“Stan,” he said, “the girl is dead. I just heard from the South Beach Police, she was being held in a house out there. All three of the perps are gone. I’ve got full names for two of them, and a given name for the third. They made calls to Air Jamaica, British Air, Air France, American, Virgin Atlantic, and Delta. You’ve got better ties to Homeland Security than we do, maybe you can flash their names on the airport computers here and across the river. I’ve got Barney Loomis in custody, I think he was an accomplice…”
“Wait a minute,
“One of the perps called his home number every day in March.”
“You’ve been busy,” Endicott said dryly.
“Can you cover the airports?”
“What are those names you’ve got?” Endicott said.
BARNEY LOOMIS’ attorney was a man named Roger Halliday. He’d been watching
“Is my client being charged with something?” he asked.
“Not yet, Mr. Halliday,” Hawes said. “We’d just like to ask him some questions.”
“He doesn’t have to answer any questions, you know that.”
“Yes, we know that.”
“Has he been read his rights? The man’s under arrest here, have you yet…?”
“We read them to him in his apartment,” Carella said.
“Read them to him again now,” Halliday said.
Carella read Loomis his rights again.
Halliday looked bored.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked Loomis. “You don’t have to answer any questions if you don’t want to. My advice is you ask them either to charge you or let you go. Even if they charge you, you don’t have to answer any questions. This is America, don’t forget.”
“Charge me with what?” Loomis asked. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Why don’t you just satisfy our curiosity, Mr. Loomis?” Carella said. “Answer a few questions for us, okay?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Loomis said.
TWO HOMELAND SECURITY agents boarded British Air’s flight #82 ten minutes before it was scheduled to take off for London. They found Avery Hanes in the first-class section, where he was already enjoying a scotch and soda, and they asked him if he would mind accompanying them off the aircraft. Since they were both armed, he said he wouldn’t mind at all.
Fifteen minutes later, he ratted out Barney Loomis, and told them they could find Calvin Wilkins in American Airline’s first-class lounge. He also told them that his girlfriend Kellie Morgan would be landing in Paris at eleven-fifteen tomorrow morning.
Wilkins’ flight to Jamaica was not scheduled to leave until seven A.M. tomorrow morning. He was curled up asleep on one of the lounge’s sofas when they shook him awake. Looking up into what appeared to be nine-millimeter weapons, he said, “Oh shit.”
WHEN NELLIE BRAND got to the squadroom at close to eleven, she was still wearing the long green gown and green satin slippers she’d worn to the annual May Cotillion at the River Dix Yacht Club, to which she and her husband belonged. She was also wearing a mink stole, and a jade necklace her husband had given her this past Christmas, and she looked less like a District Attorney answering a rotation call than a stockbroker’s wife who’d been drinking champagne not an hour and a half ago, which she was and which she had been.
Carella took her aside and told her what he had.
“That’s purely circumstantial,” she said. “Is that why you dragged me all the way up here?”
“I think it’ll wash.”
“I don’t. Guy could’ve called him for any one of a thousand reasons besides criminal chicanery.”
“How’d he happen to know him? How’d he get his home number?”
“How do I know? Having a person’s home number doesn’t add up to kidnapping.”
“The girl’s dead, Nellie. This is now a death penalty case.”
“Where are these people with whom he allegedly conspired?”
“Flew the coop.”
“That’s nice. And you say they left a dead girl behind?”
“Yes.”
“This singer I’ve been seeing all over television?”
“That’s the one.”
“Very high profile, Steve. You’d better be right.”
“What can we lose?” Carella said. “Let’s give it a shot.”
“I must be out of my mind,” Nellie said.
THE Q ANDA started at a quarter past eleven.
It had been a long Tuesday for everyone in that room. Well, everyone except maybe the police stenographer, who took down every word as Loomis was read his rights for the third time, and then advised that he did not have to answer any questions if he chose not to…
“I choose not to,” he said.
“In which case,” Nellie said, “we’ll be charging you with Conspiracy to Commit Kidnapping…”
“That’s ridiculous,” Halliday said.
“…and Kidnapping itself, which is an A-1 Felony…”
“You truly can’t be serious, young lady.”
“Oh but I am, Counselor. Under the laws of this state, your client acted in concert, and it doesn’t matter whether he was a principal or an accomplice…”
