The Kill Room

A woman about the same age – Sachs made it mid forties – greeted her pleasantly and asked if she wanted tea or anything else.

“No, thank you.”

“My wife, Faye.”

They shook hands.

Sachs said to Farada, “Your company, Elite, said Robert Moreno generally used another driver, right?”

“Yes, Vlad Nikolov.”

She asked for the spelling, which he gave. Sachs jotted.

“But he was sick on May first and so they called me instead to drive. Could you tell me what this is about, please?”

“I have to tell you that Mr. Moreno was killed.”

“No!” Farada’s expression darkened. He was clearly upset. “Please, what happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“This is such bad news. He was quite the gentleman. Was it robbery?”

Demurring further, she said, “I’d like to know where you drove Mr. Moreno.”

“Dead?” He turned to his wife. “Dead, you heard. How terrible.”

“Mr. Farada?” Sachs repeated with patient insistence. “Could you tell me where you drove him?”

“Where we drove, where we drove.” He looked troubled. But he looked too troubled. Studiously troubled.

Sachs wasn’t surprised when he said, “Sadly I am not sure I can remember.”

Ah. She got it. “Here’s an idea. I could hire you to re create the route. To start where you picked him up. That might refresh your memory.”

His eyes pendulumed away. “Oh. Yes, it might. But I could have a regular assignment for Elite. I–”

“I’ll double your fee,” Sachs said, thinking about the ethics of paying a potential witness in a homicide investigation. But this case was fat with moral ambiguity from the top down.

Farada said, “I think that might work. I’m so very sad that he died. Let me make a call or two.”

He vanished toward a den or study, pulling his mobile from its holster.

Farada’s wife asked again, “There is nothing you’d like?”

“No, thank you. Really.”

“You are very pretty,” the woman said with admiration and envy.

Faye was attractive too, though short and round. Sachs reflected that one always envies whatever one is not. The first thing that she’d noticed about Faye, for instance, was that when she walked forward to shake the detective’s hand she did so without any hitch in her gait.

Farada returned, wearing a black jacket over the same slacks and shirt. “I am free. I will drive you. I hope I can recall everywhere we went.”

She gave him a focused look and he added quickly, “But once we start I think the places will return to me. That’s how the memory is, isn’t it? Almost a living creature unto itself.”

He kissed his wife and said he’d be back before di

She said, “A couple of hours, I’d guess.”

He and Sachs walked outside and they got into the black Lincoln Town Car.

“You don’t want to sit in the back?” he asked, perplexed by her choice of the front passenger seat.

“No.”

Amelia Sachs was not a limo girl. She’d been in one only once – at her father’s funeral. She had no bad associations with long black sedans based on that experience; she simply didn’t do well being driven by others, and sitting in the rear seat exponentially increased her discomfort.

They got under way. The man drove expertly through traffic, unwavering but polite and never using the horn, though they encountered several idiots whom Sachs would have blared onto the sidewalk. The first stop was the Helmsley on Central Park South.

“Okay, so I pick him up here about ten thirty a.m.”

She climbed out and walked inside to the hotel’s check in desk. The mission, though, was a bust. The clerks were helpful but didn’t have any information that bore on the investigation. Moreno had had several room service charges – food for one – but no outgoing or incoming calls. No one remembered if he had had any visitors.

Back into the limo.

“Where next?” she asked.

“A bank. I don’t remember the name but I remember where.”

“Let’s go.”

Farada drove her to a branch of American Independent Bank and Trust on 55th Street. She went inside. It was near closing time and some of the staff had left. The receptionist rounded up a manager. Without a warrant, Sachs couldn’t get much information. But the woman, one of those template vice presidents, did tell her that Robert Moreno’s visit on May first was to close his accounts and move his assets to a bank in the Caribbean. She wouldn’t say which one.

“How much? Can you tell me?”

Only: “Mid six figures.”

Not like he was laundering huge sums for the cartels. Still, this was suspicious.

“Did he leave any money here?”

“No. And he mentioned he was doing the same for all of his accounts in other banks.”

Returning to Tash Farada, Sachs dropped into the passenger seat. “And after this?”

“A beautiful woman,” the driver said.

She thought for a moment that Farada was talking about her. She then laughed to herself when he explained that he’d driven Moreno to the East Side and collected a woman who’d accompanied him for the rest of the day. Moreno had given the address – an intersection, Lexington and 52nd – and told the driver to pause in front of the building.

They drove there now and Sachs regarded the structure. A tall, boxy glass office building.

“Who was she?”

He answered, “Dark hair. I am thinking she was about five eight, in her thirties but youthful, attractive as I was saying. Voluptuous. And her skirt was short.”

“Actually I was more interested in her name and business affiliation.”

“I caught her first name only. Lydia. And as for business…Well.” Farada offered a coy smile.

“Well what?”

“Let me put it this way, I’m sure they hadn’t known each other before he picked her up.”

“That’s not telling me much,” Sachs said.

“You see, Detective, we learn things in this job. We learn human nature. Some things our clients do not want us to know, some things we  do not want to know. We are to be invisible. But we are observant. We drive and we ask no questions except, ‘Where do you want to go, sir?’ And yet we see.”

The esoterica on the Mystic Order of Limo Drivers was wearing and Sachs lifted an impatient eyebrow.

He said in a soft voice, as if someone else were listening, “It was clear to me she was a…You understand?”

“An escort?”

“Voluptuous, you know.”

“One does not necessarily mean the other.”

“But then there was the money.”

“Money.”

“Much of our job is learning not to see things.”

Brother . She sighed. “What money?”

“I saw Mr. Moreno give her an envelope. The way they both handled it, I knew it contained money. And he said, ‘As we agreed.’”

“And she said?”

“‘Thank you.’”

Sachs wondered what prim ADA Nance Laurel would think of her noble victim picking up a hooker in the middle of the day. “Did there seem to be any co

“She was in the lobby when we pulled up out front.”

Sachs doubted the escort service would have a cover operation here. Maybe this Lydia worked as a temp or had another part time job. She called Lon Sellitto and explained about the woman, describing her.

“And voluptuous,” Tash Farada interjected.

Sachs ignored him and gave the detective the address.

Sellitto said, “I got that canvass team together – from Myers’s division. I’ll get ’em started on the building. See if anybody’s heard of a Lydia.”

After they disco

“Downtown. Wall Street.”

“Let’s go.”

The man eased the Town Car into traffic. Speeding up, the big, spongy Lincoln wove through the congested traffic. If she had to be a prisoner in the passenger seat, at least she could take comfort that the driver wasn’t a plodder. She’d rather have a fender bender than a hesitant ride. And in her opinion faster was safer.