Patterson Array - NYPD Red

“Jimmy’s dead. It’s not him I’m worried about.” Jackman shook his head. “Shit like this gets out, it’s my sister and the kids who suffer.”

“We’re not here to trash Jimmy’s reputation,” Kylie said. “We’re here to catch his killer. Please…help us.”

Jackman sat staring into Kylie’s eyes. He let out a long, slow breath. “Just make me a promise,” he said. “Whatever I tell you, it never gets back to my sister.”

“Promise,” Kylie said.

He nodded. “Okay. Fitz was a…I don’t know what the cops would call it,” he said. “Like a mule.”

“A drug mule?” Kylie said.

“Maybe that’s the wrong term. He was the middleman between the buyer and the seller.”

“Who was the seller and what was he selling?”

“Monte. That’s all I know. Just Monte. He was selling coke.”

“And who was the buyer?”

“Our boss, Bob Levinson.”

“Is that the guy you were cursing out in the squad car?”

“He makes great movies, but he’s the boss from hell. He’s got a ton of money and a never-ending supply of blow buddies. He buys by the kilo, but he doesn’t personally go near the supply chain. His line producers always act as the go-between.”

“And if the line producer says ‘no,’ he finds himself on the unemployment line,” Kylie said.

“Right,” Jackman said. “Levinson always hires top-notch producers. They’re always family men who need the job, and they’re always clean-no past, no drug history, no rap sheet.”

“How much do you think was in the safe?”

“Every month Levinson would give Jimmy four packets with fifteen thousand in each one. Monte showed up every Thursday with a key of cocaine, and Jimmy would give him one of the packets. Today is the ninth, so there were probably three packs still in the safe.”

“Did anyone else working on this production know about the drug deals?”

“People talk. Rumors fly around. So yeah, but I have no idea who knew what about what.”

“We need a list of every single person connected to this production. Grips, gaffers, catering truck drivers-everybody,” said Kylie.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll get you a printout.”

He started to leave, then turned back. “One question-are you going to arrest Levinson?”

“We would if we could,” I said, “but we don’t have anything we can charge him with.”

“Maybe it’s just as well. Keep Fitz’s memory clean,” he said, and walked off.

“You got a minute?”

We turned around and there was the humorless hulk of Chuck Dryden.

“You find something?” I said.

He gave me a look that basically said Dumb question. There’s only one reason I would ever interact with the detectives on the scene. Of course I found something.

He gestured with a short jerk of his head, and we followed him back to the trailer.

“Look at this,” he said, pointing to the window on the left side of the trailer. “Window Number One. Blinds down.

“Now this.” He pointed to the window on the opposite side of the trailer. “Window Number Two. Blinds down. Except these two slats are turned so a person could stand here and look out onto the street.”

“A short person,” I said. “The opening in the slats is only about five feet high.”

“But judging by the angle of the bullet in the victim, whoever pulled the trigger was a foot taller,” Dryden said. “You’re looking for two people. The shooter and a lookout.”

“Two people,” Kylie repeated. “We can’t even find one.”

Dryden shrugged. Definitely not his problem.

The WALTheR PPK was Gabe’s gun of choice, the perfect little pocket pistol-the same one James Bond used. But right now his was too hot to carry. Still, he wasn’t about to transport $45,000 on the subway unarmed.

He went to his closet and dug out the Glock 23. It was a.40-caliber, bigger than the PPK.380, so it was harder to conceal, but on the off chance that a cop stopped him, it wouldn’t connect him to the robbery-homicide on West 62nd Street.

He took the number 6 local uptown, got off at Grand Central, and transferred to the number 7. The ride was uneventful-pleasant, actually. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lexi. The girl was a genius. When he asked her to help him come up with a scenario for using the extra fifteen thousand, he was just trying to make her feel wanted. He didn’t expect much.

And then she came up with an absolutely mind-blowing idea. It made the script a thousand times better.

“I want to supersize my order,” he said to Mickey when he got to the loft.

“What kind of weapons of mass destruction did you have in mind?”

Gabe had sketched Lexi’s idea out on a notepad. “I’m not sure of the exact layout, but best as I can tell, it’s something like this. What do you think?”

“Whose place is this?” Mickey asked.

Gabe told him.

Mickey let out a slow whistle. “You got balls, Benoit,” he said.

“It was my girlfriend’s idea. Can we do it?”

“I can get as much plastic as you’ll need,” Mickey said. “What kind of detonators are we talking about?”

“I don’t know yet, so mix it up-timers, remotes, something I can set off with a trip wire. Just keep it simple and idiotproof. Remember, I’m not a pro.”

“You got a budget for all this extra stuff?”

Gabe nodded. “I got a number in mind.”

“How much?”

“What can I get for another fifteen grand?”

Mickey’s eyes widened, and he coughed up a phlegmy chuckle. “My boy, for fifteen thousand dollars more you can get one hell of a lot of noise.”

Gabriel took the three stacks of hundreds out of his backpack and set them down on the table. “This is forty-five thousand.”

Mickey picked up a bundle, fanned the bills, and put it back. “I wondered how much Jimmy Fitzhugh had in his safe.”

Gabriel stiffened. “Who said anything about Jimmy Fitzhugh?”

Mickey lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling. “Nobody said anything. It was all over the police scanner. Robbery-homicide over at one of Bob Levinson’s production trailers on the West Side. Two perps involved. James Fitzhugh, producer, shot dead. What am I-stupid? You told me you knew where to get the money, but you needed a partner. I put one and one together. So, who did you team up with?”

“Your mother. And she sucked at it,” Gabe said. “You need the work or are you more interested in meddling in my private life?”

Mickey held up a hand. “Easy there, Gaby baby. I’m not meddling. Not meddling is the first thing you learn when you’re up there in Ray Brook. I was just making small talk. Forget I asked. Let’s talk about delivery.”

“Part of the deal was you said you could deliver tomorrow,” Gabe said.

“No problem. I still can.”

“Okay, but no later,” Gabe said. “I got a crazy production schedule.”

“Tomorrow, first thing. Right here. Forty-five thousand worth of boom.”

“Actually, one of the packs is shy a hundred bucks,” Gabe said. “My girlfriend used it for groceries.”

“No problem. Tell the little woman the groceries are on me,” Mickey said. “Deal?”

Gabe didn’t hesitate. “Deal,” he said.

And they sealed it in the time-honored old-school Hollywood tradition. With a handshake.

“I think we finally hit pay dirt,” Kylie said.

We had two lists-the one Shelley Trager had given us with the names of everyone who had been on the set when Ian Stewart was shot, and Mike Jackman’s printout of all the people connected to the Levinson production.

We cross-checked the names, more than four hundred in all. Twelve people were on both lists, eight of them men.