It smelled as though they were in the middle of a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which wasn’t surprising since it was a chocolate factory, specifically the main plant of Sweet Something Chocolates in south Brooklyn. The factory was in a stand-alone two-story building at the corner of Gold Street and Front that had once been a small restaurant. The reception area was very high-tech, done in chrome and black with a marble counter and glass display cases filled with examples of Sweet Something products.
There seemed to be everything from chocolate bunny rabbits to foil-wrapped chocolate effigies of the Virgin Mary and something that looked suspiciously like a vaguely pornographic naked Elvis. A teenaged girl in what appeared to be a candy striper’s uniform stood behind the marble counter with a completely insincere grin plastered across her pretty face. Behind her was a pair of double doors and behind them was the muffled sound of machinery.
“Hello and welcome to Sweet Something,” said the girl. “What sweet something can I help you with today?”
“I’m a cop,” said Slattery. “We’re here about a murder. We’d like to speak to your boss.”
“Gee,” said the girl, her eyes widening.
“No, your boss,” said Slattery.
“He’s in the back,” said the girl.
“Could you get him, please?” said Slattery. Carrie was looking at the displays. There were several examples of gold coins, but none of them was an 1863 twenty-dollar piece.
“I’m not supposed to leave my post,” she said, her face looking worried.
“This isn’t the Marines, kid; go get him,” said Slattery. He flipped back his jacket and showed her his holstered SIG-Sauer automatic. “I’ll mind the store.” The teenager’s eyes got even wider.
“Gee,” she said again. She turned and fled through the double doors.
“The smell is making me sick,” said Carrie.
“It’s making me hungry,” said Slattery. There was a Sweet Something coffee mug on the counter filled with chocolate swizel sticks. The detective took two and began to crunch his way through them. “Peppermint,” he said. “My favorite.”
Carrie pointed to the display case. “They make coins, just like the ad said.”
“But not the one we’re looking for.”
“The ad also said they did custom work.”
The double doors swung open, and a muscular bald-headed man with a battered face appeared. He was wearing a chocolate-smeared apron.
“My name’s Joe Torrini,” he said. “Sally said you were cops.”
“I’m a cop; she’s an archaeologist. My name is Slattery; she’s Dr. Norton.”
“What can I do for you?”
Slattery took a photograph of the 1863 coin out of his jacket and handed it to the chocolate maker, who looked at it briefly and nodded.
“Sure. The gold Liberty. It was a while back. He brought in a reproduction coin and we made a laser die from it. It was a short order. Ten thousand units, as I recall. It was for a fund-raiser.”
“Who brought in the reproduction coin?” Carrie asked.
“A guy named Ryan Trusell,” said Torrini.
“I know that name,” said Slattery.
“He’s Henry Todd Lincoln’s campaign manager,” said Carrie. “Lincoln’s fixer.”
While Henry Todd Lincoln occupied a penthouse apartment at 740 Park Avenue, perhaps the most prestigious address in New York City, Ryan Trusell, his campaign manager, preferred the relative anonymity of the Dakota. It somehow seemed fitting that Trusell, renowned as a political ax man and backstabber, should live in a building best known for its association with the assassination of John Lennon and as the setting for Rosemary’s Baby.
Carrie had seen an article in the paper about a plan to clean the exterior of the landmark building, but she doubted that it would ever happen. Half the cachet of the old relic was its long list of famous residents, but the other half was its blackened, slightly sinister look in what was now the ultramodern center of Manhattan. Beyond that, a cleaning would cost millions of dollars and would probably be structurally bad for the masonry.
Ryan Trusell occupied a subdivided four-room piece of what had once been Boris Karloff’s much larger apartment on the sixth floor, overlooking Central Park. It had a living room, a dining room converted into an office, a bedroom and a kitchen. There was an awful lot of dark wood paneling, Home Depot crystal chandeliers and heavy Victorian furniture that was brought over from England by the container load and sold as “important antiques” to unwary culture-desperate customers like Trusell. There were doilies and dusty-looking Persian carpets everywhere, and bad paintings of horses and battles from forgotten wars on expensively papered walls. It could have been the home of somebody’s dowager aunt.
