“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.