academy.
He neither expected nor got any favors. He graduated top of the class and started his career as a patrolman. Bright, dependable, intuitive, eager, unassuming, professional, all defined his slow climb up the ladder where he made detective after eleven years. His sergeant was Frank Rizzo.
It took four years of careful screening and special training during which Cody and Rizzo developed the men and women whose unique qualities defined the TAZ before Rizzo brought his name up. They had been searching a month or two for one more cop to round out the crew.
“There’s this kid in the Fifth…” Rizzo began one day then stopped as he ran Bergman’s qualifications through his head.
“Yeah?” Cody said.
“Tall, good-looking guy. A real chick magnet.” Rizzo paused, staring into space as he thought some more about Bergman. He nodded. “Yeah, he was really good.”
“He couldn’t be that good if it took you four years to remember him.”
“Well, he was a quiet guy. Not pushy, you know. Not a glory hound. A very professional guy. Knew a lot about forensics. Very tough but not so’s you’d notice it. I got thinking about him last night.”
“Does this guy have a name?”
“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “Uh…Bergman. Maybe we should pull his record and see what he’s been up to.”
So they pulled his record. They interviewed him. And he had what Cody called “the wisdom for the job.” Only one problem: he didn’t want to lose his place at the Fifth Precinct. He was “emotionally attached” to the crew there. Go figure. But somehow Cody liked the sound of even that. It might even be a good idea to have a NYPD regular on the team, as practical-and public relations-liaison to keep the regulars’ noses from going out of joint. So Cal fit perfectly, like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Calvin Bergman became the last jewel in the crown.?
They were three blocks down Lexington when Bergman rolled down the window and put the light on the roof. He kept nudging the siren as they wound their way south.
Cody held up the bag of receipts and shook them a little.
“What do you know about Handley’s last day on earth, Cal?”
“He had three meetings in Cincinnati. His limo driver picked him up at home at about four-thirty, a.m. Handley flew American. He was traveling light. No luggage. The flight was about twenty minutes late taking off and got in about seven forty-five. Had a room at the Airport Hilton and had breakfast in the room. My guess is he wanted to freshen up and brief himself for his first meeting which was a lunch at high noon with a man named Wilkes at a German place called the Hofbrau.
“His second meeting was at a bar in the Wilkes Hotel. A woman named Christine Sykes. Got there about four and the meeting lasted an hour-and-a-half. One vodka and rocks, two Manhattans. My guess is the lady was drinking the Manhattans. It’s a lady’s drink.
“Also he had his big meeting early, at six-probably because he had an eight-fifty flight back-so he would have laid off the booze. I say big meeting because the dinner meetings usually are and the restaurant was very expensive. The Hoar’s Hound Inn. They had a bottle of Australian Malbec that cost a hundred and twenty bucks. His client was Ernst Braufmann, CEO of a very profitable statewide chain of upscale supermarkets. Self-made man who turned his father’s grocery store into a gold mine. Handley was out of there by seven forty-five, caught the flight back to New York.
“They were about fifteen minutes late landing at LaGuardia, ten-thirty. His driver picked him up and he went by his office for about twenty minutes. But he didn’t go home after that. He made a note in the book. He cut the driver loose somewhere downtown at eleven-fifty but he doesn’t say where. I’m sure the driver will remember. No taxi receipt for the last ride home.”
“You have an amazing memory, Cal.”
“But it’s short term,” Bergman laughed. “By tomorrow half of that stuff will be gone but that’s why I put it all on tape as I was going through that little black bible of his.”
“Well, between what we know from the entry plus my interrogation and your notes, we’ve got enough to wake the gang up and keep everybody busy. It’s gonna be a long day.”
“They usually are,” Bergman answered with a smile.
“And I’m guessing most of it will be in vain.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think we’re gonna find the name of whoever did that job on him in any book. And I don’t think the killer took any of his business stuff from the apartment. Or anything else for that matter.”
“That’s why he went by his office,” Bergman said. “He probably dropped off the computer, his cell, and the Blackberry there.”
“What leads you to that conclusion?”
“He was going someplace else before he went home,” Bergman said.
“Keep talking.”
“Didn’t mix business with pleasure. So he left the business stuff at his office and then went…wherever he went.”
“Then why did he take the briefcase?” Cody asked.
“Because it had the little black book in it and that was very personal.”
“Cool thinking,” Cody said. “The book’s a map of his past, Cal.”
“Also his future,” said Bergman. “All his appointments are in it.”
“They’re probably in his Blackberry and laptop. They just happened to be in that personal book, too, and he took that with him. And that mask.”
Bergman nodded. “Full of personal stuff,” he said.
“Yup.”
“Why do you suppose he took all the receipts with him?” Bergman asked.
“Force of habit. He still had one more stop to make after he signed off on the limo and he was taking the case with him anyway so he took the receipts.”
“There wasn’t a receipt for the taxi…”
“…because it was personal and he didn’t want a record of it,” Cody said, finishing the sentence.
“And the mask?” Bergman asked, dodging past a FedEx truck and taking a hard right.
“That may help explain where he went on his way home.”
“I just thought of something,” Bergman said. “His overcoat was in that closet in the bedroom.”
“Yeah?”
“It was cold last night so he was probably wearing it and stopped to put it in the closet when he came in.”
“And…”
“If he signed off for the limo the receipt may be in the pocket. We don’t want to have to check with the driver unless we have to, he’ll get curious.”
“Good idea.”
Bergman drove another block, weaving through morning traffic.
“What a weird way to live,” Bergman said, half aloud.
“Not nearly as weird as the way he died,” Cody answered. “And I have a theory about where he stopped after the office.”
8
Kate Winters stood in front of the oblong brick building and straightened out the wrinkles in her tan pants suit. She was about five-five, a shapely African-American woman in her mid-forties, with handsomely etched features and black hair trimmed in a bob. The strap of her dark brown purse was hooked over one shoulder but she held the purse itself in a tight fist, a not uncommon pose for a woman who had lived in Manhattan for more than a decade. A snatch thief would need a pair of vice grips to get it away from her.
It was an unimposing building, an old two-story warehouse that filled a short block bordering Little Italy and
