51
The fire door opened and a young African American woman showed her face. “You Mr. Thomas?”
“Yes.” Bolden hugged the wall next to the employee entrance of the Peninsula Hotel. A slim cornice one story up deflected the snow from his head and onto the toes of his shoes. In his dark overcoat, blue blazer, and flannel trousers, he could be the night manager waiting for his shift to begin, or a boyfriend wondering why his girl was always late.
“I’m Catherine. Come with me.” Without waiting for his acknowledgment, she turned and led the way inside.
Bolden followed at her heel. She was dressed in hotelier’s garb-black blazer, gray skirt cut below the knees, and a pressed white blouse. She walked quickly, never checking to see if he was keeping up. At the staff elevator, she pressed the call button and assumed her professional hostess’s stance. Hands folded at the waist. Head slightly bowed. But her eyes were anything but welcoming.
“I’ve put you in four twenty-one. It’s a junior suite,” she said as the elevator arrived and the two stepped inside. “Darius says to call if you need something else. Anything. He made me say it like that.”
Her name was Catherine Fell, and her official title was assistant front-office manager. Bolden had met her once over lunch at Schrafft’s. As a favor to her brother, Darius, he’d used the company’s pull to help Catherine get a job at the hotel. Darius Fell was his one great failure at the Boys Club, and not incidentally, the man who’d beaten him in a scant twenty moves at last weekend’s chess tournament. Chess, however, was one of Darius’s secondary endeavors. What captured the lion’s share of his formidable mental powers was crime. Drugs, guns, numbers: Harlem’s holy trinity. Darius Fell was a major player in the Macoutes street gang, the American offshoot of the feared Haitian secret police, the Tonton Macoutes. Un homme d’importance, according to the gang’s bloody hierarchy.
When they arrived at the room, she handed him a key. “You’re registered as Mr. Flanagan.”
“Thanks,” said Bolden, attempting a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t take anything from the minibar.”
But Catherine Fell was immune. Her brother was bad news, and so were his friends. “Be out by nine P.M. Housekeeping performs a second room check. I don’t want them to ask any questions.”
The suite was as opulent as you had every right to expect for twelve hundred dollars a night. There wasn’t a square inch that wasn’t decorated, laden, or stuffed with elegant accoutrements. The quilted king-size bed, the claw-footed desk, the Egyptian divan, the chiffon curtains: All were done in warm golden tones of vast wealth.
Bolden grabbed an orange from the fruit basket and sat on the bed. He picked up the phone, then set it back in its cradle. He could not risk making a call that might be traced. Still, he couldn’t drive her from his mind. He turned on the TV. All three networks were showing the video of him shooting Sol Weiss. He closed his eyes, wanting to doze, but sleep wouldn’t come. He imagined Jenny asleep in his arms, her face the color of alabaster. Wake up, he wanted to tell her. We’ll start the day over. This never happened. But she didn’t move.
A sharp knock at the door startled him. He stood immediately. He had dozed, after all. The bedside clock read 6:05. “Yeah,” he called. “Coming. Who is it?”
“Martin Kravitz,” came the muted reply. “Prell.”
Bolden peered through the peephole. Marty Kravitz stood in the hall, briefcase in hand. He studied him for a few seconds, checking for a tip-off that he’d alerted the police or brought a second. Pressing his cheek to either side of the hole, he trained his eye down the corridor. Miles of golden carpeting stared back.
He opened the door. Turning swiftly, he made as if to return to the sitting room, showing Kravitz his back. “Come on in,” he said.
“How goes it, Jake?” asked Kravitz. “Not bad digs. If you’ve got to keep a safe house, this will do nicely.”
Bolden waited for the two-tone thud of the door closing properly. He let Kravitz catch up, then spun quickly and slugged the investigator in the stomach. Breath hissed out of him like a punctured tire. “I’m not Jake,” he said, shoving him against the wall, bracing a forearm under the man’s chin, raising it high so that he could look him in the eye. “Recognize me?”
Kravitz nodded, his eyes bulging. “Bolden.”
“Nice to meet you, too. Listen up. I’ll tell you this once, and only once: I didn’t kill Sol Weiss. The tape you saw was altered by… well, all you need to know is that it was altered. Got me so far?”
“Yeah,” croaked Kravitz.
“The way I see things, you have two choices: Come in, have a seat, and tell me what you’ve learned about Mickey Schiff, or struggle. If you put up a fight, I promise it’ll go badly for you.”
Kravitz raised a hand in surrender. “Okay,” he gasped. “Just relax. It’s all good. All good.”
Bolden released his pressure and stepped back. Kravitz stumbled down the hall and collapsed on a divan. In his late forties, he was short with sloped shoulders and a runner’s wiry physique. His hair was curly and black. He had a long, bony nose and a weak chin, but his brown eyes were formidable. After a moment, he gathered his breath. “You’re in some deep kimchee, my friend.”
“You can say that again.”
Kravitz held his stomach, grimacing. “Here I was thinking I was doing scut work for HW’s next CEO. Oh well.”
Bolden sat down on the edge of the bed. “What did you find?”
“First, you tell me something. What makes you so interested in Schiff?”
“I have my reasons. Take my advice: You don’t want to know them. Let’s just say that Schiff’s a dirtbag.”
“If you’re trying to prey on my conscience, you can forget it. I checked it at the door when I started at Prell. We’re not in the good-fairy business.”
“I’m getting sick and tired of people telling me they don’t care what’s right and wrong,” said Bolden. “You want to know what my reasons are. Okay. Here’s one of them: Last night some men kidnapped me off the street and decided to ask me some very interesting questions while I was standing on the girder of a high-rise seventy stories above the ground. I had no idea what they were talking about, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t in the good-fairy business either. One of them had a tattoo on his chest that I’m pretty sure identifies him as working for the Scanlon Corporation. I did some checking and found that Mickey Schiff worked for a company that bought Scanlon twenty years ago. That good enough for you?”
“Marginal. I’d have added that he was standing right next to you when Sol Weiss got shot. I saw the tape, by the way. I take it you believe Schiff was involved with your dismissal from the firm. The coincidences are piling up. I’ll grant you that. Looks like you took out the wrong man.”
“I didn’t shoot Sol.”
“So you told me.” Kravitz sat back, crossing one leg over another. “At least I know why you filed a police report for felonious assault at the Thirty-fourth Precinct last night.”
The two men looked at each other. “Someone’s trying to kill me,” Bolden said finally.
“That’s a good reason,” said Kravitz. He nodded to the entryway. “My briefcase. There’s some material you may find interesting.”
“Does this mean you’re going to let me know what you found on Schiff?”
“May I?”
Bolden stood and retrieved the briefcase, setting it down between them. Kravitz opened it, and methodically withdrew one folder after the next, setting each on the table beside him. “All right then, first things first,” he said. “Diana Chambers.” He picked up a folder and opened the cover. “No record of her at any hospital. She isn’t at home either. Or, if she is, she’s not answering her phone or door. Easy ruse: send over takeout. There’s been no police report filed, either. Not in the five boroughs, at least, and you said the crime took place in Manhattan.”