1 Runaway Man (19 page)

“I’ll sure try.”

“Don’t say you’ll try. Say you’ll be there. I
need
you there. I’ll totally lose it if you’re not holding my hand.”

“Sara, I’ll be there.”

“Thank you, Benji. Can I ride back to the city with you after the funeral and spend the night?”

I sighed inwardly. “We’ll talk about you and me tomorrow, okay?”

“That sounds like no.”

“Sara?…”

“Yes, Benji?”

“I really like my bracelet.”

“You’d better,” she said.

I hung up the phone. Rita was staring across her desk at me, and my new bracelet, with keen-eyed disapproval.

“Okay, what is it?”

“That little girl’s madly in love with you.”

“She just needs someone to hold onto right now.”

“
And
she’s madly in love with you. Tell me, does she know about you and the ferret?”

“Would you be referring to Sonya?”

“If Sara Weiner finds out that you’re sleeping with the ferret she’ll be crushed. You can’t toy with a girl’s feelings this way.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m trying to be a friend to her.”

“Trust me, friendship isn’t what she’s after. She wants to jump you, same as the ferret did. You’re quite jumpworthy in your own adorably helpless way. Just don’t make a mess of things, okay?”

“Does that mean you think I am?”

“It means I think you’re a grown man and therefore you haven’t got the slightest idea what you’re doing.”

“Not to worry, Rita. I’ve got everything under control.”

“Sure, you do, little lamb.”

Now I got my second phone call—this one from Legs Diamond.

“It’s getting tense out on the front lines,” he informed me in a taut, edgy voice. “We just had a mini-riot outside of Velma Willingham’s building in the King projects. Fifteen, twenty bangers started throwing rocks and bottles at our men. Back-up had to be called in. The situation was contained, but the whole department’s on high alert now.”

“Are you working his shooting?”

“I just left the crime scene. And we have
two
victims, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t. Did you know Fred Ayeroff well?”

“Yeah, I knew him well. Listen, I’m ten blocks uptown from your place. Grab your coat and head downstairs. I’m picking you up.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll talk about that when I see you. Yo, little dude?”

“Yeah, Legs?”

“Tell your mom you may be home late.”

When I stuck my head in her doorway, Mom was sitting at her desk gazing out the window at Broadway, lost in thought. I wondered what she was thinking about. Maybe she was missing my dad. Maybe she was wishing he was around to take care of this shitstorm instead of me. I didn’t blame her. I wished he was still around, too. I tapped on the door and told her Legs was coming by for me.

She heaved a sigh and said, “Take care of yourself, Bunny. And don’t forget your gun.”

“I won’t, Mom.”

I put my duffel coat on over my Harris Tweed sports jacket, feeling the snug weight of my Chief’s Special in my right-hand coat pocket. I told Rita I’d see her in the morning. She didn’t say anything in response. Seemed to be lost in thought, too. Missing Clarence, I imagined. It was that kind of a day.

By the time I made it downstairs Legs was pulling up out front. I got in and off we zoomed down Broadway, Legs with his foot to the floor, me holding on for dear life. He was incredibly wired. His left knee was jiggling. His head was bobbing. It was a wonder he could keep the car on the road.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“Command performance,” he said tightly. “We are into some uber-bad shit now.”

“Tell me what the press doesn’t have, will you?”

“No prob, although it wasn’t easy getting anything out of Coach Seckla. The man’s a total wreck. Charles was like a son to him. He called the coach at home in Riverdale from his mom’s place right around noon. The coach said he sounded real down.”

“Did Charles tell him why?”

“Yes and no. He told him a close friend had just been murdered. That he was having a hard time dealing. And he was going to go nuts if he didn’t get in the gym. Coach Seckla drove straight to the King projects and picked him up. Fred Ayeroff and his partner, Mark Olman, were there keeping an eye on Velma’s building. They tailed Coach Seckla and Charles to the Field House. Ayeroff went inside with them.”

“How did Ayeroff explain his presence to the coach?”

“Charles took care of it. He told Coach Seckla that it had to do with the shooting of his friend. A precautionary measure. Coach Seckla was fine with it. He was accustomed to having extra security for Charles. Crowds of people wanted a piece of him wherever the team went. They shot hoops together for a couple hours. Coach told me they didn’t talk a lot. Charles didn’t want to talk. Just shoot. Ayeroff sat and watched them the whole time.”

