(I)
Forty-year-old Paul Nasher looked out his office window from the twentieth floor of the Mahoney Building. He stared through his smile down at Beekman Street and watched the orderly chaos of Financial District traffic. God, I’m lucky, he realized. Paul and his best friend, Jess Franklin, owned the firm outright now. They were among the most exclusive real estate lawyers in the city.
Yeah, we own this place, he mused. And now I own the house. It was the next step he’d succeeded in—the next step in cementing his life with Cristina.
Though Paul didn’t have the build for a high-powered attorney—he was stocky, broad-shouldered like a power-lifter—he had the brains and the inclination. Real estate law came innately to him; he could “feel” the future pulse of the market, and due to this he made just as much money during the downs as the ups, the annex house he’d bought being a prime example. He didn’t feel that he’d exploited the diocese at all—Not with a million in cash, I didn’t—but it was just another of those circumstances that had landed in his jurisprudential lap. I have the Midas touch. I wonder why …
He sat down at the desk, wearing a gratified smile along with his charcoal-gray Z Zegna suit. What he wore at any given time cost more than the average person made in a week, or in a year if one counted his Lange & Sohne Fly-back watch. It was all part of what he worked for, and he didn’t take it for granted. What he wore was an extension of his sense of communication.
He communicated very well. His attire went hand in hand with his business acumen: it spoke the language of a winner.
Now if I could only get Cristina to marry me …
The door clicked open and in walked his partner. Jess Franklin, though he dressed just as well as Paul and, if anything, had more cosmopolitan taste, looked more accountant than attorney, a little mussed with the unruly brown hair and pointy goatee that seemed perpetually in need of a trim. Paul winced when Jess lit a Marlboro.
“You should get a haircut and quit smoking. That shit’s not cool in our business. It’s kind of…redneck.”
“Hey, I am a redneck,” Jess countered, “and damn proud of it. I’m the ground-pounder here, remember? You’re the Face—”
“It’s good you know your calling,” Paul laughed.
“—in spite of the clear and present fact that I order better in a restaurant than you.”
“Amen. And go ahead, tap the ashes on my floor. Good for the carpet, right? Isn’t that what they say in the trailer park?”
“Carpet tiles, man,” Jess prodded.
Paul found it difficult not to guffaw. “It must kill you that whenever you drop a grand for lunch at the Four Seasons, you can’t smoke.”
“Tell me about it. What ever happened to America? Oh, and I let Ann go early. She said she had a date.”
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
Jess and Paul cracked laughs. Then Paul glanced at his Lange & Sohne. “Let’s have a drink at Harry’s. We don’t have anything else going today, do we?”
“Mind like a steel trap, Paul. I’ve got that pile of summary judgment briefs to FedEx for the Mayr land-deal, and you’ve got that call coming in.”
Paul straightened in his leather chair. “What call?”
“Do you ever look at your scheduler? You got a call at one from Panzram and Cartlon.” Jess looked at his own watch, a Breitling Chromatic. “Five minutes.”
“Ann never told me.”
“Yes, she did. Yesterday. You weren’t paying attention because you were too busy trying to see if she wasn’t wearing pan ties beneath that little Cavalli skirt.”
Paul smirked. “You’re out of your—”
“She wasn’t, by the way. And you know who Panzram and Carlton are, don’t you?”
Paul looked fuddled. “I’ve heard of them, sure. East Side ambulance chasers, aren’t they?”
Jess chuckled Marlboro smoke. “They’re more than that as far as you’re concerned. Change the air in your head.”
Paul nodded. “I’ll admit, I’m a little distracted lately, with Cristina here and all.”
“Yeah, yeah, great, but we’re attorneys, remember? Good attorneys forget about their squeeze the second they step into the office.” Jess looked disapproving. “After you finagled the diocese to sell you the annex house for five times less than it’s worth, they fired the lawyer they had on retainer—”
“But the monsignor named his price and I paid!” Paul objected, but only half in earnest.
“The monsignor’s eighty, Paul.”
