If I Should Die Before I Die (15 page)

One: there wasn't an adult male anywhere on the wall or the mantel, no father, no grandfather. Secondly, once you got past the short-pants age, Vincent seemed to have dropped totally out of sight.

I also noticed, almost in passing, an oddly familiar face.

The picture was of a bunch of college-age kids of both sexes on a sailboat, with froth in the water and billow in the sails. They wore bathing suits and T-shirts and sweatshirts, and some of them waved at the camera, and some had their arms around each other's shoulders, except for the one who was doing the steering and had his back to the camera. The photo had a grainy texture, like it had been blown up, and if I was right, it would have been some six to eight years old.

I was right. I'd recognized the one in the middle of the group. Maybe because he was taller than the rest, but almost certainly because of the towel draped around his neck.

“Is that one of yours?” I asked, pointing at him.

“Who?” she said, looking closer. “No, that's just Carter. Carter McCloy.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Just a friend of Vincenzo's.”

“And where's Vincenzo?”

“That one,” she said, pointing. “The one with his back to the camera.”

“Funny thing,” I said, by way of covering up my surprise, “but I notice he seems to have dropped out of your family album. I mean, once you get past the kiddie pictures, there aren't any of him, except for this one with his back to …”

Like I say, I'm pretty sure it came out matter-of-factly, a passing comment, but she caught me up short, whirling on me angrily.

“I thought I told you I don't like cute people. I also don't like people who waste my time. If what you're after is dirt on Vincent Angus Halloran, then why don't you ask
her
? She knows more about him than I do!”

There was flash in her voice, her eyes, and her face had gone white and taut.

“Ask who …?” I started to say, but she didn't give me room.

“Let me tell you something, Mister Revere,” she said, with an ugly twist to the “mister.” “You want to dig up dirt? Go ahead. You want to publicize that I sleep with women? Go right ahead. And if my goddamn son is sleeping with his stepgrandmother? Sure, put that in too. If that's all he's doing, who gives a damn? I've already made peace with it. You'd better be able to prove it, but even if you can prove it, do you really think that's going to stop us? And you can tell my brothers this for me, mister: if they want to start slinging mud, than La Marga and I can sling with the best of them!”

“I'm sorry, Sally, I …,” I began.

“And don't you call me Sally. How
dare
you? My name's Ms. Magister.”

Whatever else she may have been, she laid this on me with all the cold indignation of somebody born to give orders, like the queen talking to an errand boy.

“I …,” I started, but that was as far as I got.

“I want you out of here now,” she said, leading the way out of the room and pointing.

So out I went.

I stood outside in the diesel smoke of Tribeca, where the build-up to the Holland Tunnel rush hour was just starting to form, making and unmaking combinations. For instance, Vincent Angus Halloran, Jr., Sally's son, was already on three of my lists, but up to that point I'd missed the connections. This could have had to do with the names. I'd thought of them all as Magisters, the whole clan, but Sally's first husband had been a Halloran, her second a Cummings, and the children still went by their fathers' surnames. Vincent Angus Halloran, Jr., had appeared on Bud Fincher's family rosters and reports, and he was also down, I discovered when I checked later, as a sometimes visitor and escort to Margie. That they'd been shacking up together was news, and possibly not even true. Sally Magister, I judged, was capable of paranoia where her children were concerned.

But Vincent Angus Halloran, Jr., was, in addition, on a third list, only there he was called Hal. I'm talking about the Carter McCloy list. I'd even met him once myself, more or less, in the Rosebud men's room, and Bobby Derr had told me he was the one who usually defended McCloy against the others. And McCloy's picture was on his mother's wall.

What the implications were though, if any, I had no time for right then. For one thing, I was due at the office in fifteen minutes, when McClintock and Hank Rand were scheduled for a council of war. In addition, and closer to hand, I had company.

