“I vote Coco Pazzo,” Mollie said.
“Too expensive,” Sarah said.
“My treat,” Heather said.
“Even so.”
“Omelettes, then,” Heather said, and sighed heavily.
“How come you always have the last word?” Mollie wanted to know.
“But I don’t,” Sarah said.
“Yes, you do, Mom. I want Coco Pazzo, Aunt Heather wants Coco...”
“They’re always booked solid,” Sarah said, “you have to call weeks ahead. Anyway, do you really want to walk all the way up there in this freezing...?”
“Cabs, sweetie,” Heather said, and winked at Mollie. “New invention. Yellow, motorized, all the rage.”
“Sure, just try to get one in this weather,” Sarah said.
“But suppose we can get one?” Mollie said.
“And suppose he’s willing to drive us up to Seventy-Fourth?” Heather said.
“And suppose we get there without crashing into a telephone pole or anything...”
“And suppose they can take us for lunch?”
“Would you then be willing to eat there?”
“Listen, I don’t give a damn where we eat,” Sarah said, suddenly annoyed. “Just stop ganging up on me, okay?”
“Wow!” Mollie said. “Where’d that come from?”
“We’ll eat the fucking omelettes, okay?” Heather said.
“And watch your mouth when Mollie’s around,” Sarah snapped.
“Mom, I’ve heard the word before, really,” Mollie said, and rolled her eyes.
“Fine, you’ve heard it, that doesn’t mean your aunt has to use it every ten seconds.”
“Use it every...?”
“And bimbo and hanky-panky and whore gandy or whatever the hell else you...”
“Hey, listen...”
“Come on, Mom...”
“No, you listen! Every time the two of you get together, I become the...”
“Mom, what the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Let’s drop it, Mollie,” Heather said.
“Right, let’s drop it!” Sarah said.
They walked in silence past Saks and then St. Patrick’s, Sarah fumingly aware that Heather and Mollie were exchanging puzzled glances. By the time they reached Tiffany’s, her anger had dissipated, and she was beginning to wonder what had prompted her outburst.
“Okay, we’ll go to Coco Pazzo,” she said, “If they can take us.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve changed my mind about treating,” Heather said, deadpanned.
“Then I’ll treat, damn it!” Mollie said.
They all laughed.
Sarah guessed everything was all right again.
The Tech Unit detective Michael had chosen was named Freddie Coulter. He had the long rangy look of an adolescent, with narrow hips, a thin face with high cheekbones and dark brown eyes, unruly black hair, and a black mustache that looked borrowed from a western gunslick. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved chambray shirt, and a blue denim vest. A .38 Detectives Special was holstered to his belt on the right-hand side of his waist. Coulter was a Detective/First attached to the District Attorney’s Office Squad. He listened intently as Regan and Lowndes told him what he could expect at the tailor shop tonight.
“Today’s Sunday, so the shop is closed,” Lowndes said.
Jackass, Regan thought. Would they be sending him in if the place was open?
“There’s no alarm,” he said.
“The Mafia doesn’t need alarms,” Lowndes said.
“Anybody crazy enough to rob a Mafia joint deserves everything coming to him.”
“You rob a Mafia joint, the next day you have four broken arms.”
“That’s if you return what you stole.”
“No alarm,” Lowndes said, “and a Mickey Mouse lock on the front door.”
“What’s the catch?” Coulter asked.
“The catch is there’s only the one door going in and that’s right on Broome Street.”
“Any cops, patrolling on foot?” Coulter asked.
“How’s that gonna help you?”
“Shake a few doorknobs,” Coulter said, and shrugged.
“Good idea,” Michael said. “Can we suit him up?”
“You get caught inside in uniform, you’re a dead man,” Lowndes said.
“I don’t plan to get caught,” Coulter said, and smiled.
“They find a uniformed cop in there, next thing you know your relatives’ll be sending flowers,” Lowndes said.
“To a funeral home,” Regan said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Coulter said.
He had a reputation for fearlessness which Regan personally found foolhardy. In this job, only a jackass took risks. You gave Regan a million bucks he wouldn’t sneak in no fuckin’ Mafia joint wearing a police uniform and carrying bugging equipment. Far as Regan was concerned, Coulter was the dumbest fuck on the squad.
“This is the layout,” he said, and began drawing a crude floor plan on a sheet of DAO stationery. Coulter watched as the tailor shop took shape. “The curtains going to the back are about here,” Regan said, and drew a series of slash marks on the page. “They’re on like metal rings...”
“You just shove them aside...”
“Right or left?” Coulter asked.
“To the left,” Lowndes said. “In back, there’s a pressing machine on the right and what looks like a table on the other wall.”
“What kind of table?”
“We’ve never been back there,” Regan said. “This is just what we were able to catch, the times we been in the shop.”
“Is there a phone back there?”
“Telephone company says there are two phones in the shop.”
“One of them in the back room?”
“Is what we figure.”
“What kind of warrant do we have?”
“Basic bug.”
“No wiretap?”
“No. We already got an access line for you, by the way.”
The access line was what they would need to activate the bug Coulter installed. As soon as they’d obtained their eavesdropping warrant, Regan had called New York Telephone to say he was with a security company that needed an access line in the terminal box behind the Broome Street address. This was standard operating procedure. A security company, an alarm company, a data communications company, anything of that sort. The billing addresses for the fictitious firms were separate mail drops maintained by the NYPD.
“Where’s the terminal box?” Coulter asked.
“Out back on the rear wall of the building.”
“That’s the way they have them down there in Little Italy and Chinatown,” Lowndes said. “Them old buildings.”
On any hard-wire installation, Coulter connected his bug to the existing telephone line. The bug took the normal audio signal, raised it to a frequency much higher than could be heard, and using the phone line as an antenna, passed it on to the terminal box. Inside the box, Coulter would install a device known as a “slave,” which would take the high-frequency signal, demodulate it, and bridge it electronically to the access line, where anyone listening would again hear it as a normal audio signal.
“Should be simple,” Coulter said.
My ass, Regan thought.
The phone on Michael’s desk rang. He picked up at once.
“ADA Welles,” he said.
From where Sarah stood at the pay phone, she could see Mollie circling the rink, trying to do a series of linked pirouettes.