Speak of the Devil (14 page)

“We’re all set there.”

“And the money?”

“Everything’s in place. We want this thing to go off smoothly and simply. No bumps.”

“I hope our Mr. Nightmare wants the same,” I said.

“You know where to meet?”

“I’ve got it.”

“The mayor appreciates your service on this,” Byron said.

“No problem. It’ll be handy having City Hall in my pocket.”

There was a pause. “That’s not funny, Mr. Malone.”

“Really? I sort of thought it was.”

He hung up.

Margo asked, “Did the mayor say ‘Wisconsin’?”

“Apparently. If you can pull yourself away from your copulating whales, we can see. Channel Four.”

We muted the volume. I didn’t want to hear the new anchor’s version of the previous day’s events and where things allegedly stood. The truth surrounding the pair of assaults had already split into separate pieces, each of which was traveling down its own track. The version I was privy to was a lot spicier than the one being broadcast. Not to mention that it held more facts. But when footage of Rebecca Gilpin dancing her little fanny off in the dinghy started running, I barked, “Sound.”

“Yes, master.”

The attempt to keep mum on Rebecca Gilpin’s presence at Barrymore’s the night before was already crumbling. The theater had announced that the actress had picked up a flu and would be out of the show over the weekend. Her understudy would be going on. But rumors were materializing that Rebecca had been at the restaurant when the coat-check closet exploded and that she was anywhere from mildly injured to critically injured to already dead. A tearful fan out in front of the theater was convinced that the rumors of the actress’s death were the accurate ones. A know-nothing overreacting to a rumor that is false is not news. They let the woman blubber on for a good ten seconds.

A spokesman for the mayor had been sent to handle the Rebecca Gilpin matter. Was she dead? Had she been at Barrymore’s after all? Wasn’t there a connection between the two Thanksgiving Day incidents? The spokesman had used up his airtime essentially declaring that he didn’t know a damn thing.

“Fumble,” I said.

“Why didn’t they just let the story out in the first place?” Margo said.

“Desperate attempt at containment. Pointless.”

“It’s blowing up in their faces.”

“Fumble,” I said again.

The next story concerned Roberto Diaz. It didn’t contain much substance. Diaz had lived alone in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. He was divorced with a young daughter. No other details had been uncovered. His neighbors had nothing insightful to say about him, but they were allowed to say it anyway. None of them “had any idea” that he was planning such a horrific thing as the attack at the parade. He was described as “a quiet man” who “kept to himself.”

“Shush,” Margo said when she heard the beginnings of my growl.

“It’s what they always say.”

“Just let them say it.”

Details on the termination of Diaz’s employment at the messenger service were reported as unclear. A spokesman for the company had weighed in with a “no comment.”

Margo scooted to the end of the couch and brought a foot up onto my lap. I pretended to ignore it, but it kept batting me in the ribs. I finally took hold of it.

The mayor came on next. He was standing at a podium along with a very uncomfortable-looking Leonard Cox. Tommy Carroll stood behind them, half out of the picture. Leavitt praised Officer Cox for his courage and his dedication to duty and all the rest. He told him that the city was grateful. It was a very polished presentation. The mayor was wearing a bright green tie. It looked absurdly inappropriate.

Leavitt took hold of Cox’s hand and pumped his arm vigorously. “The people of this city are proud of you. I’m sure the people of your home state, Wisconsin, are proud of you as well.”

“Message delivered,” I said.

Margo said, “I think it stinks that they want you to hand off the money. I don’t like it.”

“The people of Wisconsin will be proud of me.”

Her foot kicked lightly at my ribs. “I’m serious. I don’t want you to do it.”

“Someone has to do it,” I said.

“But why you?”

“I’m qualified.”

“I hate it,” she said. “I wish you sold shoes for a living.”

I balanced her foot in my hand and studied it. I vetoed a few too-easy cracks, then lowered the foot back onto my lap. “I’ll be fine.”

She glowered at me. “I want a big juicy steak for dinner.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Something really rich for dessert.”

“Name it.”

“I want you to come back home tomorrow in one piece.”

“I always have.”

