It physically hurt him to be doing what he was doing. But hell, nobody lives forever, right?
Chapter 12
TWO DAYS AND FOUR HOURS AFTER THE FIRST BOMBING
Cole walked out of the rubble, took off his hard hat, and called Ed. “What have you got for me?” he asked.
“It’s only been three hours, Cole.”
“Yeah, and what have you got for me?”
“I assume that means you haven’t had any breakthroughs?”
“No.” Cole didn’t tell Ed about the toy store. He didn’t even know what he would say.
“I talked to a couple of guys who have worked on jobs with Ivan.”
“And?” Cole was eager for a breakthrough.
“Not much. They said that Ivan was a nice guy and a good worker but that he was quiet and mostly kept to himself. He had arthritis in his hands. They tried to cover for him, but when it flared up real bad he could barely work.”
Loneliness, isolation, powerlessness, Cole thought to himself. “What else? There has to be more.”
“They said that the only thing that they ever really talked about was the Yankees. There was a bar near his house he would go to when he wanted to watch the games because he didn’t have a TV. So when he was home, he could only listen to them on the radio.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something. Ed knew the right questions to ask. He wasn’t digging for clues. He was digging for memory triggers. “You got the name of the bar?”
“Of course,” Ed said. “It’s a little place on the corner called the Daily Bread.”
Cole looked at his watch. “I’m not sure it will be open yet.”
“Grab some lunch, Cole. I know we don’t have a lot of time but we’re not going to solve this thing in one morning.”
“It’s already been two days, Ed.”
“I know.” Cole could hear the weariness in Ed’s voice. He sounded as tired as Cole felt. “I know.”
“What are you going to do?” Cole asked his partner.
“I’m going to keep talking to people.”
Cole decided to take Ed’s advice and get some lunch. It was only about five blocks from the scene of the bombing to Ivan’s apartment building, so Cole decided to walk it. He figured he’d eat closer to Ivan’s apartment to see if anything would loosen any more memories. He saw the Daily Bread on the corner. It wasn’t open yet. It was a small place with brick walls and a green awning. The bar’s name was painted across the brick. The windows were high and small. It was the type of bar you could sit in during the day and barely realize that it was daytime.
Cole noticed a pizza place across the street from the bar. He waited for a couple cars to go by and then jogged across the two-lane street. He ordered two plain slices and a Coke. Then he sat on a stool near the front window so he could watch the bar. He barely looked away when they brought him his pizza. When he was about halfway through his first slice, he saw the door to the bar open. A man stepped out and flipped down the doorstop with the toe of his shoe. Cole could see straight into the bar now. He could feel something, but wasn’t sure what. He shoveled the pizza into his mouth, downed his Coke, and ran back across the street.
Cole stopped outside the open door to the bar for a moment, and took a deep breath. The bartender noticed him. “Can I help you?” he called out from behind the bar.
“You open?” Cole asked.
The bartender laughed. “That’s what the open door means, my friend. If you’re paying, we’re open.”
Cole walked inside. He looked around. The place was entirely nondescript. There was a bar, a few round wooden tables, a dartboard in one of the back corners, and a TV mounted over the bar. “You work here at night too?” Cole asked the bartender.
The bartender nodded. “I own the place. I’m here most of the time.”
“I heard there’s a guy who comes in here sometimes to watch the Yankee games.”
“That’s all we play. Just because people live in Queens doesn’t mean they have to root for the Mets.” Cole took out his phone and began scrolling for a picture of Ivan, stopping when he found one. Before Cole could show him the picture, the bartender asked, “Are you a cop or some other sort of trouble?”
“I’m a cop,” Cole said.
“I don’t rat out customers,” the bartender told him.
Cole shook his head. “I’m not asking you to rat anybody out. I just want to see if you could remember what he drank.”
“That’s it?”
Cole nodded this time.
“That sounds harmless.” Cole showed the bartender Ivan’s picture. “Yeah, I remember him. He’s hard to forget. He usually comes and sits at the bar alone and doesn’t talk to anybody. The first four or five times he came in here, I just assumed he didn’t speak English.”
“What did he drink?”
“Nothing fancy. Miller High Life out of the bottle.”
“Can I get one?” Cole asked.
“Sure thing, pal.” The bartender grabbed a beer from under the bar, twisted off the top, and handed the bottle to Cole. “Based on the way you’re acting, I don’t suspect I’m going to see him again anytime soon, am I?”
Cole shook his head in silence.
“Into a cell or into the ground?” the bartender asked.
“He was at the mall,” Cole said. He didn’t need to say any more. “They’ll bury what was left of him.”
Cole took a sip of his beer and then glanced up at the dark television set. He could feel the memory coming on a moment later. It was like Ivan’s memories were eager to be remembered, like they were simply waiting for their cue.
