Notorious (26 page)

A
fter seeing the photograph
of Diamond's driver, Jennifer seemed to come around. She agreed to place a monitored phone call. An agent from Tommy Yee's squad brought over recording equipment. It was important to get the details right. The call needed to originate from Jennifer's office so her extension number would show up on Diamond's caller ID. Diamond was smart and cautious. Something as simple as Jennifer placing the call from the conference room might be enough to put him on his guard. Jennifer asked that Melanie accompany her when she went back to her office with Tommy to make the recorded call. The others would wait in the conference room. Too many people in a small space could create background noise and tip Diamond off.

In Jennifer's office, Tommy slipped behind her desk and went to work attaching the recording equipment to the telephone. Jennifer sat down in her swivel chair, looking nervous enough that Melanie decided to go over again what they'd agreed that she should say on the phone. The problem was not with Jennifer understanding. The girl was plenty bright, and she would've made a good investigator if
things had gone differently. Whether she was emotionally capable of following through was another matter.

“You still don't seem ready,” Melanie said. “Shall we go over the plan again?”

“That might be a good idea,” Jennifer said with a faraway look in her eyes.

“The point is, Diamond knows how the game is played,” Melanie said. “He lives with enough duplicity that he's always on high alert. Even from you, he'll be expecting treachery, so you have to go the extra mile to allay his fears. You need to fake him out. Suggest there's a big problem, but don't come right out and say it openly or he might get suspicious. Act like
you're
the one who's worried about saying incriminating things over the telephone. If he seems like he's falling for it, and you can draw him out and get him talking, great. If not, just make a date to meet him tonight at your apartment. He'll feel safe there. Then we can get him on tape for sure. Got it?”

Jennifer hesitated.

“What's the matter?” Melanie asked, not unkindly.

“I've never set up somebody I cared about before. I'm not sure how you prepare for that. The only way I can feel okay about it is to tell myself I'm only doing this to clear Evan's name.”

“Whatever it takes,” Melanie snapped, frustrated. “Are you ready?”

Jennifer nodded. “Let's get this over with.”

Tommy handed Melanie a set of padded headphones that would enable her to hear both sides of the conversation, and began to dial. Even as Melanie watched him punch in the number, she didn't know whether Jennifer would do what was required to get Diamond on tape. The line was ringing. Melanie held her breath. A pulse beat in Jennifer's temple, and her eyes were clouded and troubled.

“Poe and Diamond,” the receptionist answered.

“This is Jennifer Lamont from the U.S. Attorney's Office. I need to speak with Mr. Diamond.”

“One moment, please.”

They waited.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Evan. It's Jennifer.”

Diamond paused a second too long, as if weighing his response.

“Jennifer. What can I do for you?”

The tone was businesslike, impersonal. Melanie had a bad feeling already. There was a yellow legal pad on the desk. She grabbed it, scrawled TAKE IT SLOW, and held it up at Jennifer.

“There's something I need to discuss with you,” Jennifer said.

“Go ahead. You have my complete attention.”

“No, it's better if we don't talk over the phone.”

“Is this about the Briggs case?” Diamond asked.

“Sort of.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Not exactly. But I probably shouldn't go into it now. Can we meet somewhere?”

Melanie nodded her approval. Jennifer was doing a good job of throwing him off.

But apparently not good enough.

“Why do we need to meet?” Diamond asked. “If you have something to say, just say it. This is a busy time for me, with trial preparation and all.”

“If you want me to say it, I will,” Jennifer said, panicking. “We're in trouble, Evan. Susan Charlton suspects.”

Melanie was shaking her head, and waving her hands at Jennifer, but it was too late. The words were out.

A pause again, longer this time.

“Suspects?” Diamond said eventually. “I can't imagine what you're referring to. This is a very odd conversation.”

BACKTRACK! Melanie wrote on the legal pad.

“Uh, I'm—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to come out and say that,” Jennifer blurted. “I'm under a lot of stress. Can you please meet me later, so I can explain in person? Can you come to my apartment tonight?”

“Your apartment? Miss Lamont, I'm flattered, but that's really inappropriate. I'm sure your supervisors would be very upset if they knew you were coming on to me like that.”

TELL HIM 7 AND HANG UP, Melanie wrote.

“Seven o'clock,” Jennifer said. “Please come. I'll be waiting.”

Jennifer put her head down on her arms and started to sob. Melanie and Tommy Yee exchanged glances over her head. It had not gone well.

“Don't feel bad, Jennifer,” Melanie said. “You did your best. He's a hardened target.”

“I totally blew it,” Jennifer said between sobs. “He hates me.”

“Not necessarily,” Melanie said. “Diamond was being careful over the phone, but I'm not convinced he won't come to your apartment tonight. In fact, I think he probably will.”

Jennifer sat up, looking hopeful. “You think so?”

“I
think so,” Tommy Yee with a cynical twinkle in his eye. “Now Diamond suspects you're cooperating. He'll come by just to whack you.”

