Tug noticed that Donna had noticed the big guy. Like always. He got up and, if it had been anyone but Tug Parnell, would've felt foolish. "This side of beef is Kevin Byrne. Kevin Byrne, Donna Sullivan."
"You're the one they call Riff Raff, right?" she asked.
Byrne reddened in a flash, embarrassed at the handle for the very first time. The nickname had always given Byrne a certain sense of ethnic bad- boy pride, but coming from Donna Sullivan's lips that day, it sounded, well, stupid. "Uh, yeah," he said, feeling even dumber.
"Want to walk with me awhile?" she asked.
It was like asking him if he had any interest in breathing. "Sure," he said.
And thus she had him.
They walked down to the river, their hands brushing, never quite reaching out, fully sensing each other's nearness. When they returned to the neighborhood at just after dusk, Donna Sullivan kissed him on the cheek.
"You're not so tough, you know," Donna said.
"I'm not?"
"No. I think you may even be sweet."
Byrne grabbed his heart in mock cardiac arrest. "Sweet?"
Donna laughed. "Don't worry," she said. She lowered her voice to a honey whisper. "Your secret is safe with me."
He watched her walk up to the house. She turned, silhouetted in the doorway, and blew him another kiss.
He fell in love that day, and he thought it would never end.
The cancer got Tug in '99. Timmy was running a plumbing crew in Camden. Six kids, last he heard. Des was killed by a drunk driver in '02. Himself.
And now Kevin Francis Byrne again felt that rush of romantic love, for only the second time in his life. He had been adrift for so long. Victoria had the power to change all that.
He decided to call off this crusade to find Julian Matisse. Let the system run its game. He was too old and too tired. When Victoria showed, he would tell her, they would have a few cocktails, call it a night.
The one good thing that came out of all this was that he had found her again.
He looked at his watch. Nine ten.
He got out of his car, walked into the diner, thinking he had missed Victoria, thinking maybe she had not seen his car and had gone inside. She was not inside. He took out his cell phone, called her number, got her voice mail. He called the runaway shelter where she counseled, and was told that she had left awhile ago.
When Byrne got back to the car, he had to look twice to make sure it was his car. For some reason, his car now had a hood ornament. He glanced around the lot, a little disoriented. He looked back. It was his car.
As he got closer, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, and the skin begin to dimple on his arms.
It wasn't a hood ornament. Someone had put something on the hood of his car while he was inside the diner, a small ceramic figure sitting on an oaken keg. A figurine from a Disney movie.
It was Snow White.
29
"Name five historical roles played by Gary Oldman," Seth said.
Ian's face lit up. He had been reading the first of a short stack of scripts. No one read or absorbed a screenplay faster than Ian Whitestone.
But even a mind as quick and encyclopedic as Ian's should have taken more than a few seconds on this one. Not a chance. Seth had barely mouthed the question before Ian was spitting out the answer.
"Sid Vicious, Pontius Pilate, Joe Orton, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Albert Milo."
Gotcha, Seth thought. Le Bec-Fin here we come. "Albert Milo was fictional."
"Yes, but everyone knows he was really supposed to be Julian Schnabel in Basquiat."
Seth glared at Ian for a moment. Ian knew the rules. No fictionaliza- tion of real-life characters. They were sitting in Little Pete's Restaurant on Seventeenth Street, across from the Radisson hotel. As wealthy as Ian Whitestone was, he lived on diner food. "Okay, then," Ian said. "Ludwig van Beethoven."
Shit, Seth thought. He really thought he'd had him this time.
Seth finished his coffee, wondering if he'd ever stump the man. He looked out the window, saw the first flashbulb pop across the street, saw the crowd swell toward the entrance to the hotel, watched the adoring fans gather around Will Parrish. He then glanced back at Ian Whitestone, his nose once more stuck in a script, the food still untouched on his plate.
What a paradox, Seth thought. Although it was a paradox suffused with a strange sort of logic.
Granted, Will Parrish was a bankable movie star. He had been responsible for well over a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales over the past two decades, and was one of only half a dozen or so American actors over the age of thirty-five who could "open" a movie. On the other hand, Ian Whitestone could pick up the phone and get any of the five major studio heads on the line within minutes. These were the only people in the world who could green-light a film budgeted at nine figures. And they were all on Ian's speed dial. Even Will Parrish couldn't say that.
In the film trade, at least at the creative level, the real power was with men like Ian Whitestone, not Will Parrish. If he was so inclined-and he quite often was-Ian Whitestone could pluck that heart-stoppingly beautiful yet thoroughly untalented nineteen-year-old girl from the crowd and drop her right into the middle of her wildest dreams. With a brief layover in his bed, of course. All without lifting a finger. All without causing a stir.
Yet in just about any city other than Hollywood, it was Ian White- stone, not Will Parrish, who could sit unmolested and virtually unobserved in a diner and eat his meal in peace. No one would know that the creative force behind Dimensions liked to put tartar sauce on his hamburgers. No one would know that the man once referred to as the second coming of Luis Bunuel liked to put a tablespoon of sugar into his Diet Coke.
But Seth Goldman knew.
He knew these things and so much more. Ian Whitestone was a man with appetites. If no one knew about his culinary peculiarities, only one other man knew that, when the sun dropped below the lowest roofline, when people dressed in their nighttime masks, Ian Whitestone saw the city as his own twisted and dangerous buffet.
Seth looked across the street, spotted a young, stately redhead at the back of the crowd. She had not gotten anywhere near the movie star before he had been whisked away in his stretch limo. She looked crestfallen. Seth glanced around. No one was watching.
He rose from the booth, exited the restaurant, spritzed his breath, crossed the street. When he reached the other curb he thought about what he and Ian Whitestone were about to do. He thought about how his connection to the Oscar-nominated director ran much deeper than that of the average executive assistant, about how the tissue that bound them snaked through a darker place, a place that sunshine never graced, a place where the screams of the innocent were never heard.
30
The crowd at Finnigan's Wake was starting to thicken. The raucous, multilevel Irish pub on Spring Garden Street was a venerated cop hangout that drew its clientele from all of Philly's police districts. Everyone from the top brass to the rookie patrolman stopped here from time to time. The food was decent, the beer was cold, and the atmosphere was pure Philly blue.
But you had to count your drinks at Finnigan's. You could literally bump into the commissioner here.
Above the bar was a banner proclaiming: BEST WISHES SERGEANT O'BRIEN! Jessica stopped upstairs, got her pleasantries out of the way. She came back down to the first floor. It was noisier down there, but right now she wanted the quiet anonymity of a boisterous cop bar. She had just turned the corner into the main room when her cell phone rang. It was Terry Cahill. Although it was hard to hear, she did pick up that he was taking a rain check on their drink. He said he had tailed Adam Kaslov to a bar in North Philly, and had then gotten a call from his ASAC. There was a bank robbery in Lower Merion, and they needed him at the scene. He had to shut down the surveillance.