The white limousine went directly to Trump Tower, drove into the parking garage and disappeared, just as the black one had the day before.
Since there was no need to go into the building, Frank decided to maintain his surveillance from just outside the building. He slumped against the wall and watched as people moved in and out, whirling through the large bronze revolving doors. Most of them were tourists, since the building itself had become one of the city’s most spectacular sights. Whole families stood gaping at its impressive exterior, men trudged inside to take pictures of the marble walls, greenery and waterfalls.
As he watched them, Frank thought of his own early days in the city, of the long walks with Karen, then the longer ones by himself, a rogue figure stalking through the city’s twilight streets. Now more than ever, it was this that struck him as his appointed fate, to be forever the solitary night crawler that Tannenbaum had called him, wifeless, childless and, except for Farouk, utterly alone. It was not a fate that struck him anymore as entirely dreadful. He had come to accept it the way he accepted death, along with a vast number of deep, unrightable wrongs. And yet, there were times when this acceptance seemed like something broken in him, not a sign of strength or resignation, but of an old resistance that had lost its will.
He was still thinking vaguely of these things, smarting slightly under their invisible lash, when a black limousine pulled up in front of the Tower. Reflexively, he glanced at its license plate and realized that it was the same as the one he had written into his notebook the day before.
Two large men got out and took up positions on either side of the passenger door. One of them snapped a radio up to his mouth and said something. Then the other man bent forward and opened the door.
A short, somewhat stocky man got out of the car, moving awkwardly, as if he were pulling a heavy sack behind him. Almost immediately, another man stepped up to him and thrust out his hand. “Good to see you, Mr. Burroughs,” he said.
Burroughs smiled happily and shook his hand. “I am sorry,” he said, “but I have only twenty minutes.”
“Plenty of time, I hope,” the other man said cheerfully. “Please, come in.”
With that, the two men walked quickly into the lobby of Trump Tower, turned to the right and entered a luxury jewelry shop which glittered with diamonds and rubies, and which had been cleared of its usual number of gawking tourists.
Once Burroughs was inside, the two men from the limousine took up their positions on either side of the door and smiled sweetly as people passed them, glancing inside to watch Burroughs make his purchases.
It seemed only seconds before Burroughs stepped out of the shop and hustled back to his limousine, but it was enough time for Frank to confirm Farouk’s impression, that he was a man who knew no consequences.
Frank stationed himself beside the revolving door once Burroughs’s limousine had pulled away. If Mrs. Phillips left by the front door, instead of being whisked away in the limousine that had picked her up on Park Avenue, then he would be able to resume his surveillance. It was a chance he had to take, since he couldn’t cover both places at the same time.
Almost an hour later, the risk paid off, and Mrs. Phillips came through the revolving door. He was only a few feet from her, and as she lingered a moment on the sidewalk, he was able to get a long, concentrated look at her face. Her eyes were light blue and strangely moist. Her lipstick was bright red, and in contrast to her smooth, white skin, it made her mouth look like a wide gash. From a distance, she might have looked like a sleek East Side model, someone who knew how to wear clothes, how to stand with an elegant defiance amid the pedestrian traffic that swirled around her. But she was very near to him now, and all of that looked like nothing but a pose that was less grand than the woman who assumed it. He could feel a curious power in the way she stood very still and let her eyes stare out across the moving crowds as if they were troops under her command. She seemed as if she were the focus of her own concentration, as if some kind of spotlight beamed down upon her constantly, singling her out from the mass, and as Frank continued to look at her, it was easy for him to imagine her raising money for her charities, ordering wine from the respectful sommelier, or conducting complex deals in a room full of cigar-chomping men who never for one moment doubted her right to stand among them.
Suddenly, in a quick, darting movement, she turned to face him, her eyes concentrating on him with an unmistakable intensity, bearing in like the twin barrels of a cold blue shotgun. “The time,” was all she said.
Frank quickly glanced at his watch. “It’s ten-fifteen,” he said.
She nodded quickly. “Thank you.” Then she turned and headed down the avenue.
Frank stepped forward, then stopped, realizing mat he could not follow her now, that she had held him in view too long not to recognize his face. So he simply craned his neck above the swirling crowd and watched her disappear into its sea of gently bobbing heads.
Farouk looked at him, astonished.
“The thing is, this time I’m pretty sure she made me,” Frank told him. “Yesterday, across from her place, I’m not sure she noticed me. But today, she looked right at me.”
Farouk thought about it. “Perhaps she had already made you, Frank.”
“I’ve thought of that, too,” Frank said. “It’s possible. But I don’t know when or how.”
Farouk fell silent, his eyes drifting toward the ceiling. “And she said only, ‘The time,’ yes?” he asked when they dropped toward Frank again.
“That’s right.”
Farouk smiled at the mystery of it. “A woman of codes.”
“Codes?”
“Codes. Passwords.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is possible, is it not, that she thought you were someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“A contact of some kind. As they say, a secret agent.”
“A contact,” Frank repeated, almost to himself. “But for what?”
