That was a memory she didn’t want to dwell upon. Once a week, on Friday nights, she would ride the elevator to the basement lot with Levy. He would lean against the opposite side of the elevator car, pretend to look at his phone, while Kate stood with a box of files at her feet. She could feel him watching her, staring at her ass and her legs. She could almost feel his gaze intensifying when she bent to pick up the boxes from the floor.
Levy never carried anything heavier than his cell phone.
The memory made her shiver. She touched the control panel on the dash, locked the doors on the car and selected the heating options. Within seconds, warm air was flowing through her seat. She needed it tonight.
Looking down at her training shoes, she saw the file of papers she had taken from Levy in the station. She was supposed to put those in the trunk safe. What was it he’d said about them? They might upset Alexandra?
The precinct entrance was visible from where Levy had parked. Kate took a long look, making sure her boss didn’t suddenly come charging out. He could be in there for most of the night. Kate picked up the file, opened it and began to flick through.
Scott had put together a dossier on Frank Avellino, and his daughters. Most of it came straight from the internet. Photographs of Avellino when he’d been elected for the first time. He stood at a podium, flanked by his second wife, Heather, and a much younger Alexandra. There were no pictures or mentions of Sofia in this article. Avellino ran on an anti-corruption ticket. He was going to clean up the unions, the lobbyists and City Hall.
A familiar story. And Kate knew how that had turned out.
Six months into his first term and Avellino was facing an investigation into receiving off-the-books payments from two construction unions and an investment fund that bankrolled casinos. It didn’t take long for Avellino to steamroll the story.
For someone who was anti-corruption, dirt seemed to follow Frank Avellino like that kid from the Peanuts cartoon. There were pictures of Frank in restaurants and at social events with movie stars, writers, directors, real-estate moguls and well-known mobsters like Jimmy ‘the Hat’ Fellini. His revitalization programs always seemed to have accounting difficulties, like the two-million-dollar clean-up scheme he ran in the Bronx, which somehow had three hundred grand unaccounted for. It was a construction firm with affiliations to Jimmy ‘the Hat’, which carried out renovations to the First Precinct, and it had been no surprise the valuable iron doors that had been part of the old cells were inexplicably lost during the works.
There were another two dozen articles and Kate skipped through them, looking for something on the family.
Then she found a puff-piece profile lifted from an online edition of a popular magazine. It detailed Avellino’s modest roots in Brooklyn, and his rise through a business empire based on flipping real estate, right up to his re-election as mayor. There were pictures taken in the family home in Franklin Street. The article was three years old. No sign of the second wife, Heather. It was just a series of photographs of Frank at home, with the exception of one picture.
He sat in what looked like a study. There was a bar beside a long desk, and TVs on the opposite wall. Frank sat behind the desk, flanked by two young women. One was tall and blonde, the other shorter and dark-haired. Light and dark. The caption said ‘At home with Frank: L – R Alexandra Avellino, Frank Avellino, Sofia Avellino’. Kate noticed that the two girls stood with their backs to Frank, and each other.
There was little mention of the family in the article. Frank merely said that Alexandra showed great promise as a businesswoman, and was already making a name for herself in the Manhattan real-estate community. And he had high hopes for Sofia as an artist. He knew his girls would make it on their own – they were smart and both had been chess prodigies even though neither of them played anymore.
Kate read some more about the family but couldn’t find anything that talked about Frank’s first wife – the mother of Sofia and Alexandra. Heather had been his second wife, but she had died. No information on how or when. One thing was clear, Heather was far too young to be a mother to two grown-up daughters.
She closed the file, yawned, then put the folder back on the floor. The heat was making her sleepy. She pulled out her phone, checked Twitter. So much noise, and anger. It made her feel sick sometimes. She closed the app and laid her head against the back of the warm seat and wondered when the world had become so crazy.
TAP! TAP! TAP!
Kate jolted awake, momentarily unsure of where she was, or what was going on. With the heater on she must’ve dozed off, but for how long? She looked to her right and saw Scott rapping the passenger window with a knuckle. She shook herself awake, then opened the door and got out.
‘Working hard?’ said Scott.
Kate opened her mouth to say something clever, but he cut her off.
‘You’re up. Theodore wants you in there to take notes. There’s been a development and I have to go check it out right away. Something to do with Frank’s lawyer, Mike Modine, and a will. Look, I shouldn’t be longer than a few hours. I’ll come back and take over later.’
‘No, no. No need. I can handle taking some notes. You go run your errands,’ said Kate.
She could tell he was seething at being jettisoned from the interview to go on donkey work. He stepped into the street, hailed a cab and went off in pursuit of another one of Levy’s whims.
Kate locked the car with the fob, the files safely in the trunk, and was about to walk into the station when she heard an ambulance roar around the corner. It stopped outside the precinct with a jolt. A man in a black jacket and jeans came out of the station. He carried a young woman in his arms. She wore a jailhouse jumpsuit, she was dark-haired and her chest and neck were covered in blood. It was Sofia Avellino. She recognized her from the photos in the file. Behind him came two plain-clothes detectives, a desk sergeant and another uniformed officer.
The rear doors on the ambulance were flung open. Two paramedics bounced a gurney onto the blacktop and ran over to the man carrying Sofia. Kate saw a huge bandage on Sofia’s wrist and noticed she was only semi-conscious. The man in the black jacket laid Sofia gently on the gurney. He leaned over, put his hand on top of her head and with his thumb he gently stroked her forehead, dislodging the hair that had stuck to her skin with sweat and blood. All the while he spoke softly. His voice was gentle, comforting.
‘It’s going to be okay, Sofia. I’m going to help you. I promise I’ll do my best,’ he said.
The woman seemed to smile, weakly, and closed her eyes.
One of the detectives stepped forward, brandishing a pair of handcuffs. He snapped one cuff onto the bar of the gurney.
‘If those cuffs touch her I’ll make you swallow them,’ said the man in the black jacket.
‘Tyler, leave her alone. She’s in a bad way. One of my officers will ride along,’ said the man in the sergeant’s uniform.
‘Back off, Bukowski, I’ll go with her,’ said the detective with the cuffs, Tyler.
‘No, you won’t,’ said the man in the black jacket. ‘Bukowski’s man will take her. He’s not on the case. He won’t be tempted to question her while she’s in the back of the ambulance.’
Tyler pursed his lips flat, took his handcuffs off the gurney and stepped away. The uniformed officer took one end of the gurney, helped the paramedics load her into the ambulance. Sergeant Bukowski continued to argue with the detectives as they marched back into the precinct.