Terminal City (5 page)

A uniformed cop ducked in from the hallway. He was a fresh face, reinforcements no doubt sent in from the Seventeenth Precinct after 8:00
P.M.
“Excuse me, Lieutenant Correlli? My boss said to tell you that Commissioner Scully is on his way to the hotel. Stand-up press conference in the lobby at twenty-two hundred.”

“Press conference my ass. Fifteen minutes? We got nothing to give them.”

“It’s a zoo downstairs, Loo,” Mike said. “Gotta feed them something.”

“You better tell me how your magic box works, Dr. Azeem,” Rocco said. “Make sure I understand it,
capisce
?”

Fareed Azeem cleared his throat and moved into position by the fireplace mantel, as though it was the front of a small classroom. “As you all know, the identification of blood at a crime scene can be difficult to detect and certainly hard to rely on to pinpoint the time the bleed occurred, without months of laboratory analysis.”

“And this is what you’ve tried to do right there in the room?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. The techniques currently in use are actually a century old. Instead, our project involves hyperspectral imaging—”

“Explain that to me. I have to sell it to the media in a few minutes.”

“Certainly. So this imaging is done by a liquid-crystal filter—a tunable filter—that can provide immediate results.”

“How?” Mike said.

“The filter isolates different wavelength bands within every color. And because blood changes color over time—from a bright crimson to a very dull brown—our device is able to put an exact age to a sample.”

“This works in the UK? This wavelength band isolation?” Rocco asked. “Your murder teams use it?”

Fareed looked at the floor. “I remind you that this is a prototype machine. We’re still field-testing it. We’ve had remarkable levels of accuracy at home.”

“That’s what Johnny meant when he asked me if I was in for a forensic adventure,” I said.

Rocco removed a cigarette and matches from his jacket pocket and lit it. “So I’m a test case? Let’s leave your best guess out of the equation.”

“No smoking in here, Loo,” Pug said. “The manager reminded me.”

“I’m fresh out of heartburn medication, McBride. This is all I’ve got to calm my nerves.”

“Scully knows this is a crapshoot,” Mike said. “He’s gonna want to go with it.”

“What got your inner circle access back, Chapman? Last I knew you were headed for the rubber gun squad.”

Mike answered the lieutenant but looked at me. “It’s the latest thing, Loo, or hadn’t you heard? They try to rehabilitate miscreants these days. Give us a second chance. Were you hoping they’d administer a lethal injection?”

Pug chuckled. “Yeah, a quart of vodka.”

“It’s Scully himself who brought Mike into this,” Mercer said. “Once the medical examiner got word to him tonight that Professor Azeem was lecturing at Columbia this week and had this very promising device, he sent Mike to pick Azeem up and get him to you.”

The Manhattan North Homicide offices were uptown, much closer to the Columbia University campus than the South detectives or even the hotel scene. Keith Scully and Mike Chapman went way back together. It made sense that Scully would find a way to ease one of his smartest detectives into action again. This couldn’t be Mike’s case to run with, because his official assignment was the North, but he would be a valuable asset to have on a high-profile murder investigation.

“So Scully’s got your back, huh? On loan to me for this nightmare?”

“I’m not working a full tour, Loo. My mother’s in the hospital.”

I took a deep breath, anxious to ask why Mike hadn’t told me.

“If I may break in,” Fareed said, “I think the blood spot is an important factor. Perhaps every bit as important as the time of death. Not for the public, perhaps, but to inform the commissioner.”

“Yeah,” Pug said, scoffing at the reserved chemist. “Was it like a spot or a speck? Scully’s gonna wanna put his job on the line for that tidbit.”

“Tell me about it,” Rocco said.

“When your men worry about missing something with the naked eye, they paint the suspected area with luminol. It reacts with the iron in hemoglobin to produce a visible result.”

Television forensics had imparted that information to every viewer of
SVU
or
CSI
.

“But they missed a small area on the curtains today, which happens often when the fabric is in the very range of blood colors. These were what you might call rose. I imagine they just overlooked that area of the room as unimportant or uninvolved, since there was already so much blood on the bed and body.”

“So your camera scans the entire scene for the presence of blood?” I asked.

“Precisely. That avoids the assumptions that humans make, just applying the luminol where they expect to find evidence connected to the crime.”

