Fanatics (3 page)

7:47 A.M.

Frank Murphy stayed busy on a cell phone call to Sergeant Marty Keane, the third member of their homicide team.

Flo Ott sat in the backseat next to Senator-elect Cecil King.

Frank turned around. “You all right back there?”

“Yes,” Flo said. “Why?”

“Just got a hit. Nothing to do with the Double-A Committee, Senator. But it's near you, Flo. Some crazy perp right around the corner from where you live. Bashed a guy's head in on Twelfth Street. You know the factory condos?”

“Sure.”

“In the courtyard, maybe four, five o'clock this morning. The body was discovered at five-thirty by a lady going early to work. A bond trader.”

Flo said, “Senator, how about we drop you back at the office and meet you there later? A lot of people we got to talk to on Twelfth Street. And they're going to be very pissed off. They all want to get to work. Not to mention what a bashed-in body does to their condo values.”

“Who was he?” Cecil said.

“Owen Smith,” said Frank. “Anyway, that's his legal name. His business name was Ballz Busta. You know that rap guy in the Russian vodka ads? Him. A star. He lives, or lived, up the other end of Park Slope with his wife, three kids, and her mother. In a big brownstone on Montgomery Place. Servants, the works.”

“What's he doing on Twelfth Street?” Flo said.

“One of his girlfriends, according to Marty. Busta kept her in an apartment he owned there in the factory condos. And now she's going bananas. Better hang on. With the press all over this, the block will be crawling with jerks.”

“In that case,” Cecil said, “I'll definitely meet you back at the office.”

A murder scene was no place where the new senator-elect relished being hounded by media.

8:03 A.M.

When Flo Ott and Frank Murphy reached Twelfth Street, they encountered a police cruiser blocking off the corner on Seventh Avenue.

Farther up the block, two more cruisers were parked in front of the courtyard at the factory condo complex, as were two unmarked vehicles and a police ambulance.

More than a dozen people were waiting in the courtyard, lined up alongside a police barricade of yellow crime-scene tape. All were building residents expecting to be questioned.

Outside the courtyard entrance, a small crowd of curious neighbors gathered.

A young man and a woman, both in hospital greens, leaned against the rear of the ambulance, the woman listening to an old iPod, the man smoking, his cigarette cupped against the wind. They appeared to be the only people uninterested in the courtyard events.

A chalked outline inside the yellow tape marked the spot on the cobblestones where the victim's body had fallen.

Flo Ott and Frank Murphy walked through the entrance. They were joined by Marty Keane, the officer in charge at the crime scene. They approached the police doctor repacking his equipment.

“At this point, I can't really conclude much,” the doctor said. “Smashed skull, obviously, probably with one hard blow. Steel or iron or a lead-lined weapon. On the victim's fur coat, I guess it's his blood where the weapon might have been cleaned off.”

“The ambulance leaving now?” Flo said.

“Up to you people.”

“Sure,” Marty said. “We made a good sweep of the yard before everyone came down. Nothing so far.”

The doctor turned to leave. “See you at the lab, Flo.”

Flo turned to Marty Keane. “Who's on your line here?”

“Apartment owners. People who live on this side of the building. We're letting them out, one by one, after a few questions. No witnesses so far. We got two patrolmen knocking on all the doors across the street. And the girlfriend is still up in her apartment. Climbing the walls. She's not going anywhere yet.”

Flo examined the faces of the worried and impatient people waiting alongside the police barricade in the courtyard. Although a lifelong resident of this south end of Park Slope, she recognized no one. The neighborhood was always filling up with new people.

“That one with the dog has been griping,” Marty said, indicating a woman in the line.

“I'll talk to her,” said Flo.

8:15 A.M.

The griper was short and late middle-aged, a woman bristling with indignation and focusing a mean-eyed assessor's squint on Flo as the detective approached her.

