The Pride Trilogy: Kyle Callahan 1-3 (26 page)

Chapter 17

Lunch at the Stopwatch Diner (Meanwhile)

L
inus Hern disdained
diners, and the Stopwatch was no exception, with its ridiculous watch theme and the cheesy racecar flags on the wall. It may well be at the top of the list, if he’d had any reason to keep a list of pedestrian, crowded, loud, cheap restaurants that barely earned the name. The city’s “A” rating on the window was meaningless – falafel stands had them in New York City,
bars
for godsake, and who with any sense eats in bars? The same people who eat in diners, he thought, barely listening to the weasel lawyer sitting across from him. He didn’t like Claude Petrie, but he found him useful. It was Linus’s overriding criteria in his relations with other human beings: they were either useful to him, or they were not. Some had the potential to become useful; those who would never be had no claim to his attention, and got none.

“She only knows that Jay and Victor are kind-hearted investors with her best interest in mind,” Petrie said, referring to the two men who had convinced Margaret Bowman to sell them the building and everything in it, including her restaurant.

“Second only to theirs,” Linus said. “She’s no fool, so be very careful, we’ve almost closed this deal. Do not underestimate her ability to see you for who you are, Claude. Don’t go around too often, you might spoil the ruse.”

Claude was once again fidgeting in the presence of the restaurateur. He knew condescension when it was being heaped upon him, not to mention contempt, but he had been in a tight spot for some time and was in no position to tell Linus Hern to drop dead.
Please, right now, in this tacky diner
.

“You know,” Linus said, sipping his coffee, “I’m curious why you’ve been the Judas in this, why the betrayal.”

Claude stared at his fork, keeping his gaze away from the man across the table. “I don’t … it’s not really … we’re not friends, Margaret Bowman and I.”

“So she doesn’t know about your little gambling addiction. The one you’ll be able to pay off when this is over, providing you don’t just spend your generous fee at a poker table.”

Claude’s face flushed with embarrassment. The truth of what Linus had just said was painful for him. He’d had a gambling addiction for years and it had cost him dearly: his wife, his co-op on the Upper East Side, the affection of his two teenage daughters who lived with his mother and had been trained to think as poorly of him as she did. The old lawyer Evans, Margaret’s attorney for decades, had not been the best judge of character. He had not seen through Claude. It was another source of shame for him, to be taking such egregious advantage of a favor done him by a dead man. But he owed nearly a hundred thousand dollars, much of it to people who would soon be asking for his life if he couldn’t give them his money. Money he didn’t have. Money Linus Hern was paying him to deceive and defraud the old woman who lived above the restaurant named after her.

“I just …” Claude half-said, trying to regain his composure.

“Yes?”

“I just wondered, why you’re so determined to get her out of that building.”

“Oh, its not her,” Linus said. “It’s her restaurant. Specifically, the man who runs it.”

“Danny Durban?”

“Yes, Danny Durban. The one and only.”

Claude could see Linus’s face darken, the lids of his eyes lower slightly as hatred slid over his face like a veil.

“What did he ever do to you? It must have been terrible.”

“It was, Claude, terrible. But that’s not your concern, is it?”

Claude had never seen Linus Hern taken by surprise; it was quite a sight, like watching a supremely confident man slip on the sidewalk and land in a puddle.

“Are we about through here?” Hern said briskly. “I think I just felt a cockroach run across my foot. When will she be signing?”

“I’d say another couple days, maybe a week.”

“A week?” Linus said, displeased.

“She’s asked me to have Tierney and Gossett meet with Durban.”

Linus nearly choked, his face reddening in the time it took for Claude to say those names, names that should never have been spoke in the same sentence.

“No, no, no,” he said. “That’s not going to happen. When did she ask for this?”

“Just before I came here. It seems she told Danny Durban about the sale and she wants them to meet.”

Linus was fuming now, in a most dangerous way, his anger tightly controlled. His left eye started to twitch, and he set his coffee cup down to hide the tremble in his hand.

“You’ve failed me, Claude.”

“Excuse me?”

“I am about to, yes. This could ruin everything. I’ll have to speak with Jay and Victor. They’ll need to be coached, quickly. I don’t think all is lost, but things are very much in jeopardy now. Not only is Danny Durban sharp, but he has motives of his own.”

“But he loves the old woman.”

“Precisely!” Linus hissed. “Love is the greatest, strongest, most driving motive of all. Why do you think I’m so determined to destroy him?”

Claude knew then that Linus had been deeply hurt, somehow, at some time, by Danny Durban. But the two of them, together? Claude couldn’t see that in a million years. No, it was more complicated than that, more involved. And complicated could work to his advantage. Linus Hern wasn’t the only one with leverage. His hatred of Danny Durban and his mission to harm him could be used very effectively in Claude’s defense. All was not lost after all.

