“Unless he’s found.”
Matt narrowed his eyes. “What did Owl say to you about it? I mean, exactly, what did he say?”
“Said that Addison had some East Village connection. He took it for granted you’d called me in on it.”
Matt made a fart noise. With his mouth, praise be; he was still sitting on my pillow.
“We’ll manage without you,” Matt said. “He’ll pop up. Hell, it’s only been four months. Guy like that, he won’t stay hidden long, he can’t. Likes living large. Only a matter of time before he’s spotted.”
“I kinda got the impression from Owl…” But I stopped myself, because that’s all I really had, an impression.
“What?”
“Nothing. Only…he mentioned it in passing, that he’d stumbled on something.”
Matt stared me straight in the eye for three beats, then slapped his knee hard.
“Damn! It would just be like that old bastard to pull one last rabbit outta his hat. He found Addison.”
“Wait a second, I didn’t say he—”
Matt stood up, headed for the door.
“I gotta get back to the office and check into this. Holy fuck, if—”
“Wait, I didn’t say—”
“Yeh, I heard you. You didn’t fucking say much at all. As usual. But Owl, he wouldn’t have brought it up if it didn’t mean something. He had a nose on him, I’ll—”
Matt stopped short of the door, looked down at his feet, at Owl’s briefcase where I’d left it when I came in.
He said, “I gave him that. For his seventieth birthday.”
He reached down and picked it up. “I’m damned if you’ll have it.”
I couldn’t really object. He opened the door and I said to his back, “I’m sorry, Matt. I know what he meant to you.”
He didn’t turn round, but nodded his head couple times.
“Owl had a good run,” he said. “Did it his way all the way down the line. No one lives forever.”
I grunted. “Control yourself. You’ll do yourself a mischief carrying on that way.”
This time he turned around, and said evenly, “Fuck off, you fuckin’ fuck-off.”
Matt was never one to be at a loss for words. It felt like old times.
Only after he’d left and my office door shut did I realize I’d forgotten to congratulate him on becoming a father. And I still didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl.
I switched the phone cord back to my receiver. As soon as I did, the phone started ringing. I picked up.
“Yellow.”
“Mr. Sherwood?”
It was my client, Paul Windmann.
“Yep.”
He said, “She called.”
“Who?” I was still thinking of Michael Cassidy and whatever she’d had to do with Owl.
“The woman who ripped me off. She wants to sell my stuff back to me.”
“That isn’t selling, it’s ransoming. Don’t pay.”
“I have already.”
“What, you saw her? When?”
“I haven’t seen her. I sent her a payment through PayPal.”
“Oh brave new world. How much?”
“That’s not your concern. What I’d like is for you to make the pick-up for me.”
“Sure thing,” I said, trying to sound cheerful about it. “You’re the boss. What’s the address?”
“Number 27, Avenue C,” he said. “Apartment three. Do you know where that is?”
“I think I can find it,” I said.
I hung up the phone. I sat and thought a bit. Then I stood up and went to the kitchen area where my floor safe was located. I spun the combination, opened the door, and took out my gun.
A 9mm Luger, a black automatic with a dull sheen, which looked like it was made of plastic until you picked it up and felt the heft and knew it was serious. In twelve years, I’d only carried it three times in the course of work, never fired it except on a firing range downtown, and only once had to show it to some asshole who didn’t believe I had it, hiking up to end a confrontation that was about to get ugly. But having a license to carry is a necessity of the job. Some clients expect it, others demand it.
In this case, I had no idea what to expect, so I was going armed. I had a stiff leather side holster for the gun, but I’d misplaced it a few years back, so now I had to stick the gun down the back of my pants, just like in the movies. It meant that I had to wear a light jacket over it, even though the day was way too hot. I would have to take a cab. If I walked to 27 Avenue C with my jacket on, I’d be a sopping mess of perspiration by the time I got there.
So I caught a cab. Back to Alphabet City, back to the apartment building on Avenue C, back to Mr. Andrew’s apartment, where Jeff and the diabla were now living.
The gun dug into my lower back like someone was shoving it into me, prodding me forward against my will.
I got out a block away and walked the rest. The street door was swung wide, propped open by a stack of telephone directories. The inner vestibule door was held open by another stack, so I didn’t have to ring a buzzer to gain entrance.
I walked down the first floor corridor, a breeze against my face and bright daylight spilling out from beneath the stairwell.
The light was from an open rear door into a back courtyard. I heard the sound of water spraying from a hose. I looked out and saw Luis, the forest-green-clad super, standing with his broad back to me, hose in his hand, the nozzle shooting a jet of water. He was rinsing out a plastic trash barrel lying on its side in an area of patchy grass and weeds, disjointed brick masonry, two or three torn window screens bent into parabolas, and scraps of yellowed newspaper. I didn’t try to get his attention.
I continued down the narrow hall. It seemed to get narrower as I got to the end. I knocked on the door of apartment three.
To the right of it, at chin-level, was a replastered hole in the wall about the size of a fist or a heart.
Didn’t hear any footsteps, but as I stood there the white dot center of the peephole went dark as someone on the other side examined me.
Chapter Ten: SWING AND A MISS
From behind the door, a woman’s voice asked, “What d’you want?”
“Making a pick-up.”
“Who send you?”
“C’mon, open up. You know who sent me.”
The white dot at the center of the peephole returned, but it was still a handful of seconds before a deadbolt turned and the door finally opened.
She was a tall young woman, twenty or twenty-one. She had a helmet of blonde hair and very pale ivory skin. Below her brown eyes were dark jaundiced pouches, a flattish nose, and a wide mouth now set in a tight straight line like she was biting down on the meat of her lips. She looked frightened. She said nothing, just reached out one bare arm from behind the door and handed me a black plastic bag. Something small and heavy swung like a pendulum at its bottom, but I didn’t relieve her of it. I hadn’t come here just to be handed a bag.
I’d never seen her before in my life, but I felt a vague sense of recognition. Trying to pin it down, I stalled her.
“Open the bag, show it to me.”
“What?”
I didn’t care what was inside the bag, but a dark suspicion was niggling at me and I wanted to see the other hand she was keeping out of sight behind the door.
“How do I know it’s what I’m here for?”
“Please, take and go away. I want no more.”
I heard it clearly then, the Eastern European accent that had been barely audible in the monosyllabic responses she’d given before. But no mistaking it now, nor the sound of her voice. She was the woman who’d left the message on my machine asking for George Rowell.