“I don’t know,” Rafe said. “Like I told you, he was new.”
“Where is he now?”
Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s not here. He’s not in the kitchen. He probably went home.”
I turned to Philippe.
He shook his head. “We don’t have any new busboys today. This is a busy week. I have all my regulars- nobody new. The one who brought the juice-I don’t know who he is.”
My cell phone rang. It was Cates.
“Give me an update,” she said.
“We’re at the Regency. The Possible Homicide is looking more like a Probable Murder One, but we have to give the lab rats time to dust and dissect. We’re going to head back to the precinct.”
“Don’t,” Cates said. “I need you at Silvercup Studios. There’s another body. Ian Stewart, the actor.”
“What went down?” I asked.
“He was shot,” Cates said.
“Anybody see anything?”
“There were about a hundred witnesses,” Cates said, “and if none of them are any help, we’ve got the whole thing on film.”
Chapter 11
I gave Philippe my email address and told him to send me a list of everyone who was in the dining room. “And put the two guys who had breakfast with Roth and bolted before the cops got here at the top of the list.”
I thought about asking Rafe the waiter to sit with a police artist and come up with a sketch of the busboy, but I know a waste of time when I see one. No sense circulating a picture of a generic male Puerto Rican who looks like half a million guys from East Williamsburg to Spanish Harlem.
I thanked Philippe and motioned Kylie toward the exit. As expected, the Regency’s unholy trinity was waiting in the doorway.
“Do you have any surveillance cameras in the dining room?” I asked.
The manager looked at me like I’d asked if they had peepholes in the guests’ bathrooms.
“This is the Regency,” he said. “Our clients come here for discretion and privacy.”
“How about the back of the house? Do you keep an eye on the kitchen staff?”
“We did, but…” He looked at the executive chef. “Etienne had the cameras removed when he came here two years ago.”
The burly chef gave a wave of his hand to let me know that he had no regrets. “I find them offensive, distracting,” he said.
The old me would have said something like
“Fine,” Chef Etienne said.
Not so fine with the guy from corporate. “Detective, is that really necessary? It’s a heart attack.”
“It’s a police investigation,” I said. “My partner and I have to go. We’ll be talking to you.”
“Wait!” It was
“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” I said. “He’ll be out in a few minutes. Thank you for being so patient.” It was the classic bullshit response waiters are trained to give customers when the dinner they ordered an hour ago still hasn’t come out of the kitchen.
I seriously doubt if Chef Etienne appreciated the irony.
Chapter 12
Kylie waited till we were in the car before she said a word.
“For a couple of homicide detectives, we didn’t do a lot of detecting,” she said.
“Technically, there’s nothing to detect yet. The only guy who confirmed that it’s a homicide writes crime fiction for a living. Chuck Dryden knows it’s poison, but he won’t commit till he’s back in the lab with a test tube full of proof.”
“Give me a break, Zach,” she said. “He could have made the call right there on the scene. If you ask me, some cops are too damn thorough.”
“You’re faulting him for being
She grinned. At least it started out as a grin, and then it blossomed into a full-blown stupid girly-girl giggle. “Gotcha,” she said. “Do you really think I have a problem with cops who do their jobs by the book?”
“Sorry, but you do have a reputation for working off the reservation.”
“That was the old me. The new me is practically a Girl Scout. My mission is to play by the rules, impress the hell out of Captain Cates, and get to ride with you for the next couple of years.”
I turned east onto 59th Street, drove past Bloomingdale’s, and crossed Third Avenue. The 59th Street Bridge to Queens was straight ahead.
“Clearly we’re not going back to the office,” Kylie said.
“Cates called. There was a shooting at Silvercup Studios.”
“Oh my God. Spence is there.”
When I first saw Spence Harrington’s picture on Kylie’s cell phone back at the academy, he was a struggling television writer and her ex-boyfriend. Ten years later he’s an executive producer with a hit cop show that he shoots right here in New York.
I wish I could tell you I hate his guts, but Spence is a decent guy. Kylie had dumped him back then because she had a career in law enforcement, and he had a daily coke habit. But Spence wasn’t about to give her up that easily. Without saying a word, he entered rehab. Twenty-eight days later, he showed up, detoxed and desperate, and asked Kylie to give him one last chance. She did, and the transformation was remarkable. A year later they were married.
As soon as I told Kylie there was a shooting at Silvercup, she went from tough cop to anxious wife.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “The vic is Ian Stewart. I didn’t realize Spence was working at Silvercup.”
“He’s developing a new series,” she said as the tension drained from her face. “It’s another cop show, and a damn good one. He’s screening the pilot for the Hollywood glitterati on Wednesday night. It’s all part of the joys- of-shooting-in-New-York attitude the mayor is trying to hawk.”
“The mayor is in deep doo-doo,” I said. “The joys of shooting in New York just took on a new meaning.”
She pulled out her cell phone and hit the speed dial. “Hey, babe, it’s me. Are you okay?”
I didn’t have to be a detective to know who babe was.
Kylie turned to me. “Spence is fine.”
I nodded. “Say hello for me.”
“Zach says ‘hi.’ Did you know there was a shooting at the studio?” Pause. “Then why didn’t you call me so I wouldn’t worry about you?” Longer pause. “Oh, I didn’t check my email. Next time, call. Zach won’t mind.”
“I won’t mind what?” I said.
“Spence didn’t call because it’s my first day on the job, and he didn’t want to bother us.”
“No bother, Spence!” I called out.
“Zach and I are in the car,” she said. “We’re on the bridge. Are you ready for this? We caught the Ian Stewart shooting.”
There was a long pause while Spence did the talking.
