sure that Marco Varelli would never have chosen to leave me. Such was his love, such was his life.”
The funeral was to be on Friday, after the second night of the wake, and she invited us to come to her nearby apartment the next week.
Mike had gotten her permission to seal Marco’s atelier last night and secure it with patrolmen. He would go back later today to process it with the detectives from the Crime Scene Unit. We needed her, or one of Varelli’s workmen, to help discover whether any artworks or valuables were missing. That might have to wait until after the burial.
Finally, when everyone left the dingy funeral home, Mike and Mercer had arranged for the Medical Examiner’s Office to pick up the body of Marco Varelli for an autopsy.
I had come downtown to work, busying myself in the review of new cases till I could meet Mike or Mercer in Chelsea. We were going back to Galleria Caxton Due to talk to Bryan Daughtry again, as well as to oversee the execution of the search warrant.
It was Mercer who phoned at eleven thirty to tell me he was leaving his office to go to West Twenty-second Street. Mike had witnessed the proceeding on Varelli at the morgue, which had validated his discovery at the funeral parlor, and would join up with us in Chelsea.
I drove my Jeep up to the gallery thinking about Denise Caxton, Omar Sheffield, and Marco Varelli. What common factor in their lives so closely linked them in death?
I parked right in front and walked to the Empire Diner, where I sipped another cup of coffee until the guys arrived a few minutes later.
“You got the warrants?” Mike asked, slipping into the booth along with Mercer, who had met him at the front door.
“Everything we need.”
We walked across the street and down the block, where the entrance to the gallery’s garage was blocked by a radio car. One of the uniformed officers saw us coming, recognized Mike, and got out to say hello.
“Hey, Chapman, how’s it going? Been a long time. I thought you did steady midnights?”
“Used to be, Jack. Now I’m afraid of the dark-doing day tours. Any action here?”
“He ain’t givin’ us any trouble. A little pedestrian traffic around, but no packages going without gettin’ searched, and no trucks in or out. Same report from yesterday.”
A receptionist met us inside the front door. “Mr. Daughtry thought you might be coming in sometime this afternoon. He’s upstairs with a client. I can make you comfortable down here, if you’d-”
“No thanks,” Mike said, ignoring the young woman and leading us to the elevator in the far corner. When we reached the top floor and stepped out onto the landing, there was no sign of Daughtry on the walkway. Mercer headed over to see whether he was in his corner office, while Mike and I looked out at the old railroad tracks again.
“My father used to tell me the stories about the gangs from Hell’s Kitchen who terrorized the train lines-the Hudson Dusters, the Gophers. When he was a kid, he hung out in a saloon right up the street here, running errands for a guy named Mallet Murphy. Called him that ’cause he’d crack disorderly customers over the head with a meat hammer.”
Mike leaned back against the waist-high iron rail as he looked out at this view of Chelsea. He couldn’t have been any happier if you’d sat him at the top of the Eiffel Tower. This was his father’s home turf, and the neighborhood held his family roots.
“This view could change my whole opinion of both Denise Caxton and Bryan Daughtry. It’s really cool that they left the old tracks in place.” He turned and noted the Plexiglas doorway that led out of the gallery onto the tracks.
“Hey, Coop, someday after me and Daughtry have put our differences aside, I’ll walk you and Mercer out that very door, onto the tracks, and take you as far downtown as it goes. Tell you stories about real gangsters and show you where the bones are buried.”
“We’re down here, Mr. Chapman. As long as you’ve made yourselves at home, why don’t you come tell me what you need?” Daughtry called up to us from somewhere a level or two below. I couldn’t see him from where I was standing, but he had obviously been alerted to our arrival.
The catwalk around the edge of the upper floor was about four feet wide. The three of us walked around its perimeter until we came to a metal staircase that led down a level.
Here the space extended out over the track below, and there were couches and sitting areas that faced various exhibits on the vast walls that ringed the gallery.
Bryan Daughtry and another man were seated facing each other in brown leather armchairs. Daughtry stood to reach for Chapman’s hand.
“Let me guess,” Mike said, looking at two yellow columns positioned next to each other and representing some sort of sculpture. “
“Shall I read to you from our brochure, Detective? ‘A minimal freestanding work, this kinetic fiberglass piece conveys a charming, vertiginous uncertainty.’ Like it? Or do you prefer the one behind me? A very creative new fellow-uses beeswax, hazelnut pollen, marble, and rice to make sculptures, as we say, ‘of mute yet implacable force.’ ”
“Come to think of it, my apartment looks fine with a couple of NFL posters, a slightly used baseball signed by Bernie Williams, and an eight-by-ten glossy of Tina Turner that Miss Cooper gave me. Your stuff makes me wanna puke.”
“Shall we go back up to my office?” Daughtry asked.
Mercer and I started to follow him. Mike stretched out his arm to Daughtry’s companion, who remained seated as I started to walk away.
“Hi. Sorry to break this up. I’m Mike Chapman. Homicide. You are…?”
The attractive dark-haired man, who I guessed to be about forty years old, stood up and smiled, returning the handshake. “I’m Frank Wrenley. How do you do?”
“Well, well, well-Mr. Wrenley. And how do
“Of course. I assumed you’d want to talk to me about Deni. I’m happy to try to help.”
Mercer whispered to me as we walked to the narrow staircase, “You and Mike go at Daughtry. I’ll baby-sit Wrenley till you’re done, so he doesn’t make any calls while he’s waiting. This is a rare opportunity to get him when he wasn’t expecting us.”
Mike and I settled into the dealer’s office with him. “Like I told you, we got a warrant to go through your gallery and warehouse. A team of detectives will be here shortly to do that. You can make this real easy on yourself if you wanna give us most of what we ask for, which are Deni’s business records and belongings, access to the contents of Omar’s locker, and things like-well, look at the papers for yourself.
“We’d also like to look through some of the paintings you’ve got stored here.”
“Anything in particular you’re looking for? Your taste in art, Mr. Chapman, is so hard for me to define.”
“Got any Rembrandts on hand?”
“So you’re joining the search for the mythical Holy Grail, too? Everybody’s looking for the big score. You’ve got a better chance of winning the lottery than finding that missing painting.”
“Then you won’t mind if we look, will you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Had you and Deni talked about it? I mean, about
“Many, many times. But so did everyone else in our business.”
“Seems to me,” Mike said, “that if I were an ex-con sitting on a hot item, my best bet would be to contact somebody else in the same shoes. I wouldn’t be likely to walk into a classy operation where they might give me up to the Feds just for talkin’ to them, but I’d sure be likely to sniff out some creep who’d done time and was completely amoral.”
“What do you want me to say, Detective? ‘Sticks and stones’?”
“Look, we know someone offered Deni the Rembrandt. And we even know about her meetings with Marco Varelli, to authenticate the chips.”
Daughtry met Mike’s stare head-on. “That’s the oldest trick in the book, Mr. Chapman. Varelli is dead. Don’t
