Red Alert Read online

  “Please,” she said. “I’m too old for this shit. Let me catch my breath.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Kylie said. “Not here. We only have another hundred feet. Keep going, or Zach and I will carry you to the car.”

  The mayor gave Kylie an enigmatic stare that could have been anywhere on the spectrum from contempt to gratitude.

  “Nobody…” she said, breathing heavily, “carries…Muriel Sykes…anywhere. Lead the way.”

  We single-filed down a narrow alleyway, past a row of Dumpsters, and I radioed ahead to her team.

  The alley came out on East 61st Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues. Just as we got to the far end, the mayor’s black SUV drove up onto the sidewalk. Her driver, Charlie, jumped out and swung open the rear door. I offered to help the mayor into the back seat, but she waved me off.

  “This is as far as I’m going,” she said.

  “Ma’am, this is not the place for you to be,” Kylie said.

  “A maniac just set off a bomb in my city, Detective. This is my responsibility.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but maniacs have a bad habit of setting off secondary bombs targeting people who have just run from the first,” Kylie said. “And it’s our responsibility to get you to safe ground.”

  “Madam Mayor,” Charlie said, “they’re setting up a command center at the Park Avenue Armory. I can have you there in two minutes.”

  Crisis averted. The mayor got in the car, shut the door, and rolled down her window. “Thank you, Detectives,” she said. That was it. Three words, and the window went back up.

  Within seconds, the oversize, bulletproof Ford Explorer peeled out and, with lights flashing and sirens wailing, whisked Muriel Sykes away to the longest night of her fledgling administration.

  “I hate these boring babysitting jobs,” Kylie said. “Let’s go do some real police work.”

  The two of us ran back down the alley and up the stairs toward the smoke-filled ballroom.

  CHAPTER 2

  Kylie and I joined the influx of first responders who raced to help the injured. It was just cops and firefighters at first, but when a bomb explodes in a public place, it sets off a Pavlovian response. Law enforcement agencies everywhere start salivating.

  By the ten o’clock news cycle, The Pierre was the most famous crime scene in America, and everyone—Feds, staties, NYPD, FDNY, even the DEA—wanted a piece of the action.

  Fortunately, the turf war dust settled long before the acrid gray cloud in the Cotillion Room, and Kylie and I were thrown together with Howard Malley, an FBI bomb tech we’d run into before.

  Malley is a hawkeyed post-blast investigator and a pull-no-punches New York ballbuster, but he can also get testy as a cobra when you disagree with him. In short, he was a lot like Kylie. Maybe that’s why I liked him.

  The two of us suited up—disposable Tyvek coveralls, sock boots, face mask—and we crossed the threshold to ground zero. The rear of the room was remarkably intact. Flower arrangements and wineglasses were still sitting on several tables, waiting to be cleared.

  We walked toward the spot where Del Fairfax, Princeton Wells, and Mayor Sykes had stood less than an hour ago, wooing their wealthy benefactors. Windows were shattered, wood-paneled walls were peppered with shrapnel, and the floor was littered with the detritus of the blast: scorched drapery, sparkling chunks of chandelier crystal, overturned chairs, silverware, shoes, purses—thousands of puzzle pieces that had made a picture-perfect evening and now lay in tatters, covered in thick dust and splattered with blood.

  At the center of it all was the man who was supposed to make sense of this seemingly senseless act. He was squatting at one end of the forty-foot charred swath that had been the stage. Agent Malley, a bald-headed, gray-bearded FBI lifer, was squinting at a pair of forceps in his right hand through a pocket magnifying glass. He looked up when he heard us coming his way. “Well, if it isn’t Jordan and MacDonald,” he said. “How’s business at NYPD’s Fat Cat Squad?”

  “Booming,” Kylie deadpanned. “You find something down there?”

  “Maybe.” He stood up. “If you think of this mess as a four-thousand-square-foot haystack, I may have just found a needle. Take a look.”

