Killer Look (17 page)

I tried to press Tiz Bolt for more information as we walked upstairs and through the grand hall to the museum exit.

She had never heard of Tanya Root, didn't know of any woman in Velly's orbit with that surname, and wouldn't give up—if she knew—the names of any of the other women in his life.

Tiz was surprised that I wasn't aware that the third, fourth, and fifth wives of Wolf Savage were black women.

“African American?” I asked.

“I would have said that, but none of them were American, Alex. I have no idea where they were from, but they were foreign.”

I thought of what the housekeeper who'd found the body had told Mike, Mercer, and me, about babysitting for a woman who'd come from abroad to stay in the suite several times, with a young child she'd assumed was his daughter.

“I have so many things I want to ask you,” I said, certain that Tiz Bolt would have every good reason to turn on me when she found out who I was.

“Another time for that,” she said, skipping down the last few
steps to the sidewalk. “I've got a dinner date. Have to dress up and put on my face.
Ciao
, Alex.”

She waved goodbye and walked north on Fifth Avenue. It was dark, and I lost her in the bright headlights of the cars and buses as she crossed the street a block away.

I started to walk south, toward my apartment. I dialed Mike's cell but it went straight to voicemail.

“It's me. Call me as soon as you can,” I said. “I'm on my way home. I mean, I went home when you told me to, but I went back out. I walked up to the museum and I ran into this young woman who knew Savage really well. You've got to call me. It was a total coincidence—well, almost a coincidence.”

I stayed on Fifth, using all my willpower to avoid any of the other avenues that were lined with restaurants and bars. Mike would be annoyed that I had worked an angle of his investigation alone—even though I had gotten an enviable load of information from Tiz. He didn't need to find me intoxicated as well.

My nerves were jangly. Mike was probably still debriefing some of the family members about the contents of Wolf Savage's will, and I was anxious to see how Lily had been treated. The evening's breaking news was likely to lead with the fact that the famous designer's death had been declared a homicide, and possibly even include his connection to another murder victim—Tanya Root. And I had just spent a couple of hours misleading a perfectly nice young woman about the reasons for my questions on the Met exhibition. I felt like I was unraveling all over again.

I thought about hailing a cab, but the cold fresh air was helping to clear my head. I went straight down the avenue, turning east on Seventieth Street, passing the Frick Collection building—once the family mansion—and the handsome wrought-iron gates that protected its serene gardens from passersby.

At the corner of Third Avenue, I stopped into PJ Bernstein
Deli. I ordered salads and sandwiches for Mike and me in case he came home hungry later, and called Vickee Eaton while I waited on a stool at the counter. Her mailbox was full and not accepting messages.

I took a cup of hot coffee with me, collected the bag of food, and paid the bill.

I was on the short downhill to the driveway that led to the front door of my building. I put up my collar against the wind, balancing the coffee so it didn't spill onto my hands.

A dog walker with three of my neighbors' large pets was hugging the side of my apartment, cleaning up after the trio.

I was on the outer edge of the sidewalk, trying to avoid the mess.

The door of a large black SUV with tinted windows swung open and a man shouted my name. “Alex! Alexandra Cooper!”

The hot coffee sloshed around, scorching my hand as it came over the lip of the cardboard container. I dropped the cup and bag of food, trembling as I flashed back to the night of my abduction.

The car was the same make and model, but this time the voice was familiar to me. I started to run anyway, too startled to put the picture together.

A man stepped into my path and smiled at me. “You'd better turn around, Alex. The boss needs to talk to
you.”

The detective who had the bodyguard assignment for Paul Battaglia led me back to the SUV. The rear passenger door was open, and the district attorney slid over to allow me to get onto the seat beside him.

“Give us five minutes,” he said to the detective.

“Sure thing, boss.” He slammed the door shut and walked away from the car.

“Sorry to sneak up on you, Alex. The doorman told us you weren't at home, so I figured I'd wait half an hour or so.”

