Dear Old Dead(89)

“Get the keys. Get downstairs when everybody else was going up. Dump some strychnine out of Michael Pride’s supply. Go back upstairs when everybody was coming down. Put the keys back again.”

“Entire operation, fifteen to twenty minutes,” Gregor said, “and the police are still a good five to ten minutes from showing up at the door.”

“But where did the strychnine that killed Charles van Straadt come from? Did the murderer bring it in from the outside?”

“That has the same problems as having the murderer steal it from Michael Pride’s supply a few days in advance. Nobody in his right mind carries a batch of strychnine around on his person for days, not even knowing when he’s going to get a chance to use it. I mean, Hector, think about it. Think about the possibility of accident. You’re carrying strychnine in your pocket. You’ve got your mind on something else. You reach for what you think is your packet of aspirin or you’ve got the strychnine in the same pocket with your gum and the packages of both are breached, or—”

“Never mind,” Hector said.

“Listen,” Gregor told him. “The trick here is twofold. One, the strychnine was not difficult to get. It was easy. Two, the only reason Charles van Straadt was killed on the night he was killed was because the murderer couldn’t afford to wait any longer. If Charles van Straadt hadn’t shown up at the center that night, bumping into his murderer accidentally, his murderer would have come looking for him. His murderer would have had to. If that wasn’t the case, Charles van Straadt would not have died on the night he did under the circumstances he did. Any other explanation is nonsensical. The timing of that murder was nonsensical.”

Hector Sheed straightened up. “You think it was one of them, don’t you? Victor or Martha? One of them trying to make sure the old man didn’t have time to change his will.”

Gregor leaned over and pulled his car door shut. The window was cranked all the way open.

“Get in and drive,” he said to Hector Sheed. “I told Dave Geraldino we’d be there right away. It’s Friday night.”

“Eight hundred million dollars.” Hector Sheed was shaking his head. “Money. That’s the best motive anywhere. Ninety percent of the cases we get in Homicide, everything from drug killings to women who off their husbands, it’s money money money and nothing else.”

Gregor Demarkian had spent ten years of his life chasing serial killers. In his experience, ninety percent of the time it was sex sex sex and nothing else. This did not seem to be a point worth arguing about at the moment.

“Get into the car,” Gregor told Hector Sheed again. “Get into the car and drive.”

Hector Sheed gave the car roof a great slapping whack with the palm of his hand and then ran around the front to the driver’s side.

When he got in behind the wheel, Gregor heard that he was humming.





2


THE NEW YORK SENTINEL had its own building off Times Square on Forty-third Street, a tall gray and brown edifice with windows that looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a carved stone frieze surrounding its glass front doors that couldn’t have been replicated now at any price. It also had security. Gregor had known Secret Service operations that had provided less security. The glass front doors were locked and covered at this time of night by an inside metal grate. To get in, a visitor had to ring the bell, stand back on the pavement to be clearly seen on the security camera over the door, and wait to be opened up for. When he was opened up for, he found that the “doorman” was armed. In fact, he was armed like a cowboy, with a belt holster and a .45, and he wasn’t the only one. Gregor counted four other men walking in or through the lobby who were carrying visible weapons. The street outside might be crowded with junkies and juvenile delinquents, street people, and crazies, but everything was safe in here. It would take a small armed force to breach this place.

The “doorman” let Gregor and Hector Sheed inside, nodding at a list he held on a clipboard in his left hand.

“Demarkian and Sheed,” he said. “Mr. Geraldino’s office. Up to the forty-second floor.”

Gregor looked around at all the guns. “Is this stuff legal?” he asked Hector.

Hector shrugged. “It is if they’ve got permits for the weapons.”

“Do they?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Forty-second floor,” the “doorman” said again, more pointedly this time.

No, Gregor thought. You really wouldn’t want to mess with this man, or with any of the others, either. Charles van Straadt did not hire amateurs. Gregor’s real question was whether Charles van Straadt hired mercenaries. And where did he get them?