NYPD Red Page 5

  One thing was clear. Dave West wasn’t a killer. He was a patsy and he was about to take the fall for a sadistic killer. Reitzfeld had said that Dave’s wife was sick. But not once did he whine about her or use her illness as an excuse. He had taken his mind off his life-or-death job, and he was willing to own his mistake and suffer the consequences.

  He stopped sobbing and looked me square in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Go ahead,” he said and put both hands behind his back. “It’s your job.”

  “Dave West, you’re under arrest for negligent homicide in the death of Ian Stewart,” I said.

  I read him his Miranda rights while Kylie and Bob Reitzfeld looked on.

  I’ve never felt so bad about arresting anyone. And then something happened that made it even worse. It hit me in the pit of my stomach. Kylie was right. The shooting of Ian Stewart was too big a spectacle to walk out on. And whoever switched the harmless blanks for deadly bullets was in this room right now, silently watching me slap a pair of handcuffs on an innocent man.

  Chapter 16

  YOU MIGHT THINK that a wide-eyed, superalert, extremely talkative person would be an ideal witness to interview. Not when all that hyperactivity is induced by cocaine.

  Henry Muhlenberg, the young hotshot director, was useless. Even if we’d missed the dilated pupils and the runny nose, all it took was one question to realize he was too coked up to help.

  The question was “Can you tell us what happened?”

  “What happened was somebody put real bullets in the gun,” he said, talking at race-car speed. “Bang. Edie shoots Ian. He’s dead. I’m dead. You know what I mean when I say I’m dead? She might as well have pointed the gun at me, because I’m finished. Over. Kaput.”

  We couldn’t shut him up, so we sat him down and walked out of earshot.

  “He wasn’t nearly this whacked-out when I first got here,” Reitzfeld told us. “He probably decided to get rid of whatever blow he had on him before the cops showed up, and why waste it by flushing it down the toilet?”

  “Forget about him,” Kylie said. “Here comes the real boss.”

  Shelley Trager strode through the doors of Studio X. He’s that rare breed of producer who’s made it big in New York. A scrappy Jewish kid who used his fists growing up in the rough-and-tumble Irish neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen and his brains navigating the ego-driven world of show business.

  “The only difference,” he’s fond of saying, “is that in Hell’s Kitchen, they stab you in the front.”

  He was strikingly handsome in his prime, but now, closing in on sixty, he’s fighting a losing battle with both his waistline and his hairline. But time has only improved his reputation. He’s one of the acknowledged good guys in the entertainment business, and his company, Noo Yawk Films, has provided jobs for tens of thousands of actors, writers, and production people who would otherwise be waiting on tables.

  A longtime friend of the mayor, Trager is one of the biggest supporters of bringing more of LA’s film business to the city. And since he owns a piece of Silvercup Studios, what’s good for New York is good for Shelley.

  “Zach,” he said when he saw me.

  I met him a year ago when I put away a wacko who was stalking one of his young stars. It came as no surprise that he remembered exactly who I was.

  Kylie, of course, knows him personally, but there were no hugs, no air kisses—just a brief exchange of head tilts, and Trager got right down to business.

  “How can I help?” he said.

  “The armorer says somebody got to the gun and switched the blanks for live ammo,” I said. “For starters, we’ll need the names of everyone on the set. And I know they’re on the clock, but I’ll have to ask you not to release anybody till we get statements from every one of them.”

  “Done,” he said immediately. “What else?”

  “We’re told the shooting was all caught on film,” Kylie said. “We need to see it.”

  He took a little longer on this one. Finally, he said, “Under one condition. NYPD and nobody else. When you’re done, I want the footage locked up. God forbid it should show up on YouTube.”

  “Thank you,” Kylie said.

  “I heard you arrested Dave West,” Shelley said. “Is it really necessary? The poor guy’s got a sick wife.”

  “We had to,” I said. “I doubt if the DA will be tough on him, but it would help if he had a lawyer.”