I stared straight forward, at the headrest above the driver's seat. I was struggling to catch my breath.

“Alex? Are you all right?”

“What's your best guess, Paul?” I couldn't look at him. “You couldn't have given me a call? Waited for me in the comfort of my lobby? Or did you simply decide that the terrorist tactic of having someone sandbag me on the sidewalk close to home would be a pleasant reminder of my kidnapping?”

“Let's not be too dramatic, Alexandra. It's not as though you
wouldn't recognize my voice. I never thought I'd put a scare into you.”

“I scare pretty easily these days,” I said.

“Does that explain why you're drinking so much?”

My head snapped toward him. “What's your source for that crap, Paul?”

I used to have so much respect for him. I worked my tail off for him, day and night, trusting in both his judgment and integrity. I represented him in front of the community—at churches and synagogues, schools and precinct houses. Now I could barely recognize my own voice talking back to him.

“I don't need a source, Alex. I can smell it on your breath.”

“Over the stink of that cigar? I doubt it very much.”

He put the Cohiba back in his mouth and continued to talk around it. “I thought you were on the Vineyard. Stabilizing yourself to get back to your desk.”

“I'm on leave, Paul. I'm not required to keep a GPS in my pocket.”

“You've turned on me, Alex. I need to know what that's about.”

I put my hand on my chest, hoping to stop it from heaving.

“Sooner or later we're going to have to talk about this,” he said. “Before you come back to work.”

“Plenty of time to go, then. As you can see, I'm not at my best.” I was lightly patting the raw skin of my left hand.

“You're not possibly feeling I didn't do enough for you during your ordeal? My wife thinks that perhaps—”

“What your wife thinks is of so little interest to me that I'd put it back in the bottle, Paul,” I said. “In fact, you were the first person—though many have followed—to suggest to me that your wife is a fool.”

Battaglia's wife—who considered herself to be an artist, though she couldn't paint her way out of a paper bag—had embarrassed
him recently by writing an article for some blog. She described having intercourse with him in the bathroom of his hospital suite when he was in-patient for a gallstone procedure. It was too much information for all of my colleagues, and few could call up the image of the dignified barrister after the piece went viral in the office computer system.

“Some thoughts are best kept to yourself, Alex.”

“Then leave your wife out of our conversation.” She was despised by his secretary and was an object of ridicule to the legal staff. I knew he wouldn't do much to defend her.

For so long, I had admired his professional ideals, despite rumors of his sordid personal life. Paul Battaglia had a reputation for sleeping his way through half of the journalists who had covered his rise to political power thirty years ago, and others who curried favor with him by stroking his private parts.

“I don't like the way you're talking to me,” Battaglia said, cracking the window to tip the ashes off his cigar.

“For once, you might be the one between a rock and a hard place, boss. The worst you can do—that is, the worst thing for
you
—would be to fire me. You're the one who created this monster—you've put me in the media spotlight so many times that now I'd get a huge audience to listen to my version of the story,” I said. “Best-case scenario is that when I'm ready to have this conversation with you, you have the answers to calm me down again.”

“I must have been crazy to give you so much latitude, Alex,” he said, the cigar firmly planted between his front teeth. “There are even rumors you might make a primary run against me next year.”

We were side by side, but neither turned to face the other.

“Are you afraid to comment on that one, Alex?”

“You know I have no interest in politics,” I said. “I have one passion, and it's my work with crime victims—women and children. That's what drives me, Paul. I think you know that.” I paused.
“Oh, and then there's the awful risk of STDs in your job, isn't there?”

“What are you talking about?” Battaglia asked, trying to control his vicious temper. He was the king of petty-revenge points. He'd find a way to carry the heaviest grudge for as many years as it took to think of a payback.

