Louis questioned people at Max’s office and friends and family members of Deirdre Fisher and Stacy Goldenberg and came up with no new leads. Jeez, it was going cold already.
Kenneth and Louis were having lunch, sitting at one of the back tables in Pick-a-Bagel on Second Avenue, when Louis said, “We gotta start looking at other possibilities, man.”
Kenneth swallowed a bite of bagel with tofu scallion cream cheese, then said, “Like what?”
“Like maybe it was just what it looked like at the beginning – a guy was robbing a townhouse, the women came home, he panicked and shot them.”
“The alarm was reset,” Kenneth said. He hadn’t been able to sleep for the past two nights, his frustration with the case getting to him. “Fisher set the alarm off when he went into the house. Unless Fisher was lying – and I see no reason why he would lie about that because it just makes him look more guilty – then Fisher must’ve given the alarm code to whoever killed those two women.”
He’d gone over this a hundred times till his wife had roared, “You’re obsessed.”
She was right.
“Hey, that makes sense to me,” Louis said. “So why don’t we just bring Max Fisher in?”
“If I thought that would help – believe me, I wouldn’t be sitting here on my fat ass eating bagels. But we gotta make Fisher think he’s safe, let him get complacent. Every day that goes by that he doesn’t hear from me he gets a little more nervous. Right now he’s probably thinking, ‘Why isn’t Detective Simmons calling? He said he’d call.’ But pretty soon he’s gonna think we forgot all about him and that’s when his big shot side is gonna come out. He’s gonna think he’s above the law, king of the world, and that’s when he’s gonna slip up. And that’s when I come in and go for my knockout punch. That’s when he gets the new tracksuit.”
“Tracksuit?” Louis asked.
“Trust me on this one,” Kenneth said. “We keep up with the silent treatment a few more days and start tailing him. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be like Alexis Morgan all over again. Maybe he’ll dig his own grave.”
Kenneth put a twenty-four hour surveillance on Max Fisher, but this didn’t turn up any new leads. Fisher went to the park, the supermarket, his health club, and other normal places. Then, just when it seemed like the case was going nowhere, there was a breakthrough. Some of the jewelry that was stolen at Max Fisher’s apartment turned up at a pawnshop in Chinatown. The owner of the shop, Mr. Chen Liang, didn’t speak a word of English, but through a translator swore to Kenneth that he didn’t know who the man was who’d sold him the jewelry, he’d never seen him before. The man had allegedly come into the shop on Saturday afternoon, the day after the murder. He dumped the jewelry on the counter and said “How much?” Liang said he offered the man five thousand dollars, even though the jewelry was worth ten or twenty times that much. The man must’ve not known jack about jewelry because he didn’t complain, didn’t even try to negotiate. He happily took the cash and left the store.
Liang gave a complete description of the man. He was about five-eight, one-thirty, dirty grey hair, funny- looking mouth, and was wearing a leather jacket with what looked like a bullet hole in it. He spoke English with some kind of accent. Liang was very cooperative and polite until he found out he’d have to give back the jewelry. Then he started screaming like a maniac in goddamn Chinese, carrying on so much Kenneth almost had to cuff him.
Kenneth put out a citywide alert for the man. He knew that this guy might not be the killer – he may have just been a fence the real killer or someone else had sold the jewelry to – but finding him would definitely be a good start. Also, Kenneth now knew for sure that this wasn’t a professional job. A pro wouldn’t be dumb enough to unload jewelry he’d stolen from the scene of a double murder. And a pro wouldn’t be dumb enough to sell off jewelry for a fraction of its worth. The alarm business meant that it couldn’t have been random either, so the only logical conclusion was that Fisher had hired a non-pro to bump off his wife – either an acquaintance or a small-time hood. Fisher had gone cheap and that would cost him.
