It was already starting to get dark at four thirty. This city in January, you could have sunshine all day or you could have a day like today which was gloomy all day long and which got dark before you could take a deep breath. Streetlights were on already, car headlights beginning to come on as Regan nosed the Ford through the harsh gathering dusk, sticking close behind the Acura, not wanting to lose Faviola if, in fact, he decided to make the Delancey Street turn onto the Williamsburg Bridge. Which is just what he did do.
“Told you,” Lowndes said.
Fuckin’ genius.
The lights on all the bridges were on. You could look up and down the East River and see this winter wonderland of lights in both directions. Regan memorized the bridges on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in ascending alphabetical order. Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg. B, M, W. Like the car. Further uptown, his alphabetical system started all over again, but it still worked. Q and T for the Queensboro and Triborough bridges. It worked on the West Side of Manhattan, too. Everything in ascending alphabetical order from downtown to uptown. The Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel, and then the George Washington Bridge. H, L, and W. If you had a system, everything in the world was simple.
They were on the Brooklyn-Queens elevated highway now, the lights of apartment buildings and factories flickering on sporadically as they moved into the fast-approaching darkness, the Acura speeding into the night ahead of them.
“Probably heading for the LIE,” Lowndes said.
Brilliant fuckin’ deduction, Regan thought sourly.
The Long Island Expressway was jammed with traffic at this hour, the way it was every weekday all year round and on weekends, too, during the summer months. Get a snowstorm anytime during the winter, you could spend the better part of your life trying to get home on the LIE.
“Lots of these wiseguys live on the island,” Lowndes said.
Sighing heavily, Regan settled back for a long ride.
He could not stop thinking of her.
She had left him at two o’clock yesterday afternoon, making a phone call to her husband first, telling him she was in a phone booth at Saks, and would be heading home in a little while. He was not surprised by the speed and ease with which she’d learned to lie. He had earlier told her that he didn’t go around making passes at married women, but that had been a lie, too. He didn’t care if a woman was married or not, so long as she wasn’t married to anyone in any of the families. That could lead to serious trouble, hitting on the wife of anyone connected.
Before she left, he asked her where he could reach her, and she told him he couldn’t call her, she was a married woman, he had to understand that. He said, Okay, sure, nodding, shrugging, giving her a hurt little look, and then he wrote down both his numbers for her, the one on Mott and the one out on the Island. She’d promised to call. But if she didn’t, he’d wait for her outside the school again, or her apartment building, he wasn’t about to let this one get away from him.
They’d kissed each other deeply and hungrily just inside the door to the apartment, and then he’d walked her downstairs to the street door. Just before he unlocked the door to let her out, he’d said again, “I love you, Sarah.” She’d said nothing in response, just reached up to touch his cheek, her eyes searching his face, and then she kissed him quickly and ducked out onto the sidewalk.
I love you.
He said those words a lot, he guessed, to a lot of different women. He’d even said them to Oona Halligan last Friday, Oona, I love you, the three cheapest words in the English language, I love you. He didn’t suppose he loved Sarah Welles, but he sure loved fucking her.
Smiling, he glanced in the rearview mirror to see if there were any highway cops behind him, and then picked up the speed a little, pushing it as far as he could in this heavy traffic. When at last he pulled into the driveway of the house in Great Neck, he didn’t even notice the black Ford Escort that drove past the house as he hit the clicker and the garage door rolled up.
He was thinking that next time he saw her, he would insist on a number he could call. He didn’t like her being in control this way.
The twenty-four-hour surveillance of Andrew Faviola began the moment Regan and Lowndes reported to Michael at home that afternoon. Sarah was in the kitchen preparing dinner when the telephone rang. Regan told Michael that they’d located an address for the suspect, and Michael said he would immediately assign some detectives to work through the night, but that he wanted them back on the job first thing tomorrow morning. Regan asked Michael how he planned to run this thing, the usual eight-hour shifts, or what? Because it was now close to six o’clock and him and Lowndes had been on the job since eight this morning, which meant they’d been sitting on their asses in an automobile for ten straight hours. If somebody came out there to relieve them by seven, say, then why couldn’t a third team relieve tomorrow morning...
“... instead of us again, “Regan said. “This would give me and Alex till four tomorrow afternoon to pick up on Faviola again. That’s what I’m suggesting.”
Michael said he would prefer the second team relieving by seven, as Regan had suggested, but then have the third team come on at midnight, with Regan and Lowndes picking up the next morning at eight...
“... because you’re the two best people I have, and I want you on him during the daytime. And that’ll put us on a regular eight-hour schedule. Eight to four, four to midnight, midnight to eight. With you and Alex working the day shift every day. Till we find out what the hell’s going on here.”
“Well, we were working the day shift today, too,” Regan complained, “but now the night shift is half over, and we’re almost into the fuckin’ graveyard shift, and we’re still out here on Long Island. What I’m saying is I don’t want this to happen every day of the week, Michael, I don’t care if this guy is the boss of all bosses, you understand?”
“Well, I don’t think that’s what he is, but I can promise there won’t be any more long days like this one. Unless you choose to make them longer.”
What the fuck does that mean? Regan wondered.
“Okay, we’re in a development called Ocean Estates,” he said, “though there ain’t no ocean I can see, up the street from 1124 Palm, that’s the house he went in. Must be where he lives because he parked his car in the garage there. We’re on the corner of Palm and Lotus, fuckin’ names here, you’d think it was Miami Beach. Tell the relieving team we’re in a black Ford Escort. This is a busy place here, Michael, I don’t know how we’re going to sit this guy without one of the neighbors spotting us. Tell them to be careful.”
“I will.”
“Who do you plan on calling?”
“Harry Arnucci.”
“Okay, we’ll look for him.”
At seven thirty that night, Detectives/First Grade Harry Arnucci and Jerry Mandel relieved Regan and Lowndes, who were back on the job again at eight the next morning. At a little past ten a.m. that Wednesday, Andrew Faviola left the house and drove directly into Manhattan, where he parked the Acura in a space on Bowery again and then walked to a tailor shop on Broome Street, Regan and Lowndes following. He came out of the shop only once, to walk to a restaurant on Mulberry for lunch. He went back into the shop at two thirty and was still inside there when Regan and Lowndes were relieved at four. During that time at least a dozen men in heavy overcoats went in and out of the shop, some of them staying inside there for hours.