William Diehl - Seven ways to die

“Funny she brought up all the sex stuff when she didn’t know how he was killed,” Hue said.

“All she knew-all I told her-was that he was dead and it wasn’t an accident. I think she got started and let it all out. But, you got a point, Vinnie. Si, run a background on her and the maid while you’re at it. She had a key to the place.”

“Already on it,” Simon answered.

“Okay, let’s finish the briefing, there’s more. Cal?”

Bergman ran the timeline:

“Handley stopped by his office on the way home for about twenty minutes. He discharged his limo driver on the east side Hudson Street, the 520 block, that’s between West 10th and Charles Street, at 11:50 p.m. The sign-off slip was in Handley’s coat pocket.”

Hue picked it up: “I talked to the dispatcher at Metro cab who says one of his cabbies was off-duty and driving south on Bleecker between 10th and Christopher when Handley waved him down. Says Handley looked well-heeled so he figured him for a good tip and picked him up. That was at 12:25 a.m. He let him out at the 73 ^ rd Street address at 12:55. Handley gave him a twenty buck tip.”

“And we know the killer was waiting for him when he got there,” Cody added. “We also know he went straight to the bedroom, undressed, showered, and walked naked to the library where his murderer was waiting for him. He apparently had a drink before the messy stuff started. The glass was on the table beside him. And he submitted to the handcuffing.

“And we have the mask.”

“Maybe he was gonna get a cup of coffee and stick up a convenience store on the way home,” Ansa said with a snicker.

“It was a full moon last night,” Wow said. “You know how crazy people get when the moon is full.” More snickers.

“Hey, next Wednesday’s Halloween. Maybe him and the Staten Island Fairy were practicing,” Butch Ryan added.

Cody smiled, accustomed to the insouciant gallows humor of the group. But he cut it off by turning to Hue. “Give us a satellite shot of that block in West Village.”

The crew watched as the satellite map moved over Greenwich Village then panned down until the block bordered by Hudson and Bleecker Streets and Charles and West 10th filled the screen.

“I’m glad you guys have a good sense of humor about this,” he said. “Let me tell you what I have. I have a self-made, thirty-five-year-old man who discharged his limo here,” he pointed at the spot on Hudson Street, “and hailed a cab here,” he pointed to spot on Bleecker where the Metro cab picked up Handley. ”That’s a block and a half. A five minute walk. I got a guy who’s wearing a three thousand dollar overcoat, a seventeen thousand dollar Tag Heuer watch, and more than a grand in his wallet. So he wasn’t taking a midnight walk in the moonlight. He went straight to somewhere to meet somebody probably to give that somebody a key to his apartment to arrange a little fun and games. And that’s what he got.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the ghoulish photo of Handley’s corpse.

“I’m open to any other cogent suggestions.”

Silence.

“Wolf’s next door by now doing the autopsy. I want to take Kate and talk to Victor Stembler. Can he make the official ID, Kate?”

She thought for a moment. “Any immediate family members nearby?”

“Stembler will know, but we’re getting that he had no family left. If we have to, we’ll call the fiancee. I think we can count on Stembler to soft peddle any details we give him.”

“Wow, you, Butch, and Jonee work the phones. You’ve all been in vice. Call any old contacts, find out everything you can about sex clubs in Manhattan until Wolf is ready to brief us on the autopsy. After that I want Jonee on RR. Wow, you and Butch take on the area in Greenwich Village. I want to know where he went. What he did. Who he saw? Any clubs in that neighborhood? If so, shake ‘em but don’t break ‘em. We’re interested in Handley’s activities, who he might have connected with during that half-hour or so. Our story is we need to talk to him about a case in progress.

“Si, start working on back stories. You know how far you can go with that.”

“Yes sir,” the little man answered.

Cody looked up at the timer.

“We’re two hours and twenty-four minutes into the show.”

“Same song, new verse,” Rizzo said.

“Maybe. But I have a feeling this is one song we’ve never heard before.”

Cody and Kate Winters took the elevator to the garage on the first floor. Rizzo was waiting, holding the rear door of a black Lincoln open for them. They crawled in and Rizzo got behind the wheel. The large steel garage door rolled up.

“Where to, Cap?”

“Financial district,” Cody said. “Exchange Place, across the street from the Stock Exchange.”

“Easy one,” Rizzo said. “We’ll cut over to Broadway and head down. Ten minutes.”

“No rush.”

Rizzo snaked his way through Little Italy, turned onto Broadway and headed south toward the few cramped blocks that formed an empire whose heart was the stock market; its blood, dollars, Euros, yen, and market shares; and brokers the jaded knights that jousted for power and control over its fortunes. Its main artery was Wall Street, which someone had once called Heart Attack Alley. And little wonder. Millions could dissolve in a day because of bad weather in Texas, a bad crop in Kansas, some sick cows in Canada, or a Ponzi scheme outed. Compared to this win or lose fiefdom, Las Vegas was a nickel-dime poker game.?

Victor Stembler was one of the elite members of a round table of multi-millionaires who were major players on the street. He had inherited his seat from his father, Chester, who in turn had inherited it from his father, Sidney, Victor’s grandfather, a robber baron of the old school who had made his first fortune in the railroad business.

Victor’s genes came from Sidney, a ruthless but charming rogue who loved the competition almost as much as the money.

Chester was neither charming nor competitive, he was simply greedy. A humorless and stingy alcoholic bigot, he had forced one of his partners, Herman Marx, out of the business because he hated being in business with a Jew. He had endured Trexler, reduced to a junior partner because he was smarter than Chester. It was a known fact that Chester had kept the name Marx, Stembler and Trexler because he was too cheap to spend the money to change letterheads, logos, and various other accoutrements attached to the corporation. He had died in his private rail car traveling from San Francisco to New York. His death was attributed to a heart attack although Victor liked to say his father, “choked to death on his own gall.”

Victor had taken over the business and was soon known on the street as a man to be reckoned with. But his only son, Victor, Jr., had drowned in a yachting accident. And his daughter, Linda, had no taste for the business.

Raymond Handley had come along at the perfect time. He was handsome and charming, captain of the Princeton Lacrosse team, a top student and a ruthless competitor, who had worked his way to the top in the corporation with a combination of talent and an instinct for the jugular. And he treated Linda like a princess.

The perfect candidate for a future son-in-law.

Victor was delighted when his daughter fell head over heels for Handley. At sixty, Stembler was smugly successful and looking forward to shorter days in New York and more time on his backyard tennis court in Boston.?

Cody didn’t know any of this background. Larry Simon would later fill him in with the details. He only knew he was about to give Victor Stembler a very hard kick in the head and he felt badly about it.

He and Kate exited the elevator on the top floor of the building across the street from the Stock Exchange. Stembler’s office was on northeast corner of an elegant hallway, its teakwood walls and floors subtly lit by antique lamps on pedestal tables. It was deathly still.