Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“Don’t tempt me,” Emily said as she headed for the door.

Chapter 90

AFTER A HOT, frustrating ride back downtown, we headed directly up to my boss’s office on the eleventh floor of HQ to show her the hotel’s security tapes.

“The stones on this guy,” I said as we watched. “This place makes the Plaza look like a Days Inn, Miriam. And look at him. He’s walking around like he owns it. He even paid for his room with a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills.”

“What’s the progress on getting Berger’s assets frozen?” Emily said.

“The wheels of justice move slowly. Actually, in the summer in this city, they come to a grinding halt,” Miriam said, frowning. “Last I heard we’ll have the warrants by the end of the day, but that’s what they said yesterday. Berger’s lawyer, Duques, is the executor of the estate. Why don’t you swing by and appeal to his civic responsibility. It’s a long shot, but maybe it’ll get him to shut his damn mouth to the press for five minutes.”

We took another leisurely roll in the baking midday gridlock back up to midtown. Allen Duques’s office was in a glass pagoda-shaped building on Lexington Avenue across from Grand Central Terminal. I parked my unmarked in the middle of a bus stop across the insanely congested street and threw down the NYPD placard on the visor so it would still be there when we returned.

Duques’s firm was on thirty-three. The outfit had the entire floor. Right out of the elevator, the name of his firm, Hunt, Block & Bally, stood in yard-high stainless-steel letters on the Brazilian Cherry wall.

“Mr. Duques?” said the brunette waif of a receptionist behind the glass door after we asked to see him. Her fine-boned model’s face looked amazed, as if we’d just asked her to tell us the meaning of life.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Duques is booked all day,” she informed us.

“Yeah, well, this is important,” I said showing her my shield.

“Really, really important,” Emily said, flipping her Feds creds for good measure.

Even with all our magic badge power, we had to wait another ten minutes before another attractive flunky, who looked like she ate maybe every other day, showed up.

I trailed a finger along one of the exotic-wood-paneled hallways she led us down.

“So this is what the corridors of power look like,” I said, nodding thoughtfully.

Around a corner, Duques stood in his office doorway, smiling pleasantly. The preppy bespectacled gent shook our hands before getting us seated in his plush office. He reminded me of the fancy hotel manager, polished and perfect, not a damn wrinkle in his white shirt even when he sat down. I, on the other hand, was sweating like a pig in a hot tub, despite the A/C. How did these rich guys do it?

“Now, what can I do for the NYPD and the FBI?” he said after we declined his coffee offer. The trim, middle-aged lawyer seemed affable and down-to-earth, which most likely wasn’t easy for him, considering his socks had probably cost more than my shoes.

“We were wondering if you could help us,” I said.

“I can try,” he said, eyeing us carefully. “What’s the problem?”

“We have reason to believe that Carl Apt still has access to Lawrence Berger’s money,” Emily said. “To be frank, we’re working on a warrant to have Berger’s assets frozen, but it won’t happen until tomorrow at the earliest. We know you’re the executor of Mr. Berger’s estate, and we’re here to ask you to freeze action on all accounts before anyone else is killed.”

“Hmm. That’s a tall order,” the lawyer said, leaning slowly back in his chair. “You’re assuming a lot. I’m not even sure I should admit that my client had a relationship with Mr. Apt.”

“Crazy assumption, I know,” I said, “considering your client admitted to it and to his guilt in his signed confession before he killed himself.”

Duques took off his glasses and chewed on an endpiece.

“A signed confession that I’m going to fight to have expunged,” he said.

“We’re not here to bicker, Mr. Duques,” Emily said.

She placed a sheet of paper on the lawyer’s desk. It was a printout of Apt and the hooker at the Carlyle from the security tape.

“This morning, we found this woman dead at the Carlyle Hotel,” Emily said, tapping the paper. “Apt paid two thousand dollars in cash for the room that he killed her in. We know Apt isn’t indepen

dently wealthy. Berger took him in off the street.”

“Allegedly,” Duques said, raising an eyebrow.

“Right,” I said, going into our folder and showing him a crime scene close-up of Wendy Shackleton’s beat-in face. “And see, this is where Apt allegedly bashed in this young lady’s alleged face with an alleged chair leg.”