The couple appeared to be in their late forties, a few years younger than Harold’s mother. Though with their easy-street life, he thought, they could look like that and be much older. The woman’s hair was honey gold and sleekly coifed. She wore a beige fur jacket over an amber silk dress, oval earrings of gold rimmed with tiny diamonds, a thick gold bracelet, and a ring that was simple in style but held a diamond of several carats. The man, in a three-piece gray suit, wore a gold pocket watch and carried a tan leather briefcase of the old-fashioned envelope style, with a flap and two buckled straps.
The man and woman walked up First Avenue, busy and well lit, and turned east on Fifty-sixth Street. Vekt stayed three-quarters of a block behind them. They crossed Sutton Place; here no one else was about, and the bare but thickly branched trees dimmed the street lighting. Vekt grasped the weapon in the pocket of his gray hooded jacket and increased his pace until he was about twenty feet from them. “Excuse me, sir.”
The couple halted and turned. “Yes?”
He moved closer. In his upturned left hand was a slip of paper. “I’m looking for ninety-two Sutton Terrace.”
The man pointed toward the river. “Sutton Terrace is around that corner, but as far as I know, there’s no ninety-two.”
Vekt had closed the gap between them. He brandished the scrap of paper, and then his right hand was out with a slim-barreled black handgun and his left arm was tight around the woman’s waist.
“Okay — the rules are: one, be quiet; two, open the briefcase and put your wallet in it. And if you happen to have a gun, remember that I can shoot her before you could even aim at me.”
Staring, rigid, the man complied. Gargling noises came from the woman’s throat. Vekt jabbed the gun into the back of her armpit and whispered fiercely. “Shut — up!”
He turned back to the man. “Now, your watch, with all its attachments.” Into the briefcase went the Patek Philippe with its heavy gold chain and fob and Phi Beta Kappa key. “The wedding band too.” It was of textured gold and about half an inch wide.
Vekt turned to the woman, keeping the gun in place. “Now your stuff — into the briefcase. First the purse.”
“There’s no—”
“Quiet. The purse.” Her husband held out the briefcase; she dropped in the small cream leather bag with its mother-of-pearl clasp. “Your jewelry. All of it.”
She started with the bracelet, using her teeth to undo the difficult catch. The earrings were next, then the solitaire, followed by a diamond wedding band that Vekt hadn’t noticed.
He took the briefcase with his left hand. “Now, if you make any noise before I’m out of sight, I’ll be back here before anyone else has time to show up. In which case you won’t live to tell them anything.” Shifting his gaze back and forth between them, he walked backward, aiming the gun.
He was ready to turn and run when a glint flashed in his left eye. It came from the base of the woman’s throat.
Vekt dashed forward, grabbing at her neck for the thin gold chain with its small disc pendant.
“You stupid bitch — I said all of it!”
“NO!” she shrieked, flailing at him. “Not this! My baby! You can’t take it! You can’t have her!” She scratched his eyelids with one hand and pulled his greasy blond hair with the other.
He shoved the gun between her breasts and pulled the trigger. The husband was clawing at him; he shot without aiming and flew off down the street just as the first window opened in an adjacent building. He had not taken the chain.
Vekt flushed the toilet, huffing with relief, and jumped into the shower, making the water as hot as he could stand it. He soaped himself until he was coated with white, and then rinsed for ten minutes, gradually changing the mix until it ran ice cold.
Wrapped in a huge, thick, white towel, he strode with damp footsteps into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Heineken from the refrigerator. But he put it back without opening it; his gut feeling told him that this was more than a beer occasion. He poured three ounces of Glenlivet over two chunky ice cubes in a thick tumbler and carried it into the living room, ready to assess the evening’s proceeds.
Vekt began with high hopes and ended with exultation. Cash: $1,145 in wallet, $312 in the purse. Credit cards: five, including two platinums. Jewelry: the best, and plain design, easy to dump. Except the watch: an intricate antique; he’d have to hold it for a while. Maybe even wear it; he could afford a three-piece suit. Except the earrings too, damn it. The name of a well-known brand of costume jewelry was stamped on the back. The bitch!
Vekt’s friendly neighborhood fence was in a good mood. “These two” — the diamond rings — “let’s say five thousand.”
“Seven.”
“Fifty-five hundred.”
“They’re at least twenty-live retail.”
“Six.”
“Done. How about the gold stuff?”
“The bracelet — mmmm — four hundred. This ring’s a problem — it has initials inside.”
“So remove them.”
“I will, but it ain’t easy. And it leaves scars — reduces the resale value. Seventy-five.”
“Come on, Lou, it’s a five-hundred-dollar ring.”
“One hundred’s the best I can do. Better than you’ll get elsewhere.”
Vekt conceded. He coaxed Lou out of fifty for each of the credit cards and for the leather briefcase. He was now clean of almost all the evidence. The purse and its trivial contents had been thrown down a sewer; the gun and the blond wig went with it. Only the antique watch remained, in the movable heel of a brown leather boot, lined up in a closet with all his other footwear.
Vekt was startled by a hand touching his left forearm. His eyes and mind had been wandering around the courtroom, from the gold chains around the neck of a pudgy middle-aged juryman to the reporter who had all her parts in the right place under clothes that showed them off.
He turned toward his attorney after a second nudge. “You must, I repeat, must, pay attention,” the man growled. “If a witness says anything that you can challenge, write it down — push the paper to where I can see it from the corner of my eye.”
It was still a mystery to Vekt how he had lucked out with this lawyer. Wilson Herrera was nationally known for his high acquittal rate and his six-figure fees. “Every attorney gets to do court appointments once in a while,” was all he’d said in explanation.
The prosecutor’s six-foot-two-inch frame, with its hint of a paunch, moved agilely in its charcoal-gray vested suit as he faced the witness over rimless granny glasses. Vekt took a perverse comfort from Luther Johnson’s dark brown skin. Only two of the jurors were black. Maybe the other ten wouldn’t buy it from one of them.
“Detective Swayze. Tell us why you decided to arrest Harold Vekt for the murder of Annabelle Jagoda.”
“Her husband, Morris Jagoda, identified him in a lineup.”
“And why did you include Mr. Vekt in the lineup to begin with?”
“Mr. Jagoda had identified his picture.”
Vekt watched Herrera write, with a silver-plated Parker pen, picàl’up.
“Is this the picture?”
The detective studied the stiff four-by-six paper. “Yes.”
“What was the source of the picture?”
“Police files.” Herrera underlined his cryptic notation.
“Describe the person as you see him in the picture.”
“Long, narrow face, short, light brown hair, narrow eyes close together, sharp, straight nose, down-curved lips, small ears close to the head.”
“Do you see the person in this courtroom?”