“This doesn’t sound remotely good.”
“It’s not,” he says. “Your good friend Allen Reese? Somebody put one in his forehead and one in the chest, and not too long ago, according to the ME.”
In the moment, my brain flashes right back to the woman at the flower shop in Bridgehampton having been murdered the same way, execution style.
“Not only did somebody shoot him,” Esposito says, “it looks like they did some job on his left hand before they did. Like they took a hammer to it.”
“Sounds as if Mr. Reese owed somebody money.”
“You think?”
I’ve already made the left off 111 and am now on the divided highway headed east, driving fast, though fast is arelative concept on this stretch of 27. I tell Danny Esposito I’m probably twenty minutes out and ask if Jimmy knows.
Esposito says he called him first, adding that it was a cop thing.
“I was a cop.”
“Ish,” he says.
“Watch it,” I say, and then ask who found the body.
“That’s the weird part. The cops found him. The killer used Reese’s landline to call them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish,” Esposito says. “You throw in the guy’s hand, and the whole thing brings, like, a whole new dimension to breaking news.”
“What did he say to the cops? The killer, I mean.”
“He said, and I quote, ‘You ought to head over to Allen Reese’s house,’” Esposito tells me. “Then he said, ‘Mr. Reese had an accident.’”
EIGHTY-THREE
ROBBY SASSOON HAS DECIDED to treat himself to a night at the Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton, and a meal at the Jean-Georges restaurant there.
The high-end inn, serving farm-to-table food, was originally owned by a famous New York City chef named Tom Colicchio. Though Colicchio sold the place a few years ago, Robby knows from experience that the quality remains at the superb level he requires when celebrating a job well done.
Now, before heading downstairs to dinner, he sits in his suite, following the reports about Allen Reese, well-known Hamptons real estate tycoon, shot to death in his own home, the lurid coverage making anybody reading it think that an oceanfront home in Southampton is suddenly less safe than if Reese had lived in the old South Bronx.
Robby was in no mood for any further lying from Reese today, or even tedious begging for his life once Reese realized why Robby had returned. Robby had been watching the house for several hours and had determined that Reese was alone. Finally, Robby came in through the unlocked patio door, found Reese in his study watching CNBC, put the first bullet in his forehead, then another in the chest.
He then used Reese’s own phone—a nice touch, he thinks, almost whimsical—to call the Southampton police.Now he’s smiling as he moves from website to website, pleased with how they all quoted him correctly.
Pity that no one will ever know who the clever bastard really is.
His cell phone, turned up loud, is playing “No Good Deed,” fromWicked,one of his favorite shows, when Sonny Blum calls, forcing him to pause the song.
“The assbird try to give you some bullshit about the money?” Blum asks.
“He didn’t get the chance,” Robby says. “We both know that once he got this far behind, he wasn’t going to pay. He could’ve put his hands on the money, but he elected not to. He’s supposed to have been such a smart businessman and didn’t understand the cost of doing business with us.”
“I gotta admit, I got a kick out of you calling it in,” Blum says.
“You have to keep things fresh in my line of work,” he says, “so you don’t get stale.”
Blum chuckles. “You really are a funny bastard.”
There’s a pause.