They were parked in a tan-colored Accord in a No Standing zone at the bottom of Sally Magister's block. I didn't pay any attention at first because I thought they belonged to a line of traffic waiting for the lights to change. But then the lights changed, the column moved forward, and the Accord stayed put. Then one of them—the driver—got out and walked toward me.

I don't know what it is about the Gentlemen of the Law, I truly don't, but you really can spot them. FBI, NYPD, DA's office, take your pick. These two didn't have that young, scrubbed, crewcut look. It wasn't the polyester either, or the London Fogs, and as for smell, all you got on that street was diesel and carbon monoxide. Maybe at that it's the eyes.

“We want to talk to you,” this one said as he came up to me. NYPD as it turned out, but assigned to the DA Squad. His partner was an assistant DA.

“Who, me?” I answered in time-honored style.

“You,” he said.

“Who's we?”

He showed me his wallet then, with his badge inside a plastic cover.

“Gee,” I said, “I didn't know you guys got to drive around in foreign cars.”

“Let's go, Revere.”

So—at the risk of repeating myself—I went.

CHAPTER

8

I sat in the back while the assistant DA swung around to face me and the cop, who was driving, eyed me from time to time in the rearview. The fact that they were DA puzzled me. Usually the prosecutors only get called in late in an investigation, after the cops, as they like to say, have done all the dirty work. But the Pillow Killer investigation, they claimed, had thrown all such distinctions and divisions out the window. Both of them belonged to the Task Force.

Even so, the DA connection led me to assume that it was the Counselor himself who'd tipped them off. After I'd told him Nora's story the day before, he must have called somebody like Anne Garvey. He'd have been looking for clout and discretion, and Anne Garvey had both. She was a bitch on wheels about my age, and well on her way up in the Manhattan District Attorney's office. The day would come, according to the Counselor, when she'd either jump to a big firm or stand for office herself. Meanwhile, since the call had come from him, she'd have had one of her own follow it up: Andrew Intaglio by name.

We drove slowly through the traffic over to West Street and parked at one of the piers. After a while we got out and walked out on the pier into the river, where there was a moist breeze blowing up out of New Jersey, and they kept me in the middle so that they could take turns.

They were experienced investigators, I guess, in that they lied well. For instance, they told me they'd already picked up and questioned Bobby Derr, which turned out to be true, and that Bobby had mostly hid behind professional confidentiality, which turned out to be true too. They also said they'd been on to McCloy for some time, which turned out to be untrue, although I had no way of knowing it then.

Meanwhile, they held back the big news, but that was more omission than outright lie.

They sweated me on the confidentiality issue. The fact is that I'm not licensed either as an attorney or as a private investigator, and while I usually manage to duck behind my working for the Counselor, in this case I couldn't. What's more, they knew it.

“We want to talk to Mrs. Camelot,” said Andrew Intaglio, the assistant DA.

“Well, you certainly can do that.”

“The problem is, we don't know where to find her. You tell us.”

“How should I know? Try her office. Try her at home.”

“We have.”

“What about their house in the Hamptons?”

“She's not there.”

“Then leave a message. That's what I do when I'm trying to reach her.”

“That's all you do?”

“That's right.”

“Why do I get the feeling you're lying?” asked the cop, whose name was Walters, but Intaglio intervened.

“Why has she moved out on her husband?” the assistant DA went on.

“If she has, you'll have to ask her that.”

“Has she got something else going on the side?”

“Ditto,” I said.

“And where does Sally Magister fit in?”

“She doesn't.”

“Then what were you doing up there just now?”

“I was there on business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Mr. Camelot's business.”

“Is Camelot involved in the Magister fight, the one about the will?”

“You'll have to ask him that.”

“We intend to. But which side are you representing?”

“Ditto,” I answered.

For some reason, this last ditto seemed to stir them up. We'd reached the end of the pier where the breeze was strongest and the river water chopped against the pilings underneath us. Intaglio stood with his back to the river, staring down at his toes. He rocked back on his heels a little, then forward on his toes, then looked at me. He said if they found out I was holding out on them, they'd hang me up by the thumbs. He said he couldn't believe I didn't know where Nora Saroff was.

