Nightbird

by Edward Dee

  “Men are dense when it comes to noticing things. In case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Okay, why did he punch me when I spoke to him at the cemetery?”

  “I wish I’d’ve been there to see that. I would’ve kicked you right square in the balls.”

  “I fully believe that.”

  Lainie pulled herself upright and leaned forward. Unlike most women who wore clothes too tight, she seemed unbothered by material constricting her flesh. Most women unconsciously adjusted and yanked at such attire. Not twin forty-fours.

  “Evan Stone thought you were the sister’s boyfriend,” she said.

  “Faye Boudreau’s boyfriend?”

  “That’s the name, Faye. I couldn’t remember. Lynnette hardly ever says her name, calls her ‘my other daughter.’ She says that Faye wanted a ton of money from them. Money to go away forever. A quarter of a mil. Evan said no way. He offered a small trust fund. Said he’d put some money in it every year.”

  “They go through with it?”

  “Faye wanted no part of that deal. One big cash payment and good-bye was what she wanted. Evan said he didn’t have that kind of cash, so they made some other deal, I’m not sure of the exact amount. Faye said she’d send her boyfriend out to collect the money. Evan said he’d call when he had the cash together, but he never got the chance. This was right before Gillian died.”

  “He thought I was there to collect the money.”

  “He heard that New York accent and freaked out. Then he decided, Screw her, meaning Faye, I ain’t giving her shit. After the funeral he called and told her. They haven’t heard from Faye since.”

  Danny thought of Faye’s bruised face. The last thing she’d told him was not to come to see her again. She was moving away.

  “What’s the boyfriend’s name?”

  “Not a clue,” Lainie said, yawning. “I don’t think the Stones even know it. He’s from Florida, but he’s living in New York, too.”

  “The Bronx?”

  “I have to do everything? New York is all I know.”

  Danny knew he had to call his uncle. He’d put off telling him about Faye. Her late-night excursion in a Bronx gypsy cab, her battered face. He hoped it wasn’t too late.

  Lainie stood up and stretched. “Coffee makes me sleepy,” she said, and began to unzip her skirt. “I’m going to crash right here for an hour, if it’s okay. You have an extra pair of pajamas so I don’t wrinkle this suit?”

  “There are some T-shirts in the top drawer.”

  “You don’t mind, right. I don’t want a problem if your new fiancée, Mary Beth McGillycuddy, drops by. Is that her name?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I knew that was bullshit.”

  34

  In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Anthony Ryan strolled past the Times Building and turned west on Forty-fourth. He wore a telephone installer’s nylon windbreaker, light blue with a swath of yellow and white down the front. The jacket had been acquired by the Organized Crime Intelligence Unit through a connection in the phone company. The NYPD’s bug and wiretap teams lived in Ma Bell apparel. But the disguises of legitimacy worn by undercover cops were an unspoken matter, since no group was flattered when imitated by the law.

  On Eighth Avenue he stopped outside a botanica and checked his notes in front of a window full of saints and angels. He’d pulled old bookmaking files, looking for locations of past wiretaps. He wanted to know the basements where the telephone boxes were located.

  Besides the windbreaker, Ryan wore work boots and an old pair of chinos, and he carried a nylon gym bag with a few tools. He’d spent the entire morning looking for a telephone box that held a specific set of screws and wires: the bridging points to the phone in Trey Winters’s office. He wanted to hear any conversation between Winters and Buster Scorza. At least get the specifics on their meeting. He knew it was tomorrow morning; he didn’t know the exact time or location.

  Ryan’s search began on the outskirts of the area, picking buildings a safe distance away from Winters’s office. He knew that the hardware that connected a particular telephone to the main system appeared in more than one location. But trying to find it without the assistance of the phone company was like trying to find two needles in the crumbling haystack that was the infrastructure of this aging city. Calling the phone company was out of the question. He closed his notebook and walked away from the botanica and the eyes of a 3-D plastic Jesus.