“Right.” She sniggered. “Sometimes.”

THE CLOISTERS IS A BRANCH OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF Art. I can get to the Met from Margo’s by walking directly across Central Park. Catch me in a jogging mood and I can make it there in ten minutes. But the Cloisters is located in Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan, a mile beyond the George Washington Bridge and some six miles from Margo’s place. I’m not
that
fond of jogging.

I took the A train to 190th Street, where a cattle-style elevator brought me up to street level. They call this part of Manhattan Washington Heights. The area is essentially a long bulge running north–south along the Hudson, rivaling in height the bare-faced Palisades cliffs across the river in the state that isn’t New York. The rents are more reasonable here than farther south in the city, and the racial mix is decidedly melting-pottish. In recent years the yuppies and neo-yuppies have purchased places in Washington Heights. There may not be a Starbucks or a Banana Republic on every corner yet, but housing wise you get more bang for the buck, especially if you nab a place with a view of the river.

The sun was out. The sky was blue. There was an autumn nip in the air. I was getting by with a light sweater, a Yankees cap and a checked sport jacket. There’s a used-clothing place on Columbus Avenue called Housing Works. Margo and I had gone there just before they closed Friday night and picked up the sport jacket for fifteen dollars. It was part of my disguise. I’d be able to write it off on my taxes.

I met Philip Byron at a stone gate on the south end of Fort Tryon Park. He looked pale and unhappy. Next to him on the ground sat a large green JanSport backpack. It was bulging like an overstuffed sausage.

“Is that a million dollars in there?” I asked.

“You have no idea how difficult it was to pull this together so fast.”

“Come on. A politician. A million bucks. Sounds like a finger snap to me.”

“You’d be wrong.”

I grabbed hold of the canvas strap at the top of the bag and lifted. Good thing I had used my healthy arm. “I hope Nightmare isn’t a weakling.”

“I don’t like this,” Byron said. “I can think of a dozen better ways to arrange a hand-off. He’s got something in mind.”

“Of course he does. And he knows we know it. And he knows we don’t know what it is. That’s about as level a playing field as we’re going to get here.” I hoisted the bag onto my right shoulder. It would have been easier to carry it on my back, but I didn’t trust the torquing of my bad shoulder. I asked, “Where’s the cop?”

Byron frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re standing on a street corner with a million dollars in a backpack. Our resident psycho is out here somewhere. Probably somewhere close. I’m not calling you a coward, I’m just saying you don’t strike me as stupid.”

“He explicitly instructed no cops. No one touches him.”

“I know what he instructed. But I also know how the police operate.”

My eyes traveled down the wide road. There was a fair amount of street traffic, most of it coming into the park. A hot-dog cart stood near the gate. The vendor stood leaning against the cart, smoking a cigarette. Byron shook his head slowly. Another elevatorload of people had just come up from underground, most of them drifting toward the Cloisters. About two hundred feet from the gate, a large black man was stretched out on a bench, sleeping.

“Don’t tell me it’s him. A child could pick that up.”

Byron shook his head again. “It’s the nanny.”

I followed his eyes. Across the street from where the man was sleeping, an Asian-American woman was seated on a bench with a blue baby carriage in front of her. She was reading a paperback book.

I asked, “Is there a real baby in there?”

“Video camera. Wide-angle lens.”

“You’re breaking the rules.”

“Not really. No one said anything about not taking pictures.”

“Will she follow us?”

“At a distance. Outside only. We’ll be picked up inside by someone else.”

“I thought Leavitt was keeping this whole thing as quiet as possible.”

“The undercovers don’t know the details. Their instructions are to act for my safety, and once they’ve seen you, for yours.”

And with my checked sport coat, I’d be hard to miss.

“Remember what you said on the phone last night,” I said. “We want this to go smoothly and simply.”

“That’s the plan.”

“So no surprise interferences, right?”

“That’s right. We leave the bag, he picks it up, it’s over.”

We started walking. From the corner of my eye, I saw the “nanny” closing her book.

“You don’t even need me,” I said, adjusting the bag on my shoulder.

“Commissioner Carroll wanted you.”

