A pyramid of unlit logs rested picturesquely beneath a mantel sporting a single crystal-framed photograph: a handsome middle-aged man shaking hands with the former president. The man looked familiar.
The person in the picture was not, however, the man they found splayed naked on the white sheets of a king-size bed in the master suite, a used condom knotted neatly on top of the nightstand beside him.
Bullet holes riddled the corpse, the bed beneath the corpse, and the wall behind the bed. The nightstand and dresser drawers were open, as were the doors to two double closets. All empty. By comparison, the adjoining bathroom looked relatively peaceful, with only a stack of towels toppled onto the floor.
A voice from the living room interrupted their inspection of the disarray.
“Robo? Robo! Where the hell is he?”
“Detectives. I think the apartment owner’s here.” A uniform officer stood nervously in the doorway of the master bedroom.
“Who called him?” Rogan asked.
The officer shrugged. “We called the super. The super must’ve called the owner.”
“Did someone ask you to call the super, Officer?” Above Rogan’s clenched jaw, a vein pulsed at his temple. “Did we ask you to do that?”
“I’ll deal with it,” Ellie said, brushing past the uniform as he muttered a halfhearted apology. She turned in the living room to face a trim, middle-aged man in a black tuxedo and white bow tie. He had closely clipped silver hair and intense green eyes. She recognized him as the man from the photograph on the mantel.
He eyed her up and down, clearly trying to determine how a barefoot woman in a turquoise linen shirt and black pencil-legged pants fit in among an apartment full of uniformed police officers.
“Who are you?”
“Detective Ellie Hatcher. NYPD.” She flipped open the badge holder that was clipped to her waistband.
“I take it from your bare feet that two of these many shoes on my Ryan McGinness belong to you.”
“You mean on your rug?” Ellie looked at the patterned area rug separating her from the man in the tuxedo.
“It’s art,” the man said, “but you apparently don’t recognize that. Robo, get this cleaned up. Robo—I called him forty-five minutes ago to deal with this shit. Robo—”
He headed toward the bedroom, but Ellie held her hand up. “I answered your question, sir. Now it’s my turn. Who are you?” She still could not put her finger on where she’d seen him before.
“I’m the man who owns the apartment you all have apparently commandeered. Robo—”
“Is Robo a well-built guy? Brown hair? Sleeve tattoo wrapped up his right arm, leprechaun tat on his left hip?”
He blinked at her. “I don’t even want to process what you’re insinuating.”
“I wasn’t insinuating anything. Assuming you have never seen the tattoo on the man’s hip, the rest of the description fits?”
The man nodded. “Where is he? I don’t appreciate getting called away from an important event by some building superintendent.”
“Unfortunately, sir, the man you’re calling Robo is dead. He was shot in what is apparently your bed. And he was naked in your bed, in case you were wondering.”
The man stared at her for three full beats before the corner of his mouth crept upward. “You’re going to regret this conversation, Miss Hatcher. I won’t ask you to clean up the mess you’ve made lest you accuse me of sexism, but please have one of these lackeys standing guard on taxpayer dollars remove your soggy shoes from what you so eloquently called my rug. It’s worth more than you make in a year.”
“First I need a name and some identification, sir.”
“Samuel Sparks.” He didn’t even feign a reach for his wallet.
“And who’s Robo?”
“His name is Robert Mancini. He’s one of my protection specialists. I’ve been calling him ever since I was beckoned down here about some kind of police emergency.”
“A protection specialist. You mean a bodyguard?”
The man nodded, and Ellie suddenly matched the name to the face: Samuel Sparks was Sam Sparks. That Sam Sparks. Before she scored a rent-stabilized sublet of questionable legality, she had perused countless real estate listings for units in Sparks’s buildings that she could not afford. This was the man who had been rumored to be purchasing the 110-building Stuveysant Town to convert into condos before a rival tycoon outbid him. He was the mogul who had been photographed with so many A-list women that he himself had become fodder for the tabloids and paparazzi, including some who speculated about the sexuality of the self-declared “permanent bachelor.” Ellie assumed those rumors might explain Sparks’s response to her mention of the victim’s exposed hip.
Sparks’s smirk widened into a full-blown smile. “You can apologize after these shoes have been picked up.”
Needless to say, Ellie did not apologize.
“Mr. Sparks, your apartment is now officially a crime scene. I need you to leave.”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you hear my request, sir?”
“Of course I heard you, but—”
“Then I’m ordering you, for the second time now, to leave the premises.” Ellie intentionally used the kind of I-get-high-on-my-authority tone that made a person want to disobey.
“I am not leaving my own—”
“Sam Sparks, you’re under arrest for disobeying the lawful order of a police officer.” Ellie used her index finger to signal to a uniform officer who’d been observing cautiously from the front doorway. The officer removed his handcuffs from his duty belt.
“You want to do the honors, or should I?” the officer asked.
Sparks sucked his teeth and squinted at the officer’s nameplate. “Officer T. S. Amos. I’d warn against taking another step in my direction unless you plan to spend the rest of your NYPD career on parking patrol.”
Ellie snatched the handcuffs from the uniform’s grasp. “Not to worry, Amos. This one’s all me.”
PART I
YOU CAN’T LET
THIS GET TO YOU.
CHAPTER THREE
FOUR MONTHS LATER…
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
11:00 A.M.
Ellie Hatcher raised her right hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
But the testimony she gave before Judge Paul Bandon was not really the whole truth. It was a dry, concise recitation of the basic facts—and only the facts—of a callout 120 days earlier. Time: 11:30 p.m. Location: a penthouse apartment at a building called 212 at the corner of Lafayette and Kenmare. Nature of the callout: a report of shots fired, followed by the subsequent discovery of a bullet-ridden body in the bedroom. The dead man: Robert “Robo” Mancini, bodyguard to Manhattan real estate mogul Sam Sparks.
Ellie allowed herself a glance at Sparks, who sat at counsel table with a blank-faced stare next to his lawyer, Ramon Guerrero. According to her police report, Sparks was fifty-five years old, but looking at him this morning, she could understand why he enjoyed the serial companionship of the various models and aspiring starlets who graced his side on the society pages. It wasn’t just the money. With his square jaw, bright green eyes, and a permanent Clint Eastwood squint, Sparks exuded the kind of chiseled intensity that was catnip to a certain kind of woman.