TWO
When the phone roused him from a dead man's sleep at 3:30 in the morning, NYPD sergeant Thornton Savage didn't know the who, how, or why, but he presumed the what and the where. Someone had been murdered in Manhattan, somewhere between the Battery and Fifty-ninth Street. His bailiwick. The notification from Detective Operations hadn't startled him much. When it was his team's turn to be on call for the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force, he never really expected a full night's sleep. On the first ring he tossed the covers fully back and accepted his fate--three hours' rest was all he was getting tonight. He was it, and he was up for the day. Let the games begin.
According to Operations, there were three DOAs: two males and one female. A fourth victim, Anthony DiLeo, a licensed private investigator, was hanging on at Bellevue with just a shred of a chance. He'd been shot once in the head but was still alive.
Most of the city's normal people were happily practicing REM on cozy Posturepedics or Beautyrests when Savage arrived at La Florentine. In the deep hours before dawn, the sky being scraped by Manhattan glass and steel was jet-black and clear, and Gotham's air rode gently on a mild spring breeze. For once, the city actually smelled good.
He pulled into a warm spot just vacated by a Seventeenth Precinct radio car and parked his unmarked Crown Victoria behind a blue-and-white Crime Scene Unit van. One of two EMS ambulances that sat idling nearby sounded as if it had marbles banging around in the crankcase of its noisy, soot-puffing engine, and a somber dark green medical examiner's meat wagon was double-parked at a hydrant next to a radio car on Third Avenue. Two young uniforms from the Seventeenth were posted as doormen at La Florentine's entrance, checking identification and preventing unauthorized access. Neither slick and pushy paparazzi looking for gore nor the idle curious were getting past the two eager rookies. The men stepped aside without question, though, at Savage's deliberate approach. One look at him, natty in a steel blue pinstripe and Allen-Edmonds wing tips, and they didn't ask to see his tin--he had Homicide boss written all over him.
Savage often felt he had been born to The Job. He was the eldest son of a retired inspector, the brother of a former second-grade detective, and the nephew of the most senior lieutenant in Emergency Service. For generations that was the norm in the predominantly Irish Catholic neighborhoods of the Central and South Bronx where he'd grown up. Unless a son was so academically superior as to win himself a full scholarship to go on to become a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief, he usually wound up taking the civil service test and becoming a fireman or a cop--or pulling wire for Con Ed. Few went into sanitation. That job was the birthright of other men's sons from Brooklyn and Queens whose last names usually ended in a vowel.
Despite being a football-scholarship graduate of Fordham, where he had majored in legal studies, Thorn Savage still became a cop. He had no regrets--he loved The Job. He often said he'd rather wear the navy blue of the NYPD than any colors of the NFL. He liked blue. The guys in his precinct cracked that he even dreamed in blue.
Inside La Florentine's chandelier- and track-lighted dining room, Savage scanned the usual medley of police blue and medical white that always colored these events. Morgue attendants and EMS techs were gathered in muted conversation just outside the kitchen's swinging doors. Detectives, gold shields pinned topsy-turvy to wrinkled lapels, scribbled memoranda while conferring with their uniformed counterparts. The random flashing of strobes from the adjoining bar added a surreal quality. It could have been the opening night of a DeMille epic at the old Paramount.
Savage spotted Sergeant Dan Woodruff talking to the ME in the center of the huge dining room. The equine-looking supervisor and his Night Watch team had been the first investigators on the scene; they in turn had made the request for Homicide to respond. Woodruff had also spotted him.
``Okay everybody,'' Woodruff announced. ``We can all go home now. The cavalry is here.'' No one in the room bothered to look up.
``And not a moment too soon, it would appear,'' Savage countered, making his way along a row of neatly set, cloth-covered tables. ``Just steer me to a coffeepot, Dan. The cavalry's still half asleep for crissakes. Don't you guys have any regard for a gentleman's personal life? Calling him out at this hour of the morning?''
``You got a gentleman's life all right.'' Woodruff said with a smirk. ``We should all have it. No old lady breakin' your balls, no rug rats, no freakin' grass to mow, no bullshit. Where I come from they call that lucky.''
``Where I come from they call that smart,'' Savage said, playing the banter game, thinking lonely might have been more accurate. He winked and grinned as he shook the man's hand. ``Good to see you, Dan. Any of my team here yet?'' Woodruff nodded toward the bar. ``Jack Lindstrom's here.''
Following Woodruff's nod, Savage looked over at the tall, slender, and balding Lindstrom standing inside the bar area. He was busy conferring with a photographer from Crime Scene.