“You want to talk rumors? It's all over town you got a sexually transmitted disease from Reverend Hal Shipley. That you bent over to please him one time too many and he—”

“You've lost your mind, Alex. Next time I talk to you, you'd better clean up—”

“Next time you talk to me, please give me enough notice to have a lawyer with me, Paul,” I said. “I know why you didn't call me to ask whether you could drop by. 'Cause then there'd be a phone record of the call. And you waited outside the lobby so not even the doorman could say we were together.”

“So this is all about Hal Shipley, is it?”

“No, no, no. This is all about you, Mr. District Attorney. I saw the letter you sent to Shipley, telling him you could make the case I was working on go away,” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes. I hadn't even met the victim yet or determined her credibility, but you were sending her up the river.”

The smoke seemed to be coming out of his mouth, where he'd clenched his cigar into place. I was sure it was also coming out of his ears.

“You can make whatever deal you want with the devil,” I said. “But just leave me out of your planning.”

Battaglia opened the car door on his right and yelled the detective's name. The man came dashing back to the SUV and opened the driver's door. “Yeah, boss?”

“Alex has to go. Let's get out of here.”

I opened the door and started to get out of the car.

“By the way, Alex, the ME called me this afternoon. She's declaring the Wolf Savage death a homicide,” Battaglia said. “There's a presser at One Police Plaza right now.”

That explained why Mike hadn't returned my call.

“Dr. Parker told me you made a cameo appearance at the morgue, Alex. I was actually coming by to talk with you about that,” the district attorney said, tossing his cigar over my head. “Better to cut out that extracurricular activity while you're still nursing your wounds.”

“Or what, Paul?” I asked. “Or what?”

“It's just an expression of my concern for your well-being.” Paul Battaglia said, ready to drop me and move on. “Don't think of it for a minute as a
threat.”

The experience of being held by captors for days had made me hypervigilant since the rescue. Despite my exhaustion, hunger, and unhappiness, I heard Mike's key turn in the lock at ten fifteen.

I ran to the door to greet him with a short terry robe wrapped around me.

“Man on the hall,” Mercer said, coming in behind Mike.

“Twofers? How lucky am I,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

I went back to my bedroom to pull on sweats and a fleece jacket. When I returned, the guys were at my bar, calling to me to bring a full ice bucket to them.

“I had this dreadful encounter with Paul Battaglia,” I said, setting the ice on the bar. “I was way out of line, Mike. I know that, but he caught me off guard, lying in wait for me near the driveway and scaring me half to death.”

“Calm down, babe.” He turned to me and put his arms around me. “You're shaking like a leaf.”

“I may have just thrown away my job.” I buried my head into Mike's shoulder.

“Hell, you always wanted to be a ballet dancer, didn't you? You're a little long in the tooth for that now, but—”

“As I recall,” Mercer said, “you've got the district attorney by the short hairs, Alex. He's not about to do anything.”

“Yet,” I said. “You meant to add ‘yet,' didn't you?”

Mike pushed me back and lifted my chin. “Smile for me.”

“I've forgotten how to do that.”

“Practice,” Mike said, picking up the half-gallon bottle of Dewar's. “I'll let you have a drink with us. You've shown remarkable self-restraint.”

“You mean you trust me?”

“Not exactly. But I marked the bottle before we left the house this morning,” he said. “And you got through this little crisis without dipping in. Good for you.”

I didn't need to confess to my interlude at the Beach Café and the wine at the Met dining room. By the time I'd had my confrontation with Paul Battaglia, I needed a steaming-hot bath more than a cocktail.

“You're tracking my pours? I can't believe it.”

“That's the least of it, Coop. You're going to start running with me in the mornings, too. Boot camp begins tomorrow.”

Mercer was pouring the drinks.

“I actually bought food for Mike and me, but I dropped the bag on the street when Battaglia shouted my name. I have nothing for you guys to eat.”

“I ordered a pizza on our way up. It'll be here in half an hour,” Mike said.

“We've got a lot to catch up on,” I said. “Tell me what you did after I left.”

“First of all, we missed
Jeopardy!
because of the presser about the ME's findings,” Mike said. “My mother taped it for me.”

