Flesh and Blood Read online

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Jessica Silk. I’m told she’s a free-lance journalist who writes for magazines, and that’s all I know about her.”

  Ben wondered whether what the media was stirring up might be true. He tried to put the question diplomatically. “Of course there’s nothing to the rumors?”

  Oppenheimer sipped his coffee. “I don’t think so, although it’s possible, of course. There’ve been stories about the senator and his affairs for years. Many of them well founded, I’m afraid. When his first wife divorced him, a lot of scandalous details were revealed.”

  “I remember some of that,” Ben said.

  “On the other hand, he was a very busy man, and the family told the police it wasn’t at all unusual for him to work for an hour or two in the evening. After dinner, he’d often go over to his office and catch up on a few things. That was why he scheduled the interview at that time. What’s more, he and this woman weren’t alone when he suffered the attack.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. You see, the Cunningham Foundation is headquartered in the building. That’s the organization that makes grants to various charities and worthwhile educational ventures. The chief administrator of the foundation is a woman who lives there. She was also in the senator’s office when he became ill.”

  “So two women were present.”

  “Correct. According to the police report, they called for help immediately. The police and an emergency ambulance arrived within minutes. They tried CPR and administered oxygen, but Senator Cunningham was already dead. Dr. Phelps got there not long after, and he said nothing could have saved him.”

  “Was that the first time the senator had a heart attack?”

  “I have no idea. But whether it was or not, this one killed him, almost instantly. And as I say, that should have been the end of the story, except for mourning over the loss of a great man. Unfortunately, it won’t be. Which is why I asked for your assistance.”

  Oppenheimer drained his cup and set it down. “I want you to conduct an investigation, get to the bottom of this. I want to know exactly what happened. Not that I expect any surprises, but all these damned rumors should be put to rest.”

  “You said the police went to the scene? They would have been from the One-nine Precinct.”

  “Yes, they were.” The DA gestured toward his desk. “I had their report faxed to me as soon as I reached my office this morning. The trouble is, a summary by two officers in a patrol car isn’t going to do what needs to be done.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “That’s why I asked Chief Houlihan to recommend a detective. He suggested you because of your excellent record and your reputation for carrying through on tough assignments.”

  Oppenheimer paused. “You may be wondering why I didn’t put one of our own investigators in charge.”

  “It did cross my mind,” Ben said.

  “The reason is that I want this to be treated with total objectivity. And the only way that can happen is for you to be independent. I will ask one of our men to assist you, however. One of the detectives in Captain Brannigan’s unit. I’ve already spoken to Brannigan and cleared it with him.”

  Sure, Ben thought. I’ll be objective and independent, while you’re behind the scene, calling the shots.

  “You’re to get on it immediately,” Oppenheimer said. “Chief Houlihan will announce that a special investigator has been assigned.”

  Ben nodded.

  “There is also another situation that has bearing on this. We’ve been looking into certain irregularities involving Cunningham Securities, a stock brokerage that’s one of the family companies. The man who’ll be helping you is a detective who’s been working on it, along with the AD As assigned to the case. His name is Jack Mulloy. Do you know him, by any chance?”

  “Afraid I don’t.”

  “His work is extremely confidential, of course, but he can provide background information that would be useful to you. I’ve asked him to give you complete cooperation, and I also sent him a copy of the police report on the senator’s death. I told him to expect a visit from you this morning. You’ll find him over in the investigators’ offices.”

  “All right, fine.”

  Oppenheimer paused again. “As I said earlier, Lieutenant, I’m informed that you have an outstanding record.”

  Ben made no reply.

  “And I also happen to know you’re being considered for a promotion to captain. You’re aware of that, no doubt?”

  “I’ve always hoped it might happen someday,” Ben said.

  “No reason it shouldn’t,” the DA continued. “You’re bright, and you’re politically astute. Both those things were evident to me in the way you handled yourself in our discussion. I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you that a job well done here could be very helpful to you.”

  “I understand,” Ben said.

  Oppenheimer rose to his feet and went to his desk, returning with an envelope. Ben stood up, as well, and the DA handed him the envelope, saying, “This is a copy of the police report. Get back to me, Lieutenant, as soon as you’ve looked into the situation and made your initial assessment. I’ll tell Helga any call from you is to be put through at once. Incidentally, it’s especially important that you exercise caution when you talk to anyone from the media. I’m sure they’ll be all over you, but you know how to handle them. You’ll be polite and cooperative and what you tell them will amount to nothing. Right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The DA held out his hand. “Good luck.”

  Ben shook the hand and then Oppenheimer returned to his desk, his mind obviously already on another subject.

  Tolliver turned and left the office, picking his coat off the rack on the way. While he waited for the elevator, he thought about the situation he was in: caught between the chief of detectives and the district attorney. Wonderful.

  But he had to hand it to Oppenheimer. The DA was already protecting his flanks, testing whatever political ramifications might result from Cunningham’s death, while he saw to it that the investigation appeared to be the police department’s responsibility.