“Fine, but what’s this got to do with Panzram and Cartlon?”
Jess eyed the lengthening ash on his cigarette. “They’re the firm the diocese hired after they shitcanned their regular guy.”
Damn, Paul thought. “The contract’s ironclad—you saw it yourself. If they try to sue me, they’re gonna think a stone quarry fell on their heads.”
“Well, just get ready ’cos—”
The phone rang.
Jess winked. “There they are, and good luck. I’ll meet you at Harry’s Bar when I’m done at FedEx.”
“Right,” Paul said.
“And, Paul?”
Paul glanced up. Jess, ever so meticulously, tapped an inch-long ash on the carpet and winked.
“Redneck.” Paul sighed, waited two more rings, and picked up the phone. “Nasher and Franklin, Paul Nasher speaking.”
“Ah, Mr. Nasher,” issued a crisp, calculated voice. “I’m Vic Winner at Panzram and Carlton. I’ve recently been retained by the diocese to examine some of their legal affairs and I’ve come upon a discrepancy in the sales contract for the old annex house on Sixty-seventh Street.”
“You mean my annex house,” Paul corrected. “And I can’t imagine what discrepancy you’re referring to, because there is none.”
A pause, then, “Really, Mr. Nasher, I’m sure you realize that the price you paid for the property was, shall we say, invidious.”
“The diocesan legal representative wrote the contract, and the monsignor happily signed it. And then he even more happily took my million dollars. In cash.”
A longer pause this time. “Monsignor Romay, as you know, is on in his years, and he was badly advised on the property’s true market value—”
Paul stared at the gold-framed picture of Cristina on his desk. “I’d have to say that if the monsignor was badly advised about anything, it was in replacing his previous attorney with your crew. I know your firm, Mr. Winner, and it’s not exactly topflight. Weren’t you the guys who blew that huge asbestos case in Queens? A lot of innocent people got fucked up for life by those contractors. How could you botch a rainmaker like that?”
“That’s outrageous!” the caller yelled. “You’ve got a lot of gall saying that after what you’ve done!”
“You hoodwinked the Catholic Church! You stole from them! This is actionable and you know it!”
Paul actually chuckled. “The only thing I know, Mr. Winner, is that you and your firm are second-rate. I’m sure the diocese approached much more bankable firms than Panzram and Carlton, and I’m sure they all turned the diocese down. Why? Because a good firm would know in a half a second that my sales contract for the Sixty-seventh Street property is 100 percent legal and binding. You wouldn’t find a judge in a million years who’d hear the case after he looked at that paperwork. So go ahead and sue me, Mr. Winner. It would be my plea sure to bury you in court and embarrass you so bad you’ll never get work again.”
“You’re unmitigated, Mr. Nasher!”
Paul unconsciously wiped at a scuff on his $300 shoe. “Let me put it as politely as I possibly can. If you fuck with me, I’ll fuck you back so hard you’ll be walking like a cowboy for the rest of your chump-change career.”
Paul hung up. My God, I LOVE confrontations like that, he thought. It makes my blood pressure go down …
He stood up, tweaked his Luigi Borrelli silk tie, then smiled down at the picture of Cristina on his desk. None of it means anything without her. Yeah, I’m REALLY lucky, all right.
He called the floor janitor to report that a cigarette ash needed to be cleaned from his carpet.
Some guys got it, and some guys don’t, he thought and left for the bar.
(II)
Twentieth Precinct Homicide on 82nd Street sat stone-silent. Vernon felt awkward; he squirmed in his seat with nothing to do. Has the damn phone even rung in the last hour? They were covering burglary, too, since the administrative shake-up last winter, but there was nothing there, either. All our cold cases are solved, and we’ve only got three ongoing investigations. Twenty-fourth Precinct’s got FIFTY! Howard Vernon was a senior inspector with twenty-five years on the force and more commendations and valor medals than he could remember. Somebody give me something to do!
He spent his time getting fresh coffee and looking at the Byzantine-looking Ukranian cathedral out the window.
“This must be what retirement’s like,” he muttered.
