Gone Tomorrow (14 page)

‘For example?’

‘Best case, he gave her a warm coat in winter.’

‘And worst case?’

‘Maybe John Sansom is Lila Hoth’s father.’

THIRTY-TWO

LEE AND I WENT STRAIGHT BACK TO THE PRECINCT. JACOB Mark had finished his business with Docherty. That was clear. And something had changed. That was clear too. They were sitting opposite each other across Docherty’s desk. Not talking any more. Jake looked happier. Docherty had a patient expression on his face, like he had just wasted an hour. He didn’t look resentful about it. Cops are accustomed to wasting time. Statistically most of what they do leads nowhere. Lee and I walked over to them and Jake said, ‘Peter called his coach.’

I asked, ‘When?’

‘Two hours ago. The coach called Molina and Molina called me.’

‘So where is he?’

‘He didn’t say. He had to leave a message. His coach never answers his phone over dinner. Family time.’

‘But Peter’s OK?’

‘He said he won’t be back anytime soon. Maybe ever. He’s talking about quitting football. There was a girl giggling in the background.’

Docherty said, ‘She must be some girl.’

I asked Jake, ‘You OK with that?’

Jake said, ‘Hell no. But it’s his life. And he’ll change his mind, anyway. The only question is how fast.’

‘I meant, are you happy that the message was for real?’

‘The coach knows his voice. Better than I do, probably.’

‘Anyone try calling him back?’

‘All of us. But his phone is off again.’

Theresa Lee said, ‘So we’re satisfied?’

‘I guess.’

‘Feeling better?’

‘Relieved.’

‘May I ask you a question about another subject?’

‘Shoot.’

‘Was your sister adopted?’

Jake paused. Switched gears. Nodded. ‘We both were. As babies. Separately, three years apart. Susan first.’ Then he asked, ‘Why?’

Lee said, ‘I’m corroborating some new information received.’

‘What new information?’

‘It seems that Susan came up here to meet a friend.’

‘What friend?’

‘A Ukrainian woman called Lila Hoth.’

Jake glanced at me. ‘We’ve been through this. I never heard that name from Susan.’

Lee asked him, ‘Would you expect to? How close were you? It seems to be a fairly recent friendship.’

‘We weren’t very close.’

‘When was the last time you talked?’

‘A few months, I guess.’

‘So you’re not completely up to date with her social life.’

Jake said, ‘I guess not.’

Lee asked, ‘How many people knew that Susan was adopted?’

‘I guess she didn’t advertise it. But it wasn’t a secret.’

‘How fast would a new friend find out?’

‘Fast enough, probably. Friends talk about stuff like that:

‘How would you describe Susan’s relationship with her son?’

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘An important one.’

Jake hesitated. He clammed up and turned away, physically, like he was literally dodging the issue. Like he was flinching from a blow. Maybe because he was reluctant to wash dirty linen in public, in which case his body language was really all the answer we needed. But Theresa Lee wanted chapter and verse. She said, ‘Talk to me, Jake. Cop to cop. This is something I need to know about.’

Jake was quiet for a spell. Then he shrugged and said, ‘I guess you could call it a love-hate relationship.’

‘In what way exactly?’

‘Susan loved Peter, Peter hated her.’

‘Why?’

More hesitation. Another shrug. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘How?’

‘Peter went through a phase, like most kids do. Like girls want to be long-lost princesses, or boys want their grandfathers to have been admirals or generals or famous explorers. For a spell everyone wants to be something they’re not. Peter wanted to live in a Ralph Lauren advertisement, basically. He wanted to be Peter Molina the Fourth, or at least the Third. He wanted his father to have an estate in Kennebunkport, and his mother to have the remnants of an old fortune. Susan didn’t handle it well. She was the daughter of a drug-addicted teenage whore from Baltimore, and she made no secret of it. She thought honesty was the best policy. Peter handled it badly. They never really got past it, and then the divorce came, and Peter chose up sides, and they never got over it.’

‘How did you feel about it?’

‘I could see both points of view. I never inquired about my real mother. I didn’t want to know. But I went through a spell where I wished she was a grand old lady with diamonds. I got over it. But Peter didn’t, which is stupid, I know, but understandable.’

