“First time was a month ago. October, definitely, because I was just back from visiting my son. He and his wife just had their first baby. Then she came in again last week. Most folks wouldn’t spit on you if you was on fire, but she asked after my son and his family. Definitely raised right.”
“Last week? Did she say anything about why she was visiting Zachary Amberson?”
“No, nothing like that.” The guard shrugged. “All I can tell you is, she had an appointment. Both times she was here.”
Chapter 35
Can you come into the station?” Detective Iorio’s voice crackled over the phone line. Desmond was astonished to hear it at all. That morning, he hadn’t expected to hear from her again. “We’ve found something important.”
“What is it?” It was after seven, and Desmond would’ve sworn someone had crushed his heart and soul in a vise that day when he wasn’t looking.
“I can’t talk about that over the phone.”
“Did the cops in the Poconos call you?” Desmond asked. “Did they find something else in the house?”
“Sorry, I can’t say. You need to come down to the station.”
“Fine. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
He took a cab straight down Lexington Avenue to where it ended at Gramercy Park. He walked the last half-block stretch over to Third Avenue, since the cab couldn’t turn that way. When he looked at the sky, he missed the stars. With all the light pollution from the city, that was probably as good a view of the heavens as a New Yorker ever got. Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them, he thought. Those words filled him with sadness. That was the last thing he’d said to Dominique before she died.
“Thanks for coming in,” Reich said, when he got to the precinct. Desmond thought it strange that the detective was waiting downstairs for him, but he didn’t mention it.
“What’s going on?” he asked instead.
“Let’s go sit down.” Reich led him upstairs. “My partner has an interview room waiting for us. How are you holding up?”
“Okay. What did you find?”
“Let’s wait until my partner is in the room. Then we don’t have to go over everything twice.”
Desmond was suspicious. Reich being solicitous didn’t track. There was something afoot, but he couldn’t figure out what.
“Can I ask you something about Gary Cowan?” Desmond decided to go in a different direction. “This morning, you said something about him being a great boxer, until he got himself in some kind of jam. What was that?”
“Boxing’s kind of a shady sport. You know, like Jake LaMotta throwing his match with Billy Fox. Lotta fight-fixing, that kind of thing.”
“By fixing, you mean rigging?”
“That’s the idea.”
Desmond let out a low whistle. “Gary Cowan was into that?”
“I don’t know if it was a regular thing, but he threw one fight and screwed it up bad. It was all over YouTube. The other fighter threw a punch that barely grazed the top of his head, but Cowan went down for the count. Never heard a crowd boo so loudly in my life.”
When they got upstairs, Iorio was standing in the same interview room they’d spoken in that morning. “Thanks for coming in.” She didn’t sound thankful.
“Sure. What did you find?”
“Please sit down.” She indicated a chair. When he took it, she sat next to him. “So, this morning you mentioned a man named Thomas Klepper. How do you know him?”
“I met him yesterday. He was friends with Gary Cowan. He was also Gary’s lawyer.”
“Was friends? Was his lawyer? Interesting use of the past tense,” Reich interjected.
Desmond stared at him. “Gary’s dead. How else would you put it?”
Reich blinked. “Oh, right.”
But that slip was enough for Desmond to realize that something bad had befallen Tom Klepper. He kept his body relaxed, but his guard went up. They’d tricked him into coming in. This wasn’t about his sister. The cops had their own agenda. He should have known better.
“This morning, you told us you met with Thomas Klepper on Sunday evening.” Iorio took the reins again. “What time was that?”
“About eight o’clock. I called him, he phoned me back, and then we met at his office in the Empire State Building.”
“Is that the last time you saw him?”
“Yes. What’s going on?”
She frowned, formulating her next question. “You called Thomas Klepper something like thirty times last night and today. What’s that about?”
Desmond took a breath, remembering what he’d already said to the cops. He wasn’t going to tag on any new details for them to chew on. “I told you this morning. A man named Max was trying to extort money out of Klepper, telling him Gary had been abducted and he had to pay a ransom. Klepper didn’t know Gary was dead until I told him. After that, we agreed he’d go to the police while I went out to Lighthouse Park with the bag.” He looked from one to the other. “As far as I can tell, he never went to the police.”
Iorio sat back, her skeptical expression hardening as she watched him. “So, you contend that you and Tom Klepper were working together?”
He stared right back. “I don’t contend anything. You called me, saying you had found something about my sister’s death. Was that a lie, detective?” He stood. Never talk to cops had been the rule where he grew up. As far as he was concerned, that South Side wisdom still applied. “Unless you’ve got news you want to share with me, we’re done.”
“Thomas Klepper is dead.” It was Reich who blurted the words out. Iorio didn’t look happy about it.
“What?”
“He died in his apartment,” Reich answered. “He was strangled.”
Chapter 36
We don’t have the forensics yet but there’s bruising on his throat and marks from the cord his attacker used,” Reich said. “There was an open wall safe, so the scene is set up like a robbery. Not clear that’s what it actually was, though. Lividity and decomp place his death
