William Diehl - Seven ways to die

“Okay.”

Cody and Charley walked to Broadway and waited for a couple of minutes and then saw the black Cadillac a block away. He crossed to the far side of the street, waited until the Caddy pulled up, and opened the front door.

“Hi Berno,” he said to the policeman assigned to the Commander.

“Captain,” Berno nodded.

“Hop in, Charley,” Cody said and the big shepherd jumped in. Berno Adashek smiled and rubbed his ears as Cody got in the back. Stinelli was sitting upright, his fingers drumming his knees.

“Hi, kid,” Stinelli said. “Mind taking a drive down to City Hall with me? Berno will bring you back.”

“Whatever you say, Chief. Gloria tell you I called?”

“Yeah. Got something working?”

Cody nodded.

“We’ll get to that in a minute. You’ve heard of Ward Lee Hamilton, right?”

“I occasionally read the papers. Even a book when I have time.”

Stinelli chuckled. “Has he called your office in the last coupla days?”

“Nope.”

“Ever met him?”

“Nope.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Well, I don’t know a cop who’d shed a tear if he got run over by an eighteen-wheeler.”

Stinelli laughed and said, “Guess what? You’re about to join the club.”

“Already joined…Why?”

“Jake Sallinger has hired him to do a series on cold cases for Metro Magazine. Melinda Cramer is on top of the list.”

Cody’s expression didn’t change.

“Where’d you pick that up?”

“Sallinger called me. Hamilton’s whining because he can’t find any of the records on the case. Gloria checked with the 24 ^ th, Manhattan North and South, the detective bureau and the dead files. Hamilton has called them, all right. When he struck out he had Sallinger call me.”

“And he wants you to produce the records?”

“Probably. Or tell him where they are.”

“I’ve got the files.”

“I know that. Is it still active?”

“It’s our only open case.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s a work in progress. Whenever one of us has some free time we take a look at it. The reports are in the computer.”

“And?”

“It was cold when we got it. If we send it to the dead bureau that’ll be the end of it.”

“Hell, Micah, it’s one case and it was already screwed up when it was dumped on you. He’s gonna write the piece anyway. Wolf did a great job on that second autopsy. Give Hamilton that to play with.”

“I’m not willing to sign off on it yet.”

“You’re being stubborn. He’s threatening to go to court. Invoke the Freedom of Information Act.”

Cody thought for a moment. He tugged on his ear then shook his head.

“Hamilton won’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“If he does the rest of the press will get on it. He wants an exclusive. The last thing he wants is The Times or The Post or Nancy Grace getting curious and jumping all over it.”

“Huh. Good point,” Stinelli replied. “You say you have something on the plate?”

Cody nodded. “As of seven a.m. So far it’s all verbal including Wolf’s initial autopsy. We’ll keep it that way as long as we can.”

“High profile?”

“Oh, yeah.”

The Cadillac pulled up in front of City Hall.

“We’re here, Commander,” Berno said.

“How about I stop by the Loft later in the day so you can fill me in?”

“Sounds good, sir. What’d you tell Sallinger?”

“That I’d get back to him. Hamilton’s out of town ‘til tomorrow. It’s the weekend so we don’t have to screw with it until Monday.”

“Sic Hamilton on me Monday.”

“You don’t have time for that.”

“Neither do you. We’ll make him chase his tail for a while.”

“You sure? I can tell Sallinger it’s still under investigation.”

“Nah. Have him call me to arrange a sit-down with Hamilton. Then let me fiddle while Hamilton burns.”

“He can be a nasty son of a bitch,” Stinelli said as Berno opened the door for him.

“Commander, that oughta brighten my day considerably,” Cody said. Then he smiled. “Have fun in there.”

“Shit.”

Ward Hamilton sat at his desk, elbows angled, chin resting on intertwined fingers, his brown eyes converged intently on his computer screen. Smoke curled from a gold-tipped Sherman cigarette burning forgotten in an ashtray nearby as he scanned the innocuous internet report which had produced nothing he didn’t know already.

On the wall behind the screen, tacked on a green felt bulletin board half the size of a pool table top, was an entropic collection of newspaper clippings, copies of web downloads, partially-written manuscript drafts, and notes to himself scribbled on notebook pages of every size and shape, fluttering idly in the gentle breeze from an antique ceiling fan. It served as his “hold file.”

Otherwise, the office was a paradigm of a man of fastidious and eccentric nature with an insistence upon order and efficiency: his reference books lined up alphabetically on hand-crafted shelves; his Eames chair and ottoman positioned precisely to afford a perfect view of lower Manhattan through the floor-to-ceiling windows; unread magazines stacked neatly on a matching table in the order in which he would read them; signed first editions of great American novels set aside in a special niche in the corner and arranged chronologically based on the date they were published; a thirty-six-inch widescreen television set accompanied by an interlocked stereo and digital recording system, built into the wall and confined behind smoked glass doors, unobtrusive and silent unless he felt inclined to tape a program or play some music while he was reading.

His two-foot wide desk was a rosewood semicircle designed so everything his daily routine required was close at hand. Pens were in one container, pencils in another; unedited drafts in one tray, finished manuscripts in another; answered mail in one tray, unanswered in another. The telephone, equipped with a warning light, answered every call robotically and was muted, recording every message, name, number, caller ID and all the conversations he made personally. The laser printer was on a shelf under the desk, an arm’s length from his chair, its only sound the hush the paper made when it fell into the tray.

Only his own voice was permitted to intrude. Otherwise the room was as quiet as a mausoleum.

Only two people were permitted to enter the sanctuary. One was the maid, who dusted and sanitized it before he got up in the morning.

The other was Victoria Mansfield, his lover for the past decade, who shared the penthouse apartment with him but could enter his sanctum only when the small red light next to the door was switched off. Together, their brio was the stuff of dreams for gossip columnists and society writers. He was the flamboyant and curmudgeonly writer who had parlayed murder into a small fortune. She was the elegant, unpredictable, nonpareil heiress, about whom a columnist once wrote, “has so much dough, re, mi, she would have made Croesus look like a panhandler.”

His focus was interrupted by a green light in the corner of his screen alerting him that someone was at the entrance to the apartment. He pressed a button and a small picture appeared in the upper corner of his main screen. A tiny video camera revealed Victoria at the front door, arms juggling shopping bags, a larger suit bag slung over her shoulder and the front door key clenched between her teeth as she swept the card key through the slot and, that done, tossed the card in one of the bags, opened the door with the other key, and entered the apartment. He turned the red light off and waited for her to come in to his office, his back to the door.