It was then, as Linus tried to calm himself and Claude schemed to safeguard his payment, that Kyle Callahan and Detective Linda Sikorsky made their way past them to the exit. Kyle glanced over and did a double-take, wondering why Margaret Bowman’s lawyer would be having lunch with Linus Hern, and for that matter why Hern would be eating at a place like the Stopwatch. From everything Danny had told him, Hern would never be caught dead in a tourist trap diner. He made a quick mental note of the sighting and herded his visitor to the exit.

Linus Hern never saw Kyle pass by. He was too busy thinking how to keep his plans on track. His partners would have to meet with Durban, if that’s what Margaret Bowman wanted, and they would have to keep the deception going. Just a few more days, it could be done.

“Stay calm,” Linus said, wiping his mouth and setting his napkin down. He stood up from the table.

“That’s it?” Claude squeaked. He was startled that Hern would simply get up, without any indication the meeting was over.

“Yes, and no, my dear attorney, although you would never be mine. If we succeed, you’ll be able to pay your debts and have enough left over to start the entire sordid cycle anew. But if you fail,” and he leaned down, speaking inches from Claude’s face, “if this mission fails because you tipped our hand, or the sweat on your upper lip gave you away … well, Claude, I know some of the people who want their money back from you. It would be easy enough to tell them they won’t be getting it.”

Claude felt his throat go dry. Linus Hern did not make idle threats.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Linus said, “and even if you won’t. I’ve stayed in this rat’s nest of a diner long enough. Don’t call me again, Claude. I’ll call you.”

With that, the tall, dark, brooding man named Linus Hern strode out of the restaurant, his heart nearly as heavy as his determination for revenge. He left the check on the table for Claude Petrie to pay.

Chapter 18

Brooklyn Bound

T
he N train
was among the more sprawling subway lines in New York City, spanning three boroughs from Queens, through Manhattan, and into Brooklyn all the way to Coney Island. It had held a place in Kyle’s life since he first moved to New York. He had ridden this train from his longtime home in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, transferring from the F, for most of his working life in the City. And then for the last six years with Danny, the two of them rode it the opposite direction, into Astoria most Sundays for dinner with Danny’s parents. It was also among the lines that were both underground and overhead, snaking up after a ride beneath the East River to travel along elevated tracks where it finally came to an end at Ditmars Boulevard. You could ride the N for well over an hour, and some people did: homeless men, women and the occasional child; curious tourists, the kind with backpacks and ragged, stained maps; cops, undercover cops, and the opportunistic thieves who could spot them through a crowd. It was one line among many in the spider’s web of the New York City subway system, a marvel acknowledged to be among the best in the world. A public transportation miracle that was as easy to love as it was to hate.

Linda had never been in the subway. When she had visited Manhattan with her parents all those years ago they had taken taxis and walked. Her refusal to come to New York City meant she was as new to the subway experience as a child, or as the many people who visited this place with no desire to live here. She was trying to pay attention to Kyle, while marveling at the experience of riding the N train. They were on their way to Brooklyn, where the artist Devin had met his end last Friday night.

“I don’t know what I expect to find,” Kyle said, and he noticed Linda staring curiously at a street vendor transporting his entire shop rolled up and roped on a hand truck. “Detective Linda? Are you listening?”

“Yes, yes,” she said, turning back in her seat to Kyle. “You don’t know what you’ll find but you’re hoping to turn up something.”

“Or someone, which would be better. There won’t be anything to see but a sidewalk that’s been washed clean for days. But there are a
lot
of people around there. There are a lot of people everywhere in New York City. Out in Astoria, where Danny’s parents live, you can walk for six blocks and not pass anyone, but there are row houses along all those streets, apartment buildings, and for every one of them, eyes watching from the windows.”

“Sixteen million.”

“Pardon?”

“If you’ve got eight million people here, that’s sixteen million eyes.”

Kyle thought about it a moment. “God, that’s creepy,” he said, just as the train pulled into the Prospect Avenue station.

The street vendor tilted back his portable warehouse and off they all went, leaving the bowels of the subway for the afternoon sun.