“In case things go wacky.”

“They won’t. At least not on our end.”

We reached the stone gate. The hot-dog vendor tossed his cigarette to the street and called out in a light Irish brogue, “Hot dog, Mac?”

I answered back, “My name’s not Mac.”

Byron was a step ahead of me, so he didn’t see the guy’s wink. Nor mine back to him.

I read the sign out loud. It was planted in the ground at the base of the park’s heather garden. “Where I come from, they just say ‘No Littering.’ ”

Byron was putting on a pair of sunglasses. Along with his short hair and grim stiffness, they made him look like FBI. We walked without speaking along the dregs of the heather garden. I’d been there in the early summer, when the air was nearly choked with fragrances from all the flowers. Now it was fallow and scraggly. The Hudson was visible off to our left. A wide blue undulating ribbon.

Fort Tryon Park is laid out in a series of grass terraces broken up by large outcroppings of boulders left behind after the glaciers wormed slowly through several thousand years ago. A six-hundred-foot promenade weaves around the boulders, leading to the Cloisters. We approached from the south, the dramatic view. A pair of black crows were dive-bombing each other above the medieval building’s terra-cotta roof.

“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a monk?” I asked Byron.

“Never thought about it.”

“No sex. No pockets. No television. Eat like a bird. Out of the rack before the sun comes up. Never harm a hair on the head of a fly.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Monks,” I said. “Monks and nuns. Monasteries. Convents. The cloistered life. Turning away from the world’s distractions and focusing instead on the subtle rhythms of the spirit. Or maybe it’s the soul. I can never remember what the difference is.”

The sun glinted off Byron’s shades. “I’m not following you.”

“Just thinking out loud,” I said. “Whoever we’re handing over this money to obviously has some seriously crossed wires. You don’t normally associate nuns and monasteries with public massacres and blackmail. I think our Mr. Nightmare is what psychiatrists would call conflicted. What do you think? A very unhappy former choirboy, maybe?”

“We’re not here to analyze him. We’re here to pay him off.”

“What makes the mayor think this guy’s going to go away after this? It’s possible, I guess. But a million dollars in today’s world isn’t what it used to be. He could burn right through it and come on back for more.”

Byron took a moment before responding. “We’ve discussed that. But we feel we have no choice. The mayor has to protect the citizens of this city.”

We reached the entrance and made our way up an enclosed winding stone walkway to the admissions desk. “Mr. Small,” Byron said to the woman at the desk. “He’s expecting us.”

She indicated an arched doorway past the gift-shop entrance. “Right through there.”

I followed Byron through the arched doorway and up a short flight of stairs. The museum’s offices were at the top of the stairs. A bespectacled man with thick gray hair was waiting for us. He took us into a small office. Byron introduced us. He was Gerald Small, director of the Cloisters. Mr. Small was wearing a gray wool suit and a red-striped tie. He looked like he was bravely toughing out a migraine.

“I’m not happy with this,” he said immediately to Byron. His voice was nasal and grating. “I don’t enjoy being left in the dark. I want to be on record with that.”

“There is no record, Gerald,” Byron replied coolly. “But I hear you. And the mayor appreciates your cooperation.”

“Appreciation is one thing. You were a little more specific when you called me.”

Byron offered a reassuring tone. “The mayor keeps his promises, Gerald. Mayor Leavitt is very enthusiastic about the museum’s restoration initiative. You can depend on seeing the fruits of that enthusiasm.”

“Fruits of that enthusiasm,” I repeated. “I like that.” My enthusiasm was blandly received by both men.

Gerald Small retrieved a burgundy jacket from atop his desk and held it out to me. I removed my checked jacket and put on the burgundy one. It was a little tight across the shoulders but not so bad. From my pants pocket, I pulled out a small folding mirror and a neatly trimmed false mustache with gummy webbed backing. I affixed the mustache to my upper lip, checking in the folding mirror to see that it was on straight. From my shirt pocket, I produced a pair of black-framed glasses. I put them on, removed the Yankees cap, gave my flattened hair a finger-combing against the grain, then turned to Philip Byron. “Presto change-o.”