Mike employed a couple of very decent cooks and several waiters — all migrants, nine in total. But now his kitchen stood empty. Frank pushed the serving door and opened it a crack.
Mike sat straddling a bar stool by the door watching the TV news. The only three patrons sat at the far table over their beers and pistachio nuts. Here, too, the waiters were nowhere to be seen.
How weird. Frank crouched and sneaked behind the bar, lowering his body onto the floor.
Mike sensed and turned around. His eyes rounded. He stared at his friend, unable to speak. Frank whispered that he hadn’t killed Kathleen Baker and used his teeth to pull off the scrap of fabric from his cuffed hands.
“I’m up to my ears in shit because of this relationship. All I need are some dry clothes,” he added in a low voice. “Some kind of hat would be good, and a few bucks, too. Then I’ll be on my way.”
Mike pursed his lips. His eyes scanned the bar. He reached for a bottle of Bourbon, picked a tumbler off the rack, then reconsidered and put it all back.
“Follow me,” he nodded.
The other end of the bar joined a slightly protruding wall that partially concealed the barman from customers’ prying eyes. In the wall was a door to a small utility room, lined with shelf units. Mike waited as Frank crawled into the room on all fours, hiding from the customers. Mike followed him in and bolted the door behind himself. He took his own gray fleece jacket and hat off the coat rack.
“Put these on,” he placed the clothes on a shelf, reached for his wallet and thumbed out two hundred dollars.
“Thanks,” Frank took the money and once again showed him his cuffed hands. “First off, we’ve got to remove these.”
Mike didn’t think long. He reached up to the shelves and pulled out a couple of cardboard boxes. Having rummaged through them, he produced a large bunch of keys and dangled them in front of Frank. He could see that not all of them were keys: some looked like hooks strongly reminiscent of a set of picks.
“What’s that?” Frank asked.
“Ask no questions, hear no lies,” a faint smile crossed Mike’s face. “Show me your hands.”
In less than a minute, the cuffs were off.
“Where did you get them from?” asked Frank, rubbing his wrists.
“A cop friend couldn’t foot his bill once. So he left these as security.” Mike flicked the keys in his hand.
“He didn’t happen to’ve left anything else, did he?”
A cop leaving Mike a set of picks as a deposit was hard enough to believe. He couldn’t have also left a gun, surely?
Once again Mike rummaged through the box and produced a shiny detective badge. Frank took the piece of metal, weighing it in his hand. “A fake, I reckon?”
His friend nodded and added, “A good one. You think you can tell the difference?”
Frank twiddled the badge in his hands, shrugged and put it in his pocket. Not as good as a gun, but it will have to do. “Thanks.”
“Where are you to now?” Mike avoided meeting his eyes. His friend looked frightened: he’d parted with the money too easily, helped him remove the handcuffs, even given him the badge.
“Post office,” Frank turned to the door.
“What for?” he heard behind his back.
“Got some mail to collect. I think they want me dead. I need to find out why,” he unbolted the door.
“They said on television the whole thing was migrants’ doing,” Mike hurried to add. “They said you’d worked for them. Said you’d planned to plant a bomb at Memoria’s HQ but failed.”
Frank looked back at him. Mike gulped and went on,
“They said you’d killed Kathleen Baker to avenge your father who had fought Hopper in Bellville’s army. Now they’ve closed the migrant camps, and all the migrants working in town got to report to Bronx before midnight.” Desperation and fear in his eyes, he kept talking. “The Mayor is about to declare code orange and introduce a curfew. They’re talking about starting a reserve call-up.”
“Including the veterans?”
“Also.”
“But I — I didn’t kill Kathleen! I wasn’t going to plant any bombs, either!”
Mike raised his hands. “Mike, please. Keep your voice down.”
Frank couldn’t believe his ears. Somebody was busy setting him up, cleverly planting false evidence.
“I didn’t kill her,” he repeated in whisper.
“I do believe you.” Mike nodded. “I’m sorry if it had to come to this…”
Frank pushed the door, strode past the bar and left the building through the back.
Mike paused staring at the shelves. Then he pushed the boxes back, reached for the door handle, stepped into the doorway and stopped. What he hadn’t told Frank was that there now was a price on his head. Twenty thousand dollars for the information on his whereabouts and another hundred thousand for assisting in his arrest.
A moment later, Mike was reaching for the ancient wall phone next to the utility room door. He was dialing the police assistance line.
Chapter Four. One Against All
Frank’s plans were simple. He would collect Kathleen’s parcel at the post office claiming to be the police interrogator, Ed Freeman. The badge would help him. Of course it was a fake, but the postal workers would hardly bother to check the number or verify it with the police. The Collection counter had to be operated by some youngster with a green light on his bracelet: his job not important enough to employ an older, more responsible person.
The parcel could just be his salvation, the proof of his innocence. Frank had no idea what made him so sure but he trusted his gut instinct. They accused him of assisting terrorists, of the assault on the police station and an attempt to blow up the Memoria tower. He had no time to waste if he wanted to find out who the assailants in black were, whose toes Kathleen had stepped on, and why they wanted his head, of all people.
Frank didn’t want to risk going by subway. He flagged down a cab. Surprisingly, the first driver stopped for him, a dark man with thick long dreadlocks. The rain must have had something to do with it, as the streets were almost deserted — either that, or he had no reservations.
Frank got in. Straight away, the familiar smell of leather filled his eyes and nostrils with moisture. He sneezed and gave the driver the address.
“Are you all right, sir?” the cabbie drawled. “You don’t sound too good.”
Frank wiped his eyes and blurted out he was allergic to leather.
“Oh!” The driver glanced in the mirror. “Sorry to hear that.” He took one hand off the wheel, reached into the glove compartment and produced a packet of tissues. “There, sir. Take this.”
“Thanks a lot,” Frank mumbled.
He took the packet, tore off the plastic flap and blew his nose into a fresh tissue. When he raised his head he saw his reflection in the rear-view mirror. His allergy might just do him a good turn. He could blame it for hiding his face behind a tissue.
They soon reached the post office address on the receipt. Frank was back in Manhattan now. The rain had all but stopped but the clouds still clung to the sky. He gave the driver a generous tip, thanked him for the tissues and got out.
Once inside the post office, Frank looked around, all the time sniffling and covering his face with a tissue. At that hour, the benches along the wall had no customers waiting, and the Collection counter looked deserted. The figure of a teller loomed in the farthest booth from the door. Stacked on plastic shelving behind his back, lay yellow boxes taped with red scotch tape, envelopes of all sizes, and plastic bags.
Frank approached the counter, sneezed, wiped his nose and produced a new tissue.