Ivan took another small swig from his beer. He’d been nursing it for the last three innings. He looked up at the television set. The Yankees were beating the Orioles four to two in the bottom of the seventh. Ivan had listened to the first three innings on the radio in his apartment. He liked that he could get the games in Spanish on the radio, but he was in the mood to watch tonight’s game and to be around other people while he watched it. About a dozen other people inhabited the bar, if you included the bartender. About half of them were watching the game. Ivan’s beer was almost gone. Each swig he took got smaller and smaller.
The bartender came over to him, holding another bottle of beer. He twisted the cap off with a rag and placed the bottle in front of Ivan. “I didn’t order this,” Ivan said to the bartender.
“Look,” the bartender said, “I get it. This one’s on the house. I’m not going to let a fellow Yankee fan sit at my bar empty-handed. You can pay me back when you hit the lotto.”
“Thank you,” Ivan said to the bartender. The cold bottle felt good in his hand, easing the soreness in his joints the way a can never could. Ivan tipped the beer toward the bartender and took a long swig. He felt good. Cole wouldn’t call it happiness exactly, but he could remember feeling some level of contentment. Ivan turned his head back to the TV screen. The next batter came up to the plate and hit a two-run homer, extending the Yankees’ lead to six to two. The other people in the bar who were watching the game let out a small cheer.
The bartender grabbed his own beer from behind the bar and tipped it toward Ivan. Ivan accepted the invitation and clinked the neck of his beer bottle against the bartender’s. The bartender took a long pull, drinking half his beer in one slug. “You must be good luck, friend,” the bartender said before taking another swig.
“Do you know anything about him?” Cole asked the bartender when Ivan’s memory ended.
The bartender shook his head. “I assume he lived around here. He tipped pretty good when he had money. Seemed like a good guy.”
Cole stood up. This bar had memories but nothing he could use. “What do I owe you for the beer?” Cole asked.
“Four bucks,” the bartender said.
Cole laid a twenty on the bar. “That’s to pay you back, since Ivan never hit the lotto.” Then he walked back out into the daylight.
Chapter 13
TWO DAYS
AND SIX HOURS AFTER THE FIRST BOMBING
“I don’t think he did it,” Cole told Ed. “I think it was the girl. You gotta focus on her.”
“Why do you think it was her?” Ed asked. “Did you remember something?”
“No. Every time I try to remember something from her life, one of Ivan’s memories pops into my head. The fucker doesn’t know how to take turns.”
“Then why do you think it was her?”
“I don’t know,” Cole answered. “I’m just not feeling it.”
“You want me to stop investigating the more likely suspect because you’re not feeling it?”
“Listen, I’m right by his apartment. I’ll go back there to see if anything else comes up. In the meantime, try to find me something else that would help with Faith.”
“You promise you’re going back to Ivan’s apartment?” Ed asked. He wasn’t going to let them both drop investigating Ivan, not until they were more certain it wasn’t him.
“I promise. I’m only two minutes away.” Cole hung up the phone without any parting words. He knew they’d be talking again soon anyway.
Ed did what Cole asked him to, although he was skeptical. It didn’t make sense to him that Faith would be the bomber, but he trusted Cole’s track record. Besides, as long as Cole was looking into Ivan, it wouldn’t hurt for him to investigate Faith a little bit. Ed had the address of her office. He decided to start there.
Ed had the station call ahead so that Faith’s coworkers would be ready for him. Everybody at her old company would know she had died in the bombing, but nobody would know she was a suspect. That information hadn’t been made public. And, of course, nobody knew that another bomb was set to go off in less than five days.
Faith had worked at a digital advertising agency. Her company had a little under a hundred employees and it occupied the eighth and ninth floors of a fifteen-story building on East Twenty-fifth Street. Ed checked in at the desk and took the elevator to the office after the doorman cleared him to go up. The elevator opened into a small sitting area from where Ed could see most of the ninth floor. The office space was light and open. Ed had never seen an office so bright and so clean. The interior walls were a spotless white. The exterior walls, if you could call them that, were floor-to-ceiling windows with a prime view of the Flatiron Building.
Ed introduced himself to the receptionist. “You’re the police officer,” said the vibrant young woman, as if this was a fact that Ed didn’t already know. Then, in a whisper, she added, “It’s such a horrible thing, isn’t it?”
Ed barely knew how to respond. He nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is,” he agreed.
“I mean, it’s all so sad,” the receptionist added. “We all loved Faith so much, but you must have to deal with things like this all the time.” Ed thought that she almost sounded excited, like she was getting to meet a character from a movie, like Ed wasn’t a real person. Again, Ed didn’t know how to respond. After an awkward pause, the receptionist went on. “We have a conference room set up for you if you’ll just follow me.” She stood and began to lead Ed through a row of open cubicles toward a glass-enclosed conference room in the far corner. As he walked, Ed glanced at the people around him. They all seemed young. He wondered if anyone in the office had cracked thirty yet. Some were wearing headsets and talking on their phones. Others were typing away at their computers. Everyone looked busy, though Ed could barely fathom what they all were doing. Ed wasn’t stupid. He knew how little he understood about what other people did for a living. He’d been a cop almost his entire life. It was the only full-time job he’d ever had. He could understand some other jobs—doctors, teachers, and firemen all made sense to him—but how so many people could slave away at these jobs that seemed so trivial always amazed him.
