I pictured him pulling into some waterfront garage full of hearses. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to brave midtown traffic just for me. He’d want to unload me as quickly as he could.
Unless, of course, he was actually planning to deliver me to whichever precinct house Mirsky worked out of.
“The west side’s fine,” I said. Knowing I wouldn’t wait to be dropped off, that at the first red light I’d pop the back and run like hell. Even though he probably wasn’t planning to turn me in, probably had no idea who I was, probably thought I was just some freak who got off on riding in hearses. But I couldn’t wait and find out, just in case.
I shot a look at the watch on my wrist. I’d be early for the time I’d worked out with Susan, but not all that early. And the Ramble would be a safer place for me to wait for her than out on the street.
“Can you go up Central Park West?” I said. “Maybe drop me somewhere in the seventies?”
He shook his head. “I need to be on Eleventh Avenue.”
“Could you at least get me to Columbus?” I said.
The driver’s expression in the rear-view mirror looked pained. “You can’t walk a few blocks?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s just that I’m late for a meeting.” It was an idiotic thing to say. People with meetings don’t ride to them in the back of a hearse.
He punched his horn, swerved around another car.
“I’ll give you another twenty dollars,” I said. “Okay?”
He muttered something.
“What?” I said.
“You know how we say in Russian? The dead are less demanding.”
If only that were true, I thought.
Chapter 25
The first red light we hit was near Tavern on the Green, and I was out of the car and over the wall before he knew it. I’d hesitated before leaving the twenty in the back. But I’d said I would, and I did.
I raced past Sheep Meadow, which on a summer day would have been filled with sunbathers and voyeurs but this time of year was empty. I found my way east toward the least developed part of Central Park, the portion the designers had left wild, untouched. It was called the Ramble and in the 1970s was mostly known as a place gay men cruised for anonymous sex. AIDS brought the level of activity down; Giuliani’s tenure as mayor took its toll as well. And then 9/11 happened and no one felt much like fucking in the bushes. But all things pass, and I imagined activity was probably up again.
But not in the middle of the afternoon on a cold fall day. Brisk winds had more power to keep crowds away than all the terrorists and mayors in the world, and I saw no one on the heavily wooded paths now. At one spot, deep in the forest, a steep-sided boulder loomed. We’d found it together, Susan and I, and she’d know it was where I’d meant she should meet me. The same qualities that made it a perfect summer trysting spot made it a good choice now: you could see people coming from any direction, and unless you were standing, they couldn’t see you.
I climbed it and waited. While I waited, I tried to coax one more call out of my cell phone battery, but it was futile.
I was cold and felt exposed on the flat surface of the rock. There were patches of sparse grass that shivered when the wind blew them, and I shivered too. On every side, the trees had started losing leaves, and with every breeze a few more would fall.
Shortly after two, Susan showed up. She was wearing the same heavy coat she’d had on the day before, and it didn’t make climbing the rock easy. I leaned over the edge and held an arm out for her. She ignored it, climbed the last few feet on her own. When she was sitting next to me, she peeled off her gloves and then slapped me barehanded across the face.
“What was that for?” I said. My glasses were hanging crookedly and I straightened them.
“Where’s my goddamn wallet?” she said.
I reached into my pocket and dug the wallet out, deposited it in her outstretched hand. “Susan, I’m—”
“I don’t want to hear it, John.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? The police are looking for you. Two people are dead. And you’re sitting here in Central Park like...like some kind of homeless man. Look at you, you must be freezing. Here.” She opened her handbag and pulled out a thin cardigan. She threw it at me. “Jesus Christ, John. I’ve never seen you like this.”
I unzipped my jacket, took it off, pulled the sweater on over my head. Put the jacket back over it.
“Here.” She threw something else at me. I unfolded it. It was a knit cap.
“Susan—”
“Just put it on,” she growled. “And tell me what I’m going to find on my credit card bill next month.”
“Train tickets.”
“Train tickets,” she said, and threw her hands up. “You went to the fucking funeral. Why didn’t I hear about this from Mrs. Burke?”
“She didn’t see me.”
“She didn’t see you. Of course. Where were you, hiding behind a tombstone?” She lifted the hat out of my lap and fiercely pulled it onto my head. “John, does your behavior seem normal to you? I’m just asking because it does not seem anywhere near normal to me.”
“Normal? No, Susan, it’s not normal. A woman I cared about a great deal was killed. I’ve been shot at, tied up, held at knifepoint, I’ve had a man’s body left in my bed like something out of The Godfather. All I wanted was to know what happened to Dorrie. I didn’t want any of this. I never wanted my life to be like this again. Why do you think I stopped working for Leo?”
“You stopped working for Leo because of Miranda,” Susan said. “Let’s be honest. You felt guilty.”
“Of course I felt guilty. She died because of me.”
“Yeah, and I almost died because of her. Life goes on.”
“It’s not that simple.”
She looked at me ruefully. “John. You’ve got to let it go. Miranda, and me, and Dorrie. You’re not responsible for what happened to us.”
“Not to you, no,” I said. “Not the good things, anyway.”
“Turn yourself in, John. I’ll get you a lawyer. I’ll pay for it. If you didn’t do it, we’ll be able to prove it—”
“Not till I settle this.”
“What do you mean ‘settle this’?”
“What happened to Dorrie.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Don’t say that,” I said. “We can. Between the two of us... Don’t tell me you haven’t made any progress. You’re too good. I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Yeah? You want to see the progress I’ve made?” She opened her handbag, dug out a piece of paper, a printout of a digital photograph. I looked at it. It was some kid, maybe seventeen years old. Shaggy curls, glasses, bad posture. He was standing in a hallway, knocking on a door.
“Who is this?” I said.
“That’s Robert Lee,” she said.
I looked at it again, then at her. “You’re kidding me.”
“His real name’s Micah Goodman.”
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen. He’ll be eighteen next month.”
“He’s a kid!”
“He’s not just a kid, he’s Robert Goodman’s kid. I don’t know if the name means anything to you. Goodman’s a partner at Goldman Sachs. Took home $35 million last year in bonuses.”
“So he’s a rich kid—”
“A smart kid, too. He goes to Stuyvesant. And he’s a lonely kid. And what does a lonely, smart kid do when he can afford to blow $200 in an afternoon? He goes on Craigslist.”
“You’re telling me this kid hired Dorrie?”
“I’m telling you more than that. I’m telling you he was one of her regulars. Since he was sixteen.”