“Seriously, Mike.”

“Okay, okay. So Jimmy North met me at the morgue, to go back over to the Savage offices. By the time we got there, Hal and Reed had left for lunch, and were going directly from there to the lawyer's office for the reading of the will. That's all we were able to get out of the secretary—she wouldn't budge on who or where the lawyer is—so it shut us down for a while.”

“I got called in because of the Tanya Root piece of the case,” Mercer said. “We're starting all over on that investigation, now that we know Wolf Savage was her father. We're linked in with Mike and Jimmy, of course.”

“Murder begets murder,” Mike said. “We just need the ‘why' and the ‘who.'”

“Catherine will give you warrants for anything you want,” I said.

“Done. She's way out in front of this. You lose your job? She'll step right into your shoes. Nothing to worry about.”

“I'm not worried about Catherine or the unit for a minute, Mike. I'm worried about
me.
”

“We're going for Wolf's phones—business and cell, incoming and outgoing—for the last six months. Reed Savage and Uncle Hal, too. And Lily Savitsky.”

“But she's just—” I blurted out, not sure why I would leap to defend a woman I hadn't seen for twenty years.

“She's Tanya's half-sister, Coop. And the dead man's daughter. Think big-picture. Everybody's got a motive till they don't.”

“Sorry. You're right, of course,” I said. “Were you able to grab any of the family members after they met with the trusts and estate lawyer?”

“Nope. I don't know how long the meeting took. But nobody came back to the office. That's on tap for tomorrow morning, after the autopsy of Wolf Savage,” Mike said. “Mercer and me.”

“I figured that. Battaglia spoke to the commissioner, right? He
told me that Dr. Parker let it slip that I was at the morgue with you, and that he doesn't want me doing any more of that.”

“Don't inhale that scotch, kid. It's your one and only, so sip it slow,” Mike said. “Yeah, we went straight from Seventh Avenue to headquarters. Scully knew it was important enough to do a stand-up conference on this one. Did you catch it?”

“I saw a rerun. A clip of it anyway. How much did he give out?”

“Bare bones. That news reports of Savage's suicide were premature. That his death has been reclassified as a homicide, pending autopsy and an investigation,” Mike said. “Then he had a blow-up of the anthropologist's reconstruction of Tanya Root's face, and said that she has been identified as the daughter of Wolf Savage.”

“So far, Alex,” Mercer said, “none of the hundred-plus women in America with that name fits the 'scrip of our Tanya Root. We're hoping that because this story will get international play, especially coming from Commissioner Scully, that someone who knows her, somewhere in the world, will come forward.”

“Do you have a phone number for her? Any way to retrace her steps here?”

“You know anybody who goes swimming in the East River with a phone, Coop?” Mike said. “We don't even know that the name she gave the plastic surgeon is her real one.”

“So maybe I got some information today that will move you forward.”

“Let's hear about your little escapade,” Mike said. “It's always interesting when the patients get out of their straitjackets for a few hours.”

“Yeah, quite refreshing for me, actually. Off my meds. No keeper,” I said. “I just got lucky, is all it is. I didn't have any reason to know what I was going to walk into.”

I started to detail my conversation with Tiziana Bolt while Mercer took notes.

My information was coming out in bits and pieces. “We need to know more than what the gossip columnists have printed about his third, fourth, and fifth wives over the years,” I said.

“We're on that,” Mercer said.

“You already knew about them? That they were—?”

“‘Women of color' is what Scully called them. He made Vickee research the guy's bio from decades of press clips about him,” Mercer said. “That's one thing that benefits us from his living such a public life.”

“So Reed's mother was his first wife, and she's long dead,” I said. “Then he married Lily's mother.”

“Then the third wife is the Brit who raised Reed,” Mercer said. “Alive and well—the recluse who lives outside of London.”

“She's not supposed to be an issue in this,” Mike said. “Reed told us his father took good care of her when they split, and local police in her village say she hasn't set foot out of town in ten years.”

