by Ben Sanders
ELEVEN
The lone occupant of the vehicle was a woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties. Marshall didn’t recognize her. She was in the back, behind the empty front passenger seat, the opposite side of the car to Marshall. She had her elbow up on the sill, thumb and first finger rubbing together in a slow and contemplative fashion, or perhaps in the first outward sign of impatience. Burning off vexation, a micro-calorie at a time.
Marshall pulled his door shut.
The rain on the glass gave the car a submerged, hermetic quality. The guy he’d spoken to stayed on the sidewalk, his murky shape receding toward the relative shelter of a building eave.
The woman said, ‘I’m Deputy Inspector Loretta Flynn. NYPD.’
She opened the black leather purse resting in her lap and produced a badge wallet with a gold shield and an ID.
Marshall said, ‘You did well to find me. Or do you have people outside every lunch place in Manhattan?’
She wore a white blouse and a charcoal suit that looked to be fitted rather than off the rack. Marshall guessed tailoring was a justifiable expense, on a deputy inspector’s salary. She had the sinewy and slightly drawn look of someone who did fifteen or twenty hours a week on a treadmill cranked to a life-or-death velocity. She said, ‘We followed you up Lexington by CCTV. But I did think you’d be more difficult to corner.’
They’d worked him perfectly, he had to concede that. The two cars on Lexington as a visual nudge, prompting him back along Seventy-fifth, directly to where she was waiting.
Marshall said, ‘I was more focused on eating my lunch than playing fugitive.’
‘I see.’
‘How can I help you?’
‘What’s your interest in D’Anton Lewis?’
The question expelled a mint-scent of chewing gum. Nicorette, maybe. He could picture her smoking her way through some tense operations.
Marshall said, ‘I think you know the answer.’
In her pale blue eyes was a faint quality of wariness and contempt. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘I don’t imagine I’m his first ever visitor. And I don’t imagine the previous ones got this kind of treatment.’ He smiled. ‘Or is it standard practice to deploy three unmarked cars and a DI whenever someone knocks on his door?’
‘From what I understand, it went a bit beyond a knock on the door.’
Marshall shrugged. ‘Even if I broke his nose and pulled his teeth out with pliers, I wouldn’t expect the second in charge of a precinct to show up.’
She didn’t answer.
‘Where are you based? The two-three?’
‘I’m second in charge of the one-seven.’
‘Right. So you could’ve stayed in your nice office and signed overtime forms. But instead you came up here. Which means you were forewarned about me. Which means you know what my interest in him is.’
‘I understand that Detective Nevins conveyed to you that this is a police matter. The Vialoux investigation.’
Marshall smiled. ‘You’re not investigating Vialoux.’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Oh, is that right?’
‘Yeah. Let’s see if I can guess it on the first try. Nevins made an intel request on D’Anton, and because you’re investigating him for something else, it sent up a red flag, and you told Nevins to keep his distance.’
She made no reaction.
Marshall said, ‘And Nevins said he would, but he mentioned I’d probably show up sooner or later. Is that about right?’
‘He told us you’d be along this morning. So you’re a little slow.’
Marshall said, ‘D’Anton stonewalled me. But given your theatrics, I know he’s definitely worth pursuing.’
Flynn’s elbow went back on the sill. Her thumb and first finger resumed their circling. She said, ‘You worked undercover for Lee Ashcroft.’
Marshall nodded. ‘Long time ago, now.’
‘Sure. But you can still appreciate the fact that cases take time to build.’
He shook his head. ‘No. I appreciate the fact it takes time to convince the desk people that the ducks on the street are all in a row.’
She smiled. No emotion in it. Blue eyes unmoving. Like an executioner looking across the blade of a guillotine. She said, ‘I’ve earned my stripes. I did my time. So you don’t need to imply you’re sitting here with some naïve bureaucrat.’
‘You did your time, huh? What, undercover on a drug investigation, and now you’re overseeing one?’
‘Nice try. But no comment.’