“What’s that, How?” someone asked. “You’re retiring?”
Vernon turned to see. It was Slouch who’d made the remark, a fifteen-year vet in good standing. They called him Slouch because he slouched whenever he sat down. He was hard to make as undercover; he looked like some happy-go-lucky deadbeat who hung out in strip joints and actually thought the girls were attracted to him. His shaggy hair was always half in his face, dicing the permanent lazy shuck-and-jive smile.
“I feel irresponsible,” Vernon said. “We’re getting paid money to do a job, but—”
“But there’s no job to do? Sounds good to me.”
“Nothing ever happens in this precinct,” he grumbled and sat back down. “I spend more time walking to and from the coffee machine than writing up DOR’s.”
“You’re complaining like that’s a bad thing, How,” Slouch pointed out. “It means the crime rate is going down. And don’t forget, the Comm’s office transferred you here as a reward for outstanding service. Don’t complain.”
“Jesus Christ, Slouch, there’s nothing to do. We’re tits on a bull. The Twentieth doesn’t get homicides so the boss has us double-timing on B&E’s and nobody’s even breaking and entering here.”
Slouch stretched back with his feet up on his desk. He smiled big. “Maybe it’s your karma—it makes people peaceful. It drives the bad guys off to the Twenty-fourth.”
Where’s Bed-Sty when you need it?
When Slouch’s phone rang, Vernon glared. “Why your phone and not mine?” he yelled.
Slouch laughed. “Because you’re the head of the unit and I’m the flunky, remember? Lemme do some grunt work for ya.” When Slouch picked up the phone, he said, “Yeah? When? Okay,” and hung up.
“What is it?” Vernon pleaded.
“Treat yourself to a cartwheel, How. Worden’s Hardware Store got busted into last night.”
“I’m on it,” Vernon said, jumping up.
“Sit back down, How. Taylor did the work on it an hour ago. That wasn’t the store calling—it was Vice.”
“What the hell’s Vice got to do with a B&E at a hardware store?”
Slouch paused at the door, grinning. “They got a witness…A hooker.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m picking her up at booking and bringing her in. I hope to God she’s hot. Meanwhile, Taylor’s on the way with the lowdown.”
Slouch loped out, leaving Vernon anxious and frowning. Now he was alone. What could be duller than a hardware store burglary? But he supposed it was better than nothing.
Vernon’s second in charge was Jake Taylor. Good cop. Drank too much. “But only on Sundays,” he once told Vernon. His curly brown hair and fat mustache, plus shabby tweed sports jackets made him look like a reject from the early seventies when every cop in the department was trying to look like Bruce Dern and be “hip.”
When Taylor came in, he said, “Did you hear about the—”
“Worden’s Hardware Store, B&E,” Vernon responded to at least sound like he was a leg up. “Let me guess. A truck-job. They cleaned the place out.”
“Not even close.” Taylor dropped his case notes on Vernon’s desk and sat down. “Somebody ripped off four Sloyd-brand wood-carving knives. Total value of the heist? $39.80.”
Vernon glared. “That’s the dumbest-ass thing I’ve ever heard! Nobody busts into a fuckin’ hardware store and steals four cheap knives! You steal power drills and diamond-tipped saw blades and air compressors!”
“Right, and if you’re looking to fence knifes, you go for Gerbers and the Al Mars and the bowies, the ones that go for two bills a pop.”
Vernon’s anger spilled over into his incredulity. “How’d they break in?”
“Front window, bold as brass. Don’t know what time last night. They knew what they wanted, they went in, got it, and split. We got some prints but—” Taylor shrugged. “You might not wanna waste Tech Service’s time on a forty-dollar heist.”
“Four cheap knives?” Vernon just didn’t get it. “That’s the dumbest-ass thing I ever heard,” he repeated.
Taylor eyed him. “I know you’ve had a few more birthdays than me, How, but is any of this ringing a bell? You said the same exact thing last winter…”
Vernon stared back at his partner. “Worden’s…Yeah. The place near Greenflea, right? Around Seventy-seventh?”