Brooklyn has been around for over 350 years. Now one of New York City’s five boroughs, it began as a small Dutch-owned settlement in the 17
^th
century called “Breukelen.” By the 19
^th
Century it was a large, full fledged city of its own, and was consolidated into New York City in 1898. Were it still separate it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. As it is, many people who live in Brooklyn consider it a world apart from Manhattan. They live and love in enclaves like Prospect Park, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, and Kyle’s home for twenty-six years, Carroll Gardens. People who lived in the outer boroughs did not, by and large, regret living outside Manhattan; by the same token, most people in Manhattan considered it, and it alone, New York City, and places like Queens and the Bronx might as well be Iowa. Some of those attitudes had changed after 9/11, Kyle noticed. Something about having the World Trade Center destroyed, with all those lives falling out of the sky into a pile of rubble and dead souls, united the city in a way it had not been before. New York City now meant
New York City
, with all of its sprawl and mess, and many more people were clueing into the advantages of living “out there,” where rents were lower (not cheaper – nothing is cheap here anymore) and entire lives could be lived without ever setting foot on the Island.

Kyle was thinking of how long it had been since he’d taken the train to Brooklyn. Could it really have been since he moved in with Danny five years ago? He wanted to think he would not have so completely abandoned his old home, but it was probably true. There wouldn’t be any reason for him to come here.

“What are you thinking?” Linda asked as they walked toward the building Devin had lived in. Kyle wondered if someone was going through the dead man’s belongings yet, who had loved him, whose lives would be forever changed because of his murder.

“Nothing, just how long it’s been since I’ve come here.”

Kyle stopped them in front of an apartment building. “It must have been here,” he said. “Somewhere around here. I found his address, that was easy enough, and the news said he was killed just a few houses down from where he lived, toward the subway. So here, somewhere in here.”

Kyle stopped and looked around him: apartment buildings as far as the eye could see. And in those apartments, thousands of eyes. But would any of them have seen the killing, or the killer, and would any of them say so?

Linda glanced across the street and saw the coffee shop Kyle had mentioned. Sacred Grounds had been around for a decade, surviving the Starbucks onslaught with the support of a fiercely loyal neighborhood. “Maybe we should start there,” she said, pointing at the shop.

“I think we have to. We can’t knock on people’s doors. You can’t even get to people’s doors here, you have to ring buzzers.”

They headed across the street to the coffee shop. Linda noticed, two doors from it, the Laundromat Kyle had told her about: Fluffy Foldy’s. Did the clever names ever end, she wondered.

Sacred Grounds had needlessly underscored its name with religious icons and paraphernalia on the walls, but clearly done in a post-religion, ironic sort of way: there was nothing overtly religious or spiritual about the place or the people who worked here, but the owner had thought it a good idea to hang replicas of Catholic relics and a dizzying array of saints, gurus, martyrs, and the obligatory photos of Gandhi and Mother Teresa. All to be gazed at while sipping a cinnamon dusted soy cappuccino stirred with a mint biscotti.

There were three disinterested baristas on duty when Kyle and Linda walked in. Kyle walked up to the front counter and was immediately told by a short, acned late-teen with a prematurely shaved head and a look of millennial disdain that, “The line starts there.” He pointed at a sign that said exactly that, but there was no one waiting in front of them. The only other customer was planted by the window with a laptop and a headset to eliminate the sound of other life forms.

Kyle was hoping for some information from the child so he obliged him, shuffling backward to the sign, then, upon receiving a smile of approval, walking the few steps back to the counter. Linda did the same thing, staying silent for now.

“I was hoping someone here was on duty last Friday night.”

“You mean the night Devin was assassinated?” the barista said.

It was a strange choice of words, Kyle thought. “Yes, that Friday night.”

“I told the cops everything I know already, which is nothing. I worked a double that day ‘cause Pigpen has ‘the flu’ again, too much Tequila on Thursday night, and I was stuck here. It’s not that busy on a rainy Friday, but busy enough that I didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, just saw it on the news the next day.”

Linda leaned in, her hand on the counter. “So why would you say he was assassinated?”

“I have no idea why.”

“She means, why would you use that word,” Kyle said.

“Because it’s Brooklyn, man! There’s a government program to assassinate artists here, didn’t you know that?”

“This is the first I’ve heard, thanks for sounding the alarm,” Kyle said, wondering how such a delusional young man held down a job. “In the meantime, do you think your friends here saw anything?” He indicated the other two baristas who were multi-tasking with smartphones in one hand.

“Creamy and Soup?” the kid said, leaving Kyle to wonder if he’d spoken in code or those were their names.

“Yes. Creamy and Soup.”

“Nah, they don’t work nights, they’re in school. Out to make something of themselves,” he said derisively.

“Well, thanks for the information.”

“What information?”

Kyle let it go at that and led Linda out of the coffee shop. Once outside, he said, “The kid’s nuts.”

“A diversity hire?” Linda said, smiling.

“Maybe. Like you!” and Kyle smiled, too. Linda’s making homicide detective had been resisted by some on the New Hope police force who claimed she’d been hired just because she was a woman.