“And where was Olman?”

“Parked outside in their ride, maybe fifty feet from the door.”

“Did he see anyone?”

“Not a soul. He told me the grounds outside of the Field House were deserted.”

“What about the security guard who’s on duty outside the door?”

“He’s only there when the team is using the Field House. The place was locked up tight. Coach Seckla used his key to get in. When Charles was ready to leave, the coach went on ahead to get his car while Charles stopped off in the locker room to take a leak. Ayeroff stayed with Charles. When they exited the Field House they were both sprayed with a TEC-9. Real gangbanger special. Charles died instantly. Ayeroff died in Olman’s arms before the ambulance got there.”

“Was he able to tell Olman anything?”

Legs shook his head.

“What about the shooter?”

“Got away.”

“How’s it possible that Olman didn’t see him?”

“The door’s surrounded by a bunch of big old London plane trees. Plus it’s nearly dark there by four o’clock on a winter afternoon. He was hiding in the shadows somewhere. Shots were fired from no more than ten feet away, according to our techies.”

“How about Coach Seckla? Did he see anyone?”

Legs shook his head again.

“Did the shooter take anything?”

“I put that question to Coach Seckla. He was so shook it took him a while to notice that Charles’s backpack was gone. I asked him what Charles kept in it.”

“Let me guess—his laptop.”

“Swish,” he confirmed as we hit Columbus Circle and barreled on down toward the theater district. “His cell phone’s gone, too.”

I sat there mulling it over. “Are you thinking the shooter tailed them to the Field House?”

“No, he was already set up there. He had his getaway preplanned. Must have had a tap on Charles’s phone. We are dealing with a stone-cold pro here. The mayor’s
furious.
Wants to make a bow tie out of somebody’s balls.” Legs glanced over at me. “Olman did see a dark green vehicle go streaking down the block a few seconds after the shots were fired. It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee.”

“Oh, yeah? Did he get a license number?”

“Too far away. But I’m doubling down on the number of eyeballs that we’ve got scanning the tollbooth videos from the night Bruce was shot. We’ll catalogue every dark green Grand Cherokee that entered the city after ten p.m. And question every owner. But, real, this is a large metropolis. Your boy Marco Battalino still has people canvassing the motels near Candlewood Lake. They haven’t turned up anything yet.”

“You said we’re dealing with a stone-cold pro here.”

“Most definitely.”

“You’re assuming it’s one guy?”

“It’s one guy. He’s precise and he’s surgical. Bruce’s death looked like a home invasion. Kathleen’s like a suicide. And now Charles looks like he was taken down by a gangbanger. Trust me, this is an intelligent, highly skilled lone operator.”

“Are your cop instincts telling you this?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, steering us through the traffic of Times Square. “Plus I know something you don’t. The rifling pattern on the nine-mil slug you dug out of that building on West 12th matched the slugs the Connecticut State Police pulled out of Bruce’s body. Came from a Glock 17, they think. Same gun, same shooter.”

“If he’s so smart why did he use the same gun?”

“Because he’s taunting me, that’s why. And the arrogant son of a bitch is really starting to piss me off.”

“Legs, you still haven’t said where we’re going.”

“Little Italy.”

“What for?”

He didn’t tell me. Just drove.

“Did you find out anything at the Barrow School?”

“Never made it up there. You?”

I told him about our little visit from Bobby the K. What he’d told us about Kathleen’s wicked, wicked ways. And how the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy weren’t exactly how the old lady had portrayed them.

Legs listened without comment until I got to the part where Bobby had hinted that the Grayson political machine might be behind the deaths of Bruce and Kathleen. “Wait, he told you that his dead sister was a teen skank
and
he threw his own wife under the bus?”

“Pretty much.”

“Whoa, he’s some cutie.”

“And he’s going to be our next governor. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?”

