a task he had agreed to complete in less than a year.
The thing was that Sallinger had him on the spot. He would be approving the articles and editing them and the writer despised making pitches as much as he hated being edited, considering them demeaning. But Hamilton had accepted the terms, like it or not.
It wasn’t the money; he was a rich man.
Vanity had dictated the terms.
He had to redeem his two failures. Thus he had picked a daunting challenge.
The only control Sallinger had allowed him was the due date of the first installment: Halloween. Hamilton had chuckled morbidly as he suggested it.
Gus arrived with their food, a bagel and cream cheese for Sallinger, Eggs Benedict for Hamilton. The writer took a fork and lightly punched the poached egg.
“This egg’s a little on the hard side,” he growled to the waiter. But he noticed Sallinger’s immediate exasperation and quickly added, “They’ll do.”
“I can take them back, sir,” the waiter quickly replied.
“I said they’ll do,” Hamilton snapped and dismissed him with a wave of his hand.
Sallinger looked down and disguised a smile with a bite of bagel. Clearly Hamilton was nervous and on the defensive.?
“So, Lee, what have you got for me?” He asked, spreading cream cheese on the bagel.
“It’s got everything,” Hamilton boasted.
“Forget the tease, okay? What’s the story?”
“Ever heard of the NYPD TAZ?”
Sallinger frowned. “Some kind of back-up squad, isn’t it? Jimmy wanted to do a piece on them a while back but he dumped the idea.” He took another bite. “I thought we were talking about unsolved cases?”
“I’ll get to that. TAZ stands for Tactical Assistance Squad, an understated moniker if I’ve ever seen one. They have more power than God. Everything they do is on the Q.T. They hide police reports, crap all over the media, violate open records laws. Push good, decent cops around. A regular Gestapo, Jacob.”
Sallinger glared at him. “First of all, stop calling me Jacob. Forget the Biblical bull shit and make your point.” He could see Hamilton bridle at his harsh tone, and didn’t give a flying damn.
“Nobody will talk about them. The precinct boys won’t mention them. Stinelli has a clamp on them. They can step into any homicide, any homicide they want. Just take over the investigation. The head of it was a kid when they formed the outfit about five years ago. That’s unheard of. They have their own headquarters downtown, a loft that’s harder to get into than Fort Knox. It’s a block from the old police station down around Little Italy.”
“You are pushing my envelope, Lee.”
“You remember a case about two years ago? Her name was Melinda Cramer. A sometime dancer. It went down as a suicide. Then it turned out she was snuffed and thrown off her balcony.”
“It rings a bell.”
“Well, the whole point of the TAZ is that they can step into any case immediately, for any reason-or none whatsoever. The theory being that if a homicide gets to be forty-eight hours old and there’s no leads, it starts icing up. So they form this squad with this young guy running it.”
“What’s his name?”
“Micah Cody.”
“Hey, so he’s young. It’s a young person’s world. Rock stars and singers are in their teens. What the hell, Custer was a general when he was twenty-two or something.”
“And look what happened to him.”
“Lee…”
“Just let me finish. Cody joins the force when he’s twenty-one. He makes detective by the time he’s twenty- eight, sergeant at thirty and lieutenant at thirty-two. Most cops are still in patrol cars when they’re thirty.”
“You got a hard-on for this guy or something?”
“No, granted he was a hot shot. But here’s what makes this a great story. Cody rises to captain and head of an elite squad in his thirties! They stepped in and took over the Cramer case when it was still unsolved. A headline case with a twist and they never had a decent suspect. Then, out of the blue, Cody has the body pulled out of the ground and re-autopsied. Jake, I keep a scrapbook filled with murder cases from all over the world. This one has everything. It’s perfect for the lead article. A beautiful young dancer, a suicide that turns into murder, a hotshot cop who’s never lost a case but one. A famous pathologist working it.”
“Who?”
“Max Wolfsheim.”
“Him I know. Somebody wanted to do a piece on him but he wouldn’t cooperate.”
“He doesn’t have to cooperate. I’ve got everything on him. I sat in on his lectures at NYU. The nuns in Guatemala, the Bhopal case in India, a dozen serial killers. Think about it. Great characters, a backroom squad nobody talks about, a case that’s colder than the Antarctic. And no files. I checked. Zip. The thing about cold cases? A lot of them the police know who the killer is, they just can’t prove it. Eventually they go cold. ‘Why’ is what makes them interesting. What’s the ‘why’ here? It didn’t even make the obit section when she was a jumper. It barely got to page three in The Post when it turned out to be a homicide. Couple of weeks later it dropped off the radar. I’ve got notes on a dozen cases, but this one? This one’ll be the most interesting hook we could ever come up with for the book. I’m nearly done with it, just one more hurdle.”
Sallinger finished his bagel and sipped his coffee. He stared at Hamilton. “I’m thinking maybe you see this as an entree to get inside this squad you’re so needled about.”
“I’ll admit that’s part of the story. But the victim herself is interesting. A beautiful young dancer, can’t make it with the New York Ballet Company, ends up a hoofer in the chorus line of a couple a Broadway shows, starts hanging out in rave clubs, singing at cabarets, and teaching in the daytime and anything else she can do to hold it together and then bingo, she gets murdered in what was obviously planned to look like a suicide. Who could possibly have wanted her dead?”
Sallinger had to admit it was an interesting yarn. He thought about it over his second cup of coffee.
“It’s not bad, Lee. But it sounds like a lot of back story with no payoff.”
“That’s what makes cold cases interesting. The back story is the story and sometimes it shakes up the pot and they land a killer. Which is very good publicity for us.”
“What’s your back-up on this if it fizzles?”
“I’ve got a dozen of them. Let’s not talk about ‘what if’. Let’s talk about ‘what about.’”
Sallinger thought about a minute or two more.
“What’s the hurdle?” He finally asked Hamilton.
“I need a look at the file. I don’t know Lou Stinelli but he’s a friend of yours. Just a phone call. Tell him you’re doing a piece on cold cases and the writer can’t find the Cramer file. It’s a fact check thing.”
Sallinger thought about it. The story did have meat, it wasn’t just bones. And Metro was known for its demanding standard of accuracy. It wasn’t an unreasonable request.
“Okay, Lee, I’ll give it a try. But remember, I’ve got this piece scheduled for the February cover with the attendant publicity. You blow your deadline and I’ll end up with pie all over my face. Halloween is just around the corner.” His threat was implicit.
“Why, I wouldn’t dare blow it,” Hamilton said, nastily, and leaned back with a grin. “I was fated to write this one. It’s a matter of life and death.”
6
She was shorter than Cody expected. Five-four or so. A trim young woman, twenty-six or seven, her body well-toned but not muscular, her dark hair cut to mold a face that was exotically beautiful even without makeup, green eyes with Asian folds that looked straight into his and held the stare, naturally full lips unenhanced by Botox. She was wearing black sweats, a black tank top and black walking sneakers.
“Amelie Cluett?” he asked and his surprise was evident.
