“I have to see Battaglia at eight thirty.” That appointment hadn’t been made yet, but the district attorney would want as complete an update as I could give him before he started his day. “Then a quick court appearance. I’m all yours by ten fifteen.”
“I want you to work out of the hotel. I’m going to run this right here.”
“Makes sense.”
“The sergeant will be up in five,” Mercer said. “I’ll meet Alex here in the morning and we’ll handle this together.”
I looked at Mike to jump in with us, but he was staring at the lieutenant.
“You two are on the sex crimes angle,” Rocco said. “Every contact you have in the other boroughs and across the country, every cold case you can get your hands on, every parolee who’s hit the streets in the last year, every junkie who’s AWOL from his program. And, Alex, look into every one of those trunks that’s been sold-when, where, to whom.”
He searched in vain for an ashtray, then tapped the ashes from his cigarette into a vase of flowers.
“Hugh will oversee all the employee and guest interviews. Night Watch will kick in at midnight, and by morning we’ll have help from all the local squads. As long as it takes. Any of the weepy broads-I can’t stomach that stuff-anyone squirrelly or acting nuts we’ll sweep right over to you, Alex. You’ll have backup?”
“I’ll reach out for someone tonight. Not a problem.”
“Pug, I’ll throw you all the support you can handle. You’ll have four guys around the clock with you for starters. More if Scully gives me what I ask for. Homicidal maniacs from here to Nome, anything that smells like this, you find ’em. Call in chits on any snitches you’ve got,” Rocco said. “Who owns this joint anyway?”
“It’s part of the Hilton chain, I think,” Mercer said.
“Get their lawyers in on this. Any litigation? Anybody trying to sabotage this place for commercial reasons?”
The uniformed cop stepped back into the doorway. “Excuse me, Lieutenant Correlli? Just got word that the commissioner is about to pull up on the Lexington Avenue side. You’re to head downstairs to Peacock Alley to brief him.”
“A briefing in a bar,” Pug said. “Off and running.”
“Johnny? Professor? Anyone have anything to add?”
“The commissioner would like you to bring Ms. Cooper, too,” the cop said.
“I-uh-I can’t say anything to the press, Rocco. Battaglia would have my head. There’s no point in taking me down with you.”
“You know Scully as well as I do, Alex. He doesn’t want to be hanging out there all alone. He just wants the visual of you standing behind him. If anything gets screwed up,” Rocco said, smiling at me as he plunged his cigarette tip-down between the stems of the yellow roses, “he can always say the district attorney was leading the charge.”
“He won’t need Coop to take the fall,” Mike said. “If you haven’t solved this within forty-eight hours, the feds will be in here, setting up shop for the president’s pilgrimage. You want to see a complete professional fuckup? Put the feebies to work on a homicide.”
FIVE
Keith Scully stood at the makeshift podium in the fashionable lobby of the five-star hotel. He was an enormously well-respected commissioner who had risen through the ranks to the top job, keeping the admiration and affection of most of his men along the way. He was about my height-five ten-with the ramrod-straight bearing of an ex-marine. His short-cropped hair had grayed throughout his tenure, and he tolerated far less nonsense now than he had in his youth.
Rocco Correlli was a step back, at the commissioner’s right shoulder. Pug, Mercer, and I stood several paces behind both of them and off to the side, where I attempted to keep out of camera range while the focus was on Scully.
The deputy commissioner for Public Information, Guido Lentini, was trying to control the unruly crowd of reporters who had surged past the patrol guards on Park Avenue and up the staircase to the lobby. We all knew the locals from print and broadcast well; most had a long familiarity with police work and knew how to ask questions and when to mine their favorite detectives for well-placed leaks. Others were drawn in from feature work about traffic accidents and consumer frauds and limited their inquiries to the color of the deceased’s hair and whether next of kin had been notified.
This group was unusual. I recognized some national reporters, cable and network, thrown into the mix, perhaps anticipating that this was more than a gruesome street crime.
“When you guys settle down,” DCPI Lentini called out, “the commissioner will get started.”
One of the reporters had slipped off to my side, whispering into his microphone as his cameraman scanned the art deco interior and the carefully placed potted palms lining the gilded archways into the main lobby. He seemed to be doing a setup for tomorrow’s NBC Nightly News, talking to Brian Williams, in case the story grew into a national one.
“We’re here, Brian, in the historic Waldorf Astoria-an early New York City skyscraper built over the air rights of the New York Central Railroad-yes, the train tracks run directly below us on Park Avenue to all points north of the city-and opened in 1931. It’s actually the second site of the famed hotel,” the young man said, vamping to fill time while other teams elbowed for space, setting up tripods and mikes. “If you know your history, Brian, you’ll recall that it was an Astor family feud that led to the construction of the original Waldorf-Astoria, on the site of what is now the Empire State Building, Fifth Avenue at 33rd Street.”
The reporter looked around to see if Scully was ready to speak. The commissioner was listening to Rocco Correlli, who moments ago in the empty bar had given him a quick rundown-more of what we didn’t know than what we did-and was now whispering something else in his ear.
“William Waldorf Astor built his swank establishment in 1893, naming it the Waldorf, next door to his aunt’s home after a nasty battle with her, and when she moved away it was her son-John Jacob Astor IV, later to perish on the Titanic-who replaced her mansion with the Astoria Hotel. There was only a tiny strip of pavement, known as Peacock Alley, which separated the two structures, so the cousins soon after joined them together to create the Waldorf-Astoria, which at the time became the world’s largest hotel and the very first to offer room service to its upscale clientele.”
Scully stepped to the microphone and silenced the press corps.
“Brian,” the reporter whispered as he turned to face the podium, “Commissioner Keith Scully, after a briefing in Peacock Alley-now a bar in this legendary venue-is ready to tell us about this most unusual murder, in the Waldorf Towers, a boutique hotel within a hotel, on the eve of a presidential visit.”
I couldn’t think what made this homicide unusual, except to someone who had never covered crime stories in Manhattan. People had been killed in every landmark location from Central Park to Madison Square Garden to the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. The stories rarely made national headlines-housing projects, school playgrounds, and abandoned buildings held no interest for news desk editors-unless the victim was prominent or the setting was one that resonated with the rest of America.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Scully said, beginning with the routine assurances about the safety of the Waldorf Astoria and the full cooperation of management and staff.
He might have been talking about another body than the one I saw. The unidentified victim had been stabbed in the neck. No need to alarm the public by disclosing that her throat was slit from ear to ear. Uncertain about how she came to be in the Waldorf. Uncertain about which day and what time she died. Uncertain about whether she had anything to do with the hotel itself, either as a former employee or regular guest.