  “I’ve already hired one,” Shelley said. “Perry Keziah—you know him?”

  I nodded. Everybody knew Perry Keziah. He wasn’t just a lawyer; he was the best of the best. Dave would be home in time for dinner.

  “Excuse me,” Trager said.

  He walked onto the set and stood over Ian Stewart’s body. Everything else stopped. Nobody on the stage moved. Nobody talked. All eyes were on him.

  He lowered his head and mouthed a silent prayer.

  Then he walked back and stood face-to-face with Kylie and me.

  “This is a tragedy,” he said. “But if what they’re saying about the death of Sid Roth is true…” He paused, as if speaking the words out loud would make them real. “If what they’re saying about the death of Sid Roth is true,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “then it’s a conspiracy.”

  Chapter 17

  KYLIE AND I stood there and let Trager’s words sink in. A major producer is found dead in the morning—probable homicide. An above-the-title actor is shot a few hours later—probable homicide. It’s a pretty big coincidence, and homicide detectives don’t believe in coincidences.

  “I hit a hot button, didn’t I?” Trager said.

  Kylie stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re both lousy poker players. I can tell by looking at the two of you that Sid Roth, who was ten years younger and in ten times better shape than I am, did not suddenly keel over and die of a heart attack on the first day of Hollywood on the Hudson. The rumors are true. He was poisoned, wasn’t he?”

  “Shelley, you know we can’t answer that,” Kylie said.

  “Fine. The mayor can. I’m the guy who helped him deliver a thousand Hollywood big hitters to New York. I’m the first guy he’ll call if he thinks the other nine hundred and ninety-eight are at risk.” He took out his cell phone.

  “Put it away,” Kylie said. “We’re waiting for the lab results, but it looks like Sid Roth was poisoned.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Trager said. “Are we talking about a serial killer?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “There’s no pattern. Except for the fact that both men were in show business, there’s no link between the two of them. We have to investigate each case separately.”

  “Which means we have to talk to Edie Coburn,” Kylie said.

  “Give her a break,” Shelley said. “She’s in shock.”

  “That’s what happens to people who witness a murder,” Kylie said. “We know how to talk to her.”

  “She’s in her trailer,” Trager said. “I’ll take you there.”

  Edie Coburn was in a lot less shock than advertised. She was smoking a cigarette and sipping clear liquid out of a tall water tumbler. I doubted it was Evian. Shelley introduced us as Detectives Jordan and MacDonald from NYPD, but he left out the part about his connection to Kylie through Spence Harrington. He told her we had a few questions about the “unfortunate accident.”

  “I didn’t know the gun was loaded,” she said. Actually, she didn’t just say it. She delivered it. It was like she’d rehearsed the line all afternoon, and the camera started rolling as soon as the cops walked in.

  “You know that’s a line from a song,” Trager said.

  She smiled. Of course she knew.

  “We’re sorry for your loss, Ms. Coburn,” I said. “Can you talk about what happened on the set?”

  “Let’s not pretend,” she said. “I was a naughty girl. I held up production all morning because I was furious at Ian. He’s a serial adulterer. I ought
to know—the first time I slept with him he was married to someone else. So I married him with my eyes wide open. He cheats; I look the other way. But this one was too much. Did he really have to fuck the girl the two of us would be doing a scene with? And worse than that, the bitch told everybody. All proud of herself, like it was some sort of big conquest, like Ian was the Holy Grail.”

  She took a swig from the tumbler. “I knew how important this scene was to Ian, so I went into my diva act and refused to come out. I decided to let him sweat for a while.”

  “What motivated you to finally do the scene?” Kylie said.

  “Oh, you’re cute,” Edie said. “You wouldn’t ask that question if you didn’t already know the answer. The director came to my trailer. Let’s just say he’s very persuasive. He convinced me.” Another gulp from the glass. “Convinced the hell out of me.”

  “And when you got to the stage, were you still angry at your husband?” Kylie said.

  “What do you think?”

  “And were you uncomfortable with the fact that a lot of people on the set knew he was having an affair with Devon Whitaker?”