I was sketching a family tree as I sat on the sofa with a legal pad.

“Did she figure out four and five?”

“You know Vickee. She's a relentless researcher,” Mercer said. “The fourth wife is from the Caribbean originally. Nevis. She lives in New Orleans now. She met Wolf when she was trying to break into modeling here in the city as a teenager. Married him when she was twenty-one, and the only job she could land was in a showroom of a glove manufacturer.”

“Great hands, I guess,” Mike said. “Not a total bust.”

“Short marriage. No kids,” Mercer said. “I talked to her on the phone. She's remarried, to a former Saint.”

“A saint?” I asked.

“Think football, Coop. New Orleans Saints.”

“Happy and healthy, and very comfortable answering my questions,” Mercer said. “Holds no grudge for Wolf. The man treated her like a queen.”

“Did she know about Reed?” I asked. “And Lily?”

“Met Reed. Heard about Lily but never met her. And no, she never knew anything about an illegitimate child. Never heard of Tanya Root.”

“The woman had to come from somewhere,” I said.

“She's going to stay in touch with me. She remembers that Wolf Savage was very familiar with New Orleans, and told her he'd spent time there in a relationship with another woman,” Mercer said. “She's going to see if she can find that woman's name in one of her old journals or diaries.”

“That would be great,” I said. “If my math is correct, Tanya was conceived sometime between the third and fourth marriages, right?”

“Seems to be so.”

“Did Vickee come up with anything on the fifth wife?”

“An African woman.”

“Ethiopian?” I asked, telling them the story of Samira.

“No,” Mercer said. “This one was from Ghana. A young businesswoman, actually. We haven't been able to reach her by phone. Thirtysomething when Wolf married her, according to the tabloids. She stole a bundle of money from him. Got nothing in the divorce and went back to Ghana a year later, where she started her own company. Vickee can't find her name in any of the newspapers since she left the States.”

“You guys really have your hands full,” I said, holding the chilled glass against my forehead. “Does Dr. Parker know what killed Tanya?”

“Blunt-force trauma confirmed,” Mercer said. “Her skull was crushed in the rear.”

“Which is nothing like Wolf's death,” I said.

“Right. I take his autopsy at nine, then Mercer and I try a new approach to the brother and the uncle,” Mike said. “Track Lily down to see how she fared in the will.”

“You need to get the two hotel housekeepers,” I said. “Wolf recommended Josie—the one who took off—for the job. We've got to find out where in life their paths originally crossed. Then there's Wanda. The one who found the body. She told us she babysat for a child whose mother was going out with Wolf. She assumed it was his wife and child, from somewhere abroad.”

“Not a wife,” Mike said. “A lover, maybe. But there's no evidence of another marriage.”

“Even so,” I said, “Wanda can give you a better description. Maybe a way to figure out who they are.”

Mike barely acknowledged my ideas, while Mercer wrote everything down. I knew Mike wanted me to keep my nose out of this entire affair.

“Then there's the business side of things. You're going to have to talk to Tiziana.” I looked in my contacts and gave Mercer the number. “She probably has more reason to give you the real story than the brother and son.”

“Good work, Alex,” Mercer said, clinking his glass against mine.

“You should both be at the Savage show at the Met on Monday night,” I said. “It will be a chance for all the interested parties to be under the same roof.”

The intercom rang. “There's your pizza,” I said.

Mike went to answer it while I grabbed some plates and napkins.

“I agree with you, Alex,” Mercer said. “The outfit that does security for Fashion Week is run by a guy who used to be a detective in the Nineteenth. I told Scully I'd call him and see if I can fake my way onto his staff.”

“If you're going in undercover, Detective Wallace, then I'm going to be your date.”

“You know how I feel about you, Alexandra, but Commissioner Scully would have my head for that. Think of yourself as a wallflower, Alex. This may be one ball you just have to sit out.”