Rizzo’s Fire Page 26

  Priscilla cleared her throat. “That’s the theory, ma’m. We’re just double checking.”

  Richarte nodded, dabbing lightly at her eyes with the tip of her pinky finger. “Avery was a genius, you know, a true genius.” After a small pause, she smiled sadly.

  “And the most wonderful lover I’ve ever known,” she added wistfully.

  ARTHUR WAIN sighed, looking from one detective to the other, then meeting Rizzo’s eyes.

  “I’ve already been through this,” he said wearily. “More times, and for too many hours, than can possibly be necessary.”

  Rizzo and Priscilla stood at the front door of Wain’s home at number twelve Adams Mews—the building next door to Mallard’s former residence.

  “I can appreciate that, Mr. Wain,” Rizzo said politely, “and I know Manhattan South is satisfied that your involvement was limited to having found the body. I just have a question or two, that’s all. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  Wain scowled. “Well, I don’t mean to be rude, Sergeant, and I know it’s chilly out here, but my wife has had quite enough of all this. She was very fond of Avery, and all these police inquiries have served only to magnify her stress level. Can you ask your questions here? Without coming inside?”

  “Sure,” Rizzo said, “no problem. First off, take a look at this.” He produced the photo of Lauria, the same one he had shown to Kellerman, Thurbill, and Richarte. “Ever see this man, Mr. Wain? With Mr. Mallard, maybe? Or hanging around the street, near the house, anything like that?”

  Wain looked carefully at the photo. “No,” he said after a moment, “I can’t say that I have.” He raised his face back to Rizzo, a faint glimmer evident in his eyes. “Is he a suspect?” he asked hopefully. “Do you think he might be Avery’s killer?”

  Rizzo shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Just someone who maybe can point us in the right direction. It’s a long shot.”

  Wain replied with a sad, ironic smile. “A long shot,” he said softly. “How appropriate.”

  Priscilla raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Why’s that?”

  Wain shook his head, then explained. “Every August, my wife and I would go up to Saratoga to the racetrack with Avery and whichever wife or girlfriend he was involved with at the time. We shared a liking for the horses, you see.”

  “And?” Rizzo asked.

  Wain sighed, extracting a cigarette from his shirt pocket, searching absentmindedly for his lighter.

  “Well, Avery always liked the long shots, Sergeant,” he said. Then, with another sad smile, added, “And I must say, quite often they came in for him. Quite often.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MONDAY MORNING THE TWO DETECTIVES once again returned to Lauria’s former home. There, they showed a recent photograph of Avery Mallard to the Annasias. Neither remembered ever having seen him in Lauria’s company or in the vicinity of the house.

  As Rizzo drove once again to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Priscilla commented from the passenger seat, “I like workin’ Brooklyn, Joe. I get to spend lotsa time in Manhattan.”

  “Yeah,” Rizzo said. “And the tolls are on the city.”

  Her face grew serious. “I still think we shoulda called first. This could be a waste of time. These people may not even be in today …”

  “Yeah, could be,” Rizzo said, “but I wanna catch ’em cold. I don’t want them with any time to think about this, why two cops are comin’ to see them. With Kellerman and Thurbill and the others, they already talked to cops, they knew they were involved. These people at the agencies, they have no reason to think cops are coming to talk to them. It’s better this way, trust me.”

  She nodded. “Well, when you put it like that … I guess so. Okay, so we’ll just drop in.” Her face brightened. “We can say, Oh, we were just in the neighborhood and figured we’d stop by and ask, ‘Hey, you kill these two guys? You know who did, maybe?’ I can deal with that.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Rizzo said. “Catch ’em with their alibis all up in the air.” He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  The first literary agency they visited was located on Columbus Avenue at West Seventy-first Street. A little research by Priscilla had shown that this particular agency was well known for its representation of stage drama. The eventual letter declining the work had been signed by an Evelyn Myerson.

  Ms. Myerson was twenty-six years old, employed by the agency as a first reader, and assigned to what was referred to as the “slush pile,” a myriad of eclectic unsolicited works received by the dozens each month. Myerson had obtained her B.A. in English literature from a small local college in her native Midwest, then relocated to New York City for a career in author representation.