T
he weather had turned
yet again, and it felt like spring instead of winter. The sun was warm and high in the sky, shimmering against the squat buildings of the downtown skyline as Melanie glanced out the back window of Tommy Yee's G-car. She used to love this view from the Brooklyn Bridge, the Gothic stone arches ahead contrasting with the sleek twin towers behind. But now the view was diminished by the absence of the towers, so that she couldn't look at it without remembering the history. She couldn't enjoy it anymore; it would take future generations to do that. She was glad Maya would escape the burden of that difficult context. It was happier to be ignorant sometimes, and she wanted happiness for her daughter.

The block where Jennifer Lamont lived in Carroll Gardens was something out of the past rather than the future. The row of flat-fronted brownstones each had a tiny front lawn enclosed by a cast-iron gate. A few of the patches of grass displayed the religious statuary that hinted of an elderly Italian lady still residing within, some held trash cans, but many others had the over-the-top landscaping of the freshly gentrified. In front of every house, the snow
had melted, and the crocuses and dandelions had begun to bloom. The flowering trees were just coming into bud, promising a glorious profusion within a matter of days. It occurred to Melanie that maybe the answer to improving her own situation was forsaking Manhattan for a small patch of Brooklyn. To have a garden where Maya could play. That could be lovely, and the private schools out here might be less expensive, or at least more low-key.

As she got out of the car, the velvety air and the smell of wet earth made their errand seem less urgent and dangerous. Jennifer was docile now. Her handcuffs were off, and as she unlatched the gate and led them to the basement door, it was almost possible to imagine that she'd invited Tommy and Melanie for a social visit.

Inside, the apartment was dark and smelled of the litter box. A tabby cat with luminous green eyes rubbed up against Jennifer's legs, meowing. The girl picked the cat up and hugged it to her chest. Three other agents who'd driven over in the surveillance van and parked in the alley behind Jennifer's apartment filed in the back door carrying equipment in cardboard boxes. Evan Diamond might be too smart to show up, or he might be too curious not to. Maybe he'd come to Jennifer's apartment simply to retaliate. Whatever he did, they'd be ready. Jennifer opened the blinds and turned on lights, and Tommy began inspecting the apartment for the best spots to hide video cameras.

“Is there a place where I can sit to do some paperwork and make some phone calls?” Melanie asked Jennifer.

She'd come along so she could take part in planning the evening's surveillance, and also to hold Jennifer's hand and make sure she didn't buckle under the weight of her disgrace. But Melanie had time to kill while the equipment got installed, and lots of other work to do.

“The table is best,” Jennifer said. “I don't have a desk. No space for it.”

Melanie sat down at a white table in the corner of the living room
and took a manila folder from her shoulder bag. When she'd come back to her office after the disappointing phone call to Evan Diamond, she'd found a fax waiting for her. It had come in response to a subpoena she issued after talking with Bob Adelman about Philippe Poe's suspicious travel arrangements, and it contained Air France Flight manifests showing flights from Charles de Gaulle to JFK on the dates surrounding Lester's funeral. Quickly, Melanie scanned the fax and found exactly what she'd been looking for. What Bob had told her was true. Philippe Poe had bought his ticket in his own name, and had traveled to New York two days prior to the day when Bob picked him up from the airport. Philippe had arrived in the evening—the night before his stepmother Brenda Gould's overdose death.

Now that she knew Philippe Poe's itinerary, Melanie became convinced something was fishy. Philippe had been in town when Brenda died, but had taken great pains to lie about it to Bob Adelman. He'd had lunch with a broker to discuss selling a property that wouldn't belong to him until the death of his stepmother several hours later. Melanie made a note to interview that real-estate broker: if she backed up Bob Adelman's report, that would be damning evidence indeed.

But if Philippe had been involved in his stepmother's death, had he acted alone? He hadn't arrived in New York from France until the night before. What were the chances that he'd managed to step off an airplane and gather the tools he'd need to murder his stepmother while making it look like a drug overdose? Brenda's death had required a syringe and some highly pure heroin, things Philippe couldn't have carried with him on the flight. Would a foreigner have managed to sniff out a good spot to buy heroin after one night in New York City? Maybe—if he'd had help.

In the depths of Melanie's manila folder was a lab report suggesting that he had. It contained a detailed analysis of the syringe that had been found sticking out of Brenda Gould's arm. The syringe
held the residue of a highly pure batch of heroin, South Asian in origin, which matched samples of the product that Kevin Bonner was selling exactly. And there was something else telling about the syringe. It had no fingerprints on it—none, not even Brenda's, which made Melanie think that somebody had wiped it clean after plunging it into Brenda's vein.

