First Born(37)

From my park bench I call Detective Martinez, but the call goes straight through to his voicemail. I don’t leave a message; I call Bogart DeLuca instead.

‘DeLuca.’

‘Hi, Bogart, it’s Molly Raven.’

‘I was just thinking about you, Molly.’

That seems creepy. I pause and he says, ‘I’ve found some stuff. Can I show you some things I’ve dug up so I can get your reaction? That possible, you think?’

‘I could come to your office?’

‘You could, Molly, you could. But I’m based all the way down on the Lower East Side. Canal Street. Right now I’m at Hudson Yards – fancy place, you know it?’

‘No.’

‘OK, where are you right now?’

‘Central Park.’

‘OK, OK, you walk down Fifth Avenue, right, headed south. Past the boutiques, past the library, past the Empire State. Before you reach the Flatiron you’ll see a small park called Madison Square Park, around 26th Street, you follow?’

‘Madison Square Gardens?’

‘Not the Garden, no. The Park. Madison Square Park.’

‘I’ll find it.’

If I didn’t have my phone I’d be completely lost in this city.

‘I’ll walk across from here and we’ll pray to the Almighty the heavens don’t open till later like they’re forecasting. Meet you at the park in about thirty minutes. You want a coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘A frappuccino or something, pumpkin spice soya latte? What do you want, Molly?’

‘Black with one sugar.’

‘You got it.’

I make my way to the Plaza Hotel, and down Fifth Avenue, as he instructed. The strip of sky visible between the buildings looks ominous. Navy blue with a grey hue. When I reach Madison Square Park the wind’s picking up but there’s no rain. I pull my coat tight around my throat and look around for DeLuca.

‘Molly,’ he says, coming up behind me with a wool hat and two cardboard cups of coffee, his a tiny espresso cup. ‘Black, one sugar. It’s Ethiopian, tell me what you think.’

I try to sip it but it’s too hot. ‘Delicious,’ I lie.

He nods, and gestures to a bench half-shaded by trees. Leaves are falling all around us. A well-fed squirrel sprints across the paving slabs.

‘Do you know who killed KT?’

He sips his espresso and looks around conspiratorially. ‘I worked lots of cases in my time, police and PI. I know when we’re getting close.’ He looks at me. ‘We’re getting real close, Molly.’

‘I have some fresh information for you,’ I say. ‘Want to run it by you, see what you think.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘I heard something about Scott Sbarra today. Something disturbing.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘There was a complaint from his boarding school in Connecticut. Some kind of erotic asphyxiation game where the girl complained, not sure if it was to the police or the school, and then dropped the complaint. I’m going to tell Martinez about it.’

‘He already knows.’ DeLuca sips his coffee.

‘He knows?’

‘Yeah, we both know about Sbarra. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Thing is, his old roommate told me, one of them, guy from his dorm, really intense guy who’s now at MIT – told me Sbarra was with some redhead girl the evening of Katie’s murder, but that was at least an hour after your parents found her. Roommate told me Scott was seeing her on and off, some redhead girl from Queens or someplace, some redhead Columbia student, friend of Katie’s. Ring any bells?’

‘He was with Violet?’

‘Violet’s from Brooklyn, but yeah, it could fit. Look at it this way. If they were seeing each other – and that’s a big if – then they probably won’t want to talk about it unless pressed by Homicide. ’Cos I’m guessing they both feel pretty lousy about it right now, especially with you and your mom and dad over here from England. I figure if they’ve both got alibis then it’s each other. We’ll need to match their story up against time of death.’

Earlier today when we went for hot dogs. I did think it was strange that they were together. Violet’s lipstick smudged and his hair a mess.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Her friend and her boyfriend?’

‘Just a working theory is all,’ says DeLuca, draining the last of his coffee. ‘It’s like the scientific method. You come up with a hypothesis and then you test the shit out of it.’

I sip my coffee and blow and sip some more. ‘I’ve talked to Groot,’ I say. ‘I think he may have had a long-running thing with KT, not just casual dates.’

‘Oh, he did,’ says DeLuca. ‘That I do know for sure.’

‘You know for sure?’

‘Let’s just say through the means available to me as a licensed private investigator in this great city, I became the short-term caretaker of sixteen bags of the Groot family’s garbage.’

I raise my eyebrows.

‘Dirty work, Molly. Someone’s gotta do it. Ninety-five per cent of the contents were garbage, literally. But I did find some shredded papers and shredded receipts, and one shredded photograph.’