Kylie and I joined the influx of first responders who raced to help the injured. It was just cops and firefighters at first, but when a bomb explodes in a public place, it sets off a Pavlovian response. Law enforcement agencies everywhere start salivating.
By the ten o’clock news cycle, The Pierre was the most famous crime scene in America, and everyone—Feds, staties, NYPD, FDNY, even the DEA—wanted a piece of the action.
Fortunately, the turf war dust settled long before the acrid gray cloud in the Cotillion Room, and Kylie and I were thrown together with Howard Malley, an FBI bomb tech we’d run into before.
Malley is a hawkeyed post-blast investigator and a pull-no-punches New York ballbuster, but he can also get testy as a cobra when you disagree with him. In short, he was a lot like Kylie. Maybe that’s why I liked him.
The two of us suited up—disposable Tyvek coveralls, sock boots, face mask—and we crossed the threshold to ground zero. The rear of the room was remarkably intact. Flower arrangements and wineglasses were still sitting on several tables, waiting to be cleared.
We walked toward the spot where Del Fairfax, Princeton Wells, and Mayor Sykes had stood less than an hour ago, wooing their wealthy benefactors. Windows were shattered, wood-paneled walls were peppered with shrapnel, and the floor was littered with the detritus of the blast: scorched drapery, sparkling chunks of chandelier crystal, overturned chairs, silverware, shoes, purses—thousands of puzzle pieces that had made a picture-perfect evening and now lay in tatters, covered in thick dust and splattered with blood.
At the center of it all was the man who was supposed to make sense of this seemingly senseless act. He was squatting at one end of the forty-foot charred swath that had been the stage. Agent Malley, a bald-headed, gray-bearded FBI lifer, was squinting at a pair of forceps in his right hand through a pocket magnifying glass. He looked up when he heard us coming his way. “Well, if it isn’t Jordan and MacDonald,” he said. “How’s business at NYPD’s Fat Cat Squad?”
“Booming,” Kylie deadpanned. “You find something down there?”
“Maybe.” He stood up. “If you think of this mess as a four-thousand-square-foot haystack, I may have just found a needle. Take a look.”
Kylie and I took turns studying the prize dangling from Malley’s stainless steel pincers. It was a piece of wire. Three pieces, actually—one red, one white, one blue—twisted together in pigtail fashion. It was as thin as a strand of angel-hair pasta and no more than two inches long.
“And that’s significant?” I asked.
“Again, maybe. These bomb makers—we see them as mass murderers, but they like to think of themselves as artists.” He gave the word a French spin so that it came out arteests.
“And like artists everywhere, they are compelled to sign their masterpieces. This little red, white, and blue twisty thing isn’t something I’ve come across before, so the thought popped into my head that maybe it’s our bomber’s signature.”
“Red, white, and blue,” Kylie said. “So what does that mean—death to America?”
“The bomb says death. I think the wire is about the guy who built it.”
“Red, white, and blue,” Kylie repeated. “You think he’s an American?”
“Or he could be a color-blind Lithuanian. It would be nice to know what it symbolizes, but what would be really helpful is if this is his trademark, and he’s in our global database. I’ll take it back to the office and see if we get a hit.”
“So, what’s your take so far?” I asked.
He bagged the tiny fragment of wire, marked it, and put it in an evidence bin. “It wasn’t a terrorist attack,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Hell, no. I’m just a humble underpaid government employee, not Harry Potter. But you asked what’s my take, which kind of means my educated guess after snooping around for twenty minutes. It’ll never stand up in court, but right now my take is that with only one dead and twenty-two injured, this is not the handiwork of a dyed-in-the-wool, trained-in-Syria jihadi.”
“Not a terrorist?” Kylie said. “Howard, this guy took out twenty-three people with a bomb.”
“You’re not listening, Detective,” Malley said, his defense mechanisms going on point. “I didn’t say he wasn’t a pro. This guy is top-shelf. But he was using a shaped charge aimed at killing one person. Those twenty-two other people were collateral damage, some from the blowback, but mostly from the stampede. I don’t know nearly as much about dealing with zillionaires as you do, but I’m guessing this was an every-man-for-himself crowd. They’d have a lot fewer broken bones if they didn’t panic. This guy was only after Fairfax. It wasn’t terrorism. It was personal.”
“If it were personal,” Kylie said, “wouldn’t it have been easier just to murder him in his bed?”
Malley shrugged. “I’m guessing he wanted to make a public statement. I just have no idea what he was trying to say.” He winked. “But then, that’s not my problem.”
CHAPTER 3
Malley was right. Terrorism was Homeland’s problem, but homicide—especially an A-list victim like Del Fairfax—was all ours.
Other than being witness to the final seconds of his life, we knew nothing about him. We needed to talk to someone who did. We tracked down Princeton Wells. He was still at the hotel, only he’d relocated to the thirty-ninth floor.
“Anything I can do to help,” he said, opening the door to a suite with sweeping views of Central Park.
He’d traded his formal wear for a pair of wrinkled khaki cargo shorts, a faded gray T-shirt, no shoes, no socks.
The mayor had introduced us to Wells earlier in the evening. We’d given him our cards, and he’d joked about hoping he’d never need them. Yet here we were, only hours later, following him into the living room.
“Grab a chair,” he said, heading for a well-stocked wet bar. “Drink?”
We declined. He tossed some rocks into a glass and added four inches of Grey Goose. Then he uncorked a bottle of white and poured an equally generous amount into a crystal goblet.
He took a hit of vodka, set the wine on the coffee table in front of us, and said, “What have you got so far?”
“We’re sorry for the loss of your friend,” I said, “but the fact that he was the only one killed points to the possibility that he may have been the primary target.”
“That’s insane,” Wells said. “Who would want to kill Del?”
“That’s what Detective MacDonald and I are here to ask you. How well did you know him?”
“We’ve been best friends since high school. We roomed together in college. Twenty years ago we cofounded Silver Bullet along with Arnie Zimmer and Nathan Hirsch. Del and I were like brothers.”
“Did he have any enemies? Anyone who would want to see him dead?”
“This is fucking surreal,” he said, tipping the glass to his lips and draining it. “I need another drink.” He padded back to the bar.
The last thing Princeton Wells needed was more alcohol, which is something I would have told him if he were an ordinary citizen, and I were an ordinary cop. But he was a billionaire many times over, and I was a detective first grade trained to deal with the privileged class, be they shit-faced or sober. I watched as he ignored the ice and replenished the vodka.
“This is a beautiful place,” Kylie said, backing off the raw subject of his murdered best friend.
He smiled. “Thanks. I’ve had it for three years now. The view is spectacular when it snows. Point the remote at the fireplace, open a bottle of wine…”
“Did someone say wine?”
Kenda Whithouse entered the room, her hair wrapped in a towel, her body somewhat covered by a man’s tuxedo shirt.
“Already poured,” Wells said, pointing to the glass he’d left on the table.
She picked it up, sat on a sofa, and discreetly tucked her legs under her.
“Kenda,” Wells said, “these detectives are from NYPD.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Did you catch them yet?”