John Palmer lived on the eighteenth floor of a building on Columbus Avenue near 100th Street that had been thoroughly vetted late Saturday night by the master burglars Ricky and Jonas Bolo.
The building had been designed to provide housing for up-and-coming singles and young marrieds who were content with living in hundreds of identical Sheetrock boxes stacked on top of each other, floor after floor.
In order to squeeze the maximum amount of profit from the absurdly high rents, instead of doormen and lobby staff, the building provided a large cage in the basement manned round-the-clock by minimum-wage workers who signed for an endless stream of deliveries from Amazon, UPS, FedEx, FreshDirect, local restaurants, dry cleaners, and other merchants. They, in turn, sent texts to the residents, who then made the monumental effort to ride an elevator downstairs to get their stuff. The building euphemistically dubbed this their concierge service.
Security in and out of the building depended on a video intercom/buzzer system and cameras in the lobby, elevators, and stairwell.
At five minutes after one P.M., John Palmer stood in his kitchen making coffee. He planned on being dressed and ready to leave for the meeting at One PP by two o’clock. His intercom buzzer rang. Barefoot, he padded out to his small foyer, checked the flat-screen display, and saw Raymond Ippolito staring into the camera.
“What’s up, Ray?”
“Gotta come up and talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Something I shouldn’t be yelling about out on the street.”
Palmer was already unnerved by what his father had told him, plus Juju Jackson never showing up for their meeting. Ippolito appearing unannounced felt like more bad news, but Palmer wanted to hear what he had to say.
“Okay. C’mon up.”
Palmer leaned on the buzzer, opened his apartment door, and then headed back to his kitchen.
* * *
Down on Columbus Avenue, when the buzzer rang, Ippolito remained standing in front of the intercom, while Beck, who had stood out of range of the intercom camera, pushed open the door and slipped into the lobby, head down, his face covered by a ball cap.
A couple walked past him while two women returning from their Sunday morning yoga class walked in behind him. He continued past the security camera in the mailbox area, and into the main lobby. Beck had been briefed by Ricky and Jonas about the location of the security cameras in the lobby and near the elevator banks. He made sure to stand out of camera range, mixing with others waiting for one of the building’s four elevators to arrive.
* * *
Outside, Ippolito faked another ring of Palmer’s buzzer, waited for ten seconds, checked his watch, and walked away. He did this exactly as instructed, knowing Ciro Baldassare stood on the other side of Columbus Avenue watching him. Ippolito continued uptown to 101st Street and turned east, heading toward Central Park. When he reached Central Park West, he crossed the street and waited for Baldassare to join him, where they would wait until Ciro told him he could go.
* * *
Beck stood aside as four people stepped out of the elevator, then he followed the gossiping yoga ladies into the cab, along with a man carrying grocery bags and his wife talking on her cell phone. Just before the elevator doors shut, a woman with a dog and a two-year-old in a stroller rushed on board.
Beck waited until everyone had pressed their floors so he could pick a floor higher than the others. He leaned forward and pressed twenty-two, keeping his head down so the ball cap hid his face from the elevator’s security camera and nobody noticed the formidable guy with a lumpy, bruised face.
On twenty-two he exited the empty elevator, turning to his right, knowing that like most apartment buildings there were no security cameras in the hallways. The only cameras were at the top and bottom of the emergency-exit stairwell.
He walked quickly down a typical high-rise hallway: low popcorn ceiling, nondescript carpeting, inexpensive down-lighting, long rows of doors painted a deep maroon, each with a security peephole.
Beck found the exit to the stairwell and walked down to eighteen. The Bolo brothers had already taped open the latch on that door with a tape that would leave no residue.
Beck opened the door, removed the tape, and stuck it in his back pocket. He peered out, making sure the hallway was empty. He stepped out, closed the door carefully, and quickly walked to apartment sixteen.
Ippolito had been right. The door was open for him.
Beck stepped quietly into the apartment, carefully closing the door behind him.
There was a small foyer that opened onto a minimally furnished living room/dining area, kitchen on the left, a hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom on the right.
Palmer stood fifteen feet in front of Beck, backlit by the living room window, holding a cordless phone next to his leg. He was barefoot, wearing a white T-shirt and black workout pants with a stylish red vertical stripe running along the side of each leg.
He turned at the sound of his front door closing and flinched when he saw James Beck.
Beck said, “I’m guessing that phone call wasn’t good news.”
Palmer looked at the phone in his hand, then back at Beck, confused. “Who are you? Where’s Raymond?”
Beck took off his ball cap and tossed it on the floor.
“You!”
“Yeah, me. I assume that was your boss, Levitt, on the phone. What did he say?”
“How did you— Why are you here?”
“To make sure you go down for shooting Paco Johnson, for trying to frame me, for colluding with Eric Jackson, for lying about what you saw at Mount Hope Place, and everything else you’ve done.”
Beck had no gun. He took a few steps toward Palmer, his empty hands at his sides, calm, focused, and aware of Palmer’s holstered SIG Sauer sitting on the glass-topped dining room table six feet to Palmer’s left along with keys, cell phone, and a wallet.
