Linda Fairstein - Hell Gate

“P. J. Bernstein’s Deli makes really good hot chocolate. Drop me at home and I’ll order up.”

“Tell you what. Take a ride with me. Let’s stir the pot a bit.”

“I guess I’m in your hands. Where to?”

“City Hall.”

“It’s Saturday afternoon. Who do you expect to find?”

“The city never sleeps. And Statler said he was going there after a stop at Madison Square Garden.”

“Waste of time.”

“Look, Coop,” Mike said. “Battaglia rattled their cages Thursday night with that sudden indictment of Kendall Reid and the other councilman, and the story of phantom funds. You don’t think you got people cleaning out desks and computer files and all their other garbage? I’m dying to see my tax dollars at work.”

We made a slight detour to pick up a sandwich and hot drink, then Mike got on the drive for the quick ride downtown.

The Civic Center, hub of all the government offices, municipal building, city, state, and federal courthouses, was usually pretty empty on weekends. We parked on Chambers Street and walked in from the west, past the yellow tape that bordered the hole that the reporter had described at the start of the press conference.

“Is that the crater you made?” Mike asked.

“No, mine’s around back on the far side. Just more of the same sad relics, though. They blocked this one off, too, when I broke through the other tarp.”

We climbed the steps and stopped at the metal detector in the lobby. Mike and I both showed our IDs and the cop on duty let us through the gate.

“Which way to Kendall Reid’s office?” Mike asked.

The cop gave us a room number on the second floor. “You have an appointment with Mr. Reid? Want me to call up?”

“No, thanks. Just dropping by to talk about an old friend.”

“You don’t value my life at all, do you?” I asked, laughing at Mike’s apparent plan. “That’s Tim Spindlis’s case. I can’t walk in on Kendall Reid. He’s just been indicted.”

“Hey, did old Spineless stab you in the back once last year? Or was it twice? I have no interest in Kendall Reid stealing cash from widows and children and the great unwashed. In our case, he’s just an ordinary witness. I need to talk to him about Ethan Leighton. And about Salma. Educate me, blondie, how many councilmen we got?”

Mike was charging up the staircase ahead of me.

“There are fifty-one members of the council. The speaker’s a woman, so mind your manners. Fifty-one council districts throughout the city. Reid stepped into the seat that Leighton had before he ran for congress.”

“What do they do here? I mean the council.”

I was trying to catch up to Mike, but he was taking the great worn marble steps two at a time. “It’s the lawmaking body of the city of New York. It governs, along with the mayor. The City Council has the sole responsibility for approving the budget.”

“What does that run a year?”

“About sixty billion.”

“So a few hundred thou in a shoe box would hardly be missed?” Mike asked.

“I guess that’s the theory.”

He stopped at the top of the landing. “What do you know about Kendall Reid?”

“What was in the Times yesterday morning. Your age.”

“Our age?”

“I’m not thirty-eight till spring.”

“Yeah, well, you better be lights out a little earlier tonight. You got so many circles under your eyes, they’d match the ones that ring a two-hundred-year-old redwood.”

“There isn’t enough concealer in the world to cover these,” I said. “Reid grew up in Harlem. Black mother, white father who abandoned them when Kendall was four or five. Very smart kid. Stuyvesant High School. Full scholarship to NYU. Law school there after that. Worked for Bloomberg, then for Moses Leighton, until he became Ethan Leighton’s aide.”

“Where does he live?”

“One of those renovated brownstones. Sugar Hill,” I said, referring to an area with some of the finest buildings uptown, part of the Harlem Renaissance.

“Sweet. He must have been sucking up to Moses to get enough money for that.”

“Yes. Moses Leighton put him in some deals before Reid went to work for Ethan.”

“What kind of deals?”

“Leighton’s had some export-import companies, and a lot of real estate.”

“Is Reid married?”

“Single. He’s supposed to be a real player.”

“Could be your moment, Coop.”

The second floor hall was almost as busy as on a weekday. I didn’t recognize most of the people around, but there were dozens of casually dressed men and women who were scurrying about or stopping to talk in small huddles.

The door to Reid’s room was ajar. He was on the phone at his desk, and it looked like his office had already been emptied of file cabinets, in all likelihood a result of a search warrant executed after the unsealing of the indictment.

He covered the receiver with his hand. “Who you looking for?”

Mike flashed his badge again and said his name.

Reid didn’t even say good-bye to whoever was on the phone. He hung up, stood, and began shooing us out of the small room. “Nothing left for you guys. Be gone.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with your arrest, Mr. Reid,” Mike said. “I’m here about your friend Ethan Leighton.”

Kendall Reid looked at us quizzically. “You’d best talk to my lawyer.”

He was about five foot nine, muscular and well-built, with short-cropped curly hair and very light brown skin.

“We just left Ethan.”

“Left him where?”

I introduced myself to Reid. “Just an informal meeting.”

“Lemuel Howell know about it?”

“Lem was a mentor of mine in the DA’s Office. He made it happen.”

Reid was giving each of us a thorough once-over. “How’s Ethan doin’?”

“That’s exactly what I was going to ask you,” Mike said. “You’re his buddy.”

“Well, we’ve both been a little bit busy. I haven’t seen him.”

“How strange is that? The congressman told me that just yesterday-”

Kendall Reid got the point. “Forgot that I ran into him right outside. Dammit. Right on the front steps. I had no idea he’d be around here. Come in, come in, Detective. Sit yourselves down.”

Reid walked behind us and closed the door. Then he parked himself on the edge of the desk, facing us. The monogram on his shirt pocket matched the pale blue lines in his black striped suit, and his gold fountain pen was clipped neatly in place.

Mike told Reid that we were investigating the murder of Salma Zunega, and that so far, Ethan Leighton had been cooperating with us.

“You’ve known the congressman for quite some time, haven’t you?” Mike asked.

“Sure have. Sure have. I actually met him through his father. It was Moses Leighton who hired me away right out from under Mayor Bloomberg. I was just two years out of law school, working on legislation for the City Planning Commission.”

“You and Moses Leighton became close?”

“Yes, we did. Man is like a father to me. Took a chance, liked what he saw, thought he could teach me a few things. I owe a lot to him.”

I’d guess he owed at least the monogrammed shirt and the vintage Montblanc, not to mention the well-addressed town house, to the senior Leighton.

“Was it through working at Leighton Enterprises that you got to know Ethan?”

“Yeah. I’m an only kid, Detective. No sibs. So Ethan liked to take me under his wing, show me the ropes.”

“Has politics always interested you?” I asked.

“There’s two ways out of the ghetto, Ms. Cooper. Politics and business. The gangsta route? You can make money and live just as well that way, though not likely as long. It’s still a ghetto lifestyle, no matter how high the rent. And there’s always the risk of prison bars. No, I was focused early on. Politics and business.”