Hack (11 page)

“Hi, Ginny,” I said, hoping I sounded casual.

“Hi,” she said, indifferent.

“What’s up?”

She looked at me with a bored expression for only a second. Her eyes were some kind of green with red flecks, like sparks. I was trying to keep my eyes on her eyes, no lower.

“Waiting for Aubrey. Nobody home,” she shrugged.

So far, so good. I figured she wouldn’t want to advertise our hookup to her colleagues.

“He told me he was going to hide from you guys. From us,” I said.

“Where?”

“He didn’t say. Then it wouldn’t be hiding,” I smiled. She ignored me again and it bothered me. My cell vibrated and I answered it before it rang. “Hello?”

“Shepherd? Roland Arbusto here.”

“Oh, hi,” I responded, not using his name in front of my competition. “What’s up?”

“Oh not much… preparing for Aubrey’s court date tomorrow morning… How about you? Any new leads?”

“No, not at the moment,” I replied.

“Oh, too bad… hear from anybody today?”

He was fishing.

“Like who?” I asked.

He was silent for a bit.

“Off the record?” he asked.

I casually strolled slowly away from the passel of press. “I’d prefer not,” I said quietly, walking down the block. “How about as a source, you know, I won’t use your name?”

He thought about it.

“Okay. On the record, no source. It won’t matter anyway in the morning if… I can’t reach Aubrey. He missed two conferences at my office over the weekend. He won’t return my calls and he never checked into the hotel he was supposed to go to. I called everyone else he might have contacted—nothing. You are the only other person he might call. I’m afraid he…”

“You’re afraid he jumped bail.”

“That won’t be official until the judge issues a bench warrant tomorrow,” Arbusto said. “I can’t cover for him. I’m afraid… he may have done something stupid. He took a lot of cash and jewelry with him. I can’t believe he would do this. It doesn’t make any sense. I really believe he is not guilty, Shepherd. I mean no-shit innocent.”

“I was beginning to think so but now I don’t know. How much cash and jewelry?”

“At least half a mil total value. I won’t tell anyone else. I hope to God he shows up. Call me at any time, day or night, if you hear from him.”

“You want me to print it, right?”

He laughed.

“Yeah, you got me. Put it in the paper, maybe it’ll scare him into coming back. Say the source said if he jumps bail, the cops will find him and he’ll be in jail for two years until his trial. Also, the judge will tell the jury that fleeing the jurisdiction shows consciousness of guilt and might ensure a guilty verdict. That might do it.”

“Okay, Rolly. Thanks. By the way, why am I the only other person Aubrey might call?”

“He likes you,” Arbusto replied. “He told me.”

“That creeps me out,” I said. “His husband is barely cold.”

“No, not like that,” Arbusto said. “He knows you’re straight. He thinks you’re smart and you might help him prove he’s not guilty.”

“He treats people he
likes
like that? Glad he doesn’t hate me.”

Arbusto laughed.

“He’s surprised when straight people don’t hate him because he’s gay,” Arbusto said. “He thinks honest people are suckers but they can be useful.”

“What a guy,” I laughed back. “Good luck.”

I hung up and dialed the office but immediately canceled the call. Ginny was staring at me like I was lunch. What if she could read lips? I moseyed back and introduced myself to some of the reporters and camera crews, like I had nothing to do. Some were friendly, some seemed envious, others bored. I decided to hit on Ginny. That way, when she shot me down, I could leave and she wouldn’t follow me.

“So, Ginny, doing anything major tonight?”

“Working. Maybe,” she answered, coldly.

“How about dinner at eight? You can bring that DVD, if you’re finished copying it,” I said, my voice dripping with charm. “Also, my notebooks. And anything else you may have taken.”

She looked at me oddly, trying to decide if I was stupid or sarcastic, but then she softened.

“You’re asking me out on a date?” she smirked, making the last word sound like a turd.

“No, just dinner with a colleague. You can bring your brothers but they have to pay for their own food.”

She cracked and smiled. “Where?”

I told her and she smiled again.

“Okay, it’s a date,” she said, extending her hand for a businesslike shake.

I detected the sweet scent of vanilla swirling in the dirty breeze. I ambled west, toward Fifth Avenue and Central Park beyond. I stopped inside the entrance, at a break in the brownstone wall surrounding the park, and looked back. Ginny wasn’t following me.