  “No, sweetie. I’m uncomfortable when my panty hose ride up. When I walked out on that stage in front of all those gossiping extras, I was mortified. But how I felt and what I did are two different things. The prop guy gave me the gun. I didn’t know there were any real bullets in it. If I did, I would have fired the two blanks at Ian and put the entire clip into Devon Whitaker. She’s the one who told the cast and crew that she was screwing my husband.”

  “Thank you for talking with us,” I said. “Again, we’re sorry for your loss.”

  “I called Ian’s brother Sebastian in London,” she said. “They agreed to let us have a memorial service in New York for his fans. Then they want his body sent back home as soon as possible.”

  “The medical examiner should be finished with the autopsy by tomorrow or Wednesday,” I said. “The family can claim his remains after that.”

  “Thank you,” she said, draining what was left in her glass. “Shelley, would you mind staying after the detectives leave.”

  Kylie and I took our cue and exited the trailer.

  “If we’re looking for someone with a motive,” I said, “she’s got one with a capital M.”

  “She’s a bitch,” Kylie said, “but she’s innocent. Ian Stewart was a world-class skirt chaser, and Edie knew it. He’d cheated on her before, and she figured he’d cheat on her again. I’m sure she wanted payback, but more on the order of a nice little bauble in a robin’s-egg blue Tiffany box, not a dead husband. She didn’t do it. She didn’t set it up.”

  “You sure?” I said. “Whatever happened to ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”

  “It doesn’t apply here,” Kylie said. “A lot of these people sleep around, but in show business, adultery isn’t a motive for murder; it’s a lifestyle.”

  Chapter 18

  THE CHAMELEON WANTED to scream. It had all been going so well, and suddenly the two detectives had pulled the rug out from under him.

  His cell phone vibrated. Another text from Lexi: Ian is a trending topic on Twitter. Congrats. UR242.

  He hated all that childish text lingo. He’d mastered ROTFLMAO and a few others, but this was a new one. It took him a while to parse this one out: you are two for two.

  He was, but he wasn’t happy. He had switched magazines on the SIG Pro—as writ. The armorer gave the loaded gun to Edie Coburn—as writ. Ian Stewart was lying in a pool of blood—as writ.

  But the next scene was the one he’d been waiting for all day. It was a turning point in his script.

  INT. SOUNDSTAGE—SILVERCUP STUDIOS—DAY

  The Chameleon waits his turn as the detectives interview the extras. He knows all about the elite task force they call NYPD Red. He was looking forward to jousting with them. They’d try to trip him up a hundred different ways, but he was ready. They were smart. But he was smarter.

  When he wrote the script, The Chameleon had no idea who the lead detectives would be. All he knew was that there would be a dead man on the floor, he was the killer, and he would be standing face-to-face with two of NYPD’s smartest cops. Staring them down. Dodging their obvious trick questions. It was great theater.

  But it wasn’t happening.

  The two detectives talked to the whacked-out director, then they walked off with Shelley Trager. Walked off. He wanted to scream out at them, I’m the killer! Grill me. Suspect me. The audience will love it. It’s fucking drama, you assholes.

  But no, they simply left the studio—disappeared—leaving him to answer dumb questions from a bunch of unsophisticated, low-level bozos in blue uniforms. They would lump him in with ninety-nine other extras, none of whom were worth two seconds of screen time.

  His cell vibrated again. He read the text: Jonesing 4 ice cream. Bring home sum Rocky Road. Luv u. CU46.

  He smiled. CU46. His favorite text of them all: See you for sex. It would have to be fast. He was only 242. If Lexi paid a little more attention to the script, she’d know that by the end of the day he was planning on being 343.

  Chapter 19

  “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, AND until further notice, the entire unit is operating RTC,” Captain Cates said. “Repeat—all of NYPD Red is on duty round the clock. You can shower in the gym, and if you insist on getting any sleep, we’re setting up cots on the fourth floor.”

