A short five-minute walk got them to the darkened doors of the McArthur/Weinstein Community Theater. Turned out Mollie Rosen was waiting for them just outside. A short, slightly plump woman who McCabe guessed was somewhere in her early forties with bright eyes, dark heavy eyebrows and a mop of curly black hair with a few patches of gray that served as evidence that the color hadn’t come out of a bottle.
“Detective McCabe?”
“Ms. Rosen.” He extended his right hand. “Sorry if we’re late.”
“No. No. I just got here myself. Just call me Mollie. Everybody does.”
“Okay, Mollie. This is my partner, Detective Margaret Savage.”
“I’m so sorry about your niece. Actually horrified is more accurate than sorry.”
“We feel the same way,” said McCabe.
“I only heard the news a little before you called.”
“On television?” asked Maggie.
“Yes. On one of the news shows. But also on Facebook. Zoe was well-liked and we had a few friends in common. The news is going viral. Hundreds of shares. Everybody upset.”
Mollie unlocked one of the main doors and beckoned Maggie and McCabe to follow her inside. She turned on some lights, relocked the main door and then unlocked another door behind the ticket window. The two detectives followed her into a small, homey office with a beat-up old wooden desk that looked like it had been purchased from the Salvation Army. A single straight-back chair stood behind it. There were a half-dozen photos on the wall of Mollie posing with the same guy in various vacation locales. Another dozen or so on the opposite wall showing scenes from a variety of the productions that had been put on at the McArthur/Weinstein. Randall Carter wasn’t the first big-name star to have played this stage.
“Sorry I don’t have chairs for you all to sit in,” she said, “but this is pretty much a solo office. I rarely have visitors.”
“No problem.,” said McCabe. “We’ll stand.”
She looked up. “So tell me what I can do to I can help?”
“Like I told you on the phone, I need to know if you have access to the names of people who bought tickets.”
“Mr. A12?”
“Yes. Any chance you know the guy’s name?”
“Like I said, I might if he bought his tickets with a credit card. But if this creep was stalking Zoe, I’ll bet he paid cash. I mean why give us his name, address and credit card number if he’s on the prowl?”
“I’m sure you’re right but we need to check anyway. If you could put the receipts on this thumb drive we can take it from there.”
“I’m not sure I can do that. Credit card numbers are privileged information. Even if you are cops.”
“You won’t be breaking any laws. It’s perfectly legit for you to share this information with the police,” said McCabe.
Rosen looked like she was wondering if he was telling her the truth. After a few seconds she said, “Oh, fuck it. You’re right. We need to find Zoe.” She took the proffered thumb drive and inserted it into a slot in her desktop computer. She hit a few keys, waited a few seconds, then ejected the drive and handed it to Maggie.
“Thank you.”
“There’s one other way you can help us right now,” said Maggie. “Like you said, the guy we’re looking for always sat in the same seat. Mr. A12 you called him.”
“Yup,” said Rosen. “He always sat in A12. He was hard not to notice. Big guy. Always got here early. Every performance.”
“Which seat’s A12?” asked McCabe.
“On the aisle. Front row. Right-hand side of the auditorium. A few of our ushers noticed him sitting there night after night. It became kind of a joke.”
“You said on the phone that last night Mr. A12 got into a confrontation with someone who was sitting in the seat when he arrived?” asked McCabe.
“That’s right.”
“Do you know the name of the man he bullied out of the seat?”
“I do. I got a complaint from him right after the performance. Guy’s name was Richard Mooney.”
“Keep going,” said McCabe.
“Well, right after the curtain, Mooney and his girlfriend . . . I don’t know her name . . . they both came up to me at the back of the theater where I was standing watching the audience file out.”
“How did he know you were the right person to talk to?” asked Maggie.
“I wear a jacket with a McArthur/Weinstein emblem on it during performances. Anyway, this Mooney guy asks me if he can talk to the manager. I tell him that’s me. He’s obviously pissed about something so I ask him what the problem is and he tells me that he wants to file a complaint. What kind of complaint, I ask. He tells me that he and his girlfriend got to the theater early because they like sitting upfront and they wanted to make sure they could get seats in the first or second row. A12 and the one next to it, A13, were empty so that’s where they sat. A couple of minutes later our friend shows up. He gets right in Mooney’s face and tells him A12 is his seat and that Mooney and his girlfriend are going to have to move. Mooney says no. Says seating is first come, first served, which is true. Big dude gets very threatening. Mooney says he’s gonna call the cops. Dude says get out of the seat or he’s gonna beat him up.”
“He threatened to beat Mooney up?”
“That’s what Mooney told me. He said he didn’t want to embarrass his girlfriend by getting into a brawl so he agreed to move. But he was so pissed off about it he couldn’t think about anything else during the entire show. My guess is Mooney was probably scared shitless . . . pardon my French . . . and was afraid of maybe getting beaten up or at least very embarrassed. Anyway, he tells me he’s a regular customer, comes to all our shows, which I’m pretty sure is true ’cause I’ve seen him before. He wants me to ban the guy who bullied him from coming to the theater again. I tell him I might be able to do something if he knew the man’s name. I mean there probably wasn’t anything I could actually do. At least not there and then. But I wanted to make nice with this customer. He says he doesn’t have the guy’s name but he’s sure to recognize him if he ever saw him again. On the other hand, I’d probably recognize him as well.”