Walking in Central Park, I dialed the office and filed my exclusive story. Badger was ecstatic.

“He’s done a bunk? Super!” Badger said. He switched to headline voice. “‘FATSO FLEES!’”

“We can’t say that,” I pointed out. “Just that he
may
have, that he is out of touch and it’s a mystery. It won’t be official unless and until he does not appear in court tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll just add a question mark,” he said. “‘FATSO FLEES?’”

Murray was not at his restaurant when I called but I made my reservation and a second request of Heather the bartender, who was happy to oblige.

I hung up and dialed Izzy. He was at the precinct squad room. I told him I had some information and wanted to watch the footage of Aubrey at the Bistro du Bois on the day of the murder. He told me to come on over to East 96th Street, second floor.

“But your source isn’t sure Aubrey is in the wind?” Izzy asked after I arrived by cab and gave him the news.

“Just hasn’t heard from him but he is afraid Aubrey took off.”

“I can’t do anything until a judge issues a warrant,” Izzy said.

“Right. But he missed some important meetings and no one has heard from him. Also, he took half a million in cash and jewelry with him.”

“Outstanding,” Izzy said. “That
schmekel
has just snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”

“What’s a
schmekel
?” I asked.

“A small, shriveled penis,” Izzy responded.

“Yiddish?”

“Does it sound Spanish?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Izzy, but Jews seem to have a lot of different names for male genitalia.”

“Yah. It’s like the Eskimos with snow.”

“So, Aubrey taking off is an admission of guilt?”

“You got it. Who’s your source?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Forsythe himself?”

“No.”

“Then it’s Arbusto.”

“I can’t say. But if his own lawyer thought he’d skipped, it would carry some weight, right?”

“Yeah, maybe, but I can’t do anything official until Forsythe actually fails to show up for court.”

“Can you do anything
unofficially
?”

He pondered a moment.

“I can say we have a confidential informant who claims he has absconded and begin an investigation that would put his name on the Homeland Security no-fly list. That might keep him from getting on a plane to Rio.”

“Is that hard to do?”

“No, it’s too easy. I can label you a terrorist or arrest you for murder on anyone’s alleged eyewitness statement a lot more easily than I can get a search warrant for your home.”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“Write your congressman.”

I told Izzy my other idea and he agreed. On his desktop computer, Izzy played the footage of Aubrey chowing down at Bistro du Bois after loading up at McDonald’s. I counted the dishes. It looked like four small appetizer plates, two oval salads, and seven large entrée plates. A total of thirteen. I rewound and fast-forwarded to confirm. One dish, delivered near the end of the video, was hard to spot because the waiter or waitress—it was impossible to guess the gender—slipped it in front of Aubrey from the left, without fully entering the frame. The other servers, all in black pants and white shirts, made a big show of presentation, of smiling, giving Aubrey a plate, wishing him a hearty appetite. Probably out-of-work actors, hamming it up for the camera.

“Aubrey insists there were thirteen dishes and he’s right,” I told Izzy. “But the restaurant told me there were only a dozen. It was on the bill.”

“So? They lost count. Forsythe got a freebie.”

“Maybe. But I’ve found out that chefs and critics remember every part, every ingredient of every dish, like tennis champions can recall every point. I think the thirteenth dish was Neil Parmesan and the server was camera shy for a reason.”

“Let me see that,” Izzy said, rewinding the video. “Huh,” he said, as he watched and then froze the arm proffering the extra plate. The dish bore a small, pale oval entrée sprinkled with green flecks that might have been parsley.

“He or she is wearing black pants and a white shirt,” I pointed out. “But all the servers have black pants and a white shirt.”

“But no face,” Izzy grumbled. “No tattoo on the arm, nothing.”

“Nope. But doesn’t that plate look different than the others? Like maybe a different color?”

“They’re all white,” Izzy pointed out.

“But maybe a different shade or something, thinner?”

“Maybe,” Izzy shrugged. “Too dark. So, if Forsythe is so innocent and someone else killed Neil and slipped him Neil Parmesan, why is Forsythe making a run for it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he isn’t. We’ll see in the morning. Thanks for the show, Izzy. I gotta run. Got a date.”

“Anybody I know?” Izzy asked.

