Patterson Array: NYPD Red

“One minute Roth is fine. He’s telling us war stories. I mean this guy worked with everybody-Eastwood, Newman, Brando-the biggest of the big. I’ve got to tell you, even if half of that shit was true-”

“Scotty,” Kylie said. “What actually happened? ”

“Anyway, to make a long story short, all of a sudden, bam-he’s standing up, puking, having some kind of a seizure, and then down he goes. Smashed his head open, bled all over everything. It was gruesome. I mean, you see a lot worse on film, but in real life, it’s-I don’t know-it’s real. It sucks.”

“Did Roth grab his chest or his arm or his shoulder?” Kylie asked.

Scotty shrugged. “I don’t know. It was kind of fast, and I was pretty grossed out by all the vomiting.”

“You mean did he grab his chest like he was having a heart attack?” Pisane asked.

“Yes.”

“No, there was none of that,” Pisane said. “Look, I’m no doctor, but I wrote for CSI: Miami for two seasons, and what happened to Roth played out like an episode we shot where the guy was poisoned.”

“You mean like food poisoning?” I said.

He looked at me like I was stupid. “No! Poison, like murder. Don’t you watch CSI: Miami ?”

“So you’re talking about a homicide,” I said. “Do you know if Mr. Roth had any enemies?”

Both men laughed.

“It would be a lot easier if you asked if he had any friends,” Scotty said.

“Scotty’s right,” Pisane said. “Google him. He was a ruthless son of a bitch, but everybody wanted to work with him because he made a bitchload of money.”

We thanked them and found Dryden, who was still busy photographing table twelve.

“One of the witnesses corroborates your theory,” I said. “He says that the symptoms Roth displayed just before he died make it look like he was poisoned.”

“Is he a doctor?” Dryden said.

“A writer for CSI: Miami. ”

“It’s crap. Never watch it.”

Philippe had had the good sense not to clear Roth’s table. There were still five plates, five coffee cups, five waters, and one empty juice glass sitting on the table.

“This is Rafe,” Philippe said. “He was Mr. Roth’s waiter.”

“Where was Roth sitting?” I asked.

Rafe pointed toward the juice glass.

I turned to Dryden. “Chuck, you can bag and tag it all, but do me a favor, when you run it through the lab, start with the glass.”

“And you might want to test everything in the kitchen,” Kylie said. “Just in case someone was targeting the whole dining room and Roth was the first to drink the Kool-Aid.”

Chuck moved his head imperceptibly in something that looked like agreement.

“Rafe,” I said, “did you bring Mr. Roth the juice?”

“No. There was a busboy-a new guy, Latino. I asked him to top off the coffee. When he got to the table, Roth asked him for the tomato juice, and he brought it.”

“What’s this busboy’s name?”

“I don’t know,” Rafe said. “Like I told you, he was new.”

“Where is he now?”

Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not here. He’s not in the kitchen. He probably went home.”

I turned to Philippe.

He shook his head. “We don’t have any new busboys today. This is a busy week. I have all my regulars-nobody new. The one who brought the juice-I don’t know who he is.”

My cell phone rang. It was Cates.

“Give me an update,” she said.

“We’re at the Regency. The Possible Homicide is looking more like a Probable Murder One, but we have to give the lab rats time to dust and dissect. We’re going to head back to the precinct.”

“Don’t,” Cates said. “I need you at Silvercup Studios. There’s another body. Ian Stewart, the actor.”

“What went down?” I asked.

“He was shot,” Cates said.

“Anybody see anything?”

“There were about a hundred witnesses,” Cates said, “and if none of them are any help, we’ve got the whole thing on film.”

I gave Philippe my email address and told him to send me a list of everyone who was in the dining room. “And put the two guys who had breakfast with Roth and bolted before the cops got here at the top of the list.”

I thought about asking Rafe the waiter to sit with a police artist and come up with a sketch of the busboy, but I know a waste of time when I see one. No sense circulating a picture of a generic male Puerto Rican who looks like half a million guys from East Williamsburg to Spanish Harlem.

I thanked Philippe and motioned Kylie toward the exit. As expected, the Regency’s unholy trinity was waiting in the doorway.

“Do you have any surveillance cameras in the dining room?” I asked.

The manager looked at me like I’d asked if they had peepholes in the guests’ bathrooms.

“This is the Regency,” he said. “Our clients come here for discretion and privacy.”

“How about the back of the house? Do you keep an eye on the kitchen staff?”

“We did, but…” He looked at the executive chef. “Etienne had the cameras removed when he came here two years ago.”

The burly chef gave a wave of his hand to let me know that he had no regrets. “I find them offensive, distracting,” he said.

The old me would have said something like Makes it easier to spit in somebody’s bouillabaisse if they piss you off, but my sensitivity training kicked in and I went with, “We’ll need a list of everyone who worked here this morning.”

“Fine,” Chef Etienne said.

Not so fine with the guy from corporate. “Detective, is that really necessary? It’s a heart attack.”

“It’s a police investigation,” I said. “My partner and I have to go. We’ll be talking to you.”

“Wait!” It was le chef. “We have to set up for lunch. How long before that, that…” He pointed at the dead man on the dining room carpet, which I’m sure he found offensive and distracting.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” I said. “He’ll be out in a few minutes. Thank you for being so patient.” It was the classic bullshit response waiters are trained to give customers when the dinner they ordered an hour ago still hasn’t come out of the kitchen.

I seriously doubt if Chef Etienne appreciated the irony.

Kylie waited till we were in the car before she said a word.

“For a couple of homicide detectives, we didn’t do a lot of detecting,” she said.

“Technically, there’s nothing to detect yet. The only guy who confirmed that it’s a homicide writes crime fiction for a living. Chuck Dryden knows it’s poison, but he won’t commit till he’s back in the lab with a test tube full of proof.”

“Give me a break, Zach,” she said. “He could have made the call right there on the scene. If you ask me, some cops are too damn thorough.”

“You’re faulting him for being thorough? Kylie, the guy is more scientist than cop. His job is all about being…”

She grinned. At least it started out as a grin, and then it blossomed into a full-blown stupid girly-girl giggle. “Gotcha,” she said. “Do you really think I have a problem with cops who do their jobs by the book?”

“Sorry, but you do have a reputation for working off the reservation.”

“That was the old me. The new me is practically a Girl Scout. My mission is to play by the rules, impress the hell out of Captain Cates, and get to ride with you for the next couple of years.”

And not get pregnant.

I turned east onto 59th Street, drove past Bloomingdale’s, and crossed Third Avenue. The 59th Street Bridge to Queens was straight ahead.