  After a short interview, it was clear to both detectives that the surprised, pleasant young woman had no recollection of Robert Lauria or his play. It was apparent to Rizzo that the woman had, most probably, scanned the work only briefly before returning it to the unproven, unknown Brooklyn playwright.

  The second agency, at Ninth Avenue and Fifty-third Street, proved to be a dead end as well, also involving a young, inexperienced first reader serving more as a clearing house worker than literary representative. She, too, gave the detectives the impression that she hadn’t read A Solitary Vessel before mailing out her rejection letter.

  Rizzo had deliberately started the interviews in the northernmost location of the city, working southward and nearer to Brooklyn as the day progressed. He and Priscilla left the Impala parked on Seventh Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, stopping at a panini shop for a quick lunch.

  The last of the three agencies was located in a tall office building on Seventh between Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Streets in Chelsea. They rode the elevator and entered the third-floor office complex.

  A young receptionist examined Rizzo’s badge and I.D., her eyes growing wide.

  “Oh,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

  Priscilla smiled. “Yes, everything is fine,” she said. “We just need to speak to Linda DeMaris. Is she in?”

  “Linda?” the young woman asked. “Linda doesn’t work here anymore, Officer.”

  “Oh?” Rizzo asked. “Since when?”

  “I’m not sure … If I had to guess, maybe about a year.”

  “Okay,” Rizzo said. “Was she a first reader here?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, not when she left. Maybe she started as one, but I wouldn’t know.”

  “So what was Ms. DeMaris?” Priscilla asked. “An agent?”

  “No,” the woman said, her voice lowering, her eyes widening once more. “Is Linda in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Rizzo said. “We just need to ask her about something, no big deal. But tell me … was she an agent?”

  “No, sir, she was an administrative assistant. To Helen.”

  “Helen?” Priscilla asked.

  “Yes, Helen Crothers, one of the agents here.”

  Rizzo nodded. “Do me a favor, will you? Get ahold of Helen. We’d like to speak to her.”

  The woman reached for the intercom. “Sure,” she said. “Helen’s usually out to lunch at this hour on Mondays, but she happens to be here today. I’ll get her.”

  HELEN CROTHERS was in her mid-fifties, sharp-eyed and intelligent-looking, her black hair short and dabbed in gray. She smiled across her desk at the two detectives.

  “So,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “Well,” Rizzo said, “we wanted to speak to Linda DeMaris, but we understand she no longer works here.”

  “Yes, that’s correct. She left about a year ago.”

  Priscilla spoke up. “She was your administrative assistant?”

  “Yes, that’s correct.” She frowned. “Is Linda okay? Is everything all right?”

  “Far as we know, yeah,” Rizzo said. “We just need to ask her a question or two.”

  “Is there anything I can help you with?” Crothers asked.

  “Maybe you can,” Ri
zzo said. “Let me ask you, as an administrative assistant, did Ms. DeMaris screen incoming manuscripts? You know, unsolicited stuff the agency receives for representation?”

  “Sometimes, but not very often. Actually, Linda resisted those assignments.” She smiled. “She’d spent more than a few years as a first reader, Detective. Her promotion to A.A. was somewhat long in coming.”

  “So she did have a history here as a reader?” Priscilla asked.

  “Most definitely,” Crothers answered. “As I said, for a good number of years, until about fours years ago.”

  “And, as your assistant, she’d still occasionally read submissions that came in unsolicited?”

  “Yes. Occasionally.”

  “Ms. Crothers, you ever hear of a guy named Robert Lauria? From Brooklyn? Wrote an unproduced play called A Solitary Vessel?” Rizzo asked.

  The woman frowned, then shook her head. “No, those names are not ringing a bell. Why?”

  “His name came up on a case we’re working,” Rizzo said. “It turns out he submitted a play to this agency and it was rejected by Ms. DeMaris. We were just hoping maybe she had some additional info on the guy.”

  “That would be unlikely, Detective,” she replied. “We process hundreds of submissions each year.”

  “So we’ve been learning,” Priscilla said. “Do you keep any record of them?”