The tight lines around the woman's mouth and eyes appeared to indicate permanent personal umbrage, an impression reinforced by her steel-gray crew cut, which stuck up as stiff as a Brillo pad. The put-upon woman was lecturing a young couple behind her in the line, apparently sharing her opinion of another tenant…“
Brains get taxed, that slut he lived with gets a refund. Any dumber and you'd have to water her twice a day…”

Cowed into listening, the couple looked too fearful to reply, a captive audience with nowhere to run. Their lecturer was accompanied by her panting brute, a Doberman on a choker-chain leash.

“A filthy tramp, believe me.” The woman thumped the young man's chest with a day-old copy of the
Times,
New Yorkers' favorite doggie pooper-scooper. “Six o'clock they wake me up, banging on her door and then raising all hell out here.”

The angry woman repeated her outburst for homicide detective Flo Ott. “Lookit, Officer, this is outrageous keeping us in the yard lined up like a bunch of Nazi prisoners. It's cold out here, you know that?”

“Your name?” Flo said, showing the woman her police shield.

“I'm Marjorie Mary Hopkins.”

“We've only got a few questions.”

“So?” In one word, Marjorie Mary Hopkins's voice managed to convey her extreme displeasure at this singular moment of human contact and her intense disapproval of the entire world.

“Ms. Hopkins, this morning, at around four, four-thirty—”

“I was asleep, ferchrissakes. What do I look like, a night owl? Somebody's bimbo? We got several of
that
type living here. Go bother them. They sleep all day, they're out all night. They ought to know something, whatever it is you're looking for—”

“We're wondering if you heard any unusual noises, that's all, if anything woke you up.”

“You cops woke me up. Hell happened anyway?” Her voice quivered with anxiety.

“Someone was murdered, right here in this courtyard.”

“And no cops? You're needed and where the hell are you people? Kids get killed every day in this town and all you cops ever do is give tickets.”

“Those are traffic police, not criminal,” Flo said, as angry with Marjorie Mary Hopkins as she was with herself for spending time with this creep. “You know, Ms. Hopkins, bad drivers kill more people in a year—”

“Just jaywalkers.
I
could've been goddamn murdered. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, right here on my own private property. Thank goodness I got a Doberman. That's what I'm thinking now, you know—
Me next.
They could've killed me, all this protection we're paying for and that we never get.”

“All we're asking, Ms. Hopkins—”

“All I'm saying is you won't get away with this. I'm complaining to the mayor. Directly. I'll get a lawyer. I'm suing the city. First, the tramp next door, that stinking slut and her riffraff, and now the cops driving me crazy? I never expected it, spending a million and a half on my place, and that's what, four, five years ago now. And today it's got to be way over two. At that price, you're entitled to a little peace and quiet, so help me God, even in Brooklyn.”

“What tramp, Ms. Hopkins?”

“You don't know? I thought she was famous, going out with that music star. The rap guy. He's the one you ought to talk to. Not me. He's always creeping into this place all hours of the night.”

“He's the one who's dead, Ms. Hopkins. That's why we're here.”

“Jesus Christ, it
could've
been me! Right next door to that Celestina bitch, that's her name, you know, his bimbo. Celestina Lo Belle, she's the one you ought to lock up. Her and all the other tramps around here. Clean out this place for good. The investment I got, it's going right down the toilet now, definitely done for after this horror. Lookit, Officer, my dog here, he's got to go any minute now. I got to get my Angel up to the park, while he can still run around the meadow. After nine, he's got to be back on the leash up there.”

“You can leave, Ms. Hopkins. But we might want to talk again soon.”

Leading her gotta-go Doberman, Marjorie Mary Hopkins stalked off, muttering loud enough for everyone to overhear.

“People, they goddamn drive you crazy. Right on your own property. Good-bye investment, straight down that gutter there.”

Flo Ott watched this angry grab bag of grievances and her monster, Angel, waddle past the police barricade and head up toward the park.

Flo approached Sergeant Marty Keane. “Where's his girlfriend?”

“Apartment 2-D. We got someone up there trying to keep her calm. She's a handful.”

8:24 A.M.

Flo Ott entered the building and ascended the staircase, letting herself into 2-D, a loft apartment centered on a large rectangular living room with wall-to-wall white carpeting.