‘OK. I had a hunch he was maybe into drug trafficking. But I guess he could just be a recidivist jaywalker.’
Silence for a moment. Beyond the glass, pedestrians went by in rain-blurred anonymity. The man who’d ushered him into the car was still there in the shelter of the eave, Reaperish in vague silhouette.
Marshall said, ‘Maybe you could just explain clearly what you want me to do. Imagine for a moment that your sole mandate is to leave me in no doubt.’
She sighed through her nose, a smooth and visible deflation. Then she opened her purse again and removed a smartphone. Thin and black and glossy, like a piece of limousine glass. She navigated briskly through various menus, and then raised it so the screen was facing him.
A photo was displayed.
A hand, Marshall realized, although it took a moment for the image to register. It looked amphibious, because the digits had been amputated at the first knuckle.
Flynn said, ‘A former girlfriend of Mr Lewis. She called him in November 2017 and said she was going to disclose the infidelity to his wife, but for a million dollars she might keep it to herself. They pulled her out of the Hudson eight days later. You’ll note those cuts are clean-edged. They think he used a box-cutter. One pass, like slicing a carrot.’ She lowered the screen.
Marshall said, ‘I’d say he used that dagger he carries in his coat.’
‘Possibly. And you have evidence now that he’s prepared to use it.’
Marshall said, ‘Is this meant to give me a better idea of who I’m dealing with? I had an inkling before I met him that he’s not an upstanding citizen. And then he told me himself that he’s going to cut me from groin to voice box if he sees me again. I think his phrasing was slightly harsher.’
She didn’t answer.
Marshall said, ‘But you don’t care about dead people, anyway. Otherwise you’d let me ask him about Vialoux. And you’d let Nevins speak with him, too.’
Flynn returned the phone to the handbag. No sign of nicotine gum, but Marshall saw an e-Cigarette. He felt a small and pointless charge of vindication. Flynn pursed her lips for a moment, fine wrinkles emanating radially, and then said, ‘Prison is prison.’
‘Sure. What does that mean?’
‘It means whether you get locked up for murder, or drugs, or jaywalking, at the end of the day, it’s the same result. You’re alone in a cell. And if you stay out of my way, that’s where D’Anton Lewis is heading.’
Marshall said, ‘I don’t necessarily think that he killed Vialoux—’
‘Good. All the more reason to keep your distance—’
‘So what I’m inclined to do now is tell him he’s the subject of an investigation by NYPD, and potentially other representatives of the alphabet. And maybe in exchange he’ll give me an idea about what happened to Vialoux.’
He thought at the very least the suggestion might irritate her. But Loretta Flynn, apparently amused, said, ‘He’s aware he’s a target. Arrogance is his best feature, as far as I’m concerned. Being surveilled by police doesn’t seem to dissuade him from doing business.’
‘Well, if he’s being surveilled, does he have an alibi for last night? Between, say, eight and midnight?’
‘I’m not going to get into it with you.’
‘OK. I’m happy to ask him myself. And if he’s so unbothered about New York’s finest following him around, I can’t see how I’d cause him any distress. Which begs the question, why are you sitting here trying to w
arn me off?’
He saw the tendons in her neck tauten and then fade. She said, ‘I just want to be clear that if he ends up dead, you will go to prison.’
‘I doubt it. But I’m pleased that in some cases you’re prepared to investigate murder. You might have the budget for it if you weren’t sending three cars and four people to talk to me on my lunchbreak.’
Flynn said, ‘You were undercover with the Italian mob. Tony Asaro.’
‘Nice try. But no comment.’
‘I heard when you ended the operation you took two hundred thousand dollars from Asaro’s wall safe.’
‘Two-fifty, thereabouts. Allegedly.’
‘So not the kind of issue you’d want the law to look into with any kind of vigor.’
‘Indeed. Fortunately, I’m well outside the statute of limitation on robbery.’
