Linda Fairstein - Cold Hit

“What didn’t show on his sheet was his youth record. Again, Florida. Did time in a juvenile facility, also for rape. Carjacked a woman in a supermarket parking lot.”

“So we got a sexual predator on our hands.”

“Served his felony sentence in Raiford. They got a prison there, Coop, makes Attica look like a beauty school. Bailor did hard time. Real hard time. I’m talking chain gangs and leg irons. Must’ve been one of the first guys to get himself into the DNA data bank. Even though they didn’t exist when he was convicted, by the time he was eligible for parole, no one was let out until his genetic fingerprint was on file.”

Mike looked back at his pad and flipped the page. “When he got out of jail, he moved right out of Florida. Can’t say as I blame him. If you’re gonna foul up again, might as well come north to one of our country club prisons. Be my guest, Mr. Bailor. I love New York.

“Ready for the larceny arrest?” Mike asked. “The original charge was grand larceny, but he pleaded out to possession of stolen property. That’s how come he did so little time. Prosecutor had to drop the top count and take the lesser plea ’cause the theft actually occurred in Massachusetts. Anton Bailey was stopped on the New York State Thruway for speeding. When they searched his car, the troopers found a couple of oil paintings. Valuable ones. Seems Anton hadn’t saved his sales receipts.”

“Massachusetts? From the Gardner?”

“Nope. Right state, wrong museum. Something called the Mead Art Museum, in Amherst. Couldn’t pin the actual burglary on Anton. His alibi back in Buffalo held up pretty well. So all they had him for was possession of the goods. They even offered him a deal of no jail time if he gave up his accomplice. But he hung tough. Shit, after the stretch he did in Florida, he must have done this sentence standing on his head.”

It was an interesting development. Somewhere along the way, Bailor had connected with art criminals and had perhaps lent his break-in talent to their undertakings. A simple calculation confirmed that he was still in a Florida prison when the Gardner theft had occurred, but he must have more recently marketed his skills to this murky underground world of thieves.

“Do you think he knew Omar Sheffield before they wound up in the same cell?”

“No sign of that yet. We’ll have to talk to some of the other prisoners. So far, what K.D. got is only from the paperwork in the warden’s files. Could be just dumb luck. Omar’s doing his usual scam. Tells Anton about Denise Caxton, maybe even shows him the clippings from the Law Journal about the Caxton divorce, which lists every one of their assets and describes all of their dealings in the art business. Anton has bigger plans. Passes off the information to…”

“Whom?” I asked. “That’s all we’ve got to figure. He must have been in this with someone else, someone who had his own scam in mind for Denise.”

“Or for Lowell,” Mike reminded me. “I’m not sure who was out to get which one first.”

“You don’t really think Lowell was intended to be a victim in all this, do you?”

Mercer had been listening to us without joining the conversation, as he struggled against dozing off. “You said you spoke to that Sette woman out in Santa Fe yesterday, Mike? That she really was back there?”

Mike paused before answering. “It was actually her housekeeper who answered the phone and told me she expected Sette back in an hour or so. She was Mexican, with a thick accent, and hard to understand. No, I didn’t speak to Sette directly. And I forgot to check the airline manifest afterward to see if she really flew out there. Sorry, Mercer. I’ll get on that tonight.”

It was Marina Sette’s message-or one that had been left for us using her name-that had resulted in my trip to the Focus gallery with Mercer yesterday and that had set us up to be shot. For good reason, Mike was concentrating more on that intrigue at the moment than on piecing together the puzzle of Deni Caxton’s death.

The phone rang again and I answered it. “Alexandra? It’s Rose Malone. I thought you might be there with Mercer. I wanted you to know that Mr. Battaglia is on his way home. He’s going to stop in at the hospital.”

Thank goodness for Rose. She was better than a radar detector. I’d say good night to Mercer before Battaglia arrived, and let the squad detectives take me back to Jake’s apartment for the night.

“And one other thing. The police have arrested that Wakefield man who was here at the office looking for you earlier.”

“Did he come back?” I asked, alarmed at his persistence.

“No. But that young girl who was in your office-was it Ruth?”

“Yes.”

“She showed up at his apartment this afternoon, to try to get together with him again. He beat her up pretty seriously. For admitting to you that she’d been sleeping with his roommate.”

“Oh, no.” I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth at the thought of the anger that Wakefield must have unleashed at that child. I thanked Rose for the call and hung up the phone.

“You’re running on fumes, Coop,” Mike said. “I’ll sit with Mercer tonight. Let me take you downstairs and send you off. Get a good night’s sleep and we’ll talk in the morning. Put a double rush on those prison phone records when you get to the office. We gotta figure out who Bailey’s connected with, okay? And I think we need to find Marina Sette as soon as possible.”

I sat in the back of the unmarked car, looking out at the dark streets as we drove uptown and making small talk with the detectives about the usual office gossip. They discharged me in front of Jake’s building, watching as the doorman let me in and then parking at the curb, where they would sit out their shift before they were replaced by the midnight team in a couple of hours.

I turned the key in the lock and entered the apartment. A small lamp was lighted on the vestibule table, where I saw a handwritten note addressed to me.

“Dearest A- My turn to disappear. Running for the last shuttle to Washington. Have a 7 a.m. interview with the secretary of defense. Sweet dreams, see you tomorrow. Love, J.”

I groped the walls in the semidarkness of the unfamiliar layout to turn on a light switch in the hallway leading to the bedroom. Once I found my way, I reached for the suitcase I had packed the evening before and laid out some of the clothes for the next day.

The silence and the emptiness made me uncomfortable. I wanted the comfort of my own home, and the warmth of Jake’s caress.

I couldn’t find the coffee beans in Jake’s kitchen when I got out of bed, shortly before seven o’clock. I showered and dressed, joining the team in the department car for the ride down to 1 Hogan Place. They let me out right in front of the building, and I bought us each some breakfast at the cart on the corner before going up to my office. Now that Wakim had been arrested I felt at least somewhat more secure.

The pile of unanswered correspondence on my desk was growing out of control. There was a stack of indictments on sex crimes cases that needed to be proofread and approved before the end of the August term, which was a week away. Phone messages from friends were taped to the computer screen; a request from Elaine to set a time to come into the Escada store to have the clothes I ordered from the fall collection shortened had been ignored; and solicitations for charitable fund-raisers collected dust on the far corner of the desk. It was still too early to find most people at their offices, so I busied myself in the review of grand jury proceedings to make sure the lawyers in the unit met their filing deadlines.