Джеймс Паттерсон: NYPD Red 4

“Don’t you think I said that already?”

“Well, then go back and tell him we know how much the necklace is worth, and if he doesn’t give us fair market value, we’ll find a buyer who will.”

“Yeah, I said that too. He laughed in my face. Told me the dead actress makes it too hot to handle.” Raymond took the necklace from the coffee table and held it up to the light. “He’s right. I asked around. Nobody will touch it.”

Teddy could taste the panic welling up in his throat. His heart was racing, and he wanted to scream “The dead actress was your fault,” but he was having too much trouble breathing to waste his breath on Raymond.

He lowered his body to the armchair he’d salvaged from a curb after he’d done his last stretch at Rikers. “So now what do we do?” he asked.

“I’ve got it all worked out,” Raymond said. “Jeremy is coming over tonight. We pack up, give him the necklace, and leave for Mexico as soon as we get the money.”

“I’m not going anywhere till I say good-bye to my mom,” Teddy said. “As soon as I get my share, I’m going to go over to her place, spend the night, and ask her to make me a stack of cottage cheese pancakes for breakfast.”

“And how much will that cost you, Teddy boy? Five grand? Ten? How big a chunk will you be giving Mommy?”

“What I give her is none of your business.”

“It’s my business if we go to Mexico, and I’ve got forty-five thousand dollars, and all you’ve got is a belly full of cottage cheese pancakes. I’m not supporting you, Teddy. Or your mother.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Teddy said. “What time did Jeremy say he’d be here?”

Raymond shrugged. “He didn’t give me a time. He just said tonight. Wake me when he gets here. I’m going to take a nap.”

I was at my computer when a message from Kylie popped up on the screen.

I have an update on the Happy Homemaker. Stop by my office if you want to hear more.

Kylie loves to be right. She loves it even more when I’m wrong.

Her office is the desk directly behind mine. I swiveled my chair. “It sounds like you have something to gloat about,” I said.

“Me?” she asked, gloating. “I just thought you’d want to hear the latest on the hospital robberies. I did a little research, and it seems your favorite risotto lady volunteered at four of the nine hospitals that were robbed.”

“Does she have a rap sheet?”

“She’s clean as a whistle. In fact, three of the volunteer co-ordinators I spoke to said she was one of the best they’ve ever worked with, and they wished they had a dozen more like her.”

I waited for the but.

“But,” she said, “I did find something interesting. Her father was a petroleum engineer. As a kid she moved around the Middle East. After college, she went to India for three years and worked for a charity that provided medical treatment for street children.”

“And that’s interesting because...?”

“You heard what Gregg Hutchings said. Where do you think all this high-tech equipment is going to wind up? Lyon is a do-gooder, and she spent years surrounded by third world deprivation. My guess is she’s not even getting paid. She’s not only doing volunteer work for the hospitals; she’s doing volunteer work for the people who are ripping them off.”

“That’s brilliant police work, Detective MacDonald. The woman has no criminal record, but she’s seen poverty, so she’s decided to do her part for the underprivileged by helping a bunch of black marketeers traffic stolen goods,” I said. “Why don’t you run that by Mick Wilson at the DA’s office and see how long it takes him to kick you out on your ass?”

“That’s not the apology I was hoping for,” she said.

“So she worked in four of the hospitals. If I were a lawyer, I’d call it more circumstantial evidence. But as a cop, I’m willing to admit there’s more to like about Ms. Lyon than her porcini-asparagus risotto.”

“Are you willing to go back and bring her in for some serious questions?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d rather let her think we’ve lost interest, then put a tail on her and see if she can lead us to someone higher up the food chain.”

“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said since you were suckered in by that teary-eyed Martha Stewart act. There’s hope for you yet, Jordan.”

My cell rang, and I picked it up. It was Cheryl.

“Hey, what are you doing tonight?” she asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“How do you feel about Italian food?”

“Fantastico.”

“Can you be home by seven?”

“You bet,” I said.

“Great. Love you.”

“Love you back.”

I hung up the phone and let what I’d just heard wash over me. My brain was thinking about the night ahead when Kylie violated my reverie.

“Zach, did you hear what I said?”

“Sorry. Run it by me again.”

“I said we can’t tail Lyon. I know the mayor wants us on these hospital robberies, but they’re sucking up time we need for the Travers homicide. Let’s talk to Cates and see if she can drum us up another team to do the legwork.”

“Sure.”

She got up from her desk and headed toward Cates’s office. My body followed, but my head was still wrapped up in the phone call from Cheryl.

It was the first time I’d ever heard her refer to my apartment as home. It felt incredible.

Captain Delia Cates is third-generation NYPD. She grew up in Harlem, and if you ask her where she went to college, she’ll smile and say, “Oh, there was a good school a mile from my house.” The school, as those of us in the know can tell you, is Columbia University.

She graduated at eighteen, got a master’s in criminal justice from John Jay College, and did four years in the marine corps before joining the department. She rose through the ranks like a comet, and when our previous mayor created NYPD Red, his consigliere, Irwin Diamond, tapped Cates to run it.

“It’s not that I was the best cop for the job,” Cates told me one night when we were having a drink. “But when most of your constituency is overprivileged white men, it’s smart politics to put a black woman in charge.”

The truth is, she was the best cop for the job, and most days I love having her as my boss. This day was not one of them.

“That’s all you’ve got?” she said when Kylie and I told her where we were on the Travers murder. “You two haven’t done squat since you met with the Bassett brothers last night.”

“We’ve got cops canvassing the area, looking for eyewitnesses,” Kylie said. “And there are at least twenty-five traffic and private security cameras at 54th and Broadway, where the shooting happened. We have Jan Hogle going through those.”

“And how about that extensive network of CIs you told me about this morning?” Cates said. “How’s that working out?”

“You’re right, Captain,” I said before Kylie could mount a defense. “We haven’t done squat on the Travers case. No excuse.”

Cates laughed. “Of course you have an excuse. It’s called politics over police work. The mayor and her husband want you on these hospital robberies. You’re stuck with it. But I can’t take you off this homicide. Which means you have to do both.”

“We can,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, “but we could use some help. We have a person of interest — a hospital volunteer who may have been the inside person on four of the nine jobs. She may lead us to bigger fish, but we need to tail her. Do you think you can snag us another team to throw against it?”