Trusell looked like an undertaker. He greeted them at the door wearing a three-piece dark blue pinstripe, a Harvard Veritas silk tie and expensive-looking tasseled shoes. He wore round horn-rims balanced on a long nose that mimicked his overlong chin. The cheeks were a little sunken, his forehead arched up into thinning mouse-colored hair swept straight back in shiny, gelled perfection. The eyes behind the glasses were like lumps of coal, and when he smiled a greeting, it looked as though the slight movement of his thin lips would crack his entire face like a boiled egg.
He led them into the small living room and gestured toward a sofa upholstered in black and yellow stripes that might have suited Carrie’s grandmother. He lowered himself into a tall-backed armchair upholstered in the same fabric, tenting his fingers like an old-fashioned schoolmaster surveying a roomful of students. Carrie suddenly realized the role he was playing: it was a combination of Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett doing Sherlock Holmes. When he spoke he even had a faintly British accent.
“I’ve already been through this once with the other homicide detectives. I did what I could. I told them everything I know,” he said, and offered up his sour little smile for the second time. “I’m a little confused. Am I a witness or a suspect, or neither one?”
“Right now you’re nothing at all,” said Slattery.
“I see,” said Trusell, who clearly didn’t. Carrie could see that the position was making him uneasy. He was obviously a man who liked to know more than his companions. A gossiping spider in the center of his web; a man who used whispered confidences and secrets like a soldier used a gun.
“You ordered ten thousand chocolate coins from a place called Sweet Something in Brooklyn—is that right?” Slattery asked.
“Quite so.” Trusell nodded, the smile flickering briefly.
“They were stamped with gold foil imitating a twenty-dollar gold piece from 1863,” said Slattery.
“Right again,” said Trusell.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“That particular coin. That particular date.”
“For no particular reason,” answered Trusell.
“You just had one lying around?”
“No. Mr. Lincoln did. It was also the right size for the party favors I wanted.”
“A fund-raising dinner.”
“Yes.” The plummy English accent was slipping a little bit. Trusell was getting irritated.
“For the mayoralty campaign.”
“Yes. What else would Mr. Lincoln have to raise funds for?”
“Why a coin?”
“Because it’s known as the Liberty piece, which was the theme for the dinner.”
“Dinners need themes?” Slattery asked.
“Get to the point, Detective; what are you accusing me of?”
“During the last three months a number of homicides have occurred in Manhattan in which the victims had recently ingested your gold coins, foil and all. Your fund-raising dinner was fourteen weeks ago, two weeks before the first murder.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“I have no idea. You were the one who ordered the coins.”
“So?”
“It’s an obvious connection.”
“There are a dozen different explanations for the facts as you have presented them,” said Trusell.
“Sure, and Eskimos have a hundred different words for ‘snow,’” said Slattery. Carrie smiled but kept out of it. In the first place there was no such thing as Eskimos; in the second place there was no single Eskimo language; and in the third place, given the fact that Eskimo was a polysynthetic language, there were actually tens of thousands of words or word connections for “snow” in the dozen or more Inuit languages, but she didn’t think that was the point Max was trying to make.
“Again, what’s your point, Detective?” Trusell sighed.
“The coins originated with you. Whoever fed the coins to these people before they died felt they had some significance, just as you did.”
“I still don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Trusell.
“There are no coincidences in homicide. There are no mysteries like in an Agatha Christie story. There are only connections. It’s a complicated form of connect the dots. You’re the first dot.”
“How exciting,” quipped the campaign manager. “I’ve never been a dot before.”
“How were the coins distributed?”