The furniture consisted of seven bloated armchairs in pale cream leather and two matching sofas, and in the middle, a tan glass-top coffee table ran for at least four yards.

On a couch stretched a fleshy blonde in a black silk dressing gown, sobbing for air, while in an armchair close to her, perched as if set to leap up at the blink of an eye, a snap of two fingers, sat an overweight patrolman, cap on head, hands on knees, fingers drumming a fast lemme-the-hell-outta-here tempo.

Flo Ott stood quietly in the apartment vestibule, where she could observe Celestina Lo Belle without being seen. Although it was warm in the apartment, the blonde's black silk dressing gown sported a sable fur collar thick enough to ward off the windiest of midwinter blasts. Her long blond hair—Flo noted as Celestina Lo Belle reached over to the table for a glass of juice—was so carefully cut it fell perfectly into place with each movement. Tresses multiply shaded, blond on blonder and set off by a few stark streaks of no color at all. Celestina Lo Belle's nose was bobbed, naturally it appeared. Her mouth was large. Sunglasses, saucer-sized, obscured her eyes, although the sky in the early morning was a wintry lead, and the apartment lights were dimmed as low as they could go. Celestina Lo Belle's skin was tan, perhaps lamp-tanned, or maybe a product of the Bahamas. Her face was past childhood and on the nearer side of womanly, though still vulnerably young, as if adolescence was a chemical solution in which she was permanently immersed, a slightly sinister effect, a youthfulness disturbingly preserved, a crystal kid, guileless, unsullied, dew-damp and sparkling as a springtime raindrop. A prematurely beautiful nymphette was the character role Celestina Lo Belle might have pulled off except for her height, or length in repose, close to six feet was Flo's guess, and mainly legs. Ms. Lo Belle's breasts flopped around inside the silk dressing gown like a pair of buoyant oranges.

Before introducing herself to the apartment's grieving presence, Flo slipped silently into the kitchen to peruse the trash in a plastic bag set out for garbage collection. She noted Dean & DeLuca take-out containers. Empty wine bottles, all French, all premium, even a Château d'Yquem.
People
.
Vanity Fair
. But no newspapers except for
t
he
National Enquirer
. Junk mail, mostly from Bergdorf's and Prada. Plus a few postcards, which—aside from discernible postmarks (Houston, Little Rock, New Orleans)—were torn too small to read. Flo retrieved and pocketed all the postcard fragments in a plastic evidence bag.

As Flo entered the living room, the tensed patrolman introduced her. “This is detective Lieutenant Florence Ott, homicide.”

At the mention of the word “
homicide
,” Celestina Lo Belle released a cry to melt the iciest hearts. Even the patrolman looked alarmed, although still quite unprepared for heroics. His eyes pleaded,
Can I get out of here now?

Flo Ott nodded toward the vestibule and the front door and the grateful guard beat his retreat.

Flo Ott crossed the room, seated herself in the armchair vacated by the exiting patrolman, and regarded the wall Celestina Lo Belle was facing. A room-long, ceiling-high, digital flat-screen TV, the sound off, was playing the promotional video of Ballz Busta's latest hit, “
Redeema Schema
.” Busta, clad in nothing but a black leather thong, his body a cascade of rippling muscles, was strapped to a blinking neon cross.

“Guess you're wondering…” Celestina Lo Belle said, easing back on the sofa, sipping a drink that looked like pineapple juice. “Well, he was the sweetest, most generous man I ever met. And now I don't know how I'll live without him. He just started writing what he called his masterpiece—‘
Concerto for Celestina'
—and it was supposed to be all for me.”

The sound of her voice surprised Flo. The blonder-than-blond beauty spoke as if her mouth were busy with a couple of pounds of Dixie corn mush.

Celestina Lo Belle removed her dark glasses and revealed hazel eyes—green-flecked, Flo noted at these close quarters—a pair of moist, shattered prisms, windows to a soul destroyed, a personality smithereened perhaps irretrievably. Celestina Lo Belle tried to focus her teary eyes on the video image. Busta, an actor of sorts, was pretending to strain at neon hoops, yellow and red, that held him to his cross of light. His mouth was moving a mile a minute, but fortunately, not a syllable could be heard.