  Kylie and I took turns studying the prize dangling from Malley’s stainless steel pincers. It was a piece of wire. Three pieces, actually—one red, one white, one blue—twisted together in pigtail fashion. It was as thin as a strand of angel-hair pasta and no more than two inches long.

  “And that’s significant?” I asked.

  “Again, maybe. These bomb makers—we see them as mass murderers, but they like to think of themselves as artists.” He gave the word a French spin so that it came out arteests.

  “And like artists everywhere, they are compelled to sign their masterpieces. This little red, white, and blue twisty thing isn’t something I’ve come across before, so the thought popped into my head that maybe it’s our bomber’s signature.”

  “Red, white, and blue,” Kylie said. “So what does that mean—death to America?”

  “The bomb says death. I think the wire is about the guy who built it.”

  “Red, white, and blue,” Kylie repeated. “You think he’s an American?”

  “Or he could be a color-blind Lithuanian. It would be nice to know what it symbolizes, but what would be really helpful is if this is his trademark, and he’s in our global database. I’ll take it back to the office and see if we get a hit.”

  “So, what’s your take so far?” I asked.

  He bagged the tiny fragment of wire, marked it, and put it in an evidence bin. “It wasn’t a terrorist attack,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “Hell, no. I’m just a humble underpaid government employee, not Harry Potter. But you asked what’s my take, which kind of means my educated guess after snooping around for twenty minutes. It’ll never stand up in court, but right now my take is that with only one dead and twenty-two injured, this is not the handiwork of a dyed-in-the-wool, trained-in-Syria jihadi.”

  “Not a terrorist?” Kylie said. “Howard, this guy took out twenty-three people with a bomb.”

  “You’re not listening, Detective,” Malley said, his defense mechanisms going on point. “I didn’t say he wasn’t a pro. This guy is top-shelf. But he was using a shaped charge aimed at killing one person. Those twenty-two other people were collateral damage, some from the blowback, but mostly from the stampede. I don’t know nearly as much about dealing with zillionaires as you do, but I’m guessing this was an every-man-for-himself crowd. They’d have a lot fewer broken bones if they didn’t panic. This guy was only after Fairfax. It wasn’t terrorism. It was personal.”

  “If it were personal,” Kylie said, “wouldn’t it have been easier just to murder him in his bed?”

  Malley shrugged. “I’m guessing he wanted to make a public statement. I just have no idea what he was trying to say.” He winked. “But then, that’s not my problem.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Malley was right. Terrorism was Homeland’s problem, but homicide—especially an A-list victim like Del Fairfax—was all ours.

  Other than being witness to the final seconds of his life, we knew nothing about him. We needed to talk to someone who did. We tracked down Princeton Wells. He was still at the hotel, only he’d relocated to the thirty-ninth floor.

  “Anything I can do to help,” he said, opening the door to a suite with sweeping views of Central Park.

  He’d traded his formal wear for a pair of wrinkled khaki cargo shorts, a faded gray T-shirt, no shoes, no socks.

  The mayor had introduced us to Wells earlier in the evening. We’d given him our cards, and he’d joked about hoping he’d never need them. Yet here we were, only hours later, following him into the living room.

  “Grab a chair,” he said, heading for a well-stocked wet bar. “Drink?”

  We declined. He tossed some rocks into a glass and added four inches of Grey Goose. Then he uncorked a bottle of white and
poured an equally generous amount into a crystal goblet.

  He took a hit of vodka, set the wine on the coffee table in front of us, and said, “What have you got so far?”

  “We’re sorry for the loss of your friend,” I said, “but the fact that he was the only one killed points to the possibility that he may have been the primary target.”

  “That’s insane,” Wells said. “Who would want to kill Del?”

  “That’s what Detective MacDonald and I are here to ask you. How well did you know him?”

  “We’ve been best friends since high school. We roomed together in college. Twenty years ago we cofounded Silver Bullet along with Arnie Zimmer and Nathan Hirsch. Del and I were like brothers.”

  “Did he have any enemies? Anyone who would want to see him dead?”

