“You want something to eat?” said Perrini, smiling at the young police administrative assistant as though she were his favorite niece or beloved sister, rather than a civilian who earned a third of his detective’s basic salary.
“No. Just a Diet Sprite.”
She set down her open purse on the vacant stool beside her.
Perrini relayed the order to the waitress, then without taking his eyes off Lina or changing the smile on his face, nonchalantly removed the bag of cocaine from his pocket, stretched his hand underneath the bar-height table, and dropped the bag into Lina’s purse.
It was a point of principle with Perrini always to go first in any exchange. It promoted trust and reduced his risk should the meeting be compromised before the end. He never understood why so many people insisted on the kind of ridiculous ballet you saw in movies. He was happy to trust the other party to make good, just as the other party should trust that he would not be amused if they tried to fuck him over.
Lina took out her lipstick and compact from the purse in a practiced movement that included moving the cocaine bag to a side pocket where it couldn’t be viewed by a passing customer.
The waitress delivered their drinks as Lina ran the lipstick across her pale lips, returned both objects back to where they’d come from, then took out a folded sheet of yellow legal paper and opened it on the table in front of her.
“Hazel Lustig. Born July 18, 1947. Sister of Eileen Chaykin, nee Lustig. Never married. No children. No federal warrants. No local traffic violations. Taxes all in order. Qualified as an equine veterinarian in 1971. By 1985 had her own practice in New Jersey specializing in race horses. Sold it in 1998 and retired to Cochise County, Arizona, where she owns three hundred acres and cares for about forty retired racehorses. The ranch isn’t open to the public. Two bank accounts, both in the black. One significantly so.”
Lina slid the sheet across the table.
“Phone number?” asked Perrini after draining half his malt in one long slug.
“Home number is right there. She doesn’t have a cell phone. I also checked the cell reception in that area like you asked. It’s spotty at best. Locals and the press out there have been making noise about that, but the mobile carriers don’t give a crap.” She took a sip of her Diet Sprite as Perrini scanned the sheet. “Anything else?”
Perrini folded the sheet and pocketed it. “Not that I can think of right now, but that could change. I’ll be in touch. As always.”
“Thought you should know. They’re purging all the unused NCIC accounts. I’ll have to create a spoof login if they delete them all.”
“As long as you keep me out of it I don’t care what you do.” Perrini flashed Lina an arctic glare. A split second later, the smile with which he’d welcomed her was back.
“I’d better get back to my desk. Got a mountain of cases to key in.” She lifted her purse off the stool and turned to leave.
“Enjoy your little present,” said Perrini, gesturing to her purse. “You know there’s plenty more where that came from.”
He shot her a wink, then dropped his eyes to his malt and drained it down to the foam.
When he looked up, she was already out the door.
Twenty minutes later, Perrini was back in his car, across from Tompkins Square. He had toyed with a few different approaches, but decided to go with an angle that usually worked wonders: appealing to a person’s natural vanity, even if it was at one step removed.
He pulled out his throwaway and dialed Hazel Lustig. She answered after five rings.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Is that Hazel Lustig?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“My name is Daniel Shelton. I’m calling from the Historical Novel Society. I understand from Friedstein and Bellingham Literary Management that Miss Chaykin is staying with you at the moment?”
It was a gamble that Chaykin had left her aunt’s number with her agent, but if she was there for a month and the cell reception was bad, then the odds were surely stacked in his favor.
“I’m afraid she’s not here. Can I pass on a message?”
Her tone was defensive. Protective. Too late to change tack now though.
“Oh, that’s a shame. We’re running a review of her latest book—and, well, it’s a rave. I just got it, and the reviewer really, really loved it. And I thought it would be great to get an interview to go alongside it, do a little feature on her, but I’m playing catch-up here with a lot of people off on vacation and I’ve got a deadline coming up fast. Do you know when she’ll be back? We could do it over the phone, or even by email.”
The woman went quiet for a moment, then said, “The thing is, I’m really not sure she’s got much time to spare right now, she’s—she’s tied up on a family matter.” Her tone had softened at the mention of a rave review. Seemingly an appeal to vanity by proxy was almost as effective as direct praise.
“I’m real sorry to hear that. We’re all huge fans of her books here. I hope it’s nothing serious.”
Perrini waited for the reply, but Hazel wasn’t biting.
“No,” she said, “nothing major, thank you. If you give me your number, I’ll be sure to pass on your message.”
He gave her the number of his fresh throwaway plus an email address he’d created while sitting in the car digesting the double-patty delights of his recent fix. Then he thanked her politely and ended the call.
Miss Chaykin was playing hard to get. And although Perrini enjoyed twisting sixty-year-old women around his little finger—a feat he still couldn’t achieve when it came to his mother, who always seemed to know exactly what he was thinking—it was clearly time to apply a more straightforward approach.
He wondered about what the woman had told him. Tess Chaykin was “tied up with a family matter.” Her aunt would “pass on” his message. Perrini wondered about that, and it sounded to him like Chaykin was out of town. He thought about Guerra’s request and about Chaykin’s boyfriend being out in San Diego and what Perrini had found out about him, and he wondered if that was the family matter she was dealing with.
Problem was, Guerra had no interest in probabilities. He demanded facts. Which left Perrini with little choice but to spend a bigger chunk of his fee than he would have liked on a third party, an option he avoided as much as he could—not just due to the expense involved, but also because it involved using people he didn’t know and required them to do something that could land them with federal-level problems if they were found out.
He took out his phone and called Lina. She answered immediately.
“I need a fix on a cell phone. The full workout.”
“Ouch.”
Lina knew the ramifications, too.
“I need it. I’ll text you the number.”
“Okay,” she relented. “Ship it over.”
Perrini knew the drill. It would take anything between thirty minutes and five hours for Lina to come back with a location. There were several variables involved: the make and model of Chaykin’s handset, what carrier she was with, the cell coverage at her location, the number of masts there, and whether her phone was GPS enabled or not. On the plus side, Lina had a few tricks of her own. A combination of geek-level expertise in using the data at her disposal, plus contacts she’d nurtured at three of the big cell phone carriers, meant that Lina had not once failed to provide an accurate lock on any number he’d given her.
Perrini decided to have a quick nap before he returned to the station house. By the end of the day, there was a good chance he’d know exactly where Tess Chaykin was, and so would Guerra.
What the Mexican chose to do then was no concern of his, though Perrini was pretty sure that, given the kind of clients Guerra usually worked for, her best days were now probably behind her.