By now we’d hurtled our way downtown past Herald Square and the Flatiron Building. When we reached the Village, Legs Diamond worked his way east on Houston Street, then hung a right on Mott and took that down to Little Italy. He parked in front of a corner grocery on Mott and Grand. We got out and he led me inside of the little grocery store and straight on through to the back room, where a steep stairway took us down to the basement storeroom. There was a long, dimly lit concrete corridor down there that led, seemingly, to the basements of every store and restaurant on the block. We walked all of the way to the end of this subterranean corridor, where it made a sharp right and continued on. I heard car traffic over my head now. I’m fairly certain we were crossing under Mulberry Street. Then we made another right turn and connected up with another corridor that led us past more basement storerooms and narrow staircases.

“These passageways are left over from Prohibition,” Legs explained over his shoulder as he strode along, his motorcycle boots thunking on the concrete floor. “There’s a whole network of them in lower Manhattan. There’s even one that used to go from the basement of City Hall right to the speakeasy across the street. No lie.”

We had arrived at the basement of a restaurant. Legs led us upstairs past the bustling, fragrant kitchen—where absolutely no one looked us in the eye—and straight on up to a private second-floor dining room. I could hear the voices and laughter of the people in the restaurant below us. I don’t know what restaurant it was. Or even what street we were on. The wooden shutters over the windows were closed.

A table in the private dining room was set for five. Three men were already seated there. Our host rose to greet us.

“Thanks for coming,” said New York City Police Commissioner Dante Feldman. “Sorry for the cloak and dagger shit but I didn’t want anyone to know we were getting together. Take off your coats and join us.”

We took off our coats and joined them. I was well aware of who the other two men were. Peter Seymour I knew personally. The other man was someone who was always on television making damned sure everyone knew who he was—Jake Leetes, the one-time NYPD chief of detectives who was the founder and president of the Leetes Group.

“Good to see you again, Ben,” said Commissioner Feldman, who delivered a real nice eulogy at my dad’s funeral. “How’s that beautiful mother of yours?”

“She’s fine, sir. Thank you for asking.”

Dante Feldman was famously demanding and volatile. They called him the Human Hemorrhoid around One Police Plaza, although never to his face. It was a hawk-like face. He had a prominent beak of a nose. A carefully combed snowy white pompadour. Thin, pale lips and the hooded, penetrating glare of a man who had spent decades in interrogation rooms breaking every tough customer who came along. He was in his late fifties, tall, taut and a real sharp dresser. His navy blue suit was an Armani. And the pale blue shirt he wore had French cuffs with gold cufflinks. He was constantly shooting his cuffs and smoothing his pompadour. It was a thing that he did. Don’t know if he was aware of it or not.

Jake Leetes got up from his chair and shook my hand. “I knew your old man real well, Ben.”

Leetes was, in his own way, as intimidating a figure as Feldman. He was a simmering bunched fist of a man with a shaved head, bulging eyes and thick, liver-colored lips. A man who gave you the feeling that he could barely contain his inner rage. Leetes was no more than five-foot-nine but he had to weigh at least 220 and it was all muscle. He wore an English tweed suit with a suede vest, knit tie and tattersall shirt. He was aiming to look classy and gentlemanly the way Peter Seymour did. To me, he looked like a well-tailored bulldog.

Mr. Classy Guy didn’t say a word to me or to Legs as we joined them at the table. Just sat there sipping his mineral water and measuring the mood in the room—which was highly charged. Commissioner Feldman and Jake Leetes had come up together on the force and were two sides of the same coin. Both were ruthless, fiercely ambitious empire builders. Both had succeeded beyond their wildest schoolboy dreams. But Feldman had done it within the system while Leetes had created a system—and rules—of his own. Which meant there was a deeply felt enmity between them, a shared contempt for the other’s chosen life path. It was so apparent that it hung there in the air along with the scent of sautéed garlic from the kitchen downstairs.

Our food had already been ordered for us. A waiter brought up the first course, which was bean and pasta soup drizzled with olive oil. There was a basket of crusty bread on the table. Also two bottles of Chianti Classico. Leetes was having wine. Commissioner Feldman was sticking to mineral water same as Seymour was. Mr. Classy Guy wasn’t eating. Apparently, he had other plans for dinner. I didn’t. Neither did Legs. We both dove in as soon as our soup was set before us. I poured myself some wine. Legs drank water.