  Oppenheimer had implied this was a tough assignment. Why? From everything Ben could see, it was merely a ground ball. A prominent citizen had had a heart attack and died. The media were gossiping, but that was at least half of what their business was about. And even if the rumors were true, was that such a big deal? If the old guy had died in the saddle, what better way to go?

  The thing to do was what the DA obviously wanted: wrap this thing up in a tidy bundle with a nice official ribbon tied around it, marked CLOSED.

  And then Tolliver could get back to the job of being a cop. He hadn’t joined the force to spend his time sweeping up dog shit. But he also knew that if you wanted to make progress in the NYPD, you did what you had to do. The elevator arrived and he stepped into the car.

  5

  Jack Mulloy was a big man with a square jaw and a balding pate, working in his shirt sleeves at a desk piled high with stacks of paper. A Colt Detective Special was riding on his right hip, but even without it, there was no way you’d make him for anything but a cop. He was on the phone when Tolliver arrived and he waved his visitor to a seat beside his desk.

  Ben sat and looked around. There were a dozen similarly laden desks in the area, the men and women working at them busy to the point of seeming harassed. Which was understandable, he thought. If he had to spend his time wading through a paper swamp the way they were doing, he’d go out of his mind.

  Mulloy sounded angry. “Checking confirmations by hand is crazy,” he said into the phone. “We should have their computer data to work from. Christ, we’ll never get caught up.” He listened for a moment, then rolled his eyes. “Request it again, then. Or have Shack-ley request it. And tell him we need more bodies on this. There’s nobody over here that could pitch in, so some of you guys’ll have to.”

  He listened for another few s
econds, growled something unintelligible, and hung up.

  Turning, he stuck out a meaty hand. “You must be Lieutenant Tolliver. Welcome to the fun part of the business. Okay if I call you Ben?”

  Tolliver shook the hand. “Sure. I understand you’ll be giving me some help.”

  “So I’m told. Too bad about the senator.”

  “Yes.”

  Mulloy inclined his head toward an office door at one end of the room. “Captain Brannigan sends regards. He’s in a meeting this morning, but he wants you to stop in and say hello when you get a chance.”

  “Fine,” Ben said. “I’ll do that. The DA said you’re working on an investigation of Cunningham Securities.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Like everything else around here—slowly. We could use ten times the people we got.”

  “You’re loaded down, huh?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Okay, I understand. I’ll try to take as little of your time as possible.”

  “Hey, don’t mind my bitching. I’ll be glad to help. At least it’ll be more like being back in police work instead of dealing with this shit.”

  “You been here long?”

  “Six years. I was in the job before that, detective third. I retired with a partial disability. That’s why I’m on a desk.”

  “So what’s happening with your investigation?”

  “It looks like there’ve been leaks someplace, involving the brokerage’s employees. Inside information got out on a couple of acquisition deals. We have some possible suspects but nothing we can prove so far. Even so, two of them were fired, so I guess the company got nervous. The senator’s son is the head of it, and he’s been stonewalling us.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Clayton the Fourth. He’s got a sister named Ingrid who runs another family-owned outfit, a commercial real estate firm.”

  “How’s that one doing?”

  “Some problems, from what we can gather, but nothing illegal. At least nothing we know about. Supposedly, they’re overextended on a number of very large office-park developments. A lot of the trouble is because Ingrid’s a horse nut. She spends more time on her farm than on the business. Her husband is a con artist named Kurt Kramer. He’s a German who skipped out of Munich after he got caught running a phony investment scheme.”

  “He up to something over here?”

  “It’s possible, but there’s no evidence. He calls himself a financial consultant. We’re keeping an eye on him, too.”

  “On the subject of the senator,” Ben said.

  “Yes?”

  “Have you read the police report?”

  “Oh yeah.” Mulloy flicked a hand at the papers on his desk. “Doesn’t look like much, though, huh? The old guy was in his office getting interviewed and his ticker gave out. Another witness was there at the time, which tends to let the air out of the story the media’s trying to pump up.”

  “It should, if the witnesses’ statements were accurate.”

  “Sure, but even if they were lying and the senator was dicking this writer, so what? A guy seventy-two years of age? He should get a fucking medal. So to speak.”

  Ben smiled. The thought had occurred to him, as well.

  “Here’s another possibility,” Mulloy said. “Suppose he was getting it on with both of them, had a threesome going. That ought to be worth a parade down Broadway.”

  “Except that he wouldn’t be around to enjoy it.”

  “Okay, so maybe just a twenty-one-gun salute at the funeral. Or the Rockettes could dance or something.”

  “Fine, but I think I’d better concentrate on my end of this first. The DA is expecting a report.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Off the record,” Ben said, “I’m as curious as you are about why he wants the situation investigated at all. Seems to me there’d be less of a public stir about it if the case was just allowed to fade away. After the funeral, it’d be forgotten about.”

  “No question. By that time, the media’d be serving up some new scandal.”