Kyle and Linda walked two doors down, turned in and found themselves at Fluffy Foldy’s, the neighborhood Laundromat. Fluffy Foldy’s matched its corny name with a corny interior, displaying photos, paintings, and one large mural of clowns. It seemed designed more for children than bored and impatient neighbors trying to get through one of life’s most tedious chores.

There were a half dozen people in the place, several women of varying ages, one man Kyle pegged as gay the moment he saw him, and one old man who was sitting in a chair by the bathroom door, looking as if Fluffy Foldy’s was his home during its hours of operation.

“So who are we looking for?” Linda asked.

“I don’t know exactly. I doubt any of these people were here Friday night. It’s too soon to be doing laundry again.”

Kyle had begun to wonder what or whom he expected to find when he noticed a petite woman cleaning out a row of dryers. She was wearing the kind of mustard yellow uniform normally seen on hotel housekeepers. She was so short that he almost didn’t see her as she bent into one of the large dryers and wiped it out with a cloth.

“Excuse me,” Kyle said, heading over to her.

She pulled her upper body out of the massive dryer and turned to them suspiciously. Her hair was salt and pepper, heavy on the salt, and tied back in a long, thick ponytail. Her complexion was olive, Mediterranean, Kyle guessed, and she had intelligent, coal black eyes that he knew immediately missed nothing. She could be anywhere from forty to sixty; she had that kind of ageless look of some women of color who never seem to get older.

“Yes?” she said. “May I help you?”

“I’m hoping so,” said Kyle. “What’s your name?”

She stared at him with an expression that said her name was none of his business.

“This is Detective Linda Sikorsky,” Kyle said, trying another tack. “We’re investigating the murder that took place across the street last Friday.”

Her eyebrow arched up – another policeman, this one a woman.

“My name is Yolanda,” she said reluctantly. “I already gave a statement.”

“Yes, yes,” Kyle said, “and we are so appreciative of that. But Detective Sikorsky here just arrived from another jurisdiction, and, well, communication with the New York police has been slow. Could you just tell her what you told the other officers?”

Linda was impressed. Kyle had seen an opportunity to bend the truth to his advantage, with her in the middle, and had done it without a moment’s thought.

“Just so we get our information in sync,” Linda said to the woman. “A quick recap would be fine.”

Yolanda thought about it for several long moments, and Kyle began to think she had seen through them. Then, she said, “I saw them. I was here that night. I’m always here. There is no one else.”

“Oh, you own this establishment?” Linda asked.

Yolanda looked at her as if that was a preposterous idea. “No, I don’t own it, I work here. Just me, and Willy who fixes the machines when they break. But he wasn’t here. Just me. There is no one else.”

“So what is it you saw, Yolanda?”

“I saw the dead man, he comes here to do his wash, or did, until … He was walking toward the building he lives in – I see everything – and then he stopped and turned around. It was raining, but I could see the other man, the one who hurt him. They spoke, like they knew each other.”

Kyle wondered how that would be determined, but he knew this was a woman who had been observing people all her life. Watching how they move, where they go.

“Then the one man takes the hood off his face, but I can’t see from here, and he limps up to the dead guy …”

“Limps?” Kyle asked.

“Yes, limps, but not like he was hurt, like he was born that way.”

Kyle and Linda looked at each other. This was significant news. There was also something familiar about it to Kyle, but he couldn’t think what at the moment. A tiny, faint bell had rung, and just as quickly gone silent.

“I have an aunt,” Yolanda said, “She was born with a short leg. She walks like that.”

Kyle felt his excitement rising. They had something as close to a description as they might find.

“The bad man goes up close to the dead one and … makes him dead. I was in shock. I called 911 but it was too late.”

“Did you try to help him?” Linda asked.

It was the only time Yolanda looked away from them. She had not gone across the street, nor had she told the 911 dispatcher who she was, or that she was calling from the Laundromat.

“It was raining,” she offered weakly. “I thought they were, you know, kissing. It happens a lot.”

“Yes, of course,” Kyle said, leaving her to deal with her guilt another time. “This has been very, very helpful, Yolanda.” He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her.

She read it. “You’re with a TV station?” she said, alarmed.

“Japanese,” he said quickly. “Nothing local, it has nothing to do with this. Detective Sikorsky can vouch for that. We’re just following up on the investigation, and we thank you, Yolanda, we thank you so much.”

Kyle took Linda by the hand, something Yolanda noticed and thought odd for policemen, and led them out of the Laundromat. Standing on the sidewalk, with Yolanda staring at them from inside, Kyle said, “Finally something substantial.”