Bergman was on his second cup of coffee when he looked up from Handley’s journal and realized that the last of La Venezia’s customers were paying their bills. He checked his watch: Eleven-ten. He had been so focused on the book he had lost track of the time. The kitchen had closed at eleven. He marked his place in the journal and hurried to the desk.
“Sorry,” Bergman said. “Time got away from me.”
“No problem,” Tony said. “And how did the homework go?”
“So-so. You know what they say, win some, lose some.”
“Sorry. Maybe it was too noisy.”
Bergman laughed. “No, Tony, maybe the food was too good.”
The little man chuckled and glanced down at the bill. “I see you took my advice about the special. Che pensa?”
“Magnificent. It floated into my mouth.”
The little man beamed.
“I get to have my taste at the end of the day,” Tony said. “Something to look forward to.”
He looked at the sizeable tip, which more than covered the discount Bergman had received.
“You spoil my waiters,” Tony said.
“That’s not possible, Uncle Tony, they spoil me.”
“ Grazi’,” Tony answered with a smile. “ Buona notte, Sergeant.”?
Throughout their dinner, Cody had purposely avoided business and Amelie had followed his lead by keeping her sardonic sense of humor in play. They had talked about everything: mutable subjects that flowed naturally from one to another; about music, about movies, about Japan and Idaho; about parents, wolves, and falcons. They laughed a lot about Jon Stewart and the lunacy of politics. They talked about why neither of them ever married: Amelie lived with a musician who insisted she put her career on hold while his progressed; so she walked. Cody had the opposite problem: He was engaged to a wealthy, young woman but his unpredictable hours did not fit into her social schedule, so she eloped-but not with him. He read about it in the newspapers. Later she told him he was too damned secretive about his work, and she got bored being stonewalled. Enough time had passed for them to brush off the experiences without regrets. It was a comfortable evening.
About the only thing they did not discuss was Raymond Handley.
But as Cody turned into 73 ^ rd Street, the specter of Handley became palpable again. He sensed her fear creeping back as they turned into the driveway; the kind of fear fueled by the unknown, by rampant imagination; by the dark at the top of the stairs, a shadow moving in a dark corner, a squeaky floor in a room above.
“Don’t worry,” he told her as he helped her out of the car. He checked both doors on the first floor when they entered the brownstone, rattled Handley’s door, and then checked the rooms in her apartment, the closets, even looked under the beds.
“Clear,” he said, dropping her keys in her hand.
They were standing in the apartment doorway, a foot or so apart.
“Cop talk, huh?” she said, leaning forward an inch or so. “Brief and to the point.”
She leaned forward another inch but he didn’t take the bait. He stared down at her, started to say something. But changed his mind.
“Get your cordless phone and look out the front window,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, make sure you’re okay.”
And he left.
She got the mobile phone and went to the window. He was standing on the sidewalk, talking into his cell.
He had dialed the north RR car and Vinnie answered.
“It’s Cody. Where are you?”
“East side, near 65th.”
“Good. Come to Handley’s brownstone. I got a nervous witness here.”
“Five minutes.”
Cody looked up and she was staring down at him and he held up a forefinger and pointed to his phone. She waited. Five minutes crept by and a black sedan pulled up. A young Asian got out and Cody talked to him for a moment and he nodded. Then her phone rang.
“Hi.”
“Hi. Say hello to Vinnie, one of the crew. He’ll be parked in your driveway most of the night.”
“Cody?”
“Yeah?”
“I had a great time. Thank you.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe, uh…maybe next time dinner’s on me.”
He paused a moment, looked up at her and said, “Sleep well. Here’s Vin.”
She saw him hand the phone to the young Asian who looked about eighteen. “Hi, Miss Cluett,” he said. “I’m here if you get nervous. Please write down my number.” She fumbled around in her purse, found pencil and paper, and jotted it down.
“Thank you, Vinnie. Please call me Amelie.”
“Gotcha.”
He rang off and she watched Cody get in his car, pull out of the driveway, and leave.
It was 11:49 p.m.?
Cody drove back to the Loft and checked the car in then took the elevator up to the nerve center. Charley was sitting by the elevator door when it slid open. He sniffed Cody’s legs and then raised his nose to his waist and sniffed his jacket.
“He smells your wild friends,” Si said without looking away from his computer.
“He’s smelled them before.”
Si continued banging away on his computer. “He’s been sitting there for ten minutes,” he said. “He walked over there five minutes before I heard the garage doors open.”
Cody reached down and scratched Charley’s ears. “His ears are as good as his nose. I tooted the horn when I was coming down West Broadway.”
Si stopped working and looked over at Cody and Charley. “You know how many horns are tooting on West Broadway right now?”
“He knows my touch.”
Si shook his head and laughed as he turned back to his keyboard.
“What’re you chasing, Si? I know when you’re after something.”
“It’s bad medicine to talk about it until it shakes out.” He stole a glance at the clock. “We’ve had tough ones before, Micah. It’s only been twelve hours and fourteen minutes since this show started. Go home and get some sleep.”
“You’re gonna keep Charley up. He can hear your mind working all the way over at my apartment.”
“Good. He snores.”
“Tell me about it.”
Cody and Charley always walked the few blocks to his place on Lispenard Street, swinging over to a small arrowhead-shaped area of trees near the intersection of Sixth Avenue and West Broadway, where Charley often met up with Hoover, a black lab, owned by a young artist named Harrison. The two dogs liked to roughhouse together. But that was usually about ten p.m.
“We’re too late tonight,” Cody told the dog who seemed to understand, sniffed the trees, and peed on a couple before they walked the two blocks back to their apartment.
Cody walked into the bedroom, pulled off his jacket and laid at the foot of the bed. Charley approached it with nose twitching and smelled every inch of it, then sat down beside the bed and stared up at Cody.
“Don’t worry, pal, nobody can take your place. Anyway, I think you’ll like her.”
He stripped off his clothes and took a quick shower. When he came back, Charley had pulled the jacket down on his pad and was curled up sleeping on it. Cody got in bed, set the clock for six a.m. and clicked off the light.
Just another Friday night in the Garden of Eden, he thought as he began to doze off. Except tonight the clock was running. And he knew he was thinking something he would not say aloud:
Somebody else was going to die before they got another clue.
24
Saturday, October 27
As was their custom, Cody and Charley ate breakfast at Waldo’s at 6:30 then, it being Saturday, jogged up Mulberry St. toward Grand. Cody was wearing sweats with a bottle of water sticking out of his back pocket. Their destination was Sarah Roosevelt Park where they always found another dog or two to play with.
Cody knew the park well. His first partner was Harry Ellison, who had been on the force for twenty-three years and was not happy saddled with a rookie, particularly one who wore a ponytail and was laughed at behind the hand of just about everyone in the Fifth Precinct. But after a few months, Ellison, who was divorced, came to admire Cody’s quiet attitude, his intuition and quick response, and his eagerness to learn from a veteran cop. When Cody moved on, they remained close friends, eating dinner once a week and catching an occasional movie. When Ellison volunteered to join the Search and Rescue squad, Cody spent time watching Harry work with Charley, a cadaver dog and Harry’s new partner. Although he graced Cody with an occasional wag of his tail, Charley was a one-man dog and Harry was the man.