“Ginny McElhone, the police reporter from the
Daily Press
.”

He laughed long and loud. When I asked him why, he refused to say. He just kept laughing, as I walked out.

The night was warm and Ginny, still wearing her diaphanous outfit, was seated at an outside table at the Bistro du Bois, behind a wooden fence on the sidewalk. The hostess, Heather, showed me to the table with a wink and Murray Glassberg, the chef, waved from the kitchen. Ginny said she was drinking Jameson Irish Whiskey on the rocks. I ordered a rum punch.

“Rum punch? Are we on a cruise?” Ginny giggled.

“They don’t have my favorite drink. I did have rum punches in the islands but not on a cruise,” I admitted. “Well, I guess it was a cruise. I spent a few months sailing the Caribbean alone after… after my accident. If you use over-proof 154 rum it beats pills as a painkiller.”

“I’ll stick with good old Irish whiskey, like God intended,” she said.

“Why not Old Bushmills? I thought that was the best.”

“Aren’t you Irish Catholic?” she asked, shocked.

“Retired. Why?”

“Bushmills is Protestant. Everyone knows that.”

“How can alcohol have a religion?” I wondered aloud.

“You’re not a New Yorker. Where are you from?” she demanded.

“Kansas, sort of. Lots of other places. Now I’m a New Yorker. I moved here.”

“Doesn’t make you a New Yorker.”

“What does? Rudeness? Dishonesty? Ruthlessness? Could we get beyond the macho city crap and just agree to be friendly competitors and maybe enjoy a meal… and maybe each other?”

She thought about it while my drink arrived. It had a small, festive, multi-colored paper parasol, chunks of fruit and a pink straw with the paper removed and curled cutely.

“Sweet,” Ginny said. “Don’t forget to point your pinkie.”

I removed the straw and umbrella and held my glass up for a toast.

“What shall we drink to?” I asked.

“Your return to the Midwest,” she beamed.

“Nope. Nothing there for me anymore.”

“To the story!” she said, raising her amber glass.

“May the best man win!” I added.

She shot me an angry glance but we had a great meal, picking whatever dishes looked good and digging in. The hot shredded beef with carrots and celery was great, and so were the ginger cubes. Ginny competed at everything; drinking, eating, talking. We discussed the story but she gave up when she couldn’t get anything out of me. We ordered more drinks and she told me her greatest hits, her best stories. I switched to her drink.

“I thought you didn’t like whiskey?” she asked.

“I pretty much like anything with alcohol in it. I learned not to be too fussy about it.”

Ginny told me about the time she dressed up as a nurse to get a bedside interview with a hero firefighter, and how she posed as a hooker to catch cops asking for free sex. Picturing her dressed up as a nurse and a hooker did not calm me.

“You always been a reporter?” I asked during the salads.

“Always. My dad was a pressman, my uncles were mailers, and my brothers are pressmen, so I grew up in newspapers.”

“Mailers?”

“You really don’t know anything about our business do you?”

“Nope. Don’t really want to,” I said. “I was writing a pet column and they sent me to Aubrey’s house by mistake. I sort of stumbled into this.”

“That story is true? Damn, that is so unfair,” she said, glancing at her phone.

“To whom?” I asked.

“To me. It’s more insulting to be beaten by… a pet columnist, a beginner.”

“So, you’d feel better if I was some hotshot Pullets Prize winner?”

“Pulitzer Prize, moron. A pullet is a chicken. Yes.”

“Whatever. Am I supposed to apologize? This was a mistake. I don’t care about any of this. It won’t last. I just got kind of… caught up in it.”

As I spoke, I was caught up in watching the cute way her nose wrinkled as she spoke.

“You’re hooked. I know the signs,” she said, waving for more booze.

“Not the journalism stuff,” I protested. “The case. I have to see how it comes out. I have to finish it. I’ve locked on.”

“I’ll finish it,” she boasted. “Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure you haven’t… done something else, another job?”

“Like what?” she asked, gulping a new drink.

“Nothing… you just remind me of some people I used to work with.”

“Where?” she asked, her eyes sparkling at the prospect of new information.

“Lots of places.”

She looked at me like she thought I couldn’t hold my liquor.

“When did your mom die?” I asked. “Must have been hard without sisters.”