‘Did Susan like Peter as a person, as opposed to loving him as a son?’

Jake shook his head. ‘No. Which made things even worse. Susan had no sympathy for jocks and letter jackets and all that stuff. I guess in school and college she had bad experiences with people like that. She didn’t like that her son was turning into one of them. But that stuff was important to Peter, in its own right at first, and then later as a weapon against her. It was a dysfunctional family, no question.’

‘Who knows this story?’

‘You mean, would a friend know?’ Lee nodded.

Jake said, ‘A close friend might.’

‘A close friend she met quite recently?’

‘There’s no timetable. It’s about trust, isn’t it?’

1 said, ‘You told me Susan wasn’t an unhappy person.’

Jake said, ‘And she wasn’t. I know that sounds weird. But adopted people have a different view of family. They have different expectations. Believe me, I know. Susan was at peace with it. It was a fact of life, that’s all.’

‘Was she lonely?’

‘I’m sure she was.’

‘Did she feel isolated?’

‘I’m sure she did.’

‘Did she like to talk on the phone?’

‘Most women do.’

Lee asked him, ‘Have you got kids?’ Jake shook his head again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t have kids. I’m not even married. I tried to learn from my big sister’s experience.’

Lee stayed quiet for a spell and then she said, ‘Thanks, Jake. I’m happy that Peter’s OK. And I’m sorry I had to bring all that bad stuff up.’ Then she walked away and I followed her and she said, ‘I’ll check the other things too, but it will take time, because those channels are always slow, but right now my guess is that Lila Hoth will pan out just fine. She’s two for two so far, on the adoption thing and the mother-son thing. She knows stuff only a genuine friend would know.’

I nodded agreement. ‘You interested in the other thing? Whatever it was that got Susan so scared?’

‘Not until I see actual evidence of a crime committed in New York City, somewhere between Ninth Avenue and Park, and 30th Street and 45th.’

‘That’s this precinct?’

She nodded. ‘Anything else would be volunteer work.’

‘You interested in Sansom?’

‘Not even a little bit. Are you?’

‘I feel like I should warn him, maybe.’

‘About what? A million-to-one possibility?’

‘It’s actually much shorter odds than a million to one. There are five million men called John in America. Second only to James, for popularity. That’s one in thirty guys. Which means that in 1983 there could have been about thirty-three thousand Johns in the U.S. Army. Discount it maybe ten per cent for military demographics, the chances are about one in thirty thousand.’

‘Those are still very big odds.’

‘I think Sansom should know, that’s all.’

‘Why?’

‘Call it a brother officer thing. Maybe I’ll head back to D.C.’

‘No need. Save yourself the trip. He’s coming here. Tomorrow midday, for a fund raiser lunch at the Sheraton. With all the heavy hitters from Wall Street. Seventh Avenue and 52nd Street. We got a memo.’

‘Why? He wasn’t getting much protection in Greensboro.’

‘He isn’t getting much protection here either. In fact he isn’t getting any. But we get memos about everything. That’s how it is now. That’s the new NYPD.’ Then she walked away, leaving me all alone in the middle of the empty squad room. And leaving me feeling a little uneasy. Maybe Lila Hoth really was as pure as the driven snow, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that Sansom was walking into a trap, just by coming to the city.

THIRTY-THREE

IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE YOU COULD SLEEP WELL IN New York for five dollars a night, hut you can still do it for fifty, if you know how. The key is starting late. I walked down to a hotel I had used before, near Madison Square Garden. It was a big place, once grand, now just a faded old pile, perpetually close to renovation or demolition but never actually getting there. After midnight the front-of-house staff shrinks down to a lone night porter responsible for everything including the desk. I walked up to him and asked if he had a room available. He made a show of tapping on a keyboard and looking at a screen and then he said yes, he did have a room available. He quoted a price of a hundred and eighty-five dollars, plus tax. I asked if I could see the room before I committed. It was the kind of hotel where that kind of request seemed reasonable. And sensible. Mandatory, even. The guy came out from behind the desk and took me up in the elevator and along a corridor. He opened a door with a pass card attached to his belt by a curly plastic cord and stood back to let me enter.

The room was OK. It had a bed in it, and a bathroom. Everything I needed, and nothing I didn’t. I took two twenties out of my pocket and said, ‘Suppose I don’t worry about that whole registration process downstairs?’

