Page 2 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

“You’re going to have to hold your nose a little while longer, Hank,” Belmont said, “This astute young officer and I are going to take this egregious jaywalker upstairs for questioning.”

The sergeant gave him a sour stare. “You working traffic violations now, Detective Belmont?”

Jonas pointed at the derelict’s feet. “The shoes, Sergeant. The shoes.”

The man, a human dumpster from his head to his ankles, was wearing abrand-newpair of rich brown Ferragamo alligator leather oxfords. As soon as I saw him shuffling across Broadway against the red light, I figured they had to cost a thousand bucks. I was wrong. They were twelve thousand, and two days earlier they had been inside a suitcase that disappeared from a taxi rank outside the Pierre Hotel.

Belmont took it from there, and I watched in awe from the other side of thetwo-waymirror as hesweet-talkeda confession out of the man and got him to give up the name of the pawnshop that was dealing in stolen luggage.

When he was done, he gave me his card. “Good job, kid. Keep in touch.”

Did I ever, hanging around the squad room like a fanboy. Even after he retired, we stayed friends, and every couple of months I’d meet him for dinner and listen to him tell war stories and, of course, brag about his kids.

Evan, who had always wanted to be a cop like his dad, was now a detective working out of the Tenth Precinct in Manhattan. Vivian, who’d had the acting bug ever since she was a kid, had followed her dream to the High School of Performing Arts, then NYU, and was now out there occasionally landing a small part and waiting tables at a restaurant near Lincoln Center, hoping for her first big break.

And that’s where she met Warren Hellman. It started with a simple “Here’s my card. Call my office.” Then came the audition. She was perfect to star in his upcoming series. But of course, other young women were also perfect. The way Hellman spun it, beauty and talent were just the cost of entry. If he was going to work with an actress week in, week out, for the next five years, he had to make sure they had chemistry.

Vivian knew what that meant. Fuck the producer; become a star. The classic show businessquid pro quo. She didn’t hesitate.

It was heady at first. Restaurants, clubs, paparazzi, a key to his suite at theSherry-Netherland. She knew there was a price to pay. Sex with a man who repulsed her in every way. But she could do it. She was an actress, and his bedroom was just another stage. The alcohol and the cocaine helped.

The heroin came later. One night she was soaking in the tub, a glass of champagne at her side. The bathroom door opened. “I’m Jeff,” the man said. “Warren had to go to London. He sent me.”

“For what?”

“To keep you company till he gets back,” he said, peeling off his clothes.

“Jeff, please... I think...”

“No,” he said. “You don’t think. Warren doesn’t want you to think. That’s not part of the deal.”

He stood there naked except for the gold wedding band around his pudgy ring finger. “I’m an executive producer on the new show. The networks love the premise, love you, but they’re screaming for script changes before they sign off. Fucking networks, right?”

He produced a glassine envelope and tapped some powder onto the edge of the tub. “Help yourself.”

She put her finger to one nostril and snorted the white line with the other. Nothing. He licked his lips, waiting. And then it hit her. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before. Her body slipped back into the tub as the first wave of heroin bliss enveloped her. She felt his hand between her legs.

“Beats the piss out of cocaine, doesn’t it, sugar?” he said, sliding into the tub with her.

She couldn’t stop him. She didn’t want to stop him. She never felt so good in her life.

Three months later, hooked on heroin, forcibly removed from the hotel suite, unable to face her friends and family, Vivian Jean Belmont went down into the Columbus Circle subway station and threw herself in front of a moving train. The last dozen calls on her cell phone were all to Hellman. He never picked up. He was three thousand miles away in Hollywood, no doubt exploiting the dreams of other young beautiful women.

A month later Kylie and I were called to a town house on EastSeventy-FirstStreet. An intruder had broken in, and the homeowner had shot him inself-defense. The shooter was Warren Hellman.

My knees buckled when I saw the body. The man sprawled on the rug with a bullet through his head was my friend, my mentor, my hero: Jonas Belmont.

CHAPTER 2

There are three classesof people in New York City: the haves, thehave-nots, and the most rarefied of them all, thehave-lots. They are the superrich, the overprivileged few, the 1 percent of the 1 percent. Of course, there’s a downside to having all that money. A lot of people want to get their hands on it.

One of those people was Stanley Spellman, our former mayor. Stanley came up with an ingenious plan for winning the love and financial support of his richest and most powerful constituents. He ordered the police commissioner to create a special squad dedicated to solving crimes committed against them.

And so NYPD Red was born. Mayor Spellman lost his bid for reelection, but by then the Red team had made its mark, and the new mayor wasn’t about to deprive the city’s movers and shakers of their elite task force.

On the night that he shot and killed Detective Jonas Belmont, Warren Hellman made two calls. One was to 911. The system identified Mr. Hellman as one of New York’s platinum frequent flyers, and his case was routed to NYPD Red. When Kylie and I arrived at the house, Sonia Blakely, Hellman’s lawyer, met us at the front door. She was the first call he had made, and phone records would verify that there was aninety-two-minutegap between the time he called her and the time he reported the crime. A solid hour and a half for the two of them to concoct a believable story.

She led us to Hellman’s office, where Chuck Dryden and his crime scene investigators were already at work. Kylie pulled Chuck aside while I knelt beside Jonas, whose ginger hair was now caked withdark-redblood, his blue eyes fixed in a death stare.

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