Next, Melanie turned to the more complicated task of analyzing Evan Diamond's telephone records. Agents from Tommy's group at DEA had completed the painstaking work of getting subscriber information on each and every number that had called or been called by any one of Diamond's telephones. They'd written the subscriber name and address in the margins of the records, and despite sometimes sloppy handwriting, Melanie had no trouble zeroing in on the target. There it was over and over again, in the days before and after the deaths of Lester and Brenda. Repeated telephone contact between Philippe Poe and Evan Diamond. There was even a series of calls, two days before Brenda died, where Philippe and Diamond spoke, and then Diamond hung up and immediately dialed a Las Vegas number. Requesting a delivery of the heroin that would be used to murder Brenda Gould? Melanie would be willing to bet on it.

Lost in thought, imagining how the murder might have gone down, Melanie realized that she'd missed something important. She'd been relying all along on the autopsy report's recitation of the condition of the room in which Brenda's body was found. The facts in the autopsy report presumably came from the deputy ME who'd investigated the scene. But the police would have responded as well, and might have noticed things that the deputy ME hadn't. Melanie had never seen the police report.

She spent the next twenty minutes on the telephone, bouncing around the Nineteenth Precinct, until she landed with Officer Millie Nuñez, who'd been called to the scene of Brenda Gould's death. Officer Nuñez had an excellent memory and the inclination to help.

“I thought it was sad,” she said. “Big empty house, and the lady had been looking at old home movies while she shot up. She must've been so lonely. I thought for sure the ruling would come back suicide, especially since her husband had just died.”

“The neighbor downstairs was there while you were in the apartment?” Melanie asked.

“Yeah, I remember he said he was the business partner of the dead husband.”

“Evan Diamond, right?”

“Yeah. Good-looking guy. A lawyer. You know he's Atari Briggs's lawyer.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I live for Atari.”

“A lot of people feel that way. It surprises me coming from a cop, though. He's a stone-cold killer.”

“I know, but he gets it right. Life on the streets is really like that.”

“Now, Millie, was Diamond already there when you first got to the scene?” Melanie asked.

“Yes, Mr. Diamond let me and my partner in. He had a key. He was actually the one who'd discovered the body and called 911 in the first place.”

“What was Diamond doing in the apartment that led him to discover the body? He works in the office on the first two floors of the building, you know. The apartment is on the top three floors, and it's a completely separate unit. Did you find out why he was there?”

“Yes, I asked him that. We always get a statement for the report about the circumstances of the discovery. What I remember, he said he went upstairs to get some paperwork. The guy who'd died, the business partner—”

“Lester Poe.”

“Right, the one who got blown up downtown last week. Poe kept
an office in his house. Diamond was on his way to that office to get some papers when he discovered the body.”

“What room was Brenda's body found in?”

“The media room on the fourth floor.”

“But isn't the office on the third floor at the back of the house?”

“Uh—you know, we never established where the office was. I had no reason to question this guy's account, because what happened to the woman, it looked voluntary. He said he was on his way to the office, so I guess we assumed the office must've been near the media room. We were just taking a statement, not looking for inconsistencies. And then we got called away with a robbery in progress.”

“I suppose there was nobody else there to contradict Diamond. Nobody alive, anyway.”

“No, the only other individual we had any contact with was not involved in discovering the body.”

“Who was that?”

“When we arrived, another man was standing with Mr. Diamond waiting for us in the hallway. He left and went back in Mr. Diamond's office, and Mr. Diamond escorted us upstairs alone. We were told he was a client of Diamond's and hadn't been present and didn't know anything about the body.”

“This other man, did you get his name?”

“No. Like I said, he was just a client. Mr. Diamond assured us he hadn't been inside the premises where the body was found, so he wasn't relevant for us.”

“What did he look like?”

“Um, let's see. Late thirties, maybe. Black hair. Not bad-looking except he had kind of a bad complexion. But I'm sure he wasn't involved. He's not even from here. He was visiting from France.”

“France?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you'd recognize this man if I showed you a photo of him?” Melanie asked.

“The French guy? Sure.” Millie paused. “I'm getting the sense you think this might've been a homicide.”

“I'm looking into the possibility.”

“Do you have any basis for that? Because I really didn't think so.”

“My questions are based on concerns that the victim's lawyer raised with me, things that he knew were going on in her life that suggest someone was trying to get to her money.”

“From what I observed at the scene, if anything, I'd say this was a suicide. Like I said, she was watching home movies when she shot up.”

“Home movies?”

“Yeah. We found a whole stack of 'em on the side table, and one in the DVD player. We didn't have time to review them, but I bagged them up as evidence just for this reason. I thought they might help establish the victim's state of mind.”

“You took all of them?”

“Yes. The ones from the table and the one that was still in the player. The one from the player I'm sure she was watching when she died, because the power on the machine was still on. That one, I remember, we couldn't find the jewel case for it, which struck me as strange since all the others had them.”

“Where are these DVDs now?”

“They went to the ME's Office along with her clothing and some other effects found in the immediate vicinity of the body. The OCME retains personal effects for what, six months I think, so they should still be there. Go take a look at the one she was watching when she shot up. I bet it's something really touching, you know? Some special memory. It might set your mind at ease that this was a suicide.”