  Each telephone box he looked at contained its own history: ancient wiring weaved among space age filament, advanced technology layered over spit-and-a-prayer ingenuity. On Eighth just north of Forty-sixth, Ryan found an unlocked box in a dirt-floored basement trimmed in rat poison. He’d flashed phony ID to a Pakistani T-shirt dealer, announced himself as a troubleshooter, and descended a set of concrete steps no wider than a hand span.

  Sitting on a wire milk crate, he faced the wall, opened the box, and again began the laborious process. The huge metal box was jammed with the usual spaghetti-pot labyrinth of colored wiring. He took a telephone handset with alligator clips from his gym bag. He began working down the rows of screws, looking for the line to Trey Winters’s office.

  What he was doing made him sick to his stomach. His entire career had been built on doing the right thing. Now here he was, setting up an illegal wiretap. If they caught him, he could always retire. He’d waive his vacation and terminal leave and he’d be out tomorrow, before anyone could figure out exactly what he’d done. Saving his pension mattered most, an income for Leigh; he’d worry about jail time later.

  Ryan’s back was getting stiff. He’d spent most of the morning poking through rusty telephone boxes in ancient basements. This one was the worst. He was almost finished when he hit the jackpot.

  Either the excitement or the smell of mothballs made his eyes water. He needed to double-check. He pulled a second headset from his gym bag and borrowed a dial tone. He waited for someone to answer; then the unmistakable voice of Trey Winters’s secretary, a rasping voice Joe Gregory said was better suited to the reception desk of Ring magazine. Ryan didn’t say a word; he hung up.

  He built a nest in the corner by stacking T-shirt boxes in an el shape, forming a cardboard cave against the wall. He spread a large mover’s quilt over the floor and used smaller boxes to sit on. He squeezed in and made himself comfortable in the tight space, his feet resting on a box with the official logo of the NFL. He turned off the headset. He knew he’d be able to feel the vibrations of the next ring. The last thing he did was remove the voice-piece from the headset, so they couldn’t hear him breathing.

  Anthony Ryan’s instincts assured him that the deal between Scorza and Winters was wrong. It had nothing to do with Scorza’s union connections, but everything to do with Gillian Stone. Ryan didn’t know exactly how or when the knockout drops were administered to Gillian. But someone knew. If not Winters, surely Buster Scorza knew exactly what Lorazepam was.

  It occurred to Ryan that the basement nook he’d built was like a kid’s rainy-day fort. The kind Rip and Danny used to construct of blankets and sofa cushions. The happiest days of his life were those days of bad snowstorms, when he’d take the day off work, the schools closed, kids all over the house, building forts and playhouses. The fireplace would be blazing, Leigh in the kitchen, the smell of vegetable soup and freshly baked bread. Mostly it was the comfort of knowing that everyone you loved was perfectly safe. Right under your wing.

  The next phone call came ten minutes later. Winters’s secretary put Syd from the William Morris Agency straight through. Something about percentages. Ryan yanked the alligator clips, and the voices went silent. He couldn’t do it. He thought about Leigh, and Margaret, and Katie. His dad. He had other forts to build, a woman to get old with. A woman that he would hurt so badly.

  It would be more work, but he could do it the right way. After all, he knew Scorza wouldn’t let Winters talk business on the telephone. Darcy Winters said the meeting was tomor
row morning. All Ryan had to do was sit on Winters for the morning. He could do a morning. He could do two days… standing on his head. But he’d watch him today, just in case of a change in plans. He knew Winters was in the office at this moment. He scrambled to his feet.

  For the rest of the day Ryan stood vigil outside Trey Winters’s office in the Theater Guild Building. At lunchtime he followed him to Barrymore’s, waiting until Winters stepped down into the restaurant. Ryan checked for Buster Scorza, but Winters dined alone. So did Ryan. He ate a slice of pizza in the outer lobby of the Plymouth Theatre, watching Barrymore’s front door. Behind him stood a constant line of people at the box office, all buying tickets for Jekyll & Hyde.

  Winters ate quickly, then returned to his office, where he stayed until after five.

  At rush hour a lone pigeon squatted on the bronze head of George M. Cohan as Winters walked north on Broadway, a street that was once an Iroquois war path. Ryan stalked him from the other side of the street, slightly behind. Like most New Yorkers, Winters walked extremely fast. His lanky stride chewed up the blocks.