  “This is fucking surreal,” he said, tipping the glass to his lips and draining it. “I need another drink.” He padded back to the bar.

  The last thing Princeton Wells needed was more alcohol, which is something I would have told him if he were an ordinary citizen, and I were an ordinary cop. But he was a billionaire many times over, and I was a detective first grade trained to deal with the privileged class, be they shit-faced or sober. I watched as he ignored the ice and replenished the vodka.

  “This is a beautiful place,” Kylie said, backing off the raw subject of his murdered best friend.

  He smiled. “Thanks. I’ve had it for three years now. The view is spectacular when it snows. Point the remote at the fireplace, open a bottle of wine…”

  “Did someone say wine?”

  Kenda Whithouse entered the room, her hair wrapped in a towel, her body somewhat covered by a man’s tuxedo shirt.

  “Already poured,” Wells said, pointing to the glass he’d left on the table.

  She picked it up, sat on a sofa, and discreetly tucked her legs under her.

  “Kenda,” Wells said, “these detectives are from NYPD.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Did you catch them yet?”

  “We’re working on it,” I said.

  “It was terrible. Like one of those disaster movies, only it was real. I was lucky I wasn’t killed. Bad enough I got covered with all that crap flying through the air. I looked like one of those homeless women Princeton is building housing for. I had to wash my hair three times to get the smell out.”

  Wells sat down next to her, took another belt of the vodka, and shifted his body so he could square off with the two of us.

  “You want to know what I think, Detectives? I think that bomb was meant for the mayor. I mean, she left the podium just a few seconds before it blew. That’s the only thing that makes sense. There’s always someone with a hard-on for politicians. But Del Fairfax? Everybody loved him. Hell, they love the four of us. We raise hundreds of millions of dollars. We provide food, shelter, and education for these people, but more important, we give them purpose, hope—”

  He stopped, looked at the glass in his hand, and set it down. “Sorry. A couple of drinks and I go all humanitarian commando on you. My point is, nobody wants to kill the golden goose. Silver Bullet doesn’t have enemies.”

  “What about Fairfax’s personal life?” Kylie asked.

  “Del was a player. Never married. And why would he? He was rich, he was good-looking, and the gals loved him.”

  “Did any of these gals have husbands?” Kylie asked.

  “God, no. Del would never poach another man’s wife. He was a hound, but he wasn’t into drama.”

  My cell rang. It was Cates. I stepped into the foyer to take the call.

  “Fill me in,” she said.

  “The blast investigator flat out said, ‘It wasn’t a terrorist attack.’ He thinks it was a targeted hit at the victim. But Princeton Wells says the vic was a saint, beloved by all, so the bomb must have been meant for the mayor.”

  “I doubt it,” Cates said. “Sykes was a last-minute addition to the program. This attack was planned, prepped—but I’ll alert Gracie security. What else?”

  “Nothing else, boss. There were four hundred people in the room, yours truly included, and we can’t find a single witness who witnessed anything.”

  “How soon can you and MacDonald tear yourself away from the scene?”

  “About twelve seconds. We’re coming up dry here.”

  “Then get your asses out to Roosevelt Island. Chuck Dryden has a body he wants you to meet.”

  “Another homicide? For Red?”

  “What can I tell you, Jordan?” Cates said. “It’s a bad night for the rich and famous.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Never underestimate the insanity of people with money,” Kylie said.

  “Did you just open a fortune cookie, or is this the beginning of a fascinating observation?” I asked.

  We were in the car on our way to Roosevelt Island.

  “I’m talking about Princeton Wells,” she said. “Why in God’s name would he buy a three-bedroom suite at The Pierre hotel when he owns a six-story town house on Central Park West less than a mile away? It’s crazy.”

  “Why does Bruce Wayne dress up in a cape and a cowl and fight crime in Gotham City when he could just as easily sit back and have Alfred, the butler, wait on him hand and foot inside the stately Wayne Manor? Kylie, the rich have their own special brand of craziness.”

