The address at the condo turned out to be 212 Lafayette, but the blue glass sign on the bright white exterior marked the building merely as 212. Whereas builders had co-opted the American West a century ago with names like the Dakota, the Wyoming, and the Oregon, the latest flavor was minimalist titles that managed to evoke images of urban perfection with one discreet word: Cielo, Onyx, Azure. And what could be more quintessentially New York than Manhattans famous area code 212?
Dishwater gray puddles had pooled at their feet by the time the elevator reached the seventh floor. The doors parted to reveal a narrow hallway occupied by a uniform officer standing between two slate-colored doors. The officer nodded in the direction of the open one.
Not technically a penthouse, Rogan observed as the elevator doors whispered shut behind them. In a real penthouse, you walk directly from the elevator and into the apartment.
The foyer alone was twice the size of Ellies entire apartment.I dont care if a realtor would call it a shanty, she said. Id take it.
Rogan unbuttoned his trench coat and let it fall to the foyer floor. Ellie did the same with her black slicker. The last thing they needed was a waterlogged crime scene.
As they made their way to the sounds of voices beyond the living room, Ellie took in the apartments condition. Beneath a single built-in shelf, books were scattered haphazardly across the floor. The empty drawers of a credenza in the dining room were flung open. Kitchen cabinets, also open.
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 owners 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 mustve called the owner.
Did someone ask you to call the super, Officer? Above Rogans clenched jaw, a vein pulsed at his temple. Did we ask you to do that?
Ill 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.
Its art, the man said, but you apparently dont 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 its my turn. Who are you? She still could not put her finger on where shed seen him before.
Im 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 dont even want to process what youre insinuating.
I wasnt insinuating anything. Assuming you have never seen the tattoo on the mans hip, the rest of the description fits?
The man nodded. Where is he? I dont appreciate getting called away from an important event by some building superintendent.
Unfortunately, sir, the man youre 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. Youre going to regret this conversation, Miss Hatcher. I wont ask you to clean up the mess youve 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. Its worth more than you make in a year.
First I need a name and some identification, sir.
Samuel Sparks. He didnt even feign a reach for his wallet.
And whos Robo?
His name is Robert Mancini. Hes one of my protection specialists. Ive 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 Sparkss buildings that she could not afford. This was the man who had been rumored to be purchasing the 110-building Stuyvesant 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 Sparkss response to her mention of the victims exposed hip.
Sparkss 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 Im 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, youre under arrest for disobeying the lawful order of a police officer. Ellie used her index finger to signal to a uniform officer whod 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 officers nameplate. Officer T. S. Amos. Id warn against taking another step in my direction unless you plan to spend the rest of your NYPD career on parking patrol.
Sparks sucked his teeth and squinted at the officers nameplate. Officer T. S. Amos. Id 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 uniforms grasp. Not to worry, Amos. This ones all me.
Part IYou Cant Let This Get to You.Chapter Three
Four months laterWednesday, 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 wasnt 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.
Ellie was surprised that he had bothered to make a personal appearance. It was probably the mans way of signaling to Judge Bandon that this hearing was just as important to him as it was to the police. The only spectator on the governments side of the courtroom, in the back bench by the entrance, was Genna Walsh, the victims sister. Ellie had told her there was no point coming into the city for the hearing, but she could not be dissuaded. Perhaps Sparks was not the only one trying to send a message.
Assistant District Attorney Max Donovan continued to feed Ellie the straightforward questions that would lay the groundwork for todays motion.
Did the decedent reside at the apartment in which his body was found the penthouse in the 212 Building at 212 Lafayette?
No, he did not. Mr. Mancinis personal residence was in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Did he own the apartment where his body was found? Donovan asked.
No.
Who does own the apartment?
Mancinis employer, Sam Sparks.
In your thorough search of the crime scene, did you find any evidence to suggest that the decedent was staying long-term at the 212?
No, we did not.
No suitcase, no toothbrush or shaving kit, nothing along those lines?
No. Ellie hated the formal back-and-forth that was inherent in testifying. Shed prefer to sit across a desk from Judge Bandon and lay it all out for him. In fact, Mr. Sparks himself told us that very night that the decedent was only using the apartment for the evening.
Again, Ellie reported just the facts. According to Sparks, he had completed the development at 212 six months earlier and kept the penthouse for himself as an investment and as a place to host the European investors who increasingly preferred downtowns modern lofts to the more conventional temporary housing stock in midtown. To further justify the space as a corporate deduction, he allowed his personal assistant and security officers to make use of the apartment when the calendar permitted.
Max Donovan had pinned photographs from the crime scene on a bulletin board next to the witness stand. Moving through the sequence of photos, Ellie described the disorder in the apartment the open cabinets and drawers, the relatively few possessions in the apartment tossed to the floor like confetti.
From the looks of it, Max said, only the bathroom was spared?
In the final picture on the board, a single cabinet door in the otherwise tidy master bathroom was flung open, a pile of towels splayed on the tile floor beneath the sink.
Thats about right, Ellie responded.
I guess extra rolls of toilet paper and back issues of Sports Illustrated arent the usual targets of a home invasion.
Maxs comment wasnt especially funny, but the bar for comedy in courtrooms was notoriously low, and the remark drew a chuckle from Judge Bandon.
The point of the testimony was simple: the violent home invasion on May 27 of a seventh-floor condo overlooking Lafayette Street had nothing to do with poor Robert Mancini until Robo got caught in the crossfire. The bodyguards relationship to the apartment was too inconsequential too tangential for the dead man to have been the premeditated target of the four bullets that eventually penetrated his naked torso that night.
No, the crime had nothing to do with Mancini. The real target was either a robbery or Sam Sparks himself, and robbery seemed unlikely. Despite the expensive furnishings two flat-screen televisions, a top-of-the-line stereo system, the rug that doubled as art nothing was missing from the apartment.
So now the police wanted to know more about Sam Sparks.
From the witness stand, Ellie eyed a silver picture frame behind the bench. In the photograph, a smiling Paul Bandon beamed alongside a perfect-looking wife and a teenage boy in a royal blue cap and gown. Outside this courtroom, underneath the robes, Bandon was a normal person with a real life and a family. She wondered, if she cut through the bull and laid it all out for him, whether Judge Bandon would understand how the series of events beginning on May 27 had led her to the middle of a battle between the district attorneys office and one of the most powerful men in the city.
Maybe he would understand how she had felt when Sparks had sauntered into the crime scene, in his custom-cut tuxedo, somehow dry and picture-ready on that rain-soaked night, so put out by the disturbance at his pristine penthouse. Maybe he could imagine the disdainful looks Sparks had given the police officers sullying his spotless pied-a-terre, the very officers who protected the appearance of order that allowed Sparks to earn billions in Manhattan real estate. Maybe he would realize that she hadnt even meant to arrest Sparks and had immediately kicked herself for doing it. All shed wanted was to wipe that smug look off his face, just long enough for him to give more of a rats ass about a dead man in his bedroom than the area rug in his foyer.
If Ellie were telling the whole truth, shed tell Judge Bandon that there was something about Sam Sparks that got under her skin. And she would try to explain that the only thing that bothered her more than that something was her own inability to maintain control in the face of it.
Sparkss rigid refusal to cooperate with the police investigation all because of their first ill-fated encounter, an encounter in which she had played no small part had contributed to a four-month investigation that led nowhere.