NYPD Red 2(34)

It doesn’t get much more inflammatory than that. Parker was pulling out all the stops. He had tried to piss me off, but I didn’t bite. Kylie was another story. Kylie was a biter.

The cameraman spun around to catch her reaction, and she stared straight into the lens. Ms. MacDonald was ready for her close-up.

“You don’t want justice. The last thing you want is for us to find out who murdered Evelyn. You’re not after the killer. You’re after the cops and the mayor. All you’re doing is exploiting your sister’s murder to boost your ratings. That’s why you’re standing in our way. I have one final question for you, Damon. How the hell can you live with yourself?” she yelled. “The people want to know.”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She bolted into the front seat and slammed the door. Parker was screaming at the camera as I peeled out.

Kylie is a rule breaker. Not only does she break them, but she seems to revel in the wreckage.

“So,” she said, giving me a big-ass grin, “how’d I do? You think I have a future in television?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” I said, heading up 67th to Park Avenue. “But after that public pissing contest, I’m just hoping you have a future as a cop.”





Chapter 32



The Upper East Side of Manhattan is one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods. But unlike residents of LA’s Bel Air, our rich folks don’t have the room to build sprawling homes on magnificent grounds. New York real estate is vertical, so even a twenty-million-dollar apartment can easily go unnoticed when it’s part of a forty-story high-rise.

What does stand out is the not-so-affluent housing, like the five-story prewar brownstone on East 84th Street between First and York. It was flanked by a dry cleaner on one side and a two-hundred-unit apartment building on the other, and the fading facade was covered by one of those classic paint-flaked fire escapes that are mounted to the city’s older low-rise, low-rent buildings.

That’s where we found Horton LaFleur, a man who was obviously bringing down the per capita income in his well-to-do zip code.

We rang the bell in the vestibule of his building, identified ourselves, and walked to apartment 1A—ground floor, front. The man who opened the front door was over six feet tall, gaunt, and pulling a portable oxygen tank cylinder behind him.

“Emphysema,” LaFleur said, explaining it away in a grunt. “Come in.”

The living room was compact. It had to be. Except for a tiny kitchen and bathroom, it was the only room he had. There was a daybed that doubled as a sofa, a dining table that doubled as a desk, and on the wall above it a framed Military Order of the Purple Heart award.

My eyes went right to it. “Thank you for your service,” I said.

He nodded. “Nam.”

That was all. Just a single syllable that let us know he was proud of the sacrifice he’d made for his country but had no interest in talking about it.

One corner of the room was cluttered with plastic bins filled with old telephones, wires, and a lineman’s leather tool belt.

“I was a pole climber for the phone company,” LaFleur said. “First it was New York Tel, then Bell Atlantic, then they became Verizon. Same shit, different patch on your shirt pocket.”

I reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a pink rotary-dial Princess phone. “You don’t see many of these anymore,” I said.

“That’s an early version of the 701B, very popular with teenage girls. It was so light that it would slide around when they would dial, so in the newer version we added a chunk of lead to weigh it down.”

“Is it worth anything?” I said.

“Only to me. Don’t go thinking I stole any of this crap. It’s all junk, but that’s how it goes with us phone monkeys. You have your hands on this equipment all day long, and when something gets phased out you just want to hold on to one or two. Hattie used to say all phone guys are pack rats. But it’s part of my history. I used to have more, but I gave some of it up when we moved to this dump. I hate it, but it’s all we could afford, and it was walking distance to her job.”

There was a framed black-and-white photo of a bride and groom on the desk. It was Horton and Hattie, decades before the oxygen tank and the brutal murder.

Kylie picked it up. “She was beautiful. We’re sorry for your loss.”

“But somehow I doubt that’s why you’re here,” LaFleur said, his voice devoid of emotion.

“We’re investigating the murder of Sebastian Catt,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“We’re homicide cops. It’s what we do.”