EIGHTY-FIVE
WITH my arm around Madame, we pushed through the Village Blend’s front door, just as Esther Best was preparing to lock up for the night.
“Wow, boss lady! You look terrible!”
“I smell worse.”
“Yeah,” Esther said, holding her nose. “Like a fire sale.”
I sat Madame down into the nearest empty chair. “What time is it?”
“Twelve fifty. Last call was five minutes ago. We only have one customer left.”
“Clare!” Lori Soles was already hurrying toward me. “I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour. I thought I would stop by to see what happened to Matt’s mother—”
“I was kidnapped, twice, that’s what happened.” A breathless Madame patted my hand. “But Clare rescued me both times.”
Lori blinked. “So you know the black Jaguar was rented to—”
“Bruno and Donatella Campana.”
“And that they are staying at—”
“An Airbnb apartment in Brooklyn. I know.”
“Then, should we pick them up?”
“You might want to dispatch the Crime Scene Unit. An Italian man named Gino Benedetto was murdered there. The Campanas didn’t kill him, although evidence will look like they did. I’m a witness and can testify to their innocence—at least to murder.”
“Talk about behind the curve,” Lori cried. “Why did I bother to get out of bed?”
“To make the bust of your career.”
“Huh?”
“We have to go to the Diamond District, right now. I’ll explain on the way.”
“But I just heard from my commander. Everybody’s being called in. All hell’s broken loose in Washington Heights, and down in Battery Park, too. Nothing is going on in Midtown.”
“Yes, and that’s exactly the plan.”
“What plan?”
“I’ll tell you on the way . . .”
* * *
THE Diamond District was three miles from the Village Blend—a thirty-minute drive under “normal conditions.”
Detective Soles was determined to make it in under twenty.
At nearly one AM, traffic was light. Lori used that fact as an excuse to weave around the buses, cabs, cars, and pedestrians we did see. She blasted through a few red lights, too, but at least she didn’t blast the siren.
“Tell me again what you think is going on,” Lori said. “And why you don’t want me to use the siren?”
“Victor Fontana is behind a jewel heist that’s taking place right now. His hired people have taken my ex-husband hostage. They’re going to make Matt take at least one of their crew down to the Lyons Security underground vault, to steal the Eye of the Cat—and probably much, much more. There’s a fortune down there for the taking. And they likely have an accomplice inside.”
Lori seemed unconvinced. “And you think this has something to do with the NYPD alert tonight?”
“Everyone has been led to believe that Eduardo De Santis is behind the Panther Man shootings—Quinn, McNulty, and their squads.”
“You know, right now, there are ‘shots fired’ incidents coming from uptown and downtown?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Uptown and downtown, but not Midtown. Not anywhere near the Diamond District. Lyons Security runs an all-access vault, 24/7. This late at night, with the police intensely focused on alerts far from the area, it will be much easier to disable security systems, gas guards, and get away with hundreds of millions if not billions in precious gems and metals.”
“Why don’t I just call this in?” Lori asked. “And warn Lyons Security that something is up.”
“Because these thieves are holding Matt hostage, probably at gunpoint. If they’re trapped by security, they will use him as a shield if they have to shoot it out, and Matt may die.”
“So we’re just going to sneak up on them?”
“Kind of . . .” I said reluctantly.
Lori stated the obvious. “That’s not a plan, Clare.”
“No, it isn’t. But according to your own ETA, I still have five minutes to come up with one . . .”
* * *
FOUR minutes later, I still had nothing.
“Okay, we’re here.”
Lori pulled up to the Fifth Avenue main entrance to the Diamond Tower. The lobby lights were dim, and there was no sign of activity, normal or otherwise.
“Nothing to see here,” Lori said.
“Circle the block. Let’s look for a garage entrance . . .”
We parked within sight of a large metal door. Sure enough, after ten minutes of waiting, it rose to reveal an illuminated loading dock. I saw the Lyons Security cat’s paw logo on the wall. A panel van and a black SUV were the only occupants. As they rolled onto the street, the SUV in the lead, I spied the logo on the side of the van—Village Blend Coffee.
“Oh, for the love of—that’s them!” I cried. “Follow that van!”
Lori hit the gas.
“Why are we following your Village Blend coffee van?”
“Because it’s not our van! Someone wants you to think it is.”
“Why?”
“To go where the delivery of a van full of coffee would not look out of place.”
“Where?”
“An ocean liner!”
It all made sense, now . . .
Victor Fontana invited the Village Blend to participate in the very public Andrea Doria coffee competition. It was a last-minute invitation, and now I knew why, because the Village Blend was the only coffee roaster that had a warehouse in Red Hook. And, thanks to Monica, Fontana knew all about the real Eye of the Cat and Matt’s connection to it!
“They’re going to Pier 12, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal,” I told Lori.
From behind the wheel, she looked skeptically at me. “How can you be so sure?”
“It’s perfect camouflage. A coffee delivery to an ocean liner sailing in the early morning. Only below the coffee sacks, this van is filled with billions in treasure from the Lyons vault. Once they had Matt get them inside, the sky was the limit. I’m sure they grabbed as much as they could.”
“I think Matt might be safe so far,” Lori speculated. “If they’re smart, Matt’s driving. That way, if they’re stopped, your average officer will check his license and think, Well, it’s the co-owner of the Village Blend, so it must be legit. And let them walk.”
“Just like the cops let a woman walk through their perimeter the day Sully was shot.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t their fault. Thanks to my eyewitness account, patrolmen were on the lookout for a strapping male in a Panther Man costume, not a pretty, wide-eyed grad student from South Africa in a short skirt—even if she was carrying a backpack with a deflated Panther Man costume and a dismantled sniper rifle.”
“Clare, the crime in progress now is my concern. And right now we need reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements we can trust,” I noted. “Which means no McNulty or any of his people. For this collar, we need Mike Quinn, Sergeant Franco, and the entire OD Squad.”