The guy said nothing. They never do, at that point. I took out another ten and said, ‘For the maid, tomorrow.’

The guy shuffled a little like I was putting him on the spot, but then his hand came out and he took the money. He said, ‘Be out by eight,’ and he walked away. The door closed behind him. Maybe a central computer would show that his pass card had unlocked the room, and when, but he would claim that he had shown me the accommodations, and that I had been unmoved by their attractions, and that I had left again immediately. It was probably a claim he made on a regular basis. I was probably the fourth guy he had stowed away that week. Maybe the fifth, or the sixth. All kinds of things happen in city hotels, after the day staff has quit.

I slept well and woke up feeling good and I was out five minutes before eight. I forced my way through the crowds heading in and out of Penn Station and got breakfast in the back booth of a place on 33rd. Coffee, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and more coffee, all for six bucks, plus tax, plus tip. More expensive than North Carolina, hut only slightly. The battery of Leonid’s cell was still about half charged. An icon was showing some bars blank and some bars lit. I figured I had enough juice for a few calls. I dialled 600 and then aimed to dial 82219 but before I got halfway through the sequence the earpiece started up with a fast little triplet trill pitched somewhere between a siren and a xylophone. A voice came on and told me my call could not be completed as dialled. It asked me to check and try again. I tried 1-600 and got exactly the same result. I tried 011 for an international line, and then 1 for North America, and then 600. A circuitous route, but the outcome was no better. I tried 001 as the international code in case the phone thought it was still in London. No result. I tried 8**101, which was the Eastern European international code for America, in case the phone had been hauled all the way from Moscow a year earlier. No result. I looked at the phone’s keypad and thought about using a 3 in place of the D, but the system was already beeping at me well before I got there.

So, 600-82219-D was not a phone number, Canadian or otherwise. Which the FBI must have known. Maybe they had considered the possibility for about a minute, and then dismissed it out of hand. The FBI is a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. So back on 35th Street they had buried their real questions for me behind a smokescreen.

What else had they asked me?

They had gauged my level of interest, they had asked yet again if Susan had given me anything, and they had confirmed that I was leaving town. They had wanted me incurious, and empty-handed, and gone.

Why?

I had no idea.

And what exactly was 600-82219-D, if it wasn’t a phone number?

I sat another ten minutes with a final cup of coffee, sipping slowly, eyes open but not seeing much, trying to sneak up on the answer from below. Like Susan Mark had planned to sneak up out of the subway. I visualized the numbers in my mind, strung out, separately, together, different combinations, spaces, hyphens, groups.

The 600 part rang a faint bell.

Susan Mark.

600.

But I couldn’t get it.

I finished my coffee and put Leonid’s cell back in my pocket and headed north towards the Sheraton.

The hotel was a huge glass pillar with a plasma screen in the lobby that listed all the day’s events. The main ballroom was booked for lunch by a group calling itself FT, Fair Tax, or Free Trade, or maybe even the
Financial Times
itself. Plausible cover for a bunch of Wall Street fat cats looking to buy yet more influence. Their affair was due to start at noon. I figured Sansom would try to arrive by eleven. He would want some time and space and calm beforehand, to prepare. This was a big meeting for him. These were his people, and they had deep pockets. He would need sixty minutes, minimum. Which gave me two more hours to kill. I walked over to Broadway and found a clothing store two blocks north. I wanted another new shirt. I didn’t like the one I was in. It was a symbol of defeat.
Don’t come dressed like that, or you won’t get in
. If I was going to see Elspeth Sansom again I didn’t want to be wearing a badge of my failure and her success.

I chose an insubstantial thing made from thin khaki poplin and paid eleven bucks for it. Cheap, and it should have been. It had no pockets and the sleeves ended halfway down my forearms. With the cuffs folded back they hit my elbows. But I liked it well enough. It was a satisfactory garment. And it was purchased voluntarily, at least.

By ten thirty I was back in the Sheraton’s lobby. I sat in a chair with people all around me. They had suitcases. Half of them were heading out, waiting for cars. Half of them were heading in, waiting for rooms.

By ten forty I had figured out what 600-82219-D meant.