“We may have enough of the killer’s blood to work up a DNA sample?”

“That would be my hope, Ms. Cooper. If the murder weapon is as sharp as Dr. Mayes described, he may have just nicked his finger on it while packing up to leave.”

“Let Scully sit on that factoid. He shouldn’t give it out to the public,” Rocco said, jabbing his cigarette at Fareed. “I’d like you, Pug, and Mercer to come downstairs with me to stand with the commissioner. Don’t open your mouth unless I tell you to.”

Pug nodded. Mercer didn’t need any instructions in dealing with the media. His dignity and wisdom had guided me through every hot-spot situation we’d encountered together.

“And you, Chapman,” Rocco said, pointing his cigarette tip, “keep out of the limelight.”

“I’m a new man.”

“I kind of liked the old one,” I said.

“What do you say, Loo? Welcome to our world, right? Probably the first time there’s ever been a murder at the Waldorf, wouldn’t you think?” Pug asked, straightening his shirt collar and reknotting his tie.

“Fifth,” Mike said. “Best I can tell.”

Mike had an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s crime history, almost as thorough as the amount of military history he had absorbed throughout his youth and in his studies at Fordham University. His father, Brian, had been a tremendously respected homicide detective who died of a massive coronary within twenty-four hours of turning in his badge and gun. Brian had taken Mike, his only son, to crime scenes and on ride-alongs in unmarked cars as early as Mike could remember.

“Back in ’82 there was a bank executive killed in a stairwell. Robbery gone bad, and boy did she bleed like a stuck pig. My dad caught the squeal. I’m not sure anyone was ever charged with that. And in ’99 a tourist—from Brazil, I think—had his throat slashed by someone he brought back to the room with him after a week of gambling in Atlantic City. Known perp.”

“A slasher?” Rocco asked. “Better have someone pull those files tomorrow. Never can tell.”

“Not even close, Loo,” Mike said. “This was an execution.”

“Call Huey for me, will you, Mercer? Let’s get a plan for the midnight tour and tomorrow morning.”

Mercer called Sergeant Tatum and told him to get up to the command center, while Rocco began handing out assignments. “What have you got in the morning, Alex?”

“I have to see Battaglia at eight thirty.” That appointment hadn’t been made yet, but the district attorney would want as complete an update as I could give him before he started his day. “Then a quick court appearance. I’m all yours by ten fifteen.”

“I want you to work out of the hotel. I’m going to run this right here.”

“Makes sense.”

“The sergeant will be up in five,” Mercer said. “I’ll meet Alex here in the morning and we’ll handle this together.”

I looked at Mike to jump in with us, but he was staring at the lieutenant.

“You two are on the sex crimes angle,” Rocco said. “Every contact you have in the other boroughs and across the country, every cold case you can get your hands on, every parolee who’s hit the streets in the last year, every junkie who’s AWOL from his program. And, Alex, look into every one of those trunks that’s been sold—when, where, to whom.”

He searched in vain for an ashtray, then tapped the ashes from his cigarette into a vase of flowers.

“Hugh will oversee all the employee and guest interviews. Night Watch will kick in at midnight, and by morning we’ll have help from all the local squads. As long as it takes. Any of the weepy broads—I can’t stomach that stuff—anyone squirrelly or acting nuts we’ll sweep right over to you, Alex. You’ll have backup?”

“I’ll reach out for someone tonight. Not a problem.”

“Pug, I’ll throw you all the support you can handle. You’ll have four guys around the clock with you for starters. More if Scully gives me what I ask for. Homicidal maniacs from here to Nome, anything that smells like this, you find ’em. Call in chits on any snitches you’ve got,” Rocco said. “Who owns this joint anyway?”

“It’s part of the Hilton chain, I think,” Mercer said.

“Get their lawyers in on this. Any litigation? Anybody trying to sabotage this place for commercial reasons?”

The uniformed cop stepped back into the doorway. “Excuse me, Lieutenant Correlli? Just got word that the commissioner is about to pull up on the Lexington Avenue side. You’re to head downstairs to Peacock Alley to brief him.”

“A briefing in a bar,” Pug said. “Off and running.”

“Johnny? Professor? Anyone have anything to add?”