  Crothers tossed her head from side to side. “Yes and no. When a first reader turns down a work, generally no record is kept. But when something goes beyond the first reader and receives serious consideration, it will often be entered into our databank.” She turned to the computer on her desk. “What were those names again?”

  After keying in the information, Crothers shook her head. “No,” she said. “Neither is showing here.”

  Rizzo nodded. “Okay, thanks, we’ll just talk to Ms. DeMaris. Do you know where she’s working now?”

  “Oh, yes, Detective, I can help you with that. You see, Linda left us for a marvelous opportunity that opened up for her.”

  “Oh?” Priscilla asked. “And what was that?”

  Crothers’s smile broadened. “A personal assistant position for a very important and influential man.”

  Rizzo crossed his leg, sitting back in his seat. “And who might that be, Ms. Crothers?”

  “Thomas Bradley,” she said. “The Broadway producer. Have you heard of him?”

  Rizzo turned to Jackson, and they exchanged smiles. Turning back to Crothers, he began to stand as he answered her.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “His name does ring a bell.”

  SEATED IN the Impala on Seventh Avenue, Rizzo turned to Jackson with a smile.

  “It’s always the last place you look, Cil,” he said, “every time.”

  Priscilla started the engine. “And of all the suspects, you left Bradley for last.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Bradley looked good to me almost from the beginnin’. Remember when we talked to Kellerman, Mallard’s agent, and I told you speaking to him was pure gold?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Priscilla answered.

  “Kellerman was the first guy to mention the rift between Mallard and Thomas Bradley, you know, how Mallard wanted that female character to be screwin’ the two brothers and Bradley didn’t. That’s what tipped me. Lauria’s play, the one that Bradley seems to have stolen, had no love triangle. Mallard put it in there on his own. He was a horny son of a bitch, wasn’t he? Four wives, all those girlfriends, the guy’s life revolved around women. Lauria, on the other hand, saved his nickels and dimes for phone sex and blow jobs at the massage parlor. The play idea appealed to Mallard, but he wanted to spice it up with the sex angle. Bradley wanted to keep it pure, the way Lauria originally wrote it.”

  “You think Mallard and Bradley were in it together?” Priscilla asked.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Could be. But more likely it was just Bradley, and he spoon-fed it to Mallard.”

  “Why you leanin’ that way, Joe?”

  “It makes the most sense. Bradley steals the play, feeds it to Mallard. Bradley knows the play’s good, great even. He also knows he’s got no chance in hell of raisin’ a few million bucks to stage a Broadway production of a play written by some asshole from Brooklyn. But, if he gets Avery Mallard’s name on it, and he hypes it as a second Pulitzer by the American master, all the fat-cat art patrons in the city start liquidatin’ assets and tossin’ cash into Bradley’s hat.”

  Priscilla nodded, easing the car out into the speeding downtown traffic. “So Bradley originally got the play from Linda DeMaris.”

  “Bingo. DeMaris spent years eatin’ shit at that agency, then finally she gets a promotion. But every once in a while, some boss, maybe Crothers, says, ‘Hey, Linda, you ain’t doing anything, go help out with that slush pile.’ DeMaris gets pissed, but she’s gotta do what she’s told. So she grabs something off the pile and actually starts reading it. And it’s fuckin’ great. So, what to do with it? Hand it over to Crothers, then go out and get coffee for the big agents’ meetin’ that afternoon? No, DeMaris has a lead in to a big Broadway producer. Maybe she was sleepin’ with the guy already, maybe not, but she takes the play to him, and this plot to reject Lauria and spoon-feed Mallard gets hatched.” Rizzo smiled.

  “Dollars to fuckin’ doughnuts, Cil, we get Mike to access the uncensored copy of the ‘confidential’ statement Bradley gave Manhattan South, that alibi mistress of his turns out to be Ms. Linda DeMaris.”

  “So, Mallard comes up clean here?” Priscilla asked.