Farouk lifted his hands, palms up. “I do not know.”
Frank took a moment to consider the possibilities. “She could be some kind of middleman.”
Farouk nodded.
“A go-between, or something.”
“It is a world of go-betweens,” Farouk said. “And Mrs. Phillips could be such a person.”
“Or just a packager, like Devine.”
“Always possible.”
“But of something secret, illegal.”
Farouk smiled faintly, but with an obvious delight. “The day case is taking on something of the night, yes?”
“Enough for me to need your help on it,” Frank admitted.
“I am pleased to be of assistance,” Farouk said matter-of-factly. “What is it that you wish?”
Frank handed him the license number he’d recorded from the white limousine. “For starters.”
Farouk glanced at the paper, then handed it back.
“And some legwork, too,” Frank told him.
“Because you cannot follow her now,” Farouk said.
Frank nodded. “All I can do is go through this,” he said as he held up the copy of Mrs. Phillips’s address book, which her husband had given him.
“But the woman’s address,” Farouk said. “What is it?”
Frank gave it to him.
“When do you usually arrive?” Farouk asked.
“She’s never left before eight-thirty.”
“From what place do you observe?”
“There’s a little brick wall almost directly across from her house. I usually stand there.”
“Then I will avoid it.”
Frank nodded. “Yeah, I think you should. I’d have changed positions again myself, if I were going there tomorrow.” He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out the camera. “If you see her with anybody, I’d like a picture.”
Farouk took the camera. “Very well.”
“That’s all,” Frank said. “Just keep track of her and let me k
now where she goes, who she sees, everything.”
Farouk nodded quietly. “And what are you to do?”
“I’ll do some work on Powers,” Frank said. “Try to find out what her connection to him is.”
Farouk did not seem entirely satisfied. “About the night,” he said. “About the Puri Dai.”
She strode into Frank’s mind, tall and furious, inexpressibly in need, but utterly beyond him also, as if she lived on a distant planet which only once in a thousand years aligned itself with him. “She still doesn’t want me to work the case,” he said quietly. “But I still believe she’s innocent.”
“Then that is the thing that you must prove.”
“I’ll try,” Frank said. “But it’s really closing down. I only have one more place to go.”
Farouk looked at him very seriously. “Then go there right away,” he said.
The Food Palace was located on Forty-third Street. Its night manager was a large black woman whose hair stuck out in a thousand different directions, as if she’d just been hit with forty thousand volts.
“Private eye?” she asked incredulously as she stared at his identification. “For who?”
“A private client,” Frank said.
“This got something to do with the store?”
“One of your deliveries,” Frank said.
Her face filled with recognition. “Oh, you mean Pedro. How he seen that woman that killed her mother. The police already axed him a million questions about that.”
“I got a few more,” Frank said. “Is he here?”
“Maybe so,” the woman said. She lifted her head slightly and called the cashier, who stood at a register a few feet away. “Hey, Angela, you seen Pedro?”
“He’s on delivery,” Angela called back, without ever taking her eyes off the cash register.
The manager looked back at Frank. “He should be back pretty soon. You can wait for him.”
“Thanks.”
“He’s a little short guy,” the manager added. “Seventeen, something like that. Sort of wiry-looking, with bad skin.” She looked repulsed. “Oily hair, too,” she said with a short mocking laugh. “Gives me the creeps.”
Frank smiled. “Thanks a lot.”
“No problem,” the manager said. She stepped back into the small raised booth from which she could observe the entire store and pointed to the far right-hand corner. “He’ll probably show up over there,” she said. “By the dairy section.”
Frank walked down the nearest aisle, then wheeled to the right and stood by an enormous cooler of milk and cheese. There were two double doors to the left of the cooler, and he kept his eyes more or less focused on them. Other customers passed him, pushing grocery carts before them. Sometimes they gave him a wide berth, as if sensing something dangerous in him, contained, but potentially explosive, a creature who lived by different rules.
Pedro came through the double doors about fifteen minutes later. He was wearing blue jeans, cut out at the knees, and a fishnet shirt to display the pectorals he’d clearly been working to develop.
Frank stepped over to him, blocking his movement down the aisle. “Are you Pedro Ortiz?” he asked.
Ortiz’s body tightened, as if he were preparing to receive a blow.
To ease the young man’s mind, Frank quickly pulled out his identification. “My name’s Frank Clemons,” he said. “I’m a private investigator.”
Ortiz continued to look at him apprehensively, as if the line that divided a private investigator from a cop had never been made clear to him. “Hey, man, I ain’t done nothing,” he whined. “Why you bustin’ on me, man?”
“I’m not busting you,” Frank assured him. “I just have a few questions, that’s all.”
Ortiz didn’t look as though he was buying it. “Questions? What kinda questions you got, man? ’Cause I ain’t done nothing.” He raised his hands and waved them back and forth. “No way, man. I’m clean.” He’d begun to sweat. “No way, man. I mean it. I’m clean.”
Frank had seen that kind of sweat before. He knew where it came from. “How much time have you done, Pedro?” he asked.
“I did two years, that’s all,” Ortiz said. The whine was still in his voice, but had taken on a childlike, petulant edge. “It was a bummer, too, man. A rush job, tha’s right.”
“Where’d you do it?”
“Allentown, man.”
“That’s federal.”
“Fucking post office, man.”
“Two years?” Frank said. “For mail fraud, or something like that? You must have copped a plea.”
Ortiz said nothing. He hunched his shoulders resentfully.
“You must have sent Uncle a package, Pedro,” Frank said pointedly.
Ortiz’s eyes shifted about nervously.
“There must be some people you’d rather not see,” Frank added. “But let me tell you something, I’m not working for them.”
Ortiz’s eyes suddenly settled on Frank. “Who you working for, man?”
“Nobody you need to hear about,” Frank said. “But I have a few questions for you.”
Ortiz shifted from one foot to the next. “Not here, man. I got a job, you know. I mean, you got to see how it is, you understand what I’m saying?”
Frank said nothing.
“I mean, you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?” Ortiz asked. “You got a look to you, man. It ain’t normal.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I’ll meet you when my shift’s over.”
“When’s that?”
“I got second shift today.” Ortiz told him. “I’ll be off at midnight.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “Smith’s Bar over on Forty-seventh and Eighth.”
“Yeah, okay, man, tha’s good.”
“Don’t hang me up, Pedro,” Frank warned him. He gave him a psychotic stare. “I don’t like that.”
“No, no way, man,” Pedro sputtered. “You’ll see me, man. I’m stand-up, you know?”
Frank smiled thinly. “I’m sure you are,” he said. On your mother’s grave, he thought.
He was on his second shot of Jameson’s by the time midnight rolled around. The usual crowd was mulling over the day’s losses, mostly old-timers staring listlessly at themselves in the mirror that stretched out across the full length of the dark, splintery bar.
Frank sat at a table in the back. He could see the traffic along Eighth Avenue very easily, despite the grayish clouds that rose from the steam cart at the front of the room. A small white-haired man was standing behind it, cutting two-inch thick slices of corned beef while an old woman waited for it, her small red tongue flicking hungrily as she watched.
The old woman was about halfway through her sandwich when Ortiz finally came through the door. He stared around a moment, craning his neck until he spotted Frank at the back of the room. He looked disappointed to find him there, hunched his shoulders slightly and sauntered back to him.
“So, I’m here,” he said gruffly as he sat down.
Frank took out his notebook.
“Christ, you ain’t even gonna spring for a drink?” Ortiz said.
Frank signaled for a barman, and he stepped over immediately.
“Gimme a margarita,” Ortiz said. “Straight up, with salt.”
The barman looked at Ortiz as if he were some creature from another species. “We don’t have mixed drinks.”
“You don’t have mixed drinks?” Ortiz squealed. “What kind of fucking bar is this?”
The barman’s eyes squeezed together, and the tattooed belly dancer on his upper arm did a quick bump and grind. “We don’t have mixed drinks,” he repeated glumly.
“He’ll have a beer,” Frank said quickly, to ease the tension.
“Beer?” Ortiz blurted. “I don’t want a …”
“Beer it is,” the barman said crisply. Then he spun around and disappeared.
“Classy fuckin’ place,” Ortiz muttered.
Frank opened his notebook. �
��This has to do with a woman,” he said.
Ortiz laughed. “Don’t everything.”
“This one is accused of murder,” Frank added.
“Oh, so tha’s what this is all about,” Ortiz said happily. He looked relieved. “That killing over on Tenth Avenue.”
Frank nodded.
“Jesus, man,” Ortiz said excitedly, “I ran right into that fuckin’ thing. I was right in the middle of it.”
Frank turned to a blank page and moved his pen into position. “I want you to tell me everything you know about that night.”
“I told it all to the cops.”
“This time it’s to me,” Frank told him. “Maybe you’ll remember something.”
Ortiz began, but spotted the barman walking toward him with the beer. He waited until after the first long drink to begin.
“Well, I was working the third shift that night,” he said.
“Midnight to eight?”
“Tha’s it,” Ortiz said. “We call it the ‘suicide shift,’ because you’re out on these fuckin’ streets, you know, when you gotta be crazy to be out there.” He shrugged. “But in this neighborhood you got a lot of people that don’t do nothin’ ’cept at night. They sleep the fuckin’ day away, and at night, tha’s when they get goin’. So we got deliveries from midnight to eight. It ain’t a lot of ’em, but enough to matter to the store, you know, so they got to provide the service and all, ’cause if they don’t, they lose these night types.”
“When did you get the call from the woman on Tenth Avenue?” Frank asked quickly, trying to keep him focused.
“It wasn’t no call.”
“What do you mean?”
“She come in, that woman,” Ortiz said. “She didn’t call for nothing.”
“She came into the store?”
“Tha’s right.”
“Had she ever done that before?”
“I ain’t never seen her in there,” Ortiz said. He grinned. “And I woulda noticed her. Because she was real fine, you know?”
“What time did she come in?”
Night Secrets Page 18