‘Yes, but not on trafficking. That’s a Class A felony, with no expiration date. And we might argue that in taking the proceeds, you were rendered complicit. I suspect we’d hand it over to the feds. The Southern District of New York has an admirable track record in such matters.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
Flynn said, ‘Stay out of my way. I’d recommend just sitting quietly and hoping that Mr Lewis ends up incarcerated. Otherwise, I give you my personal assurance that I will have you instead.’ She nodded at his door. ‘You can get out now.’
TWELVE
The protesters on Fifth Avenue had been reduced by weather to the hardy few, all of them soaked and pretty hoarse by now. Marshall stopped at the Strand Books kiosk for shelter from the weather and called Nevins on his cell. It went to voicemail.
Marshall said, ‘I just met your friend Loretta Flynn. Call me back. I’m eager to discuss.’
He assumed his theory was correct: that Nevins had made a query on D’Anton, and Flynn had then warned him off. She hadn’t denied it. She hadn’t even claimed she couldn’t comment. And Nevins had been evasive on the D’Anton topic earlier.
He waited for another break in the rain, and then walked down to Forty-second Street and went into the public library. His library card was a recent and valuable acquisition, and he regarded himself as some kind of model patron. He always used bookmarks. Never had he dog-eared a page. He was fastidious in his treatment of paperbacks, and never creased the spine. And he never kept a book past its due date. He didn’t want some paltry surcharge being logged against his membership, awkward sums growing progressively inelegant with compound interest. He reserved thirty minutes on one of the public computers, and ran a search on D’Anton Lewis.
Google Images had a cached headshot, ten years old or thereabouts, from when he was on the staff of some Wall Street trading company Marshall had never heard of. Since then, he didn’t seem to have done much, at least as far as the internet was concerned. No Twitter or Instagram or anything convenient like that. The News tab on Google came up with the story Jordan Mora had mentioned – D’Anton buying the town house from that billionaire sex trafficker, Jerry Erskine. Price undisclosed, but thought to be in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars.
He searched Loretta Flynn. The first hit on Google was the NYPD website. She was second in charge of the seventeenth precinct, just as she’d told him. There was a smiling headshot of her in dress blues, alongside an italicized blurb about her passion for helping the community. The text with its humble-service theme was rather somewhat counterposed to Marshall’s own impression of her. He guessed ruthlessly pragmatic wouldn’t have much value as a PR term.
He thought about calling Jordan Mora, but he didn’t want to give an impression of coming on too heavy. Although she might know whether D’Anton had always been the kind of guy to carry a ten-inch dagger in his coat, or if it was a recent lifestyle choice. He could hear himself saying that to her, seeing her smile.
The call history on his phone still had the number for the bagel place. He typed it into Google, and the search results showed him a street-view image of the premises. He opened the Maps window and had a look around. The bagel shop was on a corner site. There was a florist’s next door and a twenty-four-hour Minimart directly opposite.
Marshall called the number again.
‘Bagel shop.’
‘Is Frank there?’
‘Who are you, pal?’
‘I’m coming to see him. He can pick a time, or I can.’
The guy hung up.
Marshall googled Ray Vialoux. A few news items had appeared in the last few hours, describing in brief the shooting at the restaurant. Nothing yet about poor Lydia in the house across the street. He scrolled through search results and found Vialoux’s website. APEX INVESTIGATIONS. The homepage had a mission statement about achieving best results, and some detective-related imagery. A digital camera the size of a cinderblock, and a floppy disk sitting on some splayed documents. The CONTACT US page had Vialoux’s name and cell number, and his company address over in Park Slope. Beneath the text was a photograph of the office frontage, pre-arson. Marshall closed the browser and walked out of the building, threading through tourists looking everywhere except where they were going.
Harry Rush’s office was in an old red-brick building in Washington Heights, way up on 155th Street. It looked like some kind of cultural intersection point. There was a Mobil station next door on the corner with Broadway, and the Church of the Intercession was directly opposite. The sidewall of Harry’s building had a five-story-high painting of an eagle that looked to be swooping down on the Mobil.
