Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(14)

“Oh, we will,” she said, letting me go. “But fair warning: I know you didn’t get any sleep last night. Don’t expect to get much tonight, either.”

She kissed me again, and I left the room happy and horny. I double-timed it around the corner to Gerri’s Diner and found Kylie at a booth in the rear with our backup team.

Danny Corcoran is second-generation NYPD who did his twenty and is two years into his next five. As usual, he was well-dressed, sporting a gray off-the-rack suit from one of the city’s better racks. Hair-challenged, he topped off the look with a gray newsboy cap.

Always on the wrong side of the body fat index, his round Irish face lit up when he saw me, and he tore himself away from a stack of pancakes with a side of sausage to give me a fierce bear hug.

“Still on that health kick?” I said, pointing to his lumberjack breakfast, and Danny responded by not so subtly scratching the tip of his nose with his middle finger. Then he introduced me to Tommy Fischer, who, like all of Danny’s partners over the years, was the quiet type.

“Foreplay is over,” Kylie said. “Cut to the chase, boys.”

“We hit the garage at about three a.m. and found her car,” Danny said. “The attendant who punched her in was long gone, so we got his home address and paid him a visit.”

“Did he remember her?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. She greased him twenty bucks to keep her car up top in one of those golden spots reserved for good tippers. She said she’d be back soon, but of course she never showed.”

“Had he seen her before?”

“She wasn’t a regular, but she’d park there from time to time. Mostly overnight. A few times he remembers her driving in with some yobbo half her age. He called him ‘a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.’”

“Sounds like the boy we like for the murder,” I said. “Name is Janek Hoffmann. He’s her cameraman. Where’s the car now?”

“Impounded. The lab guys are dusting and probing.”

“How about her apartment?” Kylie asked.

“It’s like the Barbie Dreamhouse for the terminally oversexed.” He handed Kylie his cell phone. “Scroll through some of the highlights.”

Corcoran had taken pictures of a closetful of sex paraphernalia that for most people would be taboo, but for Aubrey Davenport was the norm. I looked over Kylie’s shoulder as she flipped through the pictures in a hurry. By now we knew enough about Aubrey’s world not to be surprised.

“Drugs?” Kylie asked.

Fischer flipped open a notepad. “Ecstasy, coke, poppers, weed, plus scripts for Paxil and Zoloft,” he said. “The prescribing doc’s name is Morris Langford. Here’s his number.” He tore off a page and handed it to me.

“We’re looking for her video cameras and her computer,” I said. “You find any in her apartment?”

“Nothing.”

“How about her office?”

“It was closed, so we left a pair of uniforms in front of the door,” Corcoran said. “They called a few minutes ago. Her assistant just opened up. His name is Troy Marschand. They’re holding him. You want us to talk to him?”

“We’ll take it,” I said. “I’d rather you go back to the parking lot attendant and show him a photo lineup of six young Arnold Schwarzeneggers. One of them should be Janek Hoffmann. You can dig out five more from the files.”

Danny stuck his fork back into the stack of hotcakes and grinned. “I only need four more,” he said. “The fifth one can be a selfie.”





CHAPTER 13



Aubrey’s office was on West 17th Street in the Flatiron district near Union Square. A squad car was parked outside. The directory in the lobby said Davenport Films, 303. We took the elevator to the third floor and found a uniformed officer standing outside the door.

“Officer Hairston,” I said, reading her name tag. “You were here when the assistant showed up?”

“Yes, sir. He wanted to know what was going on, so my partner and I told him that his boss was found dead. Was that okay?”

It wasn’t, but I decided to let it go. Kylie, on the other hand, is a lot less forgiving.

“No, it’s not okay,” she snapped. “Detectives can learn a lot just by watching how people react when they’re told someone is dead. Now we have to rely on secondhand information. How’d he take the news?”

“He freaked out.”

“People freak out when they hit the lottery, officer. If you’re going to play detective, do a better job of it.”

“Sorry, ma’am. He was all broke up when we told him. Not crying, but very upset. Devastated. Heartbroken.”

“Heartbroken like he was banging her?”

“No, ma’am. More like his boss was dead, and he’s out of a job. He kept saying, ‘What am I going to do now?’ Anyway, I doubt if he was banging her. He’s gay.”

“Oh really?” Kylie said. “And how did you jump to that conclusion?”

“He asked if he could call his fiancé for moral support, and we said yes. The fiancé turns out to be another dude. It came up gay in my book.”

It was a small victory for Hairston, and to her credit, she kept a straight face. She opened the office door, gestured for her partner to step out, and Kylie and I stepped in.