“Do I look to you like I could pass for Cuban?”
“No, ma’am,” Brooks said, “but then you don’t look Italian, either.”
“I’m sorry,” Tricia said, “I’m just not comfortable—”
“That’s all right,” Brooks said, and she heard some more pages flipping. “If you’re more comfortable with our Sicilian friends, we have no shortage of assignments there, especially now, with Nicolazzo and Barrone out of commission. That creates a power vacuum and we have already heard this morning—on the QT, you understand—that certain men at the next level down are trying to fill it. There’s one fellow, for instance, who has been operating a brothel out of the Statler Hotel—he’s employed there as their house detective, if you can believe that.”
“Agent Brooks—”
“Then there’s another gentleman, Paulie Cusumano, a.k.a. ‘Paulie Lips.’ He runs a club called the Moon and word is he intends to turn it into a casino—”
“Agent Brooks!” Tricia had to shout to get his attention. “Agent Brooks. I appreciate what you’ve done for me, you and Captain O’Malley. You’ve given me a second chance and I won’t forget it. But I’ve had my fill of this sort of thing. I just want to lead a simple, quiet life from here on in. No criminals, no gunfights, no undercover assignments. Just working in the book publishing business with Charley—where at least in principle all the danger stays on the page.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Brooks said. “You have the makings of an excellent field asset.”
“Thank you,” Tricia said, “I think. But I assure you, my mind’s made up.”
“Very well. The government does not pressure its citizens. I’d like to think you might reconsider someday—but that’s entirely up to you. In the meantime,” Brooks said, “there are just a few loose ends I’d be grateful if you could help us tie up. For example, the matter of the stolen three million dollars. Are you quite certain, Miss Heverstadt, that you don’t have any idea who took it?”
“Quite certain,” Tricia said. And before he could say anything else she added, “Would you look at that? I’m so sorry, Agent Brooks, I just realized it’s almost noon and I have to be somewhere.”
“But Miss Heverstadt—” Brooks said.
“Goodbye, Agent Brooks.” She hung up.
Outside, Erin was seated at her desk, going through the mail that had piled up. She said, “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” Tricia said.
“Want to get some lunch?”
“Actually,” Tricia said, “all I want to get right now is some sleep. Could you let Charley know I’ll see him a little later?”
“Sure,” Erin said.
And Tricia headed out. But instead of going across the hall to her cot, she took the elevator downstairs.
Down the block, where it had once said “Red Baron” in Gothic letters, the sign now said “O.J.’s Bar and Grill.” Inside, the propellers and framed aviation pictures had been removed from the walls. The place looked unchanged otherwise, though, and was every bit as barren of customers at noon as it had been any of the previous times she’d come here. She ordered a coke from the bartender, who served it to her unenthusiastically. She carried it to one of the dark, anonymous booths against the back wall. Renata was right, she thought. These places did all look pretty much the same.
She didn’t have to wait long—maybe ten minutes. Don was the first to show up, coming in through a doorway labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY behind the bar. Larry appeared a few minutes later, walking in off the street. Larry’s beard had come in a bit more in the months since she’d seen him last. Otherwise, the two looked much the way they had, though she thought maybe their clothing seemed a little improved.
“Boys,” Tricia said, raising her glass and waving at them with it. “Want to come over here for a minute?”
“Why, it’s our authoress,” Larry said. “Our mystery writrix. What brings you here? Are you working on another book?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Tricia said, and there was something in her voice that stopped them dead.
Larry exchanged a glance with Don, who shrugged expressively. Without another word they came over to her table, Don drawing two glasses of beer along the way.
“You want another drink?” Don said, pointing at the finger of coke left in her glass.
“I still have some,” Tricia said.
“You know what they say, Don,” Larry said, “some people look at a glass as ninety percent empty, while others prefer to see it as ten percent full.”
“How did you know you’d find us here?” Don said.
“I didn’t,” Tricia said, “but I figured it was worth a try. This is the time we always used to meet when we were working on the book. Remember? Ten past noon.”
Larry took a long swallow of his beer. “Some people see it as ten past noon,” he said, “while others prefer to see it as fifty to one.”
She gave him a funny look.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” Tricia said. She turned back to Don. “You seem very much at home there behind the bar. You get a job here?”
“Not exactly a job,” Don said.
“What my friend is too modest to say,” Larry said, “is that he owns this place now. Bought it fair and square from the previous owner. Tore down that wretched bric-a-brac from the walls, turned it into a proper establishment one isn’t embarrassed to be seen in.”
“Really,” Tricia said. “And where, might I ask, did you get the money to buy a bar? You’d have to write a lot of travel guides to make that kind of dough.”
“My beloved aunt,” Don said, “passed away.”
“Ah,” Tricia said. “I’m sorry to hear it. And you, Larry? What are you doing these days? Still writing?”
“Of course—we both are,” Larry said. “We’re writers through and through. We will never stop.”
“That’s so,” Don said. “But what he’s too modest to tell you is that he has also opened a bookstore. Down in the Village. Sells used books. Some rare, some not so rare. A real addition to the neighborhood.”
“And where’d you get the money to do that?” Tricia asked.
“My beloved uncle,” Larry said.
“Dead?”
“The poor man.”
They all took a drink in silence.
“One of you want to tell me about it?” Tricia said.
“Not particularly,” Larry said.
“You know,” Tricia said, “all along we kept asking ourselves, who could possibly have read the book before it was published? It never occurred to me to ask, what about the guys who helped come up with the plot in the first place.”
“What finally made you think of it?” Larry said.
“You were overheard,” Tricia said. “Making your plans. This woman said she’d seen two men, one with a beard, one without, both New Yorkers by their voices, around noon in a back booth in one of her father’s bars. At first I thought she was just making it up to save her skin. But then it dawned on me about the names of the bars.”
“The names?” Don said.
“Her father’s name is Royal Barrone, and he’s in the habit of naming all his bars after himself: Royal’s Brew, the Rusty Bucket. The same initials. And then I thought about where we’d met to do all our plotting. The Red Baron.”
“I see,” Larry said.
“Why did you do it?” Tricia said, and she couldn’t keep her voice from quavering as she did. “Do you have any idea what sort of trouble you caused me? I almost got killed. My sister, too. Quite a few people did get killed. And for what? So you could run a bar?”
“And a bookstore,” Larry said.
“You risked your own lives, too,” Tricia said, “and on the basis of what, a crazy plot cooked up for a crime novel?”