“No.” I waved Mike in when I saw him standing with Laura outside my room.
“Well, we’ve finally got a situation that you haven’t seen yet.”
“Try me.” There were days when my colleagues and I were sure there was nothing left that one human being could do to another that could shock us. And then, without fail, something else came along to prove us wrong.
“Last Monday, out at Aqueduct, a cop patrolling the stables in the middle of the night came upon, shall we say, an intimate encounter between one of the grooms and a horse. The defendant’s name is Angel Garcia. The officer heard a loud thud, which was the sound made by the naked Garcia falling off the plastic bucket he’d been standing on.”
“How’s the horse?”
“The vet says she’s fine. If you pass an OTB office on your way uptown, tell Mike to put some money on Saratoga Capers. Last Friday, after a thorough examination and clean bill of health, our horse came in third. That’s her best start in weeks.”
I hung up shaking my head in amusement, although I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor creature. Fortunately, there were laws against inhumane treatment of animals, and Marjie’s Special Victims Unit was prosecuting Garcia for abusing Saratoga Capers. Mike laughed out loud when he heard the story.
“Just feature sharing a jail cell with Angel Garcia,” Mike said. “Every other prisoner has pictures of Cindy Crawford or Julia Roberts or
“Wait a minute. Has anybody explored that part of Omar Sheffield’s background?”
“Whaddaya mean? Horseplay?” Mike asked.
“Cell mates-just what you were joking about. When Omar was in the can doing time upstate, who did he share a cell with? Do we have any names?”
Mike stopped and double-backed to my desk to use the phone. “I don’t think I asked that question. I’m not sure anybody did.” He dialed the squad and reached Jimmy Halloran, a baby-faced cop who’d been on the Homicide Squad for more than a decade but looked like he was still in high school. Jimmy had been added to the Caxton team last night, after Mercer was injured. He bristled every time Mike called him by the nickname he’d been given by his team-Kid Detective.
“Hey, K.D.,” Chapman said. “Squirrel around on the lieutenant’s desk. See if you can find the paperwork on Omar Sheffield. You know, the bad boy who forgot his mother told him not to play on the tracks. See if anyone checked the names of his roommates in state prison. Coop and I are on our way uptown. If you don’t find anything in the file, call up to the warden at Coxsackie and get some answers. And if they need a subpoena, call Cooper’s secretary and she’ll crank one out for us and fax it up for her signature. Make yourself useful.” He hung up the phone.
“Where are you parked?” I asked.
“Behind the courthouse, on Baxter Street.”
“Good. Let’s slide out the back door. The fewer people I have to talk to about yesterday’s events, the better off I’ll be.” We went downstairs and took the elevators from the seventh floor to the lobby, walking past the arraignment parts and the roach coach, as the building’s snack bar was affectionately dubbed. It was half an hour before the courts recessed for the afternoon lunch break, so we navigated the hallways and went out onto the street without much delay.
As we walked into the squad office, Jimmy Halloran took his feet off the desk and stood to greet us, pointing out a young man who was reading a newspaper at a desk across the room. “That’s your one o’clock. The guy from Varelli’s studio.
“And those names you wanted from the warden? He said Omar Sheffield spent some of his time in solitary.” Halloran looked down at his notes. “Had three cell mates while he was upstate. Kevin McGuire, who’s done mostly burglaries, and Jeremy Fuller, who sold heroin to an undercover cop. They’re both still in jail.”
Again, he glanced at his notepad. “Third one is named Anton Bailey. Does this stuff mean anything to you?”
The Manhattan North Homicide Squad office was virtually empty. Every man and woman, whether on duty or off, had come in to try to crack the attempt on Mercer’s life. Those who were not officially in the field were pounding the pavement, leaning on informants to try to get a lead on which to follow up. The rest were filling the lobby at Saint Vincent’s, even though it was far too soon for all but the closest friends and family to visit with him.
“Cooper and I are gonna use the lieutenant’s office for this interview. Call Albany, call whoever you’ve got to, but get every single sheet of paper that exists in this state on Anton Bailey,” Chapman told Jimmy Halloran. “And when you’re done with that, call the Gainesville, Florida, P.D. and start all over again. Use both names, Bailey and Anthony Bailor.”
“Hey, Alex, how’d he get into the system up here without them picking up the Florida case?” Halloran asked me. “How come nobody figured out that Anton Bailey and Anthony Bailor were one and the same before today, huh?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” No one could be arraigned for a felony in New York State without a fingerprint check. But every now and then, all of the automated techniques failed. In some cases, if the interstate computer system was down and the perp used an alias, the fingerprint comparison was never actually made. The fine type at the bottom of the rap sheet, if the prosecutor or judge stopped to read it, said that the results were based on a name check and not a verified latent exam.
If the prior rape conviction had been reflected on Bailey’s record, then the larceny case would have drawn a mandatory prison sentence longer than the time he served. He would not have been free to have sexually assaulted Denise Caxton and to have set in motion the chain of deaths that followed.
“You must be Don Cannon,” Mike said, shaking hands with the man sitting in the squad room. “I’m Detective Chapman, Mike Chapman. And this is Alexandra Cooper, from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Thanks for coming in.”
I guessed Cannon to be younger than I am, in his late twenties, perhaps. He was a bit shorter than I, with a serious mien and horn-rimmed glasses. He seemed no more at ease than do most civilians who find themselves in the middle of a homicide case but express a willingness to cooperate, which few mean as sincerely as he seemed to.
“Why don’t you have a seat and tell us a bit about yourself?” Chapman asked. “I’d like to know what you did for Mr. Varelli in his business. That kind of thing.”
“You probably know by now that Marco was the master, the most meticulous workman in his field. Just about every important restoration project in the last fifty years has been offered to him. Those that excited him most, he worked on himself.
“I’m from Sacramento originally. Went to UCLA, have a graduate degree in fine arts. That the kind of thing you want to know?” He looked from Mike’s face to mine, tentatively, to see whether he was proceeding in the right direction. We both nodded.
“One of my professors had worked with Varelli on
“Yes, of course. Our office handled the case.”
“The professor knew that I wanted to work in restoration, that I hoped to develop a career, go back to the West Coast, and set up shop at the Getty or one of the other museums. To apprentice to Marco Varelli, well, there’s simply nothing better to prepare to learn this business, and no finer credential on a resume.”
“When did you start to work for him?” I asked.
Cannon hesitated. “Nobody worked
