In short, I felt I was hot on the scent of getting to the bottom of all this—no pun intended, Commish, in that the lady in the photograph behind me was bending over from the waist in a thong bikini that exposed her buttocks in a way that might have seemed enticing to many males.
I could have sworn the receptionist said, “Mercer will see you now,madame.”
But no, what she’d actually said was“Monsieurwill see you now,madame.”
She indicated a red door set between a photograph of a very tall leggy blonde wearing a white camisole and white lace panties and a very tall leggy brunette wearing a black bra and black lace panties. I opened the door and entered a hallway hung with similar photographs of similar models wearing lingerie and scarce else, and walked to another red door at the end of the corridor. I knocked on the door.
A voice I thought sounded familiar said, “Yes, come in, please.”
I opened the door and found myself face to face with Monsieur Mercer Grant.
He grinned, exposing the gold-and-diamond tooth at the front of his mouth.
“So, Detective Watts,” he exclaimed. “We meet again.”
And that was when someone hit me on the back of the head with something very hard, and I swam downwards into oblivion on a sea of utter blackness.
And that was all she wrote.
Or so Emilio thought.
A HASTY RAINbroke over the city early Monday morning, followed by a rainbow that took the citizens by surprise, causing them to follow its arc by eye, hopeful they would catch a glitter that would signify a pot of gold at its end. Ollie considered the rainbow a good omen. Surely, there would be fingerprints all over the dispatch case. Surely some of those fingerprints would be Emilio Herrera’s. And just as surely, a he-she hooker and petty thief would have run afoul of the law long before now; Herrera would have a record; Herrera would have a last known address.
Ollie immediately checked with AFIS to see if any of the prints triggered a hit. His own prints were on the case, and they came up in the system check. Well, of course; he was a law enforcement officer. There were prints on file for Veronica D’Allesandro as well; she was a resident alien, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service had taken her prints before issuing her a green card.
A match came up for someone named Thomas Kingsley, who had served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War. A call to the Gucci store on Hall Avenue confirmed that he was the man who’d sold the case to Ollie’s sister.
There was nothing for Isabelle Weeks, thank God. Nothing for Irving Stein, either. Worst of all, there was nothing for Emilio Herrera. The man—or woman, as he would have it—was clean.
Ollie liked to think of himself as The Lone Wolf. In fact, he visualized himself as a predator of the night, all sleek and svelte and lithe. He did not like working with other people, perhaps because he knew they did not like working with him. This was because most people in this world, especially law enforcement officers, could not accept the utter frankness Ollie considered his most admirable character trait. Well, that was too damn bad, really. If they couldn’t cope with his special and praiseworthy brand of candor, a fart on them all, and to Tiny Tim a good night.
But there were times when he was obliged to deal with other people in the department, as for example when he’d needed the help of Hogan or Logan or whatever the fuck his name was, in bringing up those serial numbers on the murder weapon, never mind his two worthless spic assistants, Pancho and Pablo.
This was one of those times.
So he put in a call to Jimmy Walsh in Vice.
THAT SAMEMonday morning, Carella and Kling went back to talk to Josh Coogan again. This time, they found him in the youth-oriented offices of Councilman Lester Henderson, who seemed to be somewhat youth-oriented himself. Coogan seemed harried. Everyone in the late councilman’s offices seemed harried. Gee, that’s too damn bad, Carella thought.
“It occurred to us that of all the people in the auditorium that morning, you had the best overview of what was happening,” he said.
“How do you mean?” Coogan said, looking puzzled. “Overview?”
“You were up there in the balcony when the shooting started. You could see everything happening down there.”
“Well, so could the guy in the booth.”
“He had his mind on the follow spot. He had a job to do. You were simply observing.”
“No, I was listening to sound checks.”
“What did that entail?”
“Volume levels, clarity.”
“Required yourears,right?”
“Okay, I get what you mean.”
“So tell us what you saw that morning,” Carella said.
As Coogan remembers it, there was a buzz of excitement in the air because everyone was expecting Henderson to announce his run for mayor at the rally that night. He’d been upstate all weekend, and it was no secret that he’d met with the Governor’s people and also with someone from the White House…
“We didn’t know that,” Carella said.
“Well, that was the skinny, anyway. The whole team was on his side, was the impression I got. So naturally…”
…if the man was going to announce he’d be making a run for the mayor’s office, everyone wanted everything to be just right. They’d worked with Chuck Mastroiani before, and they trusted him to make sure the place looked suitably patriotic and partisan, but he was nonetheless bustling around down there on the stage, ordering his crew to put an extra tuck in a draped bunting or supervising the placement of a fan so that an American flag would ripple with just the right amount of vigor. Coogan himself was in the balcony listening to what was coming from speakers around the hall while Mastroiani’s audio guy kept repeating the same sentences over and over again at the mike behind the podium. This must have been ten-fifteen, ten-twenty, they’d all been working since nine o’clock or a little after…
“What time did Henderson get to the hall?” Carella asked.
“Around nine-thirty.”
“Was he alone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was there anyone with him?”
“No. He was alone.”
“Okay, so it’s now ten-fifteen or so…what happened?”
“Well, Mr. Henderson was rehearsing his entrance…”
…striding on from stage left toward the podium, the follow spot on him all the way, raising his arm in greeting the way he would do it tonight, stopping when he reached the podium, starting to turn to face out front when the shots came. Six shots in a row, bam, bam, bam, and Henderson was falling, it almost looked like slow motion, the follow spot on him as he went down to the stage. Mastroiani yelled, “Kill the spot!” and when the guy in the booth was too slow to do that, he yelled again, “Kill that fuckin’ spot!” and the light went off. Alan yelled, “Stop him! Get him!,” something like that, and went running off the stage to the right…
“He didn’t tell us that.”
“Yes, he went running off with Mastroiani and some of his crew following him. I went downstairs the minute I realized what had happened. By the time I got on the stage, Alan and the others were already coming back. The shooter had got away clean.”
“Where’d they look for him?”
“In the building, I guess. Wherever. I really don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
“Younever got a look at the shooter, did you?”
“I didn’t even know from which side of the stage the shots had come from.”
“Well, it was stage right,” Carella said, “we know that. You didn’t see anyone standing there in the wings shooting, did you?”
“Not a soul. I was watching the audio guy behind the mike.”