Palmer stood with the couch between him and the dining table. He took a step back, getting clear of the couch. Beck moved forward and stopped. They were equidistant from the gun on the table.
Beck said, “You have to choose.”
Palmer looked at him, confused.
“You can sit and wait for the cops to come arrest you, or you can go for your gun and shoot the guy who’s giving them the evidence to take you down.”
“You’re crazy.”
Beck took a half step forward.
Palmer’s eyes flicked toward his gun. He’d have to get to it first, pull it out of the holster, chamber a round, and shoot Beck.
Beck seemed to read Palmer’s mind. He held up both hands, palms open. He turned halfway around to show Palmer he had no gun behind his back. He patted his pockets to show they were empty.
“You can shoot me just for being in your apartment.”
Beck took a step back, giving the advantage to Palmer.
“I know you’re a murdering, lying, ruthless, pampered piece of shit, but even for an asshole like you whose had everything served up for him it’s a no-brainer. Go for the gun, coward.”
Before Beck finished his sentence, Palmer made his move. Rage and desperation made him fast. Very fast. Two steps, and he had his right hand on the butt of the SIG before Beck made it halfway to the table. He pulled the gun free from the holster and pulled back the slide to chamber a bullet while Beck was still three feet away. For a split second, Palmer thought Beck might be setting him up. Sacrificing himself so he’d be prosecuted for shooting an unarmed man. But in the same split-second it took him to think that, he realized he could plant a weapon on Beck after he shot him. A knife. Easy. He raised the SIG, but too late now. In fact, it wasn’t very close.
Beck already had a weapon in his hand. A five-inch tapered Kubotan stick made of aircraft aluminum he’d carried in under his watchband, covered by his shirtsleeve. He’d pulled it out with his first step. Two more steps put him within arm’s length of Palmer. Close enough to ram the pointed end of the Kubotan stick into Palmer’s right temple with so much force it punched a hole into Palmer’s skull, sending shards of bone into his brain.
Palmer’s head snapped left. Beck stepped back. Palmer tried to straighten himself. He looked like he was moving underwater. He tried to point the gun at Beck, who continued stepping back, avoiding contact. Palmer blinked rapidly, lost his balance, tottered, and collapsed as a massive hemorrhage formed under his punctured skull.
Beck put the Kubotan into his front pocket and withdrew a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket.
He slipped on the gloves, squatted down, carefully removed the SIG Sauer from Palmer’s hand, and laid it on the floor. He grabbed Palmer under the armpits, lifting and maneuvering him over to the couch, setting him down on it, muscling him into a sitting position. He picked up the cordless phone Palmer had dropped and replaced it in its receptacle.
Palmer slumped forward, dying.
Beck went to the kitchen, brushing the marks out of the rug he’d made dragging Palmer to the couch. He checked to make sure no coffee or food were being prepared. He came out of the kitchen and made sure there was no blood on the floor near where he’d hit Palmer.
Palmer’s temple was oozing blood as he sat slumped on the couch, but that didn’t matter.
Beck made his way to the bedroom. The room was unkempt. The bed unmade. There was a desktop computer set up on a small desk. It was turned off. Beck ignored it.
He found a stack of printer paper on the shelf over the desk and took one page. He pulled open a file drawer and looked through Palmer’s papers until he found a sample of his writing. It wasn’t really script. Mostly printing. Beck sat at Palmer’s desk and from a pen he found next to the keyboard he wrote a simple note, mimicking Palmer’s almost childish handwriting: I’m sorry. Can’t do this anymore.
He pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket on which Alex Liebowitz had printed out an enlarged image of the signature on Palmer’s driver’s license. Beck scribbled a reasonable likeness of the signature on the suicide note, left the pen on the desk, returned to the living room, and pressed Palmer’s thumb on one side of the signed page and forefinger on the other. Remembering that Palmer had held the gun in his right hand, Beck pressed the heel of Palmer’s right hand onto the page below the signature. He set the page on the end table.
Beck retrieved the SIG from the floor. He positioned himself in front of the slumped-over corpse and put the gun in Palmer’s lifeless right hand, placing Palmer’s index finger on the trigger.
Then he surrounded Palmer’s hand with his, and pushed the tip of his thumb over Palmer’s index finger. He placed his right hand under Palmer’s chin and lifted the head and body into an upright sitting position. He raised Palmer’s right hand and pressed the muzzle of the gun on the wound he’d made in Palmer’s temple.
James Beck leaned left a bit, but did not look away. He watched to make sure he’d set everything correctly. Breathing short breaths under the strain of holding the head, body, and gun in position, Beck felt a grinding, sick feeling in his stomach. He wasn’t sure what caused it. All the misery created by the ruthless, narcissistic young man in front of him, the pain caused by holding him in position, or the knowledge of what was about to happen.
Beck squeezed Palmer’s finger against the trigger.
The SIG Sauer emitted a sharp crack. The hot, empty shell flew up and away, and a great deal of John Palmer’s skull and brains exploded outward, splattering everything to the left of Palmer’s shoulder: couch, window, wall. And the suicide note.
The 9-mm bullet plowed into the Sheetrock wall, just below the window, penetrating into the brick that separated John Palmer’s private eighteenth-floor perch from the rest of the world beneath him.