Flo was surprised when she felt a sudden maternal urge to console the childlike Celestina Lo Belle, a compulsion to say something, anything that might ease the young woman's suffering. This was a helpful attitude and certainly nothing to repress, if Flo wanted to learn how disaster had struck. She detected little in the distraught woman of the urbane chic her apartment radiated. The condo's occupant resembled a battered woman-child, a runaway waif, another damaged victim, albeit collateral, of city predators. Flo also noticed the woman's fingernails were gnawed to the nub, no sudden accident there.

Celestina Lo Belle tried drying her teary eyes on a silken sleeve.

“Ms. Lo Belle,” Flo said.

“No!”
The mourner's eyes flashed rage. “Just don't call me Lo, Officer, okay, I hate that name. My father called me Lo. And my grandfather and my uncles and all my brothers, and all the men cousins, too. All the same thing…‘Lo, get over here.' You ever watch
Oprah,
Officer? She knew. Oprah told it exactly like it was. Totally. So please, no Lo, okay? They all did me, every male in my family, every one of them but the damn dogs they owned, thank God for that much. So just call me Celestina and that'll do just fine now, know what I mean?” She released another mournful cry. “Please, excuse me, I'm no hostess. Would you like to have…” Celestina didn't finish her offer but fainted dead away, toppling off the sofa like a broke-back rag doll.

Flo sank to her knees and caught Celestina as she slumped to the floor.

The scent of expensive perfume wafted up, a whiff of musk and cloves and roses, utterly congruous, if not with the mourner's mood, certainly with the plush environment. Flo had several pretty good ideas about how the bereaved could account for the luxury lair, but she suspected a fuller, truer explanation might have been even more of a doozy.

As gently as she could, Flo shifted her unconscious hostess back onto the sofa. The blonde in black silk and sable lay stone-still. Flo placed a pillow under her feet to raise her legs so that the circulation could flow back into her brain and revive her.

Celestina blinked her eyes briefly and murmured, “So awful tired…” before promptly tumbling off to sleep.

Flo sniffed at the glass of fruit juice. Pineapple, yes, and a stiff dose of something stronger, something more like Jamaican white rum. Not Flo's idea of a breakfast eye-opener.

At nine a.m. merely the smell of alcohol set her stomach churning and her brain spinning out images of a fur-coated corpse in the courtyard, skull bashed in, brains and blood leaking onto cobblestones, a multimillionaire rap star's whiter-than-white living room where the near-naked performer was forever mounted on a neon cross, and now startling hints of a young woman's appalling childhood. You never know on whom the gods will smile, until they stop smiling.

Revenge murder?

Or a killing driven by a psychotic fan's delusion?

Or a New York mob feud?

Certainly a witches' brew. A gut twister, and whatever the explanation, the celebrity murder was over and done and begging for solution, unlike the threat of assassination to come, the impossible challenge of waiting for a murder promised and yet to be delivered.

Flo considered where, after the kitchen rubbish, to search for truth. A framed poster on the bedroom door read
: “A man is defined not by his circumstances, but by how he rises above them.–– Nelson Mandela.”

Here, waiting for Flo to discover and delineate it, was a story titled “The Rise and Fall of Owen Smith, a.k.a. Ballz Busta.”

9:02 A.M.

Flo found the bedroom and turned on the light.

To describe Celestina (Lo) Belle's bedroom as simply a room was doing it an injustice. Almost an apartment in itself and larger than an entire floor of Flo's house, it was a chamber of mirrors on walls and ceiling, and all the mirrors gold-framed.

Three eight-foot-high windows.

The bed—circular, draped in white silk, mounted from a pair of gilt-painted steps—looked as if it could comfortably accommodate a ménage of a half-dozen athletes in Olympic-class indoor games.

On an antique white rug stood a white-lacquered table, and on the table a large crystal bowl overflowing with white mums.

The floors were highly polished old oak parquet that gave the room a natural warmth it otherwise lacked.

All this luster and dazzle made for a jarring contrast to the funereal gloom in the courtyard below.

