I had officially moved from paranoid to punchy.
Go to sleep!
A banging noise emerged from somewhere in the hall, and I bolted upright in the bed. I waited, then heard it again. Someone was knocking on the door.
“Housekeeping,” a woman announced.
“Go away,” I said.
She knocked again, and I looked at the clock: six A.M. exactly.
Damn!
My last two hundred bucks had been enough to get me a room for only half a night, but I couldn’t believe the manager was holding me to such a ridiculously early checkout. I hadn’t slept at all. Or maybe I had and just didn’t realize it. That’s how tired I was. I rolled out of bed, opened the door as far as the chain lock would allow, and begged for another five minutes.
“I’ll be back at six fifteen,” said the housekeeper.
A fifteen-minute bonus. Maybe my luck was turning.
I jumped in the shower, which was literally a scream-alternating blasts of ice-cold and scalding-hot water. The poor guy in the next room must have thought it was Friday the thirteenth and that he was sharing a wall with Freddy and Jason. I pulled on my clothes-the same clothes I had worn yesterday-and used the remaining five minutes of my reprieve to check my e-mail.
The first one was from Mallory. True to her promise, she’d e-mailed me the contact information for her lawyer. I scrolled past it, didn’t even catch his name.
Probably Anoop Gupta.
It was the third e-mail from the bottom that caught my attention. I didn’t recognize the sender-the address appeared to be a random combination of letters and numbers-but the subject line chilled me. It wasn’t “random” at all.
Orene52, it read.
I opened it eagerly and retrieved the short message: I can help. Let’s meet. Time and place TBD. Check your e-mail at 10:30.
The message was signed JBU.
I froze. Obviously it was from someone who knew my stolen passwords, which was a very small universe. Mallory. Saxton Silvers’ general counsel and security director. The lawyer from Cool Cash and the FBI agents on the case. None of those people would have any conceivable reason to set up a secret meeting with such a cryptic message. But one other possibility came to mind: someone who definitely knew my passwords and who definitely would operate in such secretive fashion. The identity thief who stole my money.
JBU.
I strained my brain but could think of no one with those initials. I scrolled through my address book, but the only thing under “U” was Union Square Café.
Another knock at the door. It was firmer than the last one, meaning this time the housekeeper meant business. I thanked her on my way out the door as she handed me my free morning newspaper.
The headline grabbed me: FNN’s CHUCK BELL SLAIN.
I stopped in my tracks. It was as if someone had just hit me again with that hot-and-cold shower. I stepped to the side of the hallway and read quickly for the gist: shot outside the studio sometime after midnight, body discovered by a security guard around 12:45 A.M., no leads on the shooter.
I reopened my e-mail from JBU to check the time it was received: 3:35 A.M. It obviously wasn’t Bell who’d sent it. Then another thought came to mind.
I wondered if it had come from the guy who’d shot him.
My cell rang, and my home number came up on the display.
“Mallory?”
“You need to get over here right now,” she said.
From her tone, I knew it wasn’t about a change of heart.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“You tell me, Michael. There’s a homicide detective here who wants to talk to you.”
26
I CALLED MY BROTHER FROM THE VINTAGE 1970S LOBBY OF HOTEL Mildew. It was the first time we’d spoken since Ivy’s memorial service. Against my wishes, Papa had already told him that I would probably call, so it wasn’t out of the blue.
“Don’t speak to the cops,” said Kevin.
“I didn’t kill Chuck Bell.”
“That’s not the point. I don’t care if your hair is on fire and Detective Joe Friday is holding the last bucket of water in New York City. Don’t talk to the cops. Period.”
I hated when he talked to me like that. I was three years older than Kevin, but ever since his law school graduation he’d copped a big-brother attitude toward me. In some ways, he did seem older: He was taller, started going gray in his late twenties, and married a woman nine years his senior. I guess what really irked me was that Kevin had stopped acting like Kevin.
“What do you suggest I do?” I asked.
“Call Mallory and ask her to give the detective my phone number.”
“You know Mallory asked for a divorce, right?”
“Yeah, I read it in the Post this morning.”
“What?”
“Kidding, just kidding.”
Okay, so sometimes he did still act like Kevin.
“Papa told me,” he said.
“Did he also tell you about the text message? About the guy who’s apparently had me in his sights since tracking me down at Sal’s Place last fall? And about the bug the FBI found in our general counsel’s car?”
“Yeah, and you and I need to meet ASAP. Where are you now?”
I was embarrassed to tell him, so I didn’t get specific. “Midtown.”
“My office is down toward Foley Square, but do you want to come uptown first and say hi to Janice?”
Janice was his wife of two years. I’d missed their wedding, and I had yet to visit their Upper East Side apartment, so this shot at me was probably deserved. But I had to wonder if Kevin would have invited me to his apartment, much less to his wedding, without Papa pushing it. Sometimes I thought Kevin embraced me only out of guilt-his own need to rectify the perceived injustice of two boys having come from the same womb, one raised by his biological father in the land of plenty, the other sent away by his stepfather to live with the maternal grandparents and grow up thinking that frozen fish sticks every Friday were a treat.
“Let’s meet in your office,” I said.
“I can be there by nine.” He gave me the address, then said, “I’m glad you called, dude. I’m happy to help. Really.”
I thanked him and hung up, wondering how long this was going to last.
Really.
I called Mallory, and she promised to pass along Kevin’s message to the nice detective. She also agreed to let me stop by and get some clean clothes and personal items. I found a small suitcase in the hallway. A pressed suit, shirt, and tie were hanging from the doorknob.
She might as well have taped a DO NOT ENTER sign on the door.
My gym was on the way to Kevin’s office, and my prepaid MetroCard got me there to take a real shower and put on the fresh suit and clean shirt. The suitcase was technically too big for my locker, but I made it fit. My credit card still wasn’t working-Anoop Gupta had failed me-so I put a strawberry smoothie and a granola bar on my tab. From a stuffed chair in the lobby, I took a few proactive measures to make sure my personal crisis didn’t drag my career down with it.
Most major corporations lumped their green efforts under a vice president of social responsibility. I had meetings with five of them in two different cities scheduled over the next two days, so I did the socially responsible thing and let them know there was no way in hell that I was going to be there. That was the easy task. The next series of phone calls was much more difficult. I was trying to put my key people at ease, but they all watched the news, and I could hear the fear in their questions.
“What’s going to happen?”
“Is it true we’re up for sale?”