She laughed. “Why?”
“Kylie and I are running a sting at Hudson Hospital, and we’re going to spend the entire night on a stakeout. It’s not the kind of thing I usually do, but I promised Cates and the mayor’s husband. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Cheryl said. “It’s what makes you such a great cop.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me. A great cop, but a lousy boyfriend.”
Chapter 59
Annie could come up with only one reason why a weasel like Jeremy would drop an eight-million-dollar necklace and run: it wasn’t worth eight million.
There was one way to find out for sure. Ask Ginsberg.
“It’s flawless,” Ginsberg said after looking at the necklace through a loupe for less than twenty seconds. “Every stone is perfect.”
Annie smiled for the first time since she left Katz’s Deli. Ginsberg had spent sixty years in the wholesale jewelry business. “So it’s real,” she said.
“No, it’s synthetic. Nature doesn’t make perfect. Science does. These stones were grown in a lab. It takes a few months, so they look better than most of the dreck they use for costume jewelry. But real? No.”
Annie’s smile turned to despair, and Ginsberg wrapped his arms around her. For eight months out of the year they’d go to dinner, a movie, a Mets game, or just spend the night in his apartment on the third floor of her building. Just before Thanksgiving, he’d fly to Florida, and in the spring, they’d pick up where they left off.
“Sorry to give you the bad news, but you know what will make you feel better?” he said, giving her a wink. “A little afternoon delight.”
At eighty-two, Ginsberg bragged that he had the libido of a sixty-year-old, and while the sex wasn’t all that important to Annie, there were times when she needed the comfort of curling up against a warm man instead of a bronze urn.
This was one of those times.
An hour later, she broke the bad news to Teddy.
“So the necklace is junk,” Teddy said.
“Not junk, but it’s not worth enough money to stick our necks out trying to sell it.”
“So, what are we going to do for money, Ma?”
Annie didn’t know. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I have an idea,” she lied. “I just need some time to think it through.”
She was still trying to come up with a plan when the two detectives showed up, told her Jeremy was dead, and offered Teddy a chance to plead the murder rap down. Eight years was a long time, but she’d never forgive herself if he got caught and had to spend the rest of his life behind bars. She decided to sleep on it.
The answer came to her in the middle of the night. It was so obvious she smacked her forehead in mock disgust for not seeing it sooner. She showered and made a pot of coffee, and at five fifteen she left the apartment, walked to the deli on 27th, and brought home a box of doughnuts and the morning papers.
Teddy was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.
“What are you doing up?” she said.
“Damn cat woke me, and I’m more hungry than tired. What’ve you got?”
She tossed him the doughnuts and then opened the Daily News to a two-page spread on the Bassetts. “Your buddy Jeremy is dead,” she said. “He stabbed one of those two jewelry brothers, and the other one shot him.”
Teddy grinned. “Cool beans.”
“Yeah, cool,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She went to the bedroom and returned with the necklace. She set it on top of the news story about the Bassetts and took out her cell phone.
“What are you doing, Ma?”
“Taking a picture,” she said, trying to get the right angle.
“Why? I thought you said the necklace was worthless.”
“It’s a fake, but it’s far from worthless,” she said, taking a photo and then deleting it. “Did you ever hear of Jack Ruby?”
Teddy took a few seconds and then smiled. “Yeah. He’s the one who shot President Kennedy.”
“Close. Ruby shot the guy who shot the president. He used a .38 that he bought for sixty-two dollars and fifty cents,” she said. “I looked it up this morning on the Internet.”
“So?”
“So what do you think the gun that killed Lee Harvey Oswald is worth today?”
Teddy shrugged. “I got no idea,” he said through a mouthful of doughnut.
“Me either. But I can tell you that in 2008 the gun was sold to a collector for two million.”
“That’s crazy, Ma. Who would pay two million bucks for an old .38?”
“It’s called murderabilia, kiddo, and there are a lot of nut jobs out there who will pay big money for anything connected to a major crime.”
Teddy brightened. “So are you going to sell the necklace on eBay?”
“No,” Annie said, clicking off a half dozen more pictures. “I already found a buyer.”
Chapter 60
With only three hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four, my body was running on fumes, and whatever energy I might have had left was sapped by the time I finished my hapless breakfast with Cheryl. I went home, unplugged everything that beeped, buzzed, rang, or chirped, and slept nine hours straight.
By the time Kylie picked me up at six p.m., I was shaved, showered, caffeinated, and braced for the most boring part of every detective’s job: waiting, watching, and wishing some bad guys would show up and make my existence meaningful.
“Spence called me this afternoon,” Kylie said as she weaved in and out of Friday night traffic on the FDR.
“And?”
“There is no and, Zach. The very fact that he called me is a moral victory. You were there last night. He couldn’t stand having me in the same room with him, let alone talk to me.”
“And that was before you offered him your gun and encouraged him to blow his brains out on the spot.”
“I did do that, didn’t I?” she said, laughing. “That might have been a little reckless.”
“Why did he call?”
“To thank me for saving his life.”
“I hope you can see the irony in that,” I said.
“Stop analyzing everything. The important thing is he opened the door to a possible dialogue. Speaking of which, how’d it go with Cheryl when you got home last night?”
“Fantastic. She welcomed me home like I was Richard the Lionheart returning from the Crusades.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Keep your mind on your driving, or you’re going to miss your exit,” I said.
She got off at Grand Street, and we headed west until we got to Hudson Hospital, an imposing steel and glass complex straddling the border between Chinatown and Little Italy.
We got in an elevator in the lobby and took it two floors down to the security operations room, where we met up with Jenny Betancourt, Wanda Torres, and Frank Cavallaro, the head of Hudson’s security team.
They were sitting in front of a bank of monitors much more elaborate than the setup Gregg Hutchings had at Mercy Hospital.
“They made their first move this morning,” Torres said.
“We have it queued up for you,” Cavallaro said. “Watch this screen over here.”
The camera covered a section of the third floor, which was in the final stages of being renovated. Per Howard Sykes’s plan, the 3-D mammography machines were being “temporarily” stored there, where they were off-limits to staff and patients.
“Keep your eye on this guy in the green shirt,” Torres said, pointing at a wide shot of a man who was spreading compound on drywall, getting it prepped for the painters. “He seems to have more than a passing interest in mammogram technology.”