“So you got a good look at him?” asked Maggie.
“More than once. You think this is the guy who kidnapped Zoe?”
“Maybe,” said McCabe.
“Just maybe?”
“Yeah. Just maybe. Did this Mooney guy give you any of his contact info? We’re going to want to talk to him in person.”
“He did.” She pulled a sticky note off the wall near her desk and handed it to McCabe. Turned out Mooney’s address was on the Lower East Side just a few blocks from the theater. The sticky also had Mooney’s mobile number, work number and e-mail.
McCabe handed the sticky note back to Mollie Rosen. The information on the note would be stored in his brain more or less forever.
“One last thing,” Maggie said to Rosen. “We’ll need to take a look at seat A12.”
“It’s just a seat.”
“Has it been cleaned yet?”
“Not till tomorrow. Normally the carpet would have been vacuumed, the trash picked up and the seats wiped down first thing this morning. But after a show closes we have a crew come in and do a more thorough job. They’re not due till tomorrow.”
“Can you delay them till our evidence techs go over the seat and the area around it?”
“I guess so. Sure. You want to look at the seat now?”
“Please.”
Rosen unlocked the doors to the small auditorium. Flipped on the house lights. “It’s the aisle seat, front row, right-hand side.”
Rosen tagged along as Maggie and McCabe headed down the aisle.
McCabe slipped on a pair of latex gloves and handed a pair to Maggie. They stopped in front of A12. Looked carefully at the seat and the floor in front of it. Saw nothing of interest. Just worn leather with a couple of rough spots and a small tear in the middle. Still, there had to be prints and probably some hairs and maybe bits of skin or even flakes of dandruff, which with proper testing could yield DNA indicators.
McCabe next crouched down and shone the flashlight on his iPhone first on the seat, then on the floor underneath the seat. And then he crouched down and pointed the light upward and looked at the seat’s bottom.
“Well, well, well. Take a look at this.”
Maggie crouched down and looked at what he was shining the light on. “Coulda been there for a while,” she said.
“Yeah. Coulda been. But maybe not.” He turned to Mollie Rosen. “Do your cleaners clean the undersides of seats?”
“They’re supposed to.”
“Can you stick around for a while for our evidence techs to check out this seat for DNA?”
“Of course.”
McCabe thanked her and then called Astarita. “What now?”
“We need some evidence techs to get over to McArthur/Weinstein ASAP and check out seat number A12 now.”
“What’s the rush?”
“It’s the seat where the suspect sat. All twelve performances. Cleaners aren’t scheduled till the morning so it’s best if you get a team over here right away. He’s got to have left something behind. Which may just include a big wad of chewing gum we saw stuck to the bottom.”
“You think the chewer’s our guy? Pretty stupid to leave the gum behind.”
“Seems likely. This has been his seat for twelve straight nights. Same guy Randall Carter noticed. Carter still there?”
“No. He called one of his fancy cars and headed home.”
“How about your sketch guy? Tony Renzi?”
“He’s here.”
“Good. Tell him to hang around. We’ve got a line on somebody who got a much better look at the bad guy than Carter did. Almost got into a fight with him.”
McCabe filled Art in on what he and Maggie had learned about the man in A12. “I’m going to call Mooney and see if he’ll come in, talk to us and check out Carter’s sketch and maybe provide an even better one. I’ll let you know.”
McCabe broke the connection and called Richard Mooney. “Hello.”
“Mr. Mooney? Richard Mooney?”
“That’s right. Who’s this?”
“This is Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe with the New York Police Department. I just learned from the manager of the McArthur/Weinstein Theater that you were involved in a confrontation with someone last night who objected to the seat you were sitting in.”
“That’s right.” Mooney sounded suspicious. “What about it?”
“We have reason to believe the man in the seat is someone who we’re interested in talking to.”
“You mean he’s some kind of criminal?”
“We think it’s possible.”
“Well, that sure as hell doesn’t surprise me. Sure as hell acted like one.”
“Would you be willing to come over to the Seventh Precinct over on Pitt Street . . .”
“Yeah. I’d be more than happy to. Like they say, payback would be sweet.”
“Good. My partner and I about would like to talk to you about what exactly went on with this guy at the theater last night. And also get you to work with a sketch artist to help us get a likeness.”
“Nothing I’d like more. I knew there was something seriously wrong with that guy . . .”
McCabe heard a female voice in the background say, “Unhinged.”
“Yeah, Unhinged is what my girlfriend’s saying. We’d both like to see that jerk get his comeuppance.”
“Can you come on over to the precinct right now?”
“Sure. I guess so. We’re only a ten-minute walk away. I’ll bring my girlfriend Sarah with me. She was there too and she’s got a good eye. Probably noticed stuff about him I was so angry I might’ve missed.”
“Great. When you two get there ask the guy on duty downstairs to ask for a Lieutenant Art Astarita. He’ll be expecting you.”