“I’ll repeat what I told your colleagues. Every guest had one at his assigned dinner placement. There was also a large punch bowl filled with them at the entrance to the ballroom, and they were included in the gift bags everyone was given on the way out.”
“How many were left over?”
“I wouldn’t have the foggiest notion.”
“Where would the leftovers have been taken?”
“If they weren’t thrown into the garbage, they would probably have been taken to campaign headquarters.”
“Where’s that?
“The Graycliff.”
Carrie nodded to herself. In the heart of Wall Street, the old McKim, Mead and White building had been a landmark New York City hotel for a hundred years, surviving the 9/11 disaster where other, much larger concerns such as the Regent Wall Street had failed. It had also been LinCorp’s flagship piece of Manhattan real estate right from the start.
“The hotel?”
“Yes. The entire no-floor.”
“No-floor?”
“It’s an old-fashioned hotel. The thirteenth floor doesn’t exist on the elevator buttons. It goes from twelve to fourteen. The thirteenth has several corporate suites and conference rooms. It’s only accessible by a special key.”
“So the coins would be there?”
“They might be. As I said, they may simply have been thrown in the garbage.”
“I’ll need to talk to Mr. Lincoln about this.”
“He’s a busy man.”
“So am I. So was Jack the Ripper. I’m sure the future mayor would like to help out New York’s Finest.”
“I’m sure he would too,” said Trusell, the smile flickering again. “But what would that have to do with you and your shy lady friend here?” he added. He glanced at Carrie. “You haven’t said a word, dear.”
Carrie frowned at his condescending use of the word “dear.” She didn’t think that kind of man still existed in the twenty-first century. “I was wondering about that picture on the end table,” she said. The photograph was in an ornate pewter frame and appeared to be an old, faded daguerreotype of a bearded man in military uniform. “Civil War, isn’t it?”
Trusell glanced at the picture. He turned back to Carrie and shrugged nonchalantly. “I have no idea. Most of the things in this apartment are heirlooms. Trusells have lived at the Dakota since it was built.” He paused, then stood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal of work to do.”
“Fine,” said Slattery, levering his bulk upright. “I’d like that interview with your boss as soon as possible,” he said. Carrie stood up as well.
“I’ll see what I can do,” murmured Trusell.
Carrie crossed to the picture and picked it up. Trusell watched her.
“A relative maybe?”
“As I said, I have no idea,” answered the man. Carrie put the photograph down. She’d seen what she wanted to see. Trusell showed them out of the apartment, and they climbed into a waiting elevator.
“Little piss pot,” grunted Slattery as they slid slowly downward.
“Powerful little piss pot,” answered Carrie.
“What was that with the picture?” Slattery asked as the elevator bumped to a stop.
“I’m not sure,” said Carrie.
“He was trying to sound casual, but you asking him caught the little twerp off guard. His Adam’s apple was going a mile a minute there.”
“I saw.” Carrie nodded. They walked across the old-fashioned lobby and went out into the main interior courtyard.
“You recognize who it was?”
“No, but there were three stripes of gold lace on his uniform coat, which makes him a line officer, a captain of a ship in service. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out who he is.”
“You know a lot about that kind of thing?”
“You pick things up. The Civil War has always been a bit of a hobby with me.”
“You think it’s connected to our bog guy?”
“Could be.”
They reached the main entrance archway, the place where John Lennon had been shot down. There was the sound of a cell phone ring tone: “Aquarius.” Slattery dug in his pocket and pulled the phone out, scowling. “Stephen King was right about these damn things.” He flipped it open and clapped it to his ear. “Slattery.” He listened silently for a long time, then closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket.
“I’m really getting too old for this.”
“What?” Carrie asked.
“That was Diddy,” said the grizzled cop, referring to their young assistant. “He says the phones in the office are bugged. The whole place is. The computers too. He wants us to meet him at Nancy Whiskey’s.”
“‘Aquarius’?” Carrie grinned.
“It’s a remix.”