``As usual, I see you made good time, Thorn.'' Dan Woodruff knitted up his brow. ``You know, if your creases weren't so goddamned sharp, I'd have to think you sleep with your freakin' clothes on.''
``I live down in the Sixth,'' Savage reminded with a shrug. ``At this hour it's only a ten-minute ride.''
Woodruff lowered his voice conspiratorially. ``Still got that rent-controlled place on Sullivan Street?''
``Better believe it. They're gonna have to carry me outta there.''
``Man!'' Woodruff muttered in envy. ``You got it made.''
To cloak his own thoughts on that subject, Savage flashed an agreeable smile. ``So, tell me, good sergeant, what've we got here?''
``Three and a half dead. The bartender, the manager, and some foxy mama are all night-night. We think the manager got it first. The guy's built like freakin' Mr. America. Then the woman right next to him. They each got two in the head. Don't think they really knew what hit 'em. The whole thing prob'ly went down in seconds.''
``The bartender?''
``Shot once in the left armpit,'' the ME piped in, lifting his arm in illustration. ``I think the man had raised his arm in a defensive movement. Then, as he turned, he was shot a second time in the back. That one went through his heart.''
``Prob'ly lookin' to split,'' Woodruff suggested.
``Robbery?'' Savage asked.
``Don't think so.'' Woodruff took a deep breath while scratching below his right ear with the topside of his pen. ``I'm thinking it's lookin' more and more like a professional hit. Lots of cash in the till, money in their pockets, and jewelry never touched. We found another cash box in the manager's office with thirty-six hundred and change in it. It certainly ain't shapin' up like no robbery, but somebody sure decided to make a lotta people dead.''
``Who found them and when?'' Savage twisted his shoulders and sucked in his back, allowing a morgue attendant carrying an armful of empty body bags to squeeze past.
``Exterminator. Comes every Wednesday morning between two-thirty and three to fumigate the kitchen. Typical restaurant stuff. Guy's got his own key, but when he got here at two fifty-five the place was wide open. He walked right in and found the mess. If he hadn't, this guy DiLeo woulda bled to death.''
``He's the half, right? How's he doin'? Operations said he was a few quarts low.'' ``When they took him outta here EMS figured he was circlin' the drain. But they got him in the OR now, and maybe he's got a shot.''
``How'd we establish that he's a PI?''
``PI license in his wallet, along with a carry permit.''
``Was he packing?''
``Nothing recovered. He wasn't even wearing a holster. His permit was for a .38 Colt, but we're thinkin' that everybody here got it with something a little stronger. Prob'ly a nine.''
``We got IDs on the rest of them?''
``Yeah, pretty much. Still tentative till we get notifications out, and get positives from next of kin. According to the woman's New York driver's license, her name is Candace Mayhew. White, forty-five, 333 East Seventy-third, apartment 21-G. We sent a Nineteenth Precinct unit over to her building, The Clarendon, but the doorman said her husband's out of town. Your guys'll have to follow up on that notification. The muscle who ran the joint is Donny Cesare. The sector team from the Seventeenth knew him. He's a positive.''
``Donny Cesare? Isn't he a Gambino bit player?'' Savage asked.
``One and the same.'' Woodruff's horse face expanded with a broad toothy grin.
``I didn't know Donny'd become a restaurateur,'' Savage said, enjoying his own half-awake sarcasm while fishing in his jacket for a fresh roll of Life Savers. ``But his presence sure lends credence to your idea of a hit.''
Woodruff gave a self-satisfied nod.
Savage peeled away the snug foil wrapping and popped a Wint-O-Green into his mouth as he subconsciously looked for holes in the theory. ``Anybody?'' he asked, holding out the roll. There were no takers.
``If they were looking to do Donny Cesare, why off everybody else?'' Savage asked, talking more to himself than to Woodruff. ``That's not usual mob MO, even if the hitter was an amateur. And,'' he added, taking a long-distance gaze into the barroom-cum-slaughterhouse, ``from the looks of things, this guy was nobody's amateur.''
Woodruff stretched rusty eyebrows and shrugged. ``Well, for one thing, we think the broad may have been his squeeze.''
Savage took Woodruff's assessment at face value for the moment. ``Tell me about the bartender,'' he said, deciding to put the question of motive on the back burner for a while.
``Hugh Aloysius Byrne,'' Woodruff replied, flipping back one page of his notepad. ``Sixty-three. Bronx guy. Shit! You gotta know him, Thorn. He's been around for years. Prob'ly tended bar in every mill ...