They got to the conference room and the receptionist opened the door for him. Ed walked into the empty room. Three of the four walls were floor-to-ceiling glass. He could see the people walking around on the street below them and, if he turned around, could look out over the mass of office workers at their desks. On the fourth wall was a large blank television screen. An oval conference table sat in the center of the room with about twenty chairs arranged around it.
“Ms. Desmond will be with you in just a minute,” the receptionist informed Ed. “Can I get you anything in the meantime? Water? Coffee?”
Ed looked up at the receptionist as if she were a genie that just popped out of a bottle and offered to grant him a wish. “A coffee would be great, thanks. Black is fine.”
“Of course,” said the receptionist, “I’ll be right back with your black coffee.” Then she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. Despite the ability to see everything around him, once the door was closed, Ed found the conference room to be completely silent. He felt like he was in a prison cell in some cheesy science fiction movie. He walked around the conference table and chose a seat in the center with his back to the outside world. He didn’t need any more distraction than he already had.
A moment later the receptionist was back with his coffee in a large mug. Ed could see the steam rising off it. She brought the mug around to Ed and placed it in front of him. “You’re a lifesaver,” Ed said to her when she put the coffee down.
“I checked in and Ms. Desmond will only be another minute.”
Ed took a pad and a pen from his bag as he waited. He liked to take notes on a lined yellow pad of paper. He folded back the pages that already had notes on them so that he was starting on a completely blank page. He wrote the date and the name of the company on the top. Then the door opened again. Ed lifted his head.
A woman stood in the doorway. “Are you ready for me?” Well under forty, she was still the oldest person that Ed had seen in the office thus far.
“Come in,” Ed said, and waved the woman into the room. “You’re Ms. Desmond?” Ed stood and extended a hand across the conference table.
The woman reached over and shook his hand. “Please, call me Beth.”
“Great, Beth. My name is Ed. Thank you so much for helping to organize this on such short notice.”
Both of them sat down. Ed retook his seat and Beth Desmond sat directly across from him, as if they were about to start a game of chess. Beth began. “So I’ve lined up four or five people for you to talk to. They all worked pretty closely with Faith. Everybody here is so upset about what happened. We’ll do anything we can to help you. What exactly are you hoping to learn from us?”
Ed had already prepared his response to this question. He assumed that whatever he told Beth, word would spread quickly across the office so he had to be careful. “As I’m sure you know,” Ed began, “we haven’t released much information about the bomber. We’re trying to find more about him first, to determine what the motive might have been, to see if it might have been personal.”
Beth looked surprised. “I just—we all just assumed it was some religious thing.”
“That’s still possible,” Ed assured her, “but we want to be absolutely certain before we release any details.”
This seemed to satisfy Beth. She nodded her head and leaned back in her chair. “Okay, sure. That makes sense. So, how can we help?”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions first, if that’s all right?”
Beth sat up and leaned in toward Ed. “Of course. Of course. Just know that I don’t have a lot of experience talking to cops.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Ed assured her, though in his experience, usually the more nervous people are, the more nervous they should be. Ed wrote Beth’s name in his notepad. “You were Faith’s boss, right?”
Beth laughed. “She reported to me, yes,” she answered. “We don’t really use the word boss here. We’re all on the same team, you know?”
“Of course. I got it,” Ed said and downed a slug of his coffee. “How long had Faith worked here?”
“About three years,” Beth said.
“And how long had she reported to you?” Beth
shifted in her seat. “Don’t worry,” Ed assured her again. “This isn’t about you. We’re trying to learn as much as we can about the various victims.”
“I hired her,” Beth said. “I just saw so much potential in her, you know?”
“What exactly did she do here?” asked Ed.
Beth looked surprised again. “She was an account executive,” she answered Ed. “I assumed you knew that.”
“Yes, I know that was her title, but what does it mean? What did she do here on a day-to-day basis?”
“We’re a digital advertising agency. We help our clients create and execute Internet marketing plans. We’ve got creative teams, designers, developers, people who crunch the numbers, salespeople, and account executives. Everybody is important, but it doesn’t get more important to us than the account executives. They’re the ones who manage our clients and make sure they’re happy. You can’t have a successful business without happy clients. If our clients start to get even the least bit unhappy, if the boat gets the least bit rocky, the account executives are taught to sense this early so that we can do everything in our power to right the ship.”
“That’s it?” asked Ed.
“Well, they also stay on top of our clients to try to see if there’s anything else that we could be doing for them, any other areas where we might be able to benefit them.”
“And that’s what Faith did?” Ed asked. Beth nodded. “All day?”
Beth laughed. “It costs us a lot of money to land a new client. It’s a lot more cost-effective to try to keep the old ones. Managing clients is more than a full-time job. You always have to be willing to answer their calls.”
Ed had barely written anything down in his notebook. “How many clients did Faith have?”
Beth cocked her head as if she were tallying them up in her mind. “Six,” she finally said.
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