“Why come forward now?”
“I didn’t exactly come forward, did I? Your Mr. Doyle found me.”
“Come on, Marco. I’ve been around the block a few times myself. Brian wouldn’t have found you if you didn’t want to get found.”
“Georgie died fretting over whether he would have to tell the cops the truth to clear his name. He was afraid that if that happened, it would all come out. He didn’t want to hurt his family. He also forbade me from coming forward. He was like that.”
“And now?”
“He’s dead and buried, a hero. I need the doubts erased. I couldn’t live with myself if people continued to whisper that Georgie had anything to do with that woman’s murder.”
“You were with him that night and you can prove it?” I asked.
Marco didn’t answer. Instead, he stood up, and went into what I supposed was his bedroom. He came out holding a nine-by-twelve envelope and handed it to me.
“I can prove it and so can a hundred other witnesses. He was at both shows that night. It was a very special night, the anniversary of the first time we were together. It was also the night I premiered my Lady Gaga routine. Look for yourself.”
Sure enough, there was Marco on stage as Lady Gaga. And at one of the front tables in the time-and-date-stamped shots was Jorge Delgado’s smiling face. I put them back in the envelope and made to hand the envelope to Marco.
“No. Keep them. It will help. I want those whispers to be done with. Brian tells me you’ll know how to make that happen.”
I stood up. “I’ll try.”
He walked me to the door and thanked me for making this last gift to his lover a possibility.
“Can I ask you one thing, Marco?”
“Sure.”
“Why Delgado? It couldn’t have been easy.”
“We love who we love,” he said. “We love who we love.”
I had a sick feeling in the pit of my belly, not because of the cancer and not because of what had transpired between Marco and Delgado. On the contrary, I agreed with Marco’s view: we love who we love. The older I got, the less all the old rules mattered to me about the rights and wrongs of love and relationships. I thought about how destructive Carmella’s attitude was and who it really hurt in the end. What did any of those stupid shoulds and shouldn’ts accomplish except to ruin lives and crush hope? It was just that I was uneasy, that somehow I knew what Marco had given me as a gesture of love and absolution would be perverted into a weapon and that I would be the one to wield it.
When I got downstairs I realized I was only a block or two away from the High Line Bistro, a restaurant, frankly, I wish I had never heard of.
FORTY-THREE
In all things, success breeds complacency. It is dangerous and unavoidable. This was equally true for blackmailers and baseball players and bartenders. When you’re so sure things will go smoothly in the future because they have in the past, you’re bound to get bitten in the ass. Complacency, that’s what I was counting on as I drove Natasha around the Upper West Side in my rented Suburban, killing time until I had to drop her off.
She had been true to her word, cooperating fully without a word of complaint. As I instructed her to do, she had gotten in touch with her blackmailer as she always had, sending him an innocuous emaiclass="underline" Package ready. Just need an address. Then, within twenty-four hours, she received a call giving her instructions. No, she didn’t recognize the voice. She never could because he used one of those voice distortion boxes.
“The first two times,” she said, “he had me mail the cash to different PO boxes. After that, he had me drop it in garbage cans or leave it on a bench.”
“How much?”
“The first payments were for three thousand dollars each. Now they’re a thousand bucks each time.”
Clearly, the blackmailer-who I couldn’t help but see as Tino Escobar-wasn’t as trusting of the mail as his late partner. That and he was impatient for his money. That was good, a nice compliment to his complacency. His focus would be on the money.
“How much are you into him for?”
“Eleven thousand.”
I didn’t press her about it, nor did I ask her about how she felt when she heard Tillman was dead or when she found out that his death seemed to be beside the point. I didn’t ask her why she hadn’t gone to the cops immediately. I didn’t ask her where she was getting the money to pay. I didn’t ask her a lot of the questions it had occurred to me to ask. What did any of it matter now?
“I was tested,” Natasha whispered.
She could see the puzzlement in my eyes.
Tears were rolling down her freckled cheeks. “For HIV. I’m okay. I had the test the porn stars use when they get checked, the one that tells you right away. And I’ve had follow-ups.”
Neither of us commented on the irony in that. I’d been so focused on the nuts and bolts of the case, I hadn’t even thought about it. What an awful burden, I thought, as if the rape and blackmail wasn’t enough. As bad as I wanted to get this guy before, I wanted him much more now.
“Okay,” I said, handing the brown paper lunch bag to Natasha. “Just do what you always do. It’s okay to be nervous. He expects you to be, so if he’s watching you, he won’t see anything unusual. Make the drop like he told you and I’ll handle it from there. Just get off the train and wait upstairs.”
“Are you sure about this?” she asked. “The bag is awfully bulky.”
“I did that on purpose. It’s in small bills because I don’t want him to feel comfortable enough to take the money out of the bag and put it in his pockets. It’s easier to spot that way. Now go ahead, you should have plenty of time to walk from here to the 79th Street station.”
I didn’t follow Natasha. I knew where she was going and when she had to get there. Besides, Pam was already in position. I hadn’t told Natasha about Pam because no matter how much an amateur wants to cooperate, too much information makes them act in dumb and unnatural ways. The only thing I wanted Natasha to focus on for the moment was making the drop. When Natasha reached the corner, I put the Suburban in gear and drove over to the station.
The instructions were simple and it wasn’t hard to figure out the mechanics of how things would work. Natasha was to walk onto the downtown platform for the number 1 train and find the southernmost trash can on the platform. She was to wait until she saw the first number 1 train after two A.M. pull into the station, then she was to drop the lunch bag into the trash, and get onto the first car of the train. That was it. All very easy, quick, and clean. The blackmailer would either be on the platform or the train itself. The latter was the more likely because he wouldn’t risk being spotted before the train arrived. When Natasha got on the first car, he would get off the second or third car. He’d wait until the train pulled out of the station, walk over to the garbage, collect his money, and leave. There was a chance he might wait for the next train, but that seemed unnecessarily foolish and risky. He’d be a sitting duck. No, he would grab the sack and head right up to the street, grab a cab, or get to a car he’d parked close by earlier in the day.
I pulled over by a fire hydrant and kept the SUV running. I texted Pam my exact location. All things being equal, it would’ve been better if I could have been the one in the subway. Pam was a New Englander and though she had worked cases in New York City before and had spent a lot of time here since we began seeing each other, she didn’t know the lay of the land like a native. But all things weren’t equal. Natasha would have seemed way too comfortable with me close by. And the fact was, I’d been working the case for a while and many of the players, especially Escobar, knew me, knew my face. I’d also gotten a lot of press during the search for Sashi Bluntstone. I couldn’t risk blowing it all. Anyway, I’d given Pam a full description of Escobar. She was a total pro and could handle herself. I’d witnessed that myself.