I asked why it was so important for them to talk to her.

Because she'd named a suspect.

Then why didn't they talk to the suspect? I gave them Carter McCloy's name and address.

“We already got that,” Walters, the cop, said.

“Why'd the two of you go up to that apartment last night?” Intaglio asked, moving in front of his partner.

“I wanted to see how somebody lives,” I said, thinking fast.

“Who?”

“McCloy. Carter McCloy.”

“How come he's not listed downstairs?”

“The apartment's in another name.”

“And you took her with you?”

“That's right.”

“Why?”

“She insisted on going.”

The only person who'd known I was going to McCloy's was Bobby Derr. It made no sense that Bobby himself would have tipped off the police. That meant either they'd had McCloy's building staked out beforehand, which I tended to doubt, or they'd followed us from Nora's office. And had seen us holding hands in the street afterwards. And kissing.

“What'd you find up there?” Walters asked.

“Why don't you go look for yourselves?”

“That's our business, wise guy. Unlike you, we have to wait for a warrant.”

“Where'd you go after she got into the taxi?” Intaglio asked.

“Me? I went home.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah. Alone.”

“Can you prove that?” Walters said.

Sometimes, in my experience, the Gents of the Law will sweat you just for the fun of it, but this had an edge of real to it. I didn't get it, not at least till Intaglio rocked forward again, saying:

“There's been another murder, Revere. Last night, we think. We just found out. It'll be on the evening news.”

“An old lady this time,” Walters added.

“Suffocated?” I asked.

“With a pillow, apparently. Death by asphyxiation. And he beat her up pretty bad.”

“Beat her up? I thought the Pillow Killer just suffocated. No sex, no violence?”

I saw Intagilo's mouth tighten, and he glared at his partner.

“Sometimes,” he said. He hesitated. Then: “Except for the Park Slope case, we've managed to keep that part quiet so far. What he does when he does it.”

“Then what makes you so sure there's not a copycat involved?”

“We don't know yet, about this one. As for the others, we've got our reasons.”

“Where did this one take place?”

Walters gave me the address. It was about a block and a half from McCloy's apartment. A walkup, one block south and on the other side of Third Avenue. Sometime after midnight, they thought. Apparently the victim lived alone. And so far nobody had heard a thing.

The first one, I thought, on the Upper East Side, and then my mind started racing, trying to remember what Bobby Derr had told me about the night before.

“You'd better tell us everything you know about McCloy,” Intaglio said.

I did, up to a point, while we walked back in toward the city. South of us, the World Trade Towers had curls of clouds around their tops, and the darkening gray sky looked like it was closing down on the downtown skyscrapers. I told them what I knew firsthand, and what the Counselor's Wife had said, including the note she'd gotten. They seized on the note. They wanted to see it. I told them that to the best of my knowledge, the Counselor's Wife still had it. I also told them what Bobby Derr had found out, and what he was up to, and about my own one encounter with Carter McCloy.

And stopped there. Why I didn't tell them about the videotapes, I honestly don't know.

By then, we were standing next to the tan Accord. Walters opened the back door and motioned for me to get in.

“Where are we going now?” I asked.

“Uptown,” Walters said.

“We want to talk to Camelot,” Intaglio added.

“Do you have an appointment?”

No, they didn't.

“Then he won't see you,” I said. “In fact he's got a meeting going on right now, one I'm supposed to be at. And unless I'm wrong, it's going to run late.”

“We'll take our chances,” Walters said.

I shook my head. The Counselor, I told them, didn't see people who just walked in off the street, not even cops. I spotted a phone booth across the street and offered to call Ms. Shapiro to make them an appointment for the next day, but they turned that down. The more I discouraged them, the harder they pushed.