I touched her cheek, lightly. “You have any trouble shaking loose, kid, you know where to find me. And it won’t cost you a penny. I enjoy spending time with men who think beating up women is fun.”
She swallowed, nodded, then delivered me to my destination and slipped back to her post.
Pat hadn’t lined up a backroom or anything, just a big corner booth filled with rumpled men in rumpled suits. I shook hands with everybody, then squeezed in next to Pat, who was my age, blond with gray-blue eyes, a trimly muscular build, and a methodical mind.
“We decided,” Pat said, “not to wait for you before we started drinking.”
“Good call,” I said.
There were seven of us, including but not limited to burly, balding Shannon himself; Chris Peters, his slim young current partner on the PD; and Ben Higgins, an already retired skin-and-bones copper who’d been the sidekick before that.
I’d barely settled when a waitress in a white dress shirt and black skirt delivered me a Canadian Club and ginger. Like I said, I was something of a regular at Pete’s. My preferences were known.
We talked old times. I won’t bore you with it, but Peters loved hearing everything, particularly the tales that showed how dogged and tough Shannon could be, but also the ones that made this older mentor of his seem human, like when the Wall Street Cop was on the receiving end of his former partner Ben Higgins’s practical jokes.
“Hell,” Higgins was saying, “I didn’t even know you could melt Ex-Lax down and make a decent hot fudge sundae out of it. Turns out you can!”
Over everybody else’s laughter, a smirking Shannon said, “It made hot fudge all right, let me tell you.”
Several rounds of drinks went by before we finally ordered. Everybody got the house specialty — bone-in rib-eyes — and the waitress was still getting the particulars, salad dressing, veggies, potato and so on, when a tall, broad-shouldered guy of maybe thirty-five came in, leading two men a decade or so older who seemed vaguely servile yet bore a distinguished quality the younger man somehow lacked.
They were peeling out of their Burberry cashmere trenches, the older men revealing Brooks Brothers suits each worth a week of my rent at the Hackard Building. Shannon — sitting next to Pat — leaned over and said to both of us, “What the hell are they doing in a joint like this?”
Shannon looked something like the old movie actor Pat O’Brien at a similar age, but less hair, wisps of white only. Like that old-time actor, he had a hint of Ireland in his voice — not from once having lived there, but growing up in a home where the parents had, and the brogue had been catching.
That other Pat said, “Don’t let Pete hear you calling his white-tablecloth joint a joint, pal.”
Shannon raised a single hand of surrender. “No, it’s not that. It’s just... that Colby kid is more a Four Seasons type. Or the Union Square Café, when he feels like dressing down.”
I looked sideways at the newcomers, who Pete was handing off to Sheila for seating. “That’s Vincent Colby, huh?”
“In the flesh. And that’s probably a good two-grand worth of fabric and cut.”
Colby was not in mere Brooks Brothers. I made that beautifully assembled charcoal pin-striped affair as Armani, similar to one Velda had tried, unsuccessfully, to get me into.
I’d heard of this handsome young guy. Read about him (profiles in the Sunday Times and New York Magazine). Ivy League school (Harvard Business, wasn’t it?). Prominent in the family brokerage firm (Colby, Daltree & Levine). Eminently eligible bachelor (dating society girls).
I asked Shannon, “Is that kid as upstanding as his rep?”
Shannon was watching as Sheila led Colby across the room, the two Wall Street big shots trailing along like litter bearers.
“Far as I know,” Shannon said. “Like his old man, that ‘kid’ served in the Navy, made Lieutenant.”
“Straight shooter all the way?”
His mouth twitched. “Some youthful indiscretions, I understand. No police record, but under-age records get expunged, particularly if you have connections.” He sipped his highball. “Colby’s guilty, all right — of being a rich Golden Boy, but that’s about it.”
“Far as you know.”
“Far as I know, Mike.”
Sheila was getting them seated in a booth at the bar area, across the dining room. Only Colby didn’t sit down right away. He was standing there chatting with the redhead. She was smiling and trading talk in a friendly way. More of that going-nowhere flirtation? Or something else?
I said, “He sounds too good to be true.”
“That’s been my feeling,” Shannon admitted. “I always felt like he was playing me.”
“Playing you how, Casey?”
He twitched another sneer. “Too friendly. Too cooperative. Patronizing, like he was putting one over.”
“How did you rub shoulders with the lad?”
“I had a couple of investigations that took me to the Colby firm.”
“What kind of investigations?”
He didn’t look at me while we talked. Suddenly it was like pulling teeth. He said, “A secretary there died of an overdose. A low-level employee was the victim of a hit-and-run.”
“Fatal?”
Shannon nodded. “Vaguely suspicious but nothing came of either. Colby was in the lives of both parties. Was helpful to a fault.”
Sheila was lingering, and Colby took her two hands in his and smiled and she smiled back, then peeled away. Could this privileged punk be the guy roughing her up? Maybe somebody needed to put the break in brokerage.
Colby was finally about to sit down, but maybe he felt our eyes on him, because he paused, spotted us, beamed and came over, navigating the sea of tables of diners like the Navy man he was.
He stood before our booth and half-nodded to each of us in turn, but reserved his dazzling white smile for Shannon, who was looking up at the man in Armani with a smile as rumpled as his own decidedly off-the-rack suit.
This was my first close look at the guy, and it revealed a male specimen who was almost too handsome, with long eyelashes and dark curly hair worn rather short and wet with product, giving him a Roman Emperor look. But was he Julius Caesar or Caligula? Either way, he sported a tan that said trips to warmer climes were not infrequent or maybe he just used a tanning bed somewhere. At home, maybe.
Colby leaned in and offered his hand to Shannon, who half-stood, as much as possible in the booth anyway, and accepted the proffered paw for a shake, then settled back down.
“So I’m guessing this is a retirement party?” Colby said, his voice mellow and smooth. He could become a TV or radio announcer if being a rich Wall Street heir didn’t work out.
“Pre-retirement,” Shannon said genially. You could never have discerned that the old copper had any suspicions or negative thoughts at all about the guy. Strictly friendly time.
“I recognize both of your partners in crime,” the young man said, showing off those white teeth some more. His nods were more acknowledging this time around. “Sergeant Higgins. Detective Peters.” The teeth and pretty eyes came to me and his smile settled in one cheek. “You’re Mike Hammer, aren’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
Dark eyebrows rose above the long lashes. “That was some case you wrapped up a while back. Caused ripples from here to Europe. Stock market took a dive when those revelations about the CIA being infiltrated made the news.”
I gave him a smile. A little one, not dazzling at all. “That wasn’t my intention. To me he was just a bad guy, a very bad guy, who needed to be dealt with.”