  It was 5:00 p.m., and we were all back in the briefing room. The mood was a lot more somber than it had been nine hours ago.

  “Since this morning we’ve had two high-profile homicides,” she said. “Sid Roth, an LA producer in town for Hollywood week, collapsed and died at breakfast at the Regency Hotel. The lab found traces of sodium fluoroacetate in Roth’s juice glass, and the ME just confirmed that the same poison was found in much greater quantities in Mr. Roth. We have a primary person of interest—a male, Latino, about thirty, who was dressed as a busboy. That’s a vague enough description to start, and because the suspect was in disguise, it’s also possible he was using theatrical makeup to cover up the fact that he’s white. There were no prints on the carafes that were handled by the suspect, and the only prints on the glass belonged to the victim.

  “A few hours after Roth was murdered, Ian Stewart was shot dead at Silvercup Studios with a gun that was supposed to have been loaded with blanks. There were approximately a hundred and fifty people working on that soundstage, any one of whom could have switched the blanks for bullets. For the record, sixty-three of them are women, but I’m not ready to eliminate anyone because of age, race, or gender. Also, there’s no guarantee that someone didn’t walk in from another part of the lot. So far, statements from the cast and crew taken at Silvercup have added up to one big fat zero. And if you’re thinking of how many of those people have restaurant experience, the answer is a hundred of them are film extras—so, all of them.

  “Based on what we can pull up so far, there’s no obvious connection between Roth and Stewart. They never worked together, but operating on the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon theory, it’s not hard to imagine that somebody worked with each of them and hated them enough to kill them both on the same day.

  “There were no signatures linking the two killings, but with two dead bodies on Day One of Hollywood week, I don’t care if there’s a connection or not. We’re acting as if somebody out there is going after these high-profile targets and is not planning on stopping.

  “As I said to the mayor just a few minutes ago, there’s no way that this unit could have prevented a bogus busboy from slipping poison into someone’s juice, or someone on a crowded soundstage from putting real bullets in a prop gun,” Cates said. “He didn’t like hearing that, but he accepts that it’s true. However, we are now on high alert, and we can—we must—prevent any more attacks. There’s a major red carpet event at Radio City Music Hall tonight. It’s the big celebrity-packed kickoff to Hollywood on the Hudson week. The mayor will be there, the governor will be th
ere, the paparazzi will be there, the fans will be there, and we will be there.

  “We were already scheduled to work the event, but now we’ve been beefed up with reinforcements. We’ve got metal detectors and screeners at every door, K-9 will be out there with bomb sniffers, we’ll have air coverage, and we’ll have another three hundred uniforms on the streets. Detective Jordan will be in charge of the Command Center on Sixth Avenue. The rest of you will be in plainclothes working the crowd. Except you, Detective MacDonald. I want you in not-so-plainclothes working the theater from the inside,” Cates said. “I assume you were going to be there anyway.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Kylie said. “My husband and I are invited.”

  “Good,” Cates said. “Then the department doesn’t have to spring for a dress. All right, people. There’s a madman loose out there. Go find him. Dismissed.”

  Chapter 20

  THE CHAMELEON LAY spread-eagle on top of the crumpled sheet. He had positioned the floor fan at the perfect angle and the perfect speed for a gentle breeze to softly caress his naked body.

  He stared up at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and focused on his breathing. He inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, trying to get his brain to stop ruminating about his upcoming scene. Meditation was not his strong suit.

  He was almost there when his cell rattled against the birch veneer of the Ikea nightstand.

  He propped himself up on one elbow and reached for the phone. It was a text: 6 wuz gr8. Luv Lexi.

  The sex had been great. And when he rolled over exhausted, she hopped out of bed, and padded naked to the kitchen. Leave it to Lexi to take her cell phone so she could text him from twenty feet away.

  This is why he adored her. She was smarter than any girl he’d ever known, but she still did wonderfully stupid things like text him from the kitchen to tell him the 6 wuz gr8. He texted her back: 4 me 2. Wherz my ice cream?