“To what?”
“There’s a sheep-hunting competition called the Grand Slam,” Mike said. “To win, you have to bag all four species. Your ram gets weighed and measured in the judging, and they count the rings on its horns to see how old he was. High stakes, big money, real prizes.”
“Spare me the part about how these sportsmen are doing so much for conservation, will you?”
“You got it,” Mike said. “So four tags were auctioned in Montana this past January. I’ve been up half the night checking out the winners on Facebook. I think I’ve identified the man who Battaglia was planning to take with him to Chidra’s lodge on November first. He’s already bragging about it online.”
“What’s his name?” I said, grabbing at the corner of Mike’s iPad to turn it around so that I could see the shooter for myself.
“Pedro Echevarria. Ever see him before?”
I looked at his face but didn’t recognize him. “No, but he doesn’t look like a ghost. Or a Ghost Shadow.”
“Are you disappointed that it’s not George Kwan?” Mike asked.
“Got to go where the evidence leads you,” I said.
Echevarria didn’t appear to be more than thirty years old. He was brown-skinned, with dark curly hair, light eyes, and a long scar that ran from his left ear down to his chin. He had posted a photo of himself kneeling behind a dead bighorn, somewhere out west, holding up its head to display his trophy.
“Born in the Bronx,” Mike said. “Owns a pad in SoHo now.”
“Must have made it large. Those tags cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” I said. “Add a few million for a loft in SoHo.”
“Comebacks are a beautiful thing, Coop. I called in a record check an hour ago,” Mike said. “Seems Pedro had a felony conviction for drugs. Glad to see he’s turned his life around. Just likes to kill for sport now.”
“Possession?” I asked.
“Sale,” Mike said. “Sale of cocaine to an undercover. Three buys caught on tape before they locked him up.”
“I’ll say this is a comeback. How old is he?”
“Thirty-two. He was only eighteen when he was nailed for it. Did the minimum before he was paroled.”
“How in hell does a parolee like Echevarria get the money to enter an auction where bids can run as high as half a million dollars?” I asked. “You’d think he was back in the dope-selling biz to be running in the same leagues with entrepreneurs and the oil royals.”
“You’ve got such a suspicious mind, kid. What if I told you he’s got a sponsor?” Mike said. “Maybe Pedro pulled straight, with the help of someone paying his bills.”
“There’s something I just love about mentoring. And I’m always so happy when the Department of Corrections actually corrects someone,” I said. “It’s such a rare phenomenon.”
“I second the notion.”
“Who’s his guardian angel?”
“According to the website of the Grand Slam Club, Pedro’s winning bid was underwritten by Kwan Enterprises,” Mike said.
“George Kwan,” I said, confident that Paul Battaglia thought what he had seen on television Monday night was me leaning in to talk to Kwan during the Met’s fashion show. “We’re back to him again. The apparition himself.”
“Ready to ride?” Mike asked.
“Totally,” I said. “Have you got wheels?”
“Yeah, the lieutenant gave me a loaner since the old one went up in flames.”
“Where are we going?”
“To George Kwan’s house, Coop,” he said. “Only this time we’re getting in.”
FORTY
“May I help you?” A petite Asian woman answered the door at the double-wide town house on East Seventy-Eighth Street. She was wearing a black maid’s uniform with a white apron.
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. Kwan.”
“Too early,” she said. “Mr. Kwan isn’t available. No appointments on Sunday.”
“He’ll see me, I’m sure. Tell him my name is Alexandra Cooper. He’ll remember,” I said. “He just talked to me on Wednesday.”
The woman tried to close the wrought iron gate but she was no match for Mike. He had been standing off to the side, to my left, when the housekeeper looked through the peephole and opened the door to me. Now he reached out his arm and forced his way in.
It was eight thirty on Sunday morning. I didn’t think there was ever a time Kwan was without a bodyguard, but perhaps we had been lucky in the moment.
Mike kept going, his footsteps ringing as he charged forward on the black-and-white floor—painted like a large checkerboard—as though he knew where he was headed.
I tried to catch up to him but was brought up short by a tall man—broad shouldered and barrel-chested—who appeared in the hallway from a room on the left. He was holding a white linen napkin in one hand, as though we had interrupted his breakfast.
“Stop!” he shouted.
Mike turned and held his ground. “Don’t lay a hand on her.”
“Who the fuck are you?” the man said.
“Mike Chapman—NYPD. That’s Alex Cooper, from the DA’s office.”
There was a gun holstered on the man’s shoulder. I was relieved that he hadn’t reached for it, and that Mike hadn’t felt the need to go for his own.
“What do you want?”
“George Kwan,” Mike said. “I want to talk to him.”
“He’s not here.”
“The housekeeper told me otherwise,” Mike said.
The tall man looked around for her, but she had disappeared from the hallway.
I could hear classical music playing from a speaker in a room off the hallway, close to where Mike was standing. He backed up a few steps and put his hand on the doorknob.
“Don’t go in, Chapman. It’s not polite,” the tall man said.
“Etiquette’s not my strong suit, Miss Manners,” Mike said. “We won’t be long.”
Mike opened the door and I heard someone—presumably George Kwan—shout his guard’s name: “Rudy!”
Rudy ran down the rest of the hallway but Mike was already in the room. I followed.
George Kwan was sitting at a desk, dressed in a burgundy silk jacquard smoking jacket over striped pajamas. The day’s newspapers were spread out on the desktop in front of him.
“You’re dismissed, Rudy,” Kwan said. From the look on his face, he might have been talking about a permanent dismissal.
Kwan got to his feet and bowed his head in our direction.
“Impatient, aren’t you? I told you to call for an appointment and I’d be happy to see you,” he said, retying the belt on his jacket. “Now that you’re in, why don’t you have a seat.”
I tried not to smile, remembering one of Mike’s favorite investigative tips. If you could interview a man who was still in pajamas, you had the upper hand. He would always feel somewhat naked sitting opposite his interrogators. A woman in lingerie, however, presented a more difficult challenge.
Kwan was taller than Mike, lean and fit-looking. He was in his midforties.
We sat in chairs opposite him, and he reseated himself at his desk.