Off the far end of the bedroom were his-and-hers dressing rooms and bathrooms. Flo was going to start her search here, not a fine-toothed-comb hunt, which would be done by forensics, but an experienced once-over scan for telltale signs. She was circling the bed when something caught her eye on the floor of the bed's raised platform.

A book.

It was bound in soft white leather with thousands of gold-edged pages, and inscribed on its cover, in Gothic script, letters of embossed gold,
Holy Bible
. The only book in sight, color-coordinated with the room.

Flo opened the Bible.

And surprise, surprise: inside, the pages were hollowed out, leaving just enough space to hold a gold-plated Glock pistol, a gun far more likely to kill than wound, designed to stop an attacker or drop a fugitive permanently.

Flo removed the pistol from the Bible and walked back into the living room.

9:09 A.M.

Ballz Busta, still up on the screen, cavorting now in a three-piece white suit and white turtleneck, balancing on the backs of a dozen or so bikini-clad women down on all fours.

His lips were moving fast but soundlessly.

“Celestina?” Flo said. “Celestina…”

A drowsy Celestina opened her eyes. “You still here?”

“Did he always keep this in the house?” Flo hefted the gold-plated Glock.

Celestina was wide awake. “Where'd you get that?” She tried to stand but wobbled and sagged back down onto the sofa. “You've been snooping around.”

“There's a search warrant, always issued right from the get-go on any murder case. And we got a murder here, that's clear enough. Now, why did he have this? Or is it yours—”

“His. Be careful, it's loaded. He had enemies. Everyone in his business has enemies. Outside in the city, he usually had his guards, the posse. But in here, I didn't want anyone else around. So I guess he knew what he was doing. Just look what happened.”

Flo sat down and, keeping her finger off the trigger guard, opened the action and removed the pistol's magazine. She emptied the magazine and slipped the cartridges into her coat pocket.

“Take the gun, too,” Celestina said. “I don't want guns around no more. I don't need a gun. I've never fired a gun in my life. I have no enemies.”

Flo put the unloaded pistol in her briefcase. “Did he keep more guns here?”

Celestina shook her head. “I never saw any.”

“Okay, you never saw other guns. But how long did you know him…Mr. Owen Smith?”

“A few years. He came down to New Orleans to do a charity concert for all the poor people. They were still waiting then—and a lot of them still are—waiting for help after Katrina. I was on the local stage crew. That was in the spring. And in the summer, he brought me up here.”

Flo assessed Celestina Lo Belle. The grieving blonde was growing more awake and calmer.

“Did you work for him here, too?” Flo said.

“No. He didn't want me working. But he kept me busy enough taking care of this place and so on. And of course, we loved each other.”

And so on…of course…

“Thank you,” Flo said. “For being straightforward with me.”

“Funny, but that's exactly what he always said he liked about me. I'm a straight-out and up-front person, word for word that's what he always said.”

“Does his wife know about you?”

“I guess so. No, I know so. Anyway, he told me she did. But she didn't want a divorce because of the kids. They have three. He was a generous man to them, to her mother, to me. To everyone who worked for him. I don't know why anyone would do this. Is he still…outside…down there?”

“No, not anymore.”

“They asked me to go down and identify him. It was the hardest thing I ever did. Do you know if I can stay here now, can I keep on living here?”

“For the time being at least, I guess so. I suppose he had a lawyer and a will and so forth. It'll all depend in the end on who inherits the apartment. Did he ever say?”

“He always said he wanted me to have it. But I never saw any papers. Hey, wait a minute, you're not thinking I killed him—you don't think that, do you? So I could inherit this place or something?”

“Why would I think that?”

“You tell me. You accusing me?” Tears welled up in Celestina's eyes.

“No one is accusing you of anything. But of course you're a person of interest. That's why we're talking here. Just talking. If it turns into something else, I'll tell you your rights. But now we just talk. You're not a suspect, not at this point. Okay?”

“Like I got a choice?”

“Not really, not if you want to keep your name clear. You clam up, and that's suspicious, like you got something to hide. See what I mean?”