“You heard about Leighton already?” Mike asked. “I never drink with guys I can’t stand. Irritates my throat and my mood. Didn’t know word was out.”
“The parking lot’s buzzing,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “The reporter from the Post wants to clone himself so he can get exclusives on that story without missing any of this one. You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Alex.”
“Sorry, Rowdy,” I said, feeling the blush running up the side of my neck and coloring my cheeks. We had a professional history together, history I didn’t relish reliving. “I didn’t know you were back.”
“Never left. Just hit a bump in the road that had me sidelined for a while. The department kept me rubber-gunned for eighteen months but restored me full blast in the fall,” Rowdy Kitts said, the right side of his mouth drawing back into a grin. “And that paragon of congressional virtue-Ethan Leighton-was one of the people who made my life stink.”
“Am I interrupting a personal reunion here? What’s your problem, Coop?”
“No problem at all.”
“I think she’s still peeved at me ’cause the jury tossed one of her unit’s cases when I got jammed up. The judge threw out my testimony. Didn’t find me credible. Can you imagine that?”
“Coop doesn’t hold grudges, Rowdy. She takes body parts,” Mike said.
The last time Rowdy and I had worked together it hadn’t ended well. He was a smart cop who had chosen the wrong professional allies and paid a price for it. I could never tell if the chip on his shoulder was permanent or a result of his political troubles on the job.
Roland Kitts had been an active rookie in a rough neighborhood in Washington Heights, with a great record for getting guns off the street that earned him the nickname Rowdy and led to his promotion to detective after only four years on the job. While working on a special antiterrorist project after 9/11, he caught the attention of Bernie Kerik, who was commissioner at the time.
Kitts was glib and self-promoting-like Kerik-and it was no surprise to most cops who knew him that the brash, freewheeling commissioner chose him to serve on his personal detail. A few years later, when Kerik was charged with accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal gifts while serving in office, the feds cast a wide net, which landed the young hotshot back in uniform during the lengthy investigation. He’d only recently been able to work his way up again.
“You remember that case, Alex?” Kitts asked.
“Let’s not go there now,” I said. “We’ve got enough real grief right here.”
“We start moving these folks off the beach before we bring everyone in safe or there’ll be a riot,” Mike said. “Where you working these days, Rowdy?”
Kitts was a bit taller than I, with straight blond hair slightly darker than mine, slicked back without a part, and sharp features that matched his lean physique. “I’m on the mayor’s security detail. Same stuff I was doing for Kerik.”
“Talk about landing on your feet, man. Sweet deal,” Mike said.
I leaned over to talk to Cyril, biting my tongue so as not to swipe at Kitts’s uncanny ability to work his way back into such a plum assignment. I asked the young man if he would tell some of the other passengers we were going to move them to the buses.
“No, no, lady. Nobody gonna leave till ship is empty.”
“Who’s looking out for you?” Mike asked Kitts.
“I got a good lawyer. Once they cleared me, he fought to get me reinstated to the same kind of position I had when I was dumped,” Kitts said. “Scully’s not my biggest fan, but I used to get along fine with the mayor, back in the days before he got elected. Still got my street cred, Chapman.”
“You here with him?” Mike asked. I looked around to see if Vin Statler-the popular businessman who had succeeded Bloomberg to the mayoralty-had arrived.
“Nope. I’m on my own dime. For years I’ve had a piece of a small marina just over the border in Nassau County. Sent a couple of my guys around with their boats to assist.” Kitts shaded his eyes and tried to make out his craft among the growing flotilla surrounding the old freighter. “They’re out there somewhere.”
“Good thinking, Rowdy,” Mike said.
“Is that Mercer up ahead? Let me see if they need help at the morgue. Later, Mike. Nice to see you again, Ms. Cooper,” Kitts said. The sarcasm was thick in his voice. “You really oughtta lose that attitude.”
Kitts took off and I could read the words on the back of his jacket, printed under the logo of a small dead bird: PIPING PLOVERS TASTE LIKE CHICKEN-the recreational boaters’ rebuke to the local beach environmentalists.
I was trying to coax Emilia to get to her feet, but whatever direction I gave her was being overridden by Cyril.
“C’mon, pal,” Mike said to him. “High and dry. Do it the nice way, okay?”
Cyril shrugged and pretended he didn’t understand Mike.
“What’s your beef with Rowdy? You see any prosecutors out here volunteering to help? Not like cops and firemen. Suck it up, blondie. The guy hit on you once, is that why you’re all pink up to your eyeballs?”
“It’s a professional blush, not a personal one,” I said, trying to think of a better approach to Emilia. “Remember Jeannie Parcher?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
“You know who I mean. That very attractive paralegal who worked for Ryan Blackmer.”
“Oh, yeah. She was a sweetheart. Left the office last summer.” Mike called to a pair of detectives to move Cyril and Emilia along, then started walking with me across the wide stretch of beach.
“Exactly. A few months earlier than that, when the feds were trying to make their case against Rowdy, Jeannie phoned late one night and asked to see me at my apartment. She’d been working with the assistant DA who had an indictment in the push-in rape that got tossed because Rowdy’s testimony was so compromised. He’d made the collar, recovered the knife, and taken a statement from the perp. The guy had a rap sheet a mile long, and his admissions to Rowdy put him close enough to the crime scene to be useful.”
“Bet that dismissal ticked you off.”
“Of course it did. We had no DNA and a victim who was unable to make an ID ’cause she was yoked from behind, so there was no way to go forward,” I said.
“Hey, that perp’ll be back.”
“Most likely at the expense of another woman.”
“What brought Jeannie to your doorstep?” Mike asked. “She confuse your living room with a confessional?”
“I guess so. She had a fling with Rowdy, and the feds found out about it while they were digging into his life. They called her in to question her and she went down to their offices without telling me or anybody else on the staff first. No supervisor, no lawyer.”
“Both of them were single,” Mike said. “What did she have to give the feds?”
“Hard to reconstruct after the fact. Jeannie was so vague and emotional. I’m sure she gave them more than anyone would want to know about her sexual encounters with Rowdy, and probably way too much about the other internal affairs-and, yes, I do mean affairs-of the DA’s office to suit the boss.”