“The cogs are turning.”
Then the memory snapped back. “That’s right. Somebody B&E’d Worden’s last December, and stole…” Ridiculous, he recalled. “They stole a bunch of Christmas tree stands.”
“Yep. Over a dozen of them, and that’s all they ripped off. And do you remember who did it?”
Vernon pointed like a gun. “A bunch of homeless women! Yeah, now I remember. They got them on the security camera, and we even busted one of them a few days later.”
“Exactly. And you said it was the dumbest-ass thing you ever heard for somebody to pinch a bunch of Christmas tree stands. Gotta say I agree with you on that.”
“Don’t tell me it was the same homeless girls,” Vernon ventured.
“Got no idea.”
“But they got a security camera.”
“Yeah, and the guy who closed last night forgot to put a new disc in. But Vice called me on the wire and said they got a witness.”
“Slouch is bringing her up from booking,” Vernon told him and then the door clicked open.
“Well, what have we here?” Taylor trumpeted. “Looks like a thirteen-year-old hooker.”
“She’s twenty-five, no lie,” Slouch said. “Got a legit state ID and a rap sheet for soliciting. She’s also got an associate’s degree from the city college…Sit’cher tush down right there, Shirley Temple,” he told the handcuffed girl. “Inspector Vernon wants to rap with ya.”
Tears smeared the girl/woman’s garish eye makeup. The physique facing Vernon was reed-slim, nearly breastless and hipless, and she looked back at him with huge, watery Little Bo Peep eyes. She dressed like a little girl in Catholic school: knee-high white socks, black tap shoes, plaid knee-skirt, veiling blouse, but the image was made outrageous by the loud, whorey lipstick and eye makeup.
“You’re really twenty-five?” Vernon asked, astonished.
She nodded, sniffling.
Slouch laughed, “Hey, How—we ought to give her back to Vice so they can make her a controlled decoy. Young as she looks, we’d have half the perverts in New York behind bars in two weeks. Oh, and her name’s Cinzia.”
“Cinzia, huh? What’s your gig, Cinzia? Crack, pills, meth?”
“I don’t do drugs,” she peeped.
“Bullshit,” Vernon said stiffly. “Why else would you be doing this?”
She even tried to sit like a little girl, hands in lap. “For the money,” she insisted. “There are guys out there who pay a lot because—”
“Because you look like a little kid,” Vernon smirked, “and that means instead of working a job like the rest of us stiffs, you strut your skinny tush as chicken bait. Honey, believe me, there are better ways to get the things that you need than being a meat-magnet for scumbags who like to fuck kids.”
The expletive jolted her; more tears welled. “I know.”
“You give those freaks a taste, then they’ll go out and rape real kids. You ought to be ashamed.”
“Time Magazine Woman of the Year,” Slouch laughed.
“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I know it’s a shitty thing to do but I’ve got to make a living! It’s hard out there. I’m paying nineteen hundred dollars a month to rent four hundred square feet.”
“Welcome to New York,” Vernon said. “Move to Minnesota and take your sob story with you.”
Now she was crying like a genuine child. “I-I can’t go to jail—I can’t stand it—”
“This is her second strike,” Slouch informed.
Taylor jerked her chair around—Good Cop/Bad Cop time. “We’re just a precinct, Cinzia. We’re not like a division in one of the boroughs. There’s nothing we can do to help you stay out of the lezzie-tank. You’ll be the hit of the cell block to all those Big Bertha mamas.” Then he jerked her chair back to face Vernon.
“Maybe, maybe not. Give us a solid crack contact, and we might be able to help you out a little.”
The girl began to blubber. “I don’t have any crack contacts—I told you. I don’t do drugs. Please! I screwed up, I’m sorry. You got no idea what it was like for me when I had to do time.”
“We can all imagine, little girl,” Taylor said.
But she’s not lying about the drugs, Vernon could tell at a glance. The women always sung like canaries after a second or third bust. “Did you agree to a blood test when you got booked?”
