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they find him?”
    “No,” she said, “but when they do, I’m going to kill him.”
    I knew enough not to ask any more questions.

CHAPTER 10
     
    IT’S HARD TO make it to the top in the entertainment business. It’s even harder to do it in Queens, three thousand miles from the heartbeat of the industry in Hollywood. But Shelley Trager, a street-smart kid who grew up on a tenement-lined block in Hell’s Kitchen, had pulled it off. Now, at the age of sixty, he was the head of Noo Yawk Films and part owner of Silvercup Studios, a sprawling bread factory in Long Island City that had been converted into the largest film and television production facility in the Northeast.
    Added to the Trager mystique was the fact that the success and the power never went to his head. According to BuzzFeed, he was one of the best-liked people in show business. He was also the driving force behind Spence Harrington’s stellar career.
    Spence was only six months out of rehab when Shelley took him on as a production assistant. A year later he gave him a shot as a staff writer on a failing show, and Spence turned it around. The young golden boy then pitched his own idea, Shelley bankrolled it, and the team had their first hit. A string of winners followed until Spence went out on drugs, and it all blew up.
    Shelley responded with tough love and banned Spence from the set till he finished rehab.
    Kylie pulled the car into the Silvercup parking lot on Harry Suna Place. Carl, the perennially chatty guard at the front gate, recognized her immediately.
    “Good morning, Mrs. Harrington,” he said, stone-faced. “Mr. Trager is waiting for you at Studio Four.”
    He waved her into the lot. No banter. No jokes. No eye contact.
    “This is worse than I thought,” Kylie said. “Carl won’t even look at me. Maybe I shouldn’t drag you into this.”
    “Into what?” I asked.
    “Somebody broke into the studio last night and trashed some sets.”
    “You’re not dragging me into anything,” I said. “It’s a crime scene. It’s what we do.”
    “Only this time I’m married to the person who did the crime.”
    “Do they have proof?”
    “No, but whoever broke into the lot went straight to Studio Four and destroyed two standing sets at
K-Mac.
”
    I winced. K-Mac had been Kylie MacDonald’s nickname back in the academy. I still used it. Spence had shanghaied it. He had created a show about a female detective named Katie MacDougal who had serious boundary issues. The fictional K-Mac was a lot like the one he was married to.
    Audiences liked the show. Kylie hated it.
    “I’m going with you,” I said.
    We entered the lot and made our way past a man with a bloodied knife in his chest, a burned-out city bus, and two nuns on a smoke break. As unreal as it all was, nothing prepared us for the devastation inside Studio Four. It looked like someone had taken a wrecking ball to it.
    Shelley was waiting for us inside the soundstage. “For the record, I’m not going to report what happened,” he said to Kylie. “You’re not here as cops. I called you because you’re his wife.”
    “Thank you,” she said. Then she walked slowly through the shattered glass and splintered wood that had been the squad room. Desks were overturned, computers smashed, and the ultimate insult: the NYPD shield on the wall had been spray-painted red. I’m sure the choice of color was not lost on her.
    She crossed the room to the other set—Katie MacDougal’s bedroom—stepping over the shards of broken mirror and glass bottles that had been on the vanity, steeling herself as she approached K-Mac’s bed, where the sheets, the pillows, and the mattress had all been slashed.
    She finally turned away. “Shelley, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know he’s mad at me because I wouldn’t take him back into the apartment, but …”
    “I kicked him out too. He’s mad at both of us, and he’s sending us a message.”
    Kylie shook her head. “What kind of message is