“You have our numbers, right?” Fedora asked.
“I do, thank you.”
“You call us if you need us,” Mango Pants said.
“I’ll do that. And again, thanks for your help.”
When they started away, Glass spotted her and said, “Hey, Kat.”
“We know each other?”
“Not really, but my old man worked here with your old man. Your dad was a legend.”
You become a legend, Kat knew, by dying on the job. “So where’s Brandon?”
“He’s with the doctor in the back room. He wouldn’t let us take him to a hospital.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure, follow me.”
“How badly was he hurt?”
Glass shrugged. “Would have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for those two reliving their youth.” He gestured toward the two old men, Fedora and Mango Pants, slowly exiting the atrium.
“How’s that?”
“You know about the Ramble’s, uh, flamboyant past, right?”
She nodded. Even the official Central Park website referred to the Ramble as a “gay icon” and a “well-known site for private homosexual encounters throughout the twentieth century.” Back in the day, the dense vegetation and poor lighting made it perfect for so-called gay cruising. More recently, the Ramble had become not only the park’s premier woodland but something of a historical landmark for the LGBT community.
“Seems those two guys met in the Ramble fifty years ago,” Glass said. “So today they decided to celebrate their anniversary by going behind the old bushes and engaging in a little, uh, nostalgia.”
“In the daytime?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“They told me that, at their age, it’s hard to stay up late anymore. Or even up, I guess. So anyway, they were whatevering and they heard a commotion. They ran out—I don’t want to know in what stage of undress—and saw some ‘homeless guy’ attacking your boy.”
“How did they know he was homeless?”
“That was their description, not mine. It looks like the perp sneaked up on Brandon and punched him in the face. No warning, nothing. One of our witnesses said he saw a knife. The other said he didn’t, so I don’t know. Nothing was stolen—there was probably no time—but this was either a robbery or some guy off his meds. Maybe an old-fashioned gay basher, though I doubt that. Despite the actions of Romeo and, uh, Romeo, the Ramble isn’t known for that anymore, especially not in the daytime.”
Glass opened the door. Brandon was sitting on a table, talking to the doctor. There was tape across his nose. He looked pale and skinny, but then again, he always looked that way.
The doctor turned toward Kat. “Are you his mother?”
Brandon smiled at that. For a moment, Kat was insulted, but then she realized that, first off, she was indeed old enough to have a son his age—wow, that was depressing—and second, his actual mom probably looked younger than Kat. Double depressing.
“No. Just a friend.”
“I’d like him to go to the hospital,” the doctor said to Kat.
“I’m fine,” Brandon said.
“His nose is broken, for one thing. I also believe that he probably suffered some sort of concussion in the assault.”
Kat looked over at Brandon. Brandon just shook his head.
“I’ll look after him,” Kat said.
The doctor shrugged his surrender and headed out the door. Glass helped them with the rest of the paperwork. Brandon never saw his attacker. He didn’t seem to care much, either. He hurried through the paperwork. “I have something I need to tell you,” he whispered when Glass stepped away.
“Let’s concentrate first on what just happened, okay?”
“You heard Officer Glass. It was a random attack.”
Kat wasn’t buying that. Random? Now, when they were in the throes of . . .
Of what?
There was still no evidence to suggest any crimes were taking place. Besides, what other theories were there? Had the black-suited chauffeur disguised himself as a homeless man and followed Brandon into the Ramble? That made no sense either.
When Glass walked them back into the bulletproof atrium, Kat asked him to let her know the moment they learned anything.
“Will do,” Glass promised.
He shook both of their hands. Brandon thanked him, still in a rush to get outside. He sprinted away from the front door. Kat followed him up to the huge body of water—it took up an eighth of the park—called the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. Yes, for real.
Brandon checked his watch. “There’s still time.”
“For what?”
“To get down to Wall Street.”
“Why?”
“Someone is stealing my mother’s money.”
Chapter 21
Kat didn’t want to go.
Bork Investments was located in a sleek über-skyscraper on Vesey Street and the Hudson River in Manhattan’s Financial District, a stone’s throw away from the new World Trade Center. Kat had been a fairly young officer on that bright, sunny morning, but that wasn’t much of an excuse. When the first tower was hit at 8:46 A.M., she was sleeping one off only eight blocks away. By the time she woke up and fought through her hangover and got down there, both towers were down and it was too late to do anything about the dead, especially her fellow officers. Many who died had come down on their own from a lot farther away. She hadn’t made it in time.
Not that she could have done anything anyway.
No one could in the end. But the survivor’s guilt stayed with her. She attended every cop funeral she could, standing there in uniform, feeling like a complete fraud. There were nightmares—almost everyone who was there that day had them. In life, you can forgive yourself for a lot, but for reasons that made very little rational sense, it is very hard to forgive yourself for surviving.
It was a long time ago. She didn’t think about it much anymore, maybe around the anniversary. That outraged her on another level, the way time does indeed heal wounds. But since that day, Kat stayed away from this area, not that there was much reason for her to come down here anyway. This was the land of the dead, the ghosts, and the power suits with the big money. There was nothing here for her. Lots of the boys from her old neighborhood—yes, some girls too, but far fewer—had made their way here. As children, they had admired and feared their cop and firemen fathers and grew up wanting to be nothing like them. They went to St. Francis Prep and then to Notre Dame or Holy Cross, ended up selling junk bonds or derivatives, making a lot of money and getting as far away from their upbringing and roots as they could—just as their fathers had run from their fathers who had toiled in mills or starved in lands far away.
Progress.
We have this sense of continuity and nostalgia in America, but in truth, every generation runs away from the one before it. Oddly enough, most of the time, they run to someplace better.
Judging by his plush office, Martin Bork had run to someplace better. Kat and Brandon waited in a conference room with a mahogany table the size of a landing strip. There was a food spread waiting—muffins, donuts, fruit salad. Brandon was starving and started wolfing down the food.
“How do you know him again?” Kat asked.
“He’s our family financial adviser. He worked with my dad at a hedge fund.”
Kat didn’t know exactly what a hedge fund was, but the phrase never failed to make her cringe a little. She checked out the view of the Hudson River and New Jersey in the distance. One of those mega cruise ships floated north toward the piers off Twelfth Avenue, in the fifties. Passengers on deck waved. Even though there was no way they could see into this building, Kat waved back.
Martin Bork entered the room and gave a tight “Good afternoon.”
Kat had expected Bork to be some fat cat with plump fingers, a tight collar, and a stroke-red flush in his skin. Wrong. Bork was short and wiry, almost like a bantamweight boxer, with olive-toned skin. She guessed his age at a youthful fifty. He wore funky designer glasses that would probably have worked better on a younger guy. There was a smoothness to his face that indicated some kind of cosmetic treatment, and a diamond stud in his left ear that traveled quickly from hip to desperate.