“You don’t leverage guys like that.”
“My point,” agreed Rook. “I think he found that out the hard way, and meanwhile, his videographer slipped away under the radar — with the video as his insurance policy if he was ever found out.”
“I’m freaking out here,” Heat said. “Either your theories are getting better, or working with you, I’m starting to lose it.”
He cupped his hands and breathed like Darth Vader. “Nikki... Come to the Dark Side...”
She got out her phone and, while scrolling her address book, asked, “How confident are you that you can keep the tail on our friend?”
“Hey, that’s my ten grand. Highly.”
“And do you think you can resist getting yourself into trouble and call me when he starts to move?”
“Why,” he said, “where are you going?”
“A little divide and conquer.” She found the number she was looking for and pressed Send. “Hello, Petar? It’s Nikki, how are you doing?” While she listened to her old boyfriend celebrate hearing from her, she watched the mirror. At one point Heat flashed a glance at Rook and met the eyes of fear and loathing. Ever since Rook crossed paths with her former college live-in on a recent case, he could barely keep a lid on his jealousy. Even though Nikki ultimately shut down Petar’s attempt to rekindle, she could see that the green beast lived on in Rook. “Listen, Pet,” she said, “I have a favor to ask. You were freelancing for the gossip mags back around 2004, 2005, right? If I took you to coffee today and picked your brain about Gene Huddleston, Jr., would you have any dirt to tell me?”
When she hung up, Rook said, “That Croatian reprobate doesn’t know squat about Gene Huddleston, Jr., he just wants to have sex with you.” When she got out of the car, he said, “Hey, you forgot this.” He held out the new cell phone he got her and said, “Call me after?”
Heat leaned in the passenger door and took it from him. “Would it make you feel better if I had a chaperone? I could maybe ask Tam Svejda.”
Nikki was still grinning when she set out for the subway.
Ninety minutes later Rook was still on stakeout in Spanish Harlem when his cell phone buzzed. “Any movement?” she asked.
“Nothing. Even his driver shut off his engine. Say, that was a quick coffee.”
“I got what I needed and Petar had to get back to a production meeting.” Her old boyfriend was a segment producer for Later On, one of the numerous desk-and-couch shows that fought over insomniacs after Dave and Jay and Jimmy.
“That’s good,” he said.
“Rook, you are so transparent. You don’t even know what I learned from him, you’re just relieved he went straight back to work.”
“OK, fine. Tell me what you got from him.”
“Something that connects Huddleston, I think.”
“Tell me.”
“I need one more piece, and to get that I need to take a little trip out of town.”
“Now?” he said.
“If it weren’t critical, I wouldn’t go. This is why God invented homicide squads, so we could split up duties. You’re my squad now, Rook; can you cover that base until I get back later this afternoon? With train time I should be back by four, four-thirty.”
He paused. “Sure. But where are you going? And don’t say Disney World.”
“Ossining,” said Heat.
“What’s in Ossining, the prison?”
“Not what, Rook. Who.”
There was a small blue plastic litter bag in the glove compartment, and Rook was calculating how much urine it could hold. Images of him kneeling above it in the driver’s seat, trying to deal with the potential overflow made him chuckle, which only made his bladder press all the more. He thought, This must be what it’s like for those middle-aged dudes in that commercial, missing the big play at the ball park having to get up and run to the can. He was seriously thinking about a dash into the taqueria when he spotted motion in the rearview.
Martinez stepped out of the door to Justicia a Garda. He was followed by a man in a cammy jacket with a Che Guevara beard, who was carrying the Vuitton money bag. Rook remembered the face from Murder Board South as Pascual Guzman’s.
As before, Rook kept his tail loose, erring on the side of not being made, although their driver still didn’t seem concerned about anything but his own ride. After he looped a few turns and headed south on Second Avenue, the blinker came on after crossing East 106th, and Rook eased back to a stop at the corner and waited as the town car stopped mid-block. Guzman got out without the black bag and trotted into a mom-and-pop farmacia. While he waited, Rook dialed Heat, got immediate voice mail, and left her an update. By the time he was done with the call, Pascual Guzman was back outside fisting a small white prescription bag. He got into the rear of the Lincoln without looking back and the journey resumed.
They convoyed down Second until the lead car worked a right at Eighty-fifth that eventually fed them into a Central Park transverse much like the one in which Nikki got ambushed days before. Coming out the other side, Rook almost lost them at Columbus when the taxi he was following as a buffer stopped short to pick up a fare. He jacked the wheel and sped around the cab, managing to catch up with the Lincoln at a red light at Amsterdam. The light changed to green, but the car didn’t move. Instead Martinez and Guzman got out and entered a bar. Guzman had the black leather case with him. The town car left and Rook pulled into a loading zone around the corner from the pub.
He knew the Brass Harpoon for several reasons. First, it was one of those legendary writer’s bars of old Manhattan. Booze-infused geniuses from Hemingway to Cheever to O’Hara to Exley left their condensation rings on the bar and on tabletops at the Harpoon over the decades. It was also a mythical survivor of prohibition, with its secret doors and underground tunnels, long since condemned, where alcohol could be smuggled in and drunks smuggled out blocks away. Rook knew this spot for another reason. He could picture its name in Nikki’s neat block capitals on Murder Board South as the preferred hangout for Father Gerry Graf. He ruminated on the priest’s missing hour and a half between getting the video from Meuller and showing up drunk at the Justicia headquarters and the math wasn’t hard to do.
Rook was questioning what his next move should be. His bladder answered. On his way to the door he reasoned that neither Martinez nor Guzman had met him, so his chances of being recognized were slim. Unless he waited too long and walked in with wet khakis, he shouldn’t attract any notice. But then, this was the Brass Harpoon, so wet trousers were probably the norm. Safe either way then.
It was just after four and there were only six customers in the place. All six swung their heads to check him out when he stepped in. The two he had followed were not in sight. “What can I do you?” asked the barkeep.
“Jameson,” said Rook, eyeing the bottle of Cutty Sark on the top shelf under the small shrine that had been created in honor of Father Graf. His framed laughing photo was adorned in purple bunting, and a rocks tumbler with his name etched in the glass rested on a green velvet pillow underneath. Rook put some money down and said he’d be right back.
There were no feet under the stalls in the gents’. Rook hurried to his business, achieving blessed relief as he read the sampler hung above the urinaclass="underline" “ ‘Write drunk; edit sober.’ — Ernest Hemingway.”
Then he heard the voice he had been listening to at brunch that morning. Alejandro Martinez was laughing and joking with someone. He zipped but didn’t flush, instead roamed the restroom to hear which wall the voices were coming through. But they weren’t coming through the wall.
They were coming through the floor.
Easing out the men’s room door, Rook scoped the bar and saw a Jameson at his place, but nobody seemed interested in his whereabouts. He backed his way into the hall, and past the manager’s office, coming to a brick wall. He had read the legends — what writer worth his or her hangover hadn’t? He squared himself to that wall, scanning it, his fingers fluttering before him like a safecracker’s. Sure enough, one of the bricks had a slight discoloration, a patina of finger grime on its edging.