“That she did, How,” Slouch offered. “Makes ya wonder.”
Vernon watched her intently, assaying body language and eye movement. “Maybe I can do something for you, Cinzia, but you know how life is. To get something, you have to give something.”
The girl groaned. “Jesus, you gotta be kidding me; you guys are cops.”
“Relax, I’m not talking about sexual somethings—”
“Shucks!” Slouch laughed.
Taylor jerked her chair back. “You give us the make on your johns so we get an assist from Vice—”
The girl groaned.
“And, you give us some info that leads to a bust on the hardware store,” Vernon ganged up. “A little bird says you saw something last night.”
For once, the girl seemed enthused. “Oh, yeah, I saw the whole thing near Seventy-seventh. The hardware store near Greenflea. It was like three in the morning.”
“That’s a bit late for a little girl to be wandering around,” Taylor said, then shoved her chair back toward Vernon.
“Did you see the perpetrators?”
“Yes, four or five of them. They’d broken the front window. Right when I was walking by after a—well, you know. They all jumped out the hole in the window and ran away.”
“Four or five of them? They didn’t happen to be—”
“It’s these nutty homeless chicks I see all the time hanging out around Broadway, near—what is it? Dessorio Avenue?”
Vernon and Taylor traded raised brows.
“But last night they were up around Seventy-seventh busting into the hardware store,” she went on. “The reason I recognized them is I see ’em all the time during the day panhandling on Sixty-eighth.”
“Homeless girls…”
“Yeah, crackheads. They’re pains in the ass. They live place to place to place. You know.”
“No, we don’t know,” Vernon said. “What place? The shelters south of town?”
“No, no, a building gets sold or a restaurant goes under, lots of the bums will squat there until someone comes in to start work on the place and throws ’em out. But they hang around this area. Upper West Side’s a good place to beg for change. You want to see ’em, go down to where that guy sells off-brand hot dogs and says they’re Sabrett’s.”
“That’s half the vendors in New York, honey,” Slouch said.
“It’s the guy who’s always around Dessorio and Sixty-seventh,” she added. “I see them all the time, bumming change around there.”
“Pretty interesting, huh, How? The bum part?” Taylor remarked.
“Just like those girls last December.”
“And they’re real nutty and silly,” the prostitute complained. “Giggling and jabbering. They’re worse than the damn pigeons.”
“Have some compassion, Cinzia,” Vernon told her. “They’re probably all schizophrenic. What’s your excuse for being a non contributor?”
The girl put her head down.
Vernon rubbed his hands together. “What you gotta understand is this is about the cushiest precinct in the city. These girls stole a pissant forty bucks’ worth of knives last night and a bunch of Christmas tree stands last December.”
The girl gave him an odd look.
“That’s right. Christmas tree stands. Not exactly the crime of the century, huh?” Vernon went on. “But because our jobs are so easy here, if we don’t solve this real fast—like in one day—we’ll be the laughingstock of the department. So here’s the deal. If your blood test comes up negative for drugs, and youddd show us where these nutty homeless girls hang out, I’ll call the magistrate and have him drop your charges, if you agree to do some informant work for the Vice unit. That way, you stay out of jail, and we get something to do that makes us look like we’re earning our pay for a change.”
“All right,” the girl said.
Vernon uncuffed her. “And clean that silly makeup off your face. It makes you look asinine.”
“Thanks…”
“You’re going to go with Detective Taylor now and show him where these girls congregate.”
“I’m almost off-shift,” Taylor complained.
“Such are the hardships of public service.” Vernon cracked a smile.
“Hey, Jake, make sure you got your vest on,” Slouch sniped. “These nutty homeless chicks are tough customers.”
“You’re going with him,” Vernon said.
Slouch glared. “Why?”
“To pick up some hot dogs from that street vendor. I’ll be able to tell if they’re really Sabrett’s. False advertising’s a crime, too, you know.”
Slouch wasn’t happy. “And what are you doing, Inspector?”
“I’m going home,” Vernon said. “I’m off-shift.”