“The commissioner would like you to bring Ms. Cooper, too,” the cop said.

“I—uh—I can’t say anything to the press, Rocco. Battaglia would have my head. There’s no point in taking me down with you.”

“You know Scully as well as I do, Alex. He doesn’t want to be hanging out there all alone. He just wants the visual of you standing behind him. If anything gets screwed up,” Rocco said, smiling at me as he plunged his cigarette tip-down between the stems of the yellow roses, “he can always say the district attorney was leading the charge.”

“He won’t need Coop to take the fall,” Mike said. “If you haven’t solved this within forty-eight hours, the feds will be in here, setting up shop for the president’s pilgrimage. You want to see a complete professional fuckup? Put the feebies to work on a homicide.”

FIVE

Keith Scully stood at the makeshift podium in the fashionable lobby of the five-star hotel. He was an enormously well-respected commissioner who had risen through the ranks to the top job, keeping the admiration and affection of most of his men along the way. He was about my height—five ten—with the ramrod-straight bearing of an ex-marine. His short-cropped hair had grayed throughout his tenure, and he tolerated far less nonsense now than he had in his youth.

Rocco Correlli was a step back, at the commissioner’s right shoulder. Pug, Mercer, and I stood several paces behind both of them and off to the side, where I attempted to keep out of camera range while the focus was on Scully.

The deputy commissioner for Public Information, Guido Lentini, was trying to control the unruly crowd of reporters who had surged past the patrol guards on Park Avenue and up the staircase to the lobby. We all knew the locals from print and broadcast well; most had a long familiarity with police work and knew how to ask questions and when to mine their favorite detectives for well-placed leaks. Others were drawn in from feature work about traffic accidents and consumer frauds and limited their inquiries to the color of the deceased’s hair and whether next of kin had been notified.

This group was unusual. I recognized some national reporters, cable and network, thrown into the mix, perhaps anticipating that this was more than a gruesome street crime.

“When you guys settle down,” DCPI Lentini called out, “the commissioner will get started.”

One of the reporters had slipped off to my side, whispering into his microphone as his cameraman scanned the art deco interior and the carefully placed potted palms lining the gilded archways into the main lobby. He seemed to be doing a setup for tomorrow’s
NBC Nightly News,
talking to Brian Williams, in case the story grew into a national one.

“We’re here, Brian, in the historic Waldorf Astoria—an early New York City skyscraper built over the air rights of the New York Central Railroad—yes, the train tracks run directly below us on Park Avenue to all points north of the city—and opened in 1931. It’s actually the second site of the famed hotel,” the young man said, vamping to fill time while other teams elbowed for space, setting up tripods and mikes. “If you know your history, Brian, you’ll recall that it was an Astor family feud that led to the construction of the original Waldorf-Astoria, on the site of what is now the Empire State Building, Fifth Avenue at 33rd Street.”

The reporter looked around to see if Scully was ready to speak. The commissioner was listening to Rocco Correlli, who moments ago in the empty bar had given him a quick rundown—more of what we didn’t know than what we did—and was now whispering something else in his ear.

“William Waldorf Astor built his swank establishment in 1893, naming it the Waldorf, next door to his aunt’s home after a nasty battle with her, and when she moved away it was her son—John Jacob Astor IV, later to perish on the
Titanic
—who replaced her mansion with the Astoria Hotel. There was only a tiny strip of pavement, known as Peacock Alley, which separated the two structures, so the cousins soon after joined them together to create the Waldorf-Astoria, which at the time became the world’s largest hotel and the very first to offer room service to its upscale clientele.”

Scully stepped to the microphone and silenced the press corps.

“Brian,” the reporter whispered as he turned to face the podium, “Commissioner Keith Scully, after a briefing in Peacock Alley—now a bar in this legendary venue—is ready to tell us about this most unusual murder, in the Waldorf Towers, a boutique hotel within a hotel, on the eve of a presidential visit.”

I couldn’t think what made this homicide unusual, except to someone who had never covered crime stories in Manhattan. People had been killed in every landmark location from Central Park to Madison Square Garden to the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. The stories rarely made national headlines—housing projects, school playgrounds, and abandoned buildings held no interest for news desk editors—unless the victim was prominent or the setting was one that resonated with the rest of America.