  “So why not leave it alone? Oppenheimer said he and the senator were personal friends, told me how much he admired him. Wouldn’t it have been better to let the old man rest in peace?”

  Mulloy chewed his bottom lip as he studied his visitor. “Tell you what, Ben. Let’s you and me have ourselves a cup of coffee, okay? Only not here. There’s a deli down the street.”

  Tolliver had no need for more coffee, but he understood the signal. “Sure, let’s go.”

  Mulloy stood up and retrieved his suit jacket, which had been draped over the back of his chair. He shrugged into it and led the way.

  As they stepped toward the elevator, Ben saw that the other man walked with a limp. “That from the injury you were talking about?”

  “Yeah, I was on a drug bust in the Three-four,” Mulloy said. “We were in this crapped-out building and I stepped on a piece of rotten flooring. Went right through it, wound up in the basement. I was in and out of hospitals for over a year.”

  “Must’ve been rough.”

  Mulloy shrugged. “At least I get an extra hump on my pension.”

  The deli was called Max’s, and the pungent aromas inside were a blend of kosher pickles and hot pastrami. They ordered coffee at the counter and then took the plastic containers to one of the small tables.

  “You gotta be careful what you say up there,” Mulloy said. “Never know who’s listening or where it might go.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The detective hunched over his coffee. “You want to know what this is all about, right? Why Oppenheimer is doing this? I’ll tell you why. Maybe him and the senator were friends, like he says. Maybe they loved each other dearly—which I doubt, but maybe they did. Whether they did or not, you have to remember the DA is one thing above everything else. And that is, he’s a politician.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “Good. Because that’s the whole key to understanding how he works. See, if the investigation comes up with nothing, so be it. Running it might throw a shadow over Cunningham’s memory, but what the hell—that’s not the DA’s fault, right? The police department did the investigating. All he did was issue a routine order. On the other hand, if there is something to all those rumors, that’s not bad, either, from Oppenheimer’s point of view. It proves the senator wasn’t so high-and-mighty, after all. It’d also make it easier to go forward with the thing I’m working on. Now do you get it?”

  “Yeah, I suppose that could make sense.”

  “Now let me ask you something else. You think Oppenheimer just took it on himself to decide the senator’s death ought to be looked into?”

  “Why not?”

  “Think about it. You got a lot of powerful people who’d have reasons to push him, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe is right. There’s more undercurrents in that outfit of his than you could count. You take this investigation I’m on. The senior prosecutor is a guy named Fletcher Shackley. He’s got a whole raft of ADAs assigned to the case, but where’s the progress? We’ve been on it almost two years now and we’re no closer to an indictment than we ever were.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “I wish I knew. Every time we come up with something that looks solid, it goes up in a puff of smoke.”

  “Shackley dragging his feet?”

  “Maybe. He’s got his own agenda, speaking of politics. Far as he’s concerned, his current job is just a stepping-stone.”

  “To what?”

  “Who knows? I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to run for office someplace down the line. Maybe the state legislature, or Congress. Which means he has to be careful not to piss off the wrong people.”

  “Interesting.”

  Mulloy was thoughtful for a moment. He dumped cream and sugar into his cup. “You know what, Ben? The job has changed a lot over the past tw
enty years or so. When I was a uniform, I really believed all that shit about how our duty was to protect the civilians, catch the bad guys.”

  Tolliver knew what he was about to hear. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d listened to a veteran cop express feelings of disillusionment. And he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.

  “Nowadays,” Mulloy went on, “everything’s political—and not just on this level, either. With the DA’s office, that’s to be expected. But look at the police department. Sure, there was always politics, only now it goes all the way down to the street. A cop who makes a lot of collars is considered a problem. Why? Because arrests are what cause complaints. And yet if the assholes didn’t get arrested, they wouldn’t have anything to complain about, right? So how do the brass treat that? They tell the cop to cool it, warn him not to make waves. If he gets the message, fine. If he doesn’t, he winds up in the tunnel.”

  “Yeah, I’m aware,” Ben said. “Sometimes the political balance gets tilted in the wrong direction.”

  Mulloy’s eyebrows lifted. “Political balance gets tilted? Hey, come on. In this town, there isn’t any balance. It’s so heavy in favor of the bad guys, cops don’t worry about stopping trouble anymore; they worry about staying out of it themselves.”

  “That’s why it needs to get tilted back again.”

  “You think that’s ever gonna happen? Look at what’s been going on here. Take the thing in Washington Heights. A convicted drug dealer tries to kill a cop. The cop shoots him. So the mayor goes to the dealer’s family and offers condolences and then he has the city pay for the bum’s funeral. Acts like the cop was the criminal. And that’s just one case. You think the city can ever have an effective force again? Please.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is, the job today is all politics. Including this assignment Oppenheimer handed you. It doesn’t matter to me—I just have to ride the desk a few more years and then I get another pension on top of the one I got now. But what you’ve gotta do is be careful. This thing may look simple, but it could be a mine field. I’ll give you all the help I can, but watch your step, okay?”