Mack shrugged. “Anything’s possible, but I don’t see him risking his own skin on anything that’s dangerous and hands-on. I’d associate him with something a little more stealthy.”
“Theft? Receiving stolen goods?” Womack proposed.
Mack shook his head. “Same answer as drugs.”
“Blackmail?” Shrader suggested. “Extortion?”
“That would be my bet, but I’m going to have our profilers take a look at him and see what they say. Leigh Manning probably has the answer, whether she knows it or not,” he finished, walking away from the chalkboard. “I want to question her today, but I’m going to try to be polite and do it with Valente’s approval. That’s all for this morning,” he said.
Sam had been waiting for those words. Grabbing her purse off the floor, she stood up and shoved her chair back into place.
“Let’s start working the leads we have—” McCord added, and Sam headed for the door, keeping Womack and Shrader between McCord and her, hoping they’d block his view. She made it almost to the doorway before McCord’s implacable order checked her in midstride: “Detective Littleton. I’d like a word with you.”
Chapter 63
* * *
Sam swore silently and turned, stepping aside to let Shrader and Womack pass her. With her handbag over her right arm, and her tablet against her chest, Sam reluctantly approached the man who had seated himself behind his desk and was looking at her in speculative silence.
“Why?” he demanded bluntly.
Several possible reactions flashed through Sam’s mind, all of them excellent diversionary tactics and highly effective methods of revoking the power of a male who had it, and who intended to demonstrate it. She decided against all of them and opted for honesty. “Are you referring to the ‘massage’ remark?”
He nodded silently.
“I wish I could tell you why,” she admitted, “but I’m not completely sure. I was a little off balance. You’ve probably been in situations like ours before, but it’s a little new to me.”
“Did your remark about the massage happen to relate to my hammering you twice about being a few minutes late?”
She thought about it, and nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I won’t overreact again.”
She saw it then—a glimmer of warm amusement in his eyes. “Neither will I,” he promised. In thoughtful silence, Sam considered his confusing answer and his amused expression. “By any chance,” she said, “did you do that because you thought I was all dressed up for a big date?”
He gave her a look of utter disbelief—as if the question she’d asked was laughable. “Of course.”
Sam bit back a smile and momentarily lost herself in his eyes, then she turned to leave.
Behind her, Mack picked up a pencil and said, “I haven’t pulled surveillance off Valente. When I know he’s at his office, I want to go and see him. I want to persuade him to let Leigh Manning talk to us—openly, without a lawyer obstructing every question I ask her. If I have to, I’ll have her brought in here for questioning, but I’d like to do this in a more civilized fashion for a change. You’re my best hope for getting in to see Valente.”
“Don’t pin much hope on me,” Sam said. “I crossed the line with him the moment I asked if he was there the night we told Mrs. Manning her husband was dead. He knew we would already know that, so when I asked him the question, he downgraded me to just another devious, conniving cop.”
“Just out of curiosity, why did you ask him that?” Mack asked, doodling on the yellow tablet.
“I wanted to see if he’d try to lie.”
Leaning back in his chair, Mack gazed thoughtfully across the room. “It’s in his best interest to let us talk to Leigh Manning. If I can just get in to see him, I think I can convince him of it. If I have him brought in here, he’ll come with a lawyer and we’ll have an audience of eavesdroppers. What I have to say to him I can’t say in front of anyone else.”
Thinking, Sam shifted her tablet to her right hand and held it against her purse. “In order to persuade him to see you—particularly without his lawyer present—you’d need to convince him that you’ve had a huge change of heart after yesterday, and that it’s final and authentic.”
McCord’s lips twisted in a sardonic smile. “He sent me a very clear warning yesterday through a friend of mine at Interquest. My friend says Mr. Valente is ‘deadly serious.’?”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Great.” She brightened suddenly. “I know a way that might work, but you aren’t going to like it.”
“Try me.”
“Give him back the best and only piece of incriminating evidence we have on him. Give him his note back.”
“You’re right, I don’t like it. It’s in complete violation of evidentiary procedure.”
Tipping her head to the side, Sam said, “That’s your position. His position would be that I confiscated something that didn’t belong to us, and that we’re keeping it in hopes of hanging yet another criminal charge on him and/or Leigh Manning. He knows that note is very valuable to us if we’re going to continue trying to hassle the two of them. He would also know all about our ‘evidentiary procedure,’ because he’s undoubtedly had to wait many times before we released his property back to him. Give him back the note,” Sam said, “and you’ll be making a very serious point with him.”
For a moment, Mack hesitated; then he capitulated. “All right, but make a half-dozen copies and have them authenticated. Then call the senator,” he added, “and tell him you may be late for cocktails.”
He knew! Sam realized. But then, of course, he would have made it a point to investigate her very thoroughly before letting her on the team. Mack was extremely thorough about everything he did. Including kissing. “Very well, Lieutenant,” she joked. “I’ll do that.”
Behind her, he spoke again, his voice solemn and husky. “Sam—”
She turned. “Yes?”
“You are very beautiful.”
Sam’s heart slammed into her rib cage. “Isn’t that funny—” she said in a breathless little laugh. “I was thinking that same thing about you.”
McCord watched her walk away; then he reached for his phone and noticed his doodling on the yellow pad. The page contained only one word, written several times in different scripts. Mine.
Chapter 64
* * *
At three o’clock, the police surveillance car A following Michael Valente reported he’d returned to his company headquarters on Sixth Avenue, in midtown Manhattan.
At three-thirty-five, McCord and Sam opened the tall doors marked “Alliance-Crossing Corporation, Executive Offices,” on the forty-eighth floor.
The receptionist’s desk was made of thick glass and situated in the center of a vast, carpeted area surrounded with seating groups arranged at discreet distances from each other. Beautiful glass sculptures, some of them large and abstract, gleamed beneath spotlights at positions throughout the room.
Several office doors, all of them closed at the moment, opened onto the reception area. Two men and a woman were seated near one of them, talking quietly; another man was leafing through a magazine near the windows, his briefcase on the floor near his feet.
McCord presented his card to the receptionist and asked to see Mr. Valente. As a rule, when presented with an official “calling card” from an NYPD detective, a white-collar employee responded with either alarm, curiosity, shock, or, occasionally, wariness. They did not respond with derision. The receptionist at Valente’s headquarters was a notable exception. An attractive young woman in her early thirties, she looked at McCord’s card, and then at McCord, and literally rolled her eyes in disgust before she got up and disappeared down a long hallway.
“I don’t think she was very impressed,” Sam joked.
“I noticed that,” McCord said, then he lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “If we get in to see Valente, he’ll try to record the meeting for his own protection, in case this is some sort of trap. He’s no novi
ce with the games cops play. Don’t say anything significant until I’ve persuaded him not to record it. If he doesn’t believe what I tell him, or if he chooses revenge over caution, I don’t want him to have a tape recording to give to his attorneys.”
The receptionist returned promptly, followed by an impeccably groomed middle-aged woman in a pale pink wool suit. She had short dark hair and the erect bearing of a queen—or a headmistress. Her voice was beautifully modulated but businesslike. “I’m Mrs. Evanston, Mr. Valente’s assistant,” she enunciated. “Please follow me.”