  He shrugged. “My money says he does, and here’s why. When Lauria learns about An Atlanta Landscape, he freaks. He knows it’s his work, only with a sexy female screwin’ the brothers tossed into the mix. Then he finds out Kellerman is Mallard’s agent, and he sends a letter, through the agency, to Mallard. Mallard reads it, and in his heart, he knows it was Bradley who spoon-fed him the play under the guise of just helping him write it. I’d bet my pension Mallard never once saw the actual Lauria script. It seems unlikely a guy of his stature would deliberately plagiarize so blatantly. So he goes to Bradley and says, ‘What the fuck?’ He demands an explanation. Maybe threatens goin’ direct to Lauria. Bradley says, relax, it’s just a nut trying to make a score with some phony plagiarism claim. But Bradley’s still worried. He knows Lauria wrote the play, and maybe the guy could prove it. Maybe with one a those whaddaya-call-its? Poor man’s patents. So Bradley sees his entire career goin’ down the shitter. And Mallard’s, too. Bradley’ll forever be known as the guy who destroyed Avery Mallard’s literary legacy.”

  Priscilla picked up. “So Bradley whacks Lauria.”

  “Yeah,” Rizzo responded. “And he grabs all the incriminatin’ evidence he could find in the apartment, all the copies of Lauria’s play. Only he misses that box of rejection letters, and he never even knows about the duplicate manuscripts in Carbone’s garage in Canarsie.”

  “But Bradley knows enough about the business to realize something like that could exist somewhere,” Priscilla suggested.

  “Yeah, and he also knows a full-blown motive-based homicide investigation could turn it up, so he makes Lauria’s murder look like a breakin, just a random killing.”

  Priscilla interjected, “But he still can’t relax. Mallard might still try and reach out to Lauria in response to that letter. Bradley figures if Mallard learns Lauria’s been conveniently murdered, the shit could still hit the fan.”

  Rizzo continued. “So Bradley figures Mallard’s washed up anyway, been dried out for ten years already. Bradley can best protect himself by killin’ Mallard. That explains the time frame of the two murders. He had to act fast, so he kills Lauria on the thirtieth of October, Mallard on November second. Then he uses that DeMaris dame to alibi him for the one murder the cops would question him on: Mallard’s. Nice and neat.”

  “So when do you figure they’ll be fishin’ DeMaris outta the river?” Priscilla asked.

  “No, Cil, not gonna happen,” Rizzo said, s
haking his head. “He whacks her—he’s the married man, she’s the goumada—and he becomes number one on the suspect hit parade. Once his alibi witness turns up dead, Manhattan South starts takin’ another look at the Mallard case, only now with Bradley the target.” He smiled. “This is real life. The only people find themselves involved in different murders all the time are TV characters on those old shows like Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder. No, DeMaris is safe for now. Maybe not indefinitely, but at least for now.”

  “This is great, Joe,” Priscilla said in frustration. “We solve both cases, but we can’t write a freakin’ dis-con summons on the evidence we have, let alone prosecute some showbiz hot shot for a double homicide.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Rizzo said. “We’ve got zero chance for an indictment. Tomorrow, we’ll go talk to Bradley. Rattle his cage a little. We play dumb on the DeMaris angle at first, like we never saw the confidential part of his statement where I bet DeMaris is named as the alibi, and we don’t know she’s relevant. Then we drop her name on him and let the guy simmer a few days over Thanksgivin’. After that … we’ll see.”

  Priscilla pursed her lips. “What about Manhattan South, Joe? We been stringin’ D’Antonio along with our verbals and vague DD-fives, but now we might have to come clean.”

  “Bullshit,” Rizzo said. “All we got is a lead on the Lauria case. That’s our case, Cil. And we’re just too stupid to make the Mallard connection.”

  Priscilla looked skeptical. “We’re jugglin’ hand grenades here, Partner.”

  “Maybe,” Rizzo said. “And if one of the pins falls out, we might have to run for cover. But for now, it’s okay. Believe me, Cil, stupidity is always your best defense on this job. There’s no regulation says a cop can’t be too stupid to see the nose on his face.”

  “This is not just about covering our asses,” she said. “You gotta see that, for Christ’s sake. If we screw up here, even a little bit, somebody gets killed. I know you think you can handle this—”