  Winters was an easy tail. Tailored clothes hanging on a six-foot-five frame, chiseled features, and a hundred-dollar haircut. Ryan could tell he liked the minor buzz he left in his wake; he’d even turn a little to give his deluded fans a generous glance at his fast-moving profile. Tourists stared at him, confident it must be “somebody.”

  A red double-decker bus passed between them, the open upper deck packed with tourists. It obscured Ryan’s sightline, but Winters could have been wearing feathers, he was that easy to spot. Winters passed the Broadway Theatre, Miss Saigon in its sixth year. The line at the Ed Sullivan Theater stretched around the corner, everyone vying for the standby tickets for the taping of that evening’s Late Night with David Letterman. Letterman groupies congregated underneath the yellow-and-blue marquee, looking up continually to check the street cams.

  Ryan followed him past the theme restaurants on Fifty-seventh Street, all the way to Park Avenue, then ten blocks north. Winters was too self-involved to notice a guy in a Ma Bell windbreaker strolling behind him for twenty-five blocks. When pedestrian traffic dwindled Ryan broke off the tail and walked over to Lexington Avenue. He knew Winters was going home. No sense pushing his luck, getting made by an actor. He’d never live that down. Besides, he had more questions for Faye Boudreau.

  Ryan walked down the subway steps, searching his pockets for a token. He never used his shield in situations like this. On the platform, a slender black man wearing dreadlocks stood against a pillar, playing “Manhattan Nocturne” on a dented silver trumpet.

  35

  Danny Eumont knew that every Tuesday night Joe Gregory had dinner in Jimmy Neary’s on East Fifty-seventh Street. The restaurant was crowded when he walked in, not an empty seat anywhere. He spotted Gregory in a corner booth in the dining room.

  “Where the hell’s your uncle?” Gregory said.

  “That was my question.”

  “I covered for him all day,” Gregory whispered. “He calls me this morning, tells me some bullshit story about having errands to run. Last I heard.”

  “Did you call Aunt Leigh?”

  “Are you freakin’ nuts?” Gregory said.

  Danny shut his mouth when the waitress approached. He’d learned the rhythm of cop-speak. Certain subjects for certain ears, and when any possibility existed that your voice could be overheard… shut up. His uncle said that Joe Gregory hadn’t spoken in an elevator in twenty years.

  Danny ordered a Tullamore Dew and water. He reminded himself to drink slowly because the bartenders in Neary’s rationed the H2O as if it had dripped from the sacred shrine at Knock in County Mayo.

  “Then where is he?” Danny said when the waitress left.

  “Either working Trey Winters, or he’s with the sister. She’s putting an evil spell on him.”

  “I tried to call her all day, no answer.”

  “You have her number? Give me her number.”

  Gregory wrote in his notebook while Danny laid out the story. How he’d spotted a battered Faye Boudreau at three-thirty in the morning getting out of a gypsy cab. Danny stopped talking briefly when his drink arrived. Then he filled Gregory in on Lainie Mossberg’s tales from the desert about Gillian’s possible manic depression, Faye’s quarter-million-dollar shakedown, and the boyfriend up from Florida.

  “That’s why Evan Stone took a swing at me,” Danny said. “He thought I was the boyfriend out there to collect.”

  Joe Gregory sat in a booth with one leg outside, as if ready to pounce at the flash of a muzzle. The handle of a delicate teacup was pinched between his ironworker’s fingers. He asked Danny to tell him everything he knew about Faye. Danny complied but never mentioned anything about the sex.

  “I’m going to Florida first thing in the morning,” Danny said. “I made an appointment with the private detective the Stones hired to find Faye. Maybe I can find something on the boyfriend.”

  “Last week Arizona, this week Florida, Manhattan magazine must be duking out some major expense money.”

  “This trip comes out of my pocket,” Danny said.

  “Call me if you get something hot.”

  “I can use something hot right now,” Danny said. “Those lamb chops look good.”

  “They are. But you don’t have time.”