  “You’d think I’d have figured that out after working Red for almost a year, but when we called Wells, and he said he was on the thirty-ninth floor of the hotel, I automatically assumed he rented a room for the night.”

  “Guys like Wells don’t rent rooms for the night,” I said.

  She grinned. “Just women. Poor thing had to wash her hair three times.”

  “I take it you don’t approve of his choice.”

  “Just the opposite. She’s perfect for the man who wants to devote his energy to being of service to the less fortunate.”

  I could tell by the glint in her eyes that she was just warming up, and she was ready to slice and dice Kenda Whithouse like a late-night comedian skewering the Kardashians. But her cell phone rang.

  She checked the caller ID, smiled, and picked up. “Hey, babe, I didn’t think you were going to call.”

  Babe? Personal call, I decided, my keen detective senses kicking in. I checked my watch and the look on Kylie’s face: 11:47 p.m. Delighted. Very personal.

  I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but it went on for a solid minute. Finally, Kylie responded with, “Hey, you win some, you lose some.”

  A pause, and then she said, “I wish I could, but my partner and I just caught our second homicide of the night.” A laugh, followed by, “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who thought it would be fun to date a cop. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  She hung up. “Damn it, Zach, these dead millionaires are killing my social life. I just had to turn down an invitation for drinks at Gansevoort PM.”

  She was baiting me, waiting for me to ask who she turned down.

  Keep waiting. I’m not asking.

  “I was there last week,” she said. “The music is totally badass, but the bottle service prices in the Platinum Room are off the charts.”

  I refused to bite. I kept my eyes on the road and my mouth shut.

  “Have you ever been to the Ganz?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I said, “but if a dead body shows up, I’m there in a heartbeat.”

  That shut her up.

  Normally, cops are happy to share the intimate details of their lives with their partners, but my relationship with Kylie was far from normal. We met a dozen years ago at the academy. She had just dumped her drug-addict boyfriend, and I turned out to be just what she needed to fill the void.

  For twenty-eight days we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with her. But on Day 29, the ex-boyfriend, Spence Harrington, came back, fresh out of rehab, begging her for one last chance. She gave it to him, and a year later they were married.

>   For the next ten years they were the perfect boldface couple. Kylie was a smart, beautiful, decorated NYPD detective, and Spence became one of New York’s most prolific and successful TV writer-producers.

  And then one day the drugs pulled him back in, and he began to spiral out of control. To her credit, Kylie did everything she could to save him from self-destructing, only to learn the hard way that you can’t save an addict from himself.

  Two months ago, Spence walked out on her, and when it was clear he wasn’t coming back, Kylie slowly dipped her toe back into the dating pool.

  There was a line of boys in blue hoping to get on her dance card, but she turned them all down.

  “I’m not hooking up with any cops,” she told me. “One was enough.”

  I didn’t ask if that meant I had set the bar impossibly high or I’d ruined it for every other cop in the department.

  For weeks she’d been dropping little hints about the new man in her life, egging me on to probe for details. But I was damned if I was going to ask.

  All I knew for sure was that whoever this guy was, he could afford bottle service in the Platinum Room at the fucking Ganz.

  I have no idea why he’d want to be surrounded by loud people and even louder music, and then spend thousands of dollars on a bottle of booze he could buy for fifty bucks at a liquor store.

  But like Kylie said, “Never underestimate the insanity of people with money.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Roosevelt Island is a two-mile strip of land in the East River. It’s so narrow—barely eight hundred feet wide—that from the air it looks like a piece of dental floss in between two teeth called Manhattan and Queens.

  Eleven thousand people live there. Most of the other eight and a half million New Yorkers have either never been or popped by once when they took the kids for a ride on the aerial tramway that connects the island to Manhattan.

  I drove across the Ed Koch Bridge, made a U-turn in Queens, and then doubled back over a second bridge to Main Street on Roosevelt Island. The trip took twenty-seven minutes. The tram takes three.