Later in the day, Kenneth got word from his cop on surveillance that Fisher had gone into work. Kenneth drove down to Fortieth Street in his tan Coup-de-Ville and took over the stakeout himself, hoping that this might be the day Fisher slipped.
Finally, after seven o’clock, Fisher left his office. He looked nervous – like a man who’s guilty as hell, Kenneth thought – looking in both directions as he headed toward Fifth Avenue. Kenneth drove around the corner, making a right on a red, and made it to the corner of Fifth and Fortieth in time to see Fisher getting into a cab. The cab continued downtown on Fifth, so at least it didn’t look like Fisher was going directly home. At Thirty-third, the cab turned right. It continued, inching along two traffic-congested blocks, pulling over in front of the side entrance to the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Kenneth stopped and double-parked about four or five car-lengths behind the cab. It was getting dark and he couldn’t see clearly into the back of the cab, so he was surprised when Fisher got out wearing a curly blond wig. He looked so ridiculous that Kenneth almost started to laugh, asked aloud, “The fuck’s with that?”
He got out of his car and followed Fisher into the hotel.
Fisher was at the reception desk, checking into a room. There was a lot of activity in the lobby, but Kenneth stayed a safe distance away anyway. After Fisher headed toward the elevators, Kenneth waited to see what would happen next. He wondered if Fisher was planning to meet his hit man to make his final payoff, just like Henry Morgan. He was already imagining himself in front of the mikes and cameras, explaining to the reporters how he had cracked the case. Then he saw himself, Lieutenant Kenneth Simmons, on the podium at One Police Plaza, shaking the Mayor’s hand. His gold pin matching the new gold shield.
After about fifteen minutes had passed, Kenneth decided to go to the desk, start asking questions. The short woman with thick glasses behind the desk seemed uncomfortable, like she might be hiding something. He asked her if the man with the curly blond hair was meeting anyone in his hotel room and the woman pointed toward a good- looking white woman with big, blow-dried hair who was about to get on the elevator. For some reason, she looked familiar to Kenneth and a couple of seconds later it clicked. Earlier in the evening he had seen her leaving Fisher’s office building. So Max Fisher was the one having the affair, not the wife. This was definitely getting interesting.
Kenneth asked the woman at the reception desk whether the couple came to the hotel frequently. The woman shrugged, then said, “I don’t think so. At least not during my shift.”
The woman told Kenneth that the couple had registered at the hotel under the name Brown and that they were planning to stay overnight.
Kenneth thought, Brown? Are they kidding?
About forty-five minutes later, the white woman with the big hair came out of an elevator and headed toward the Seventh Avenue exit. Kenneth considered stopping her and speaking to her, but decided it might be more valuable to follow her, see where she was going. Who knows? Maybe Fisher had met her in the hotel room to give her the money, and now she was on her way to make a final payoff to the hit man. Or maybe she was the hit man, or hit woman.
On Seventh, the woman hailed a cab going downtown. Kenneth didn’t have time to get his car so he hailed another cab, presented his badge, and ordered the driver to follow the other car. It went across town to First Avenue and stopped on the corner of East Twenty-fifth Street. The woman got out and walked quickly up the block, toward Second. Kenneth followed her on the opposite side of the street, jogging to keep up with her.
About midway down the block, the woman went up the stoop into the vestibule of a tenement. Out of breath, Kenneth hurried up the stoop and followed her into the building. The woman turned around, startled. Kenneth was used to this reaction from white women in vestibules and elevators.
She was reaching into her purse – maybe for pepper spray – when Kenneth said, “It’s all right, I’m a Detective – NYPD.” He showed his badge. He always got a rush out of that.
“Jesus Christ,” the woman said. She was breathing heavily now too. “You just scared the bejaysus out of me.”
Kenneth registered the brogue and had a fleeting thought about the murder weapon’s possible connection to the Boyos.
Kenneth said, “You mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Questions about what?”
“Do you live in this building?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Can I have your name please?”
“What’s this all about?”