  Neary’s clientele was older and polished. The silver-haired class of Wall Street, City Hall, and the archdiocese were there for the nourishment and the nexus. And as always, where power congregated in the city of New York, the welcome mat rolled out for a few good cops.

  “You don’t think he’s with Faye, do you?” Danny said.

  “Naw, he thinks she’s a victim. My money says he’s on Winters; he’s been dying to make a case against him.”

  “Then where’s Faye?”

  “Howling at the moon, who knows? She gives me the screaming meemies, that broad.”

  A few detectives were at the bar, conversing with the lawyers and the trust funders. Gregory called them “old school cops,” a reference to how they carried themselves and their worldly secrets. Old school cops considered themselves gentlemen, and in places like Neary’s they acted as kindly consiglieres to the citizenry. In here they would never show the drink or mention the ugliness.

  “You got a medallion number on the cab?” Gregory said.

  “It was a gypsy. Tremont Taxi, on the door.”

  Gregory grabbed his notebook and stood. “What time does your flight leave?”

  “Six oh-five A.M. But I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  “Finish your drink,” he said. “I’m going to make a few phone calls. Then we’re going for a ride.”

  36

  Victor’s thighs pressed against the towel he’d draped over the sink. The tiny bathroom was poorly lit and not half the size of his own in the Bronx. He preferred a lighted mirror, preferably one with 5X magnification. This one was cheap, like everything else in the apartment. The mercury that silvered the back was peeling badly. Black images dulled and deadened his reflection.

  His face needed care. He’d spent too much time on the city streets, his skin absorbing soot and car exhaust. He searched the medicine cabinet for a little oil or cream. One tube was all he found. The label listed aloe as the first ingredient, but the smell was lilac. Too feminine for him, but better than nothing. With a circular motion he massaged cream into his cheeks and the tiny lines around his eyes.

  Soon there would be time to relax and stroll on the sunny beaches. In Mexico he could buy pure aloe from street vendors for a fraction of the price of this designer cream. His face would be tan and healthy as he walked among the blond turistas from Seattle and Minneapolis who came into his restaurant.

  He planned to invest in a nice restaurant. Not too high end, but classy. One that didn’t serve the Sonoran food of northern Mexico, with its heavy sauces, all tortillas, tacos, and lard, the kind of cooking most Americans think is the sum of Mexican food. Cheap a
nd heavy. He’d specialize in the fresh vegetables and seafood. Take advantage of the fishing boats that returned daily with the day’s catch. Octopus would be the house specialty.

  He was only days away from his dream. Today had gone beautifully, his plan delivered. At nine-thirty A.M. Victor had handed an envelope containing instructions to Trey Winters. He’d met Winters just as he was entering his office in the Theater Guild Building. His hat pulled low over his face, Victor had shoved the envelope into Winters’s hands and walked quickly away. It was even easier than the first envelope, in front of the El Bravado restaurant. This time Winters had clutched the note to his chest, as if expecting it.

  Victor heard a key in the lock and instinctively grabbed the straight razor. He flattened himself against the wall.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Victor,” Faye said, quickly locking the door behind her. She was dressed in black jeans and a blue blouse that he knew Gillian had bought for her. French blue, she’d called it. She wore dark glasses, but they didn’t hide the bruise. The eye was less swollen, less purple, than yesterday.

  “You expecting your policeman?” he said.

  “My face like this? I hope nobody ever sees me.”

  “It was your own fault.”

  She took a six-pack of Coronas from a paper bag and put them in the refrigerator.

  “I came to get you,” he said.

  “I already told you I’m not going. What is that cooking?”

  Red sauce was cooking on the stove. A bag of corn tortillas sat between the burners, steam fogging the inside of the bag.

  “I know it won’t be as good as Mama’s,” he said. “But I try.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “The way you eat. It’s a wonder you’re not sick.”

  “I am sick,” she said. “Sick in the head.”

  “Mama’s cooking will fix you.”

  “Mama’s food won’t help what’s wrong with me, Victor.”

  Faye saw her suitcase opened on the bed. Victor had found it in the closet, and he’d packed some of her clothes and others he’d left folded next to it.