In his cubicle the three button on the phone was lit. It was Dan Hippolito, reporting on John Doe’s blood. “He had enough alcohol in him to pickle an elephant. Enough coke to orbit a hippo. Plus considerable quantities of heroin and meth.”
“Was he a junkie?”
“Nah, with junkies the circulation is so bad you see necrotic tissue in the toes, but Johnny’s got no punctures and five good toes.”
“What does the combination of drugs tell you?”
“Nothing special. You can buy it prepackaged on the streets. There’s usually some other shit in it, but that metabolizes without a trace.”
Cardozo thanked Dan, then phoned the lab. “Hey, Lou, did you check John Doe’s hair? Any chance he dyed it?”
“It’s the first thing we check with blonds. The color’s real. He did use a very expensive conditioner—high in vitamin E. But it’s over-the-counter stuff.”
Cardozo drew a line through the memo in his notebook. At 8:05 he crossed the hall for his task force meeting.
“How are we doing on garbage?” he asked.
Siegel shook her head. “No leg yet.”
“And the photo?”
“Turned out pretty well.” She had taken a photo of the dead man to the Photographic Unit, had them airbrush it and put him in high-fashion clothes from last month’s GQ. She passed it to Cardozo.
He eyed it critically. The photographic boys had dressed John Doe conservatively: button-down shirt, regimental tie, tweed jacket. “Take this to the modeling agencies. See if they ever worked with him.” He turned to Detective Malloy. “Carl, how about licenses?”
“Still coming up dry,” Malloy said. “Except for Bronski. He’s got violations on his cab—and complaints to the commission.”
Cardozo smiled: the city’s taxi commission was a pork barrel of bribery and embezzlement, and the commissioners—who did little besides enforcing a cabbie dress code—were presently targets of criminal indictment. “What kind of complaints?”
“Picks up passengers from any lane, busts lights, grabs other cabbies’ fares. A go-getter like that, you’d think he’d hustle rides during the off-peak hours. But noon-to-two, he must have been napping. At eleven forty-five he had a fare from Broadway and Park Place to Fifty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. The next fare was one P.M., from Ninetieth and Broadway to Fifty-ninth and Sixth: Then one forty-five, from Fifty-fourth Street and Sixth to Twelfth Street and Third Avenue.”
“Aren’t those rides spaced a little far apart?” Cardozo said.
“Very much so, compared to other drivers’ sheets. Another thing. Bronski leaves his first fare a block from the Tower. He leaves his second six blocks from the Tower. He picks up his third a block away. I suppose it’s possible, but it seems strange.”
“How was his meter for the day?” Cardozo asked.
“Low. The other drivers’ sheets averaged twenty dollars more for the same shift.”
“Better give it another look,” Cardozo said. “Greg, what about mental institutions?”
Monteleone had checked for sex offenders released or escaped within the last month. No escapes had been reported, fifteen offenders had been released.
“Follow up on them. Find out where they were Saturday. What residents did you get hold of?”
“Jessica Lambert, Esmée Burns, and Estelle Manfrey are out of town semipermanently. Lambert’s in Hollywood, shooting a miniseries about Ellie Siegel.”
Detective Siegel looked up.
“Bad joke. It’s about a woman sleuth. Burns always spends April and May in Paris, she has a perfume factory there. Manfrey is in a wheelchair in Palm Beach, zonked on painkillers.”
“Who did you talk to personally?”
He’d spoken to Joan Adler, the mousy writer of political broadsides, who had returned from weekend house parties in the Hamptons. She had not recognized the victim’s face on the flyer. He’d also shown the flyer to the Beaux Arts staff, with the same result. He had persuaded Bill Connell, the super, to let him post a flyer in the lobby.
“Today,” Cardozo said, “take the flyer to the stores and the clinics. And get the names of the employees and patients.”
“They’re not going to want to give me those.”
Cardozo ignored the objection. “Run the names through the Bureau of Records. Have the Passport Office send us photos.”
“You’re assuming every name on the list will have a passport.”
“The ones that don’t, ask the Bureau of Motor Vehicles for license photographs.”
“Vince, that could be two hundred photos.”
“So? We’re going to have a lot of faces to match.” Cardozo turned to Sam Richards. “Sam, how’d the follow-up on Debbi Hightower go?”
“I checked with the World Trade Center. She was sort of telling the truth. There was an industrial show in the ballroom of the Helmsley Hotel and it was called Toyota Presents.” Sam Richards passed a program to Cardozo. “But Hightower’s not listed on the program. I checked the hotel’s employee list. No Hightower there either. I asked the waiters and bartenders if they’d seen a lady of Miss Hightower’s description. They had. She came in through an agency—Amanda’s Girls—temporary staff for the show.”
“What kind of temporary staff?”
“Hostess. She served coffee and smiled.”
“Who was the audience?”
“Out-of-towners. Toyota dealers, would-be Toyota dealers, Ford dealers Toyota is trying to steal.”
“What time did this show go on?” Cardozo asked.
“Eight o’clock.”
“I don’t buy Debbi Hightower served coffee and smiled at a bunch of out-of-town car dealers from eight o’clock Friday night till noon Saturday. Amanda’s Girls—is that a legit business?”
“They’re in the Yellow Pages—office temps. They have a New York business license.”
“I’d like her to account for that time, Sam.”
“She’s a hooker,” Monteleone said. “Don’t tell me she bought that apartment on an office temp’s pay.”
“She’s late with the maintenance,” Sam Richards said.
“Lean on her,” Cardozo said. “Find out who she was with. Maybe she brought the guy to her place. Maybe he saw something she didn’t. Maybe he did something she didn’t see. Dig. How’d you do with Fred Lawrence and that problem in the garage?”
“I finally got it out of him. He rents a space in the garage, it’s supposed to be his and his alone. He got back from Fire Island on Saturday at noon, and a taxi had parked in his place.”
“A taxi?” Cardozo frowned. “Why didn’t he want to tell you?”
“Because he’s ashamed. He says he’s type A, driven, heart-attack material, can’t take frustration. He went crazy and phoned the cab company. Said he was Jewish Defense League and he was going to blow them up.”
“What was the name of this cab company?”
“Ting-a-ling Taxi, something cutesy like that. He’d just as soon not remember.”
Cardozo was thoughtful. “Bronski’s company is Ding-Dong Transport. That’s awfully close to Ting-a-ling Taxi. Bronski could have had his cab parked in the Beaux Arts garage from noon to two. That would explain the low meter and why all the rides are near Sixth Avenue and Fifty-fourth. Carl, check that out.”
Malloy nodded.
“Any luck finding the handyman?” Cardozo asked.
“I’ve got a phone call in to the super,” Richards said. “He’ll let me know when Loring shows.”
“Maybe the handyman went to Rio,” Monteleone said. “Do we have extradition with Rio?”
“If we need it,” Cardozo said, “we’ll get it. Sam, how’d you do with the other residents?”
Richards had been able to question Billi von Kleist, the fashion designer; Phil Bailey, the TV network president, and his wife Jennifer; Johnny Stefano, the Broadway composer. None of them could shed any light on events in the building Saturday, and none of them recognized the face on the flyer.