Rush Law was on level five. Marshall took the stairs up and went into Harry’s reception area. Harry’s administrator, Marlene Delacroix, was behind the desk, and Harry’s bodyguard and driver, Chiat Money, was sitting on one of the client chairs, reading a magazine. In the corner, a shirtless man wearing torn fatigue pants was filling up a hot-water bottle from the watercooler.
Chiat saw Marshall enter and lifted his chin.
‘Hey, Chiat. How you doing?’
Chiat shrugged. ‘Usual. Groovin’ smooth as a motherfucker.’
‘That’s good.’
Marlene was reading a book by Lena Dunham. Without looking up she said, ‘You can go in. He knows you’re coming.’
Harry was at his desk, on the phone. Marshall closed the office door and sat down in the visitor chair, opposite. Harry had his eyes shut, brow gently furrowed. He said to the phone, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Of course.’ Trying to wedge his way into something tedious. ‘I think the fact … I think the fact you threatened to do that to him with the knife, and then the body was found essentially in that configuration … yeah. That’s the immediate obstacle. OK, you call me back then.’
He put down the phone, let his breath out through pursed lips. He was a black man closing in on fifty, very tall, very fit, very well-tailored. He had on a tan suit with a tan tie, gray shirt matching the gray in his hair – buzzcut turning salty at the margins.
Marshall said, ‘You heard what happened?’
‘Yeah. The cops ran through it. Unbelievable. But you’re OK?’
Marshall spread his hands, like the fact of his presence was sufficient response. ‘Do you know what he was into?’
‘Vialoux? Shit, no.’
‘But you put him onto me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ray said he went to you first, and you told him to talk to me.’
Harry shook his head. ‘No, all he did was ask for your details. All he said was he needed to talk to you. I never knew what his problem was.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
‘Look, don’t sit there like you got a bone to pick. Have a coffee, chill out.’
‘I already had coffee.’
‘All right, well. I’m not your problem.’
Marshall said, ‘They’d set up surveillance across the street from his house.’
‘What? Who did?’
‘Whoever nailed him.’
He told him about Lydia in the house across the street.
Harry ran his han
ds through his hair. Veins stood out on his forehead.
Marshall said, ‘He told me he had debts he couldn’t service. He was part of a gambling ring someone called D’Anton Lewis got him into.’
Harry shrugged. ‘All right.’
Marshall said, ‘And I wondered if you know Vialoux, maybe you know D’Anton, too.’
‘I know of him. He’s not cut from nice cloth, put it that way.’
‘Yeah. I got that impression.’
He told Harry what had happened.
Harry said, ‘Shit, he threatened you?’
‘Cock to throat, were his exact words.’
Harry opened a drawer and removed a letter-size envelope, tossed it toward him. It spun midair and then hit the desk, slid and then stopped with one corner cantilevered. Marshall sat there for a moment, not moving. Then the urge to make corrections ran in a prickle across his shoulders and down his spine. He slid the envelope fully onto the table. Strict, parallel orientation and a generous two-inch offset, edge with respect to edge.
Harry said, ‘That’s your fee for last month.’
‘What do you know about D’Anton?’
The door opened, and the shirtless guy stuck his head in from the waiting area. Harry said, ‘Charlie, just give us a minute. I won’t be long.’
The door closed.
Harry said, ‘Look. I don’t know anything. All I know is other people’s speculation that he’s into heavy shit.’ He shrugged. ‘Story you just told me, that’ll mix into the pot with everything else I heard, frankly make me even more certain he’s a guy best avoided.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
Harry said, ‘And shit, mob guys? Frank Cifaretti?’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no way.’
‘Vialoux’s dead. I mentioned that, right?’
‘Yeah, and I don’t want to join him. And I don’t want photos of my family showing up in the mail, because I did the wrong thing, or knocked on the wrong door.’
‘He told you about the photos, huh? What else did he say?’
Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not worth it to me, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be mixed up in something’s gonna cost me.’