It wasn’t.
Cherry Flynn called back around 3 P.M. Her voice was not nearly as friendly and open as it had been six hours earlier.
“I’m afraid we can’t grant your request, Mr. Westwood. I mean, Chief Westwood.”
“Can’t grant it because you don’t have the info? Or won’t grant it because you don’t want to give it to me?”
This threw her for a major loop. She was not used to any response that didn’t retreat in the face of authority. The stammering-intermixed with long silences-went on for so long that even Justin finally felt sorry for her.
“Cherry, may I ask you a couple of simple questions? Nothing that can possibly get you in trouble, I promise.”
“Well, okay. I guess.”
“I understand that you can’t give me the information I want. But just tell me if you have it. This way, I won’t have to bother you anymore and I can go to your supervisor and try to get it. If you don’t even have it, then I won’t pursue it.”
“We don’t have it.”
She was lying. He was absolutely positive. He hadn’t counted on that. He’d thought she wasn’t smart enough to lie.
“Are you sure about that?” he said.
“Well.” Her voice broke the word into two, maybe three syllables. And she waited a long time before uttering her next sentence. “Could you ask another question?”
“What?”
“Ask another question. On that same subject.”
“What kind of question should I ask?”
“Oh gosh, I don’t know how to say it. I shouldn’t really help you too much, should I? But this doesn’t seem very fair.”
“You want me to ask you a question that’ll help you give me a better answer? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t think I should say anything else,” Cherry decided. “Even if this is a murder investigation.”
“All right, all right, hold it.” Justin closed his eyes. She said she didn’t have the information on the tail number. But she wanted him to ask more about it. What more is there to know? Something similar? A number close to the one I gave her? No, what good would that do? She has it or she doesn’t have it, right? What’s another alternative. You have it, you don’t have it. . Bingo! “You had the information. You had the file. But you don’t have it anymore, is that right?”
“That’s very possible,” she breathed. “Uh-huh.”
“Who took it?”
“Well, it’s not really paper anymore, you know. So you can’t just take it. .”
“Okay. Cherry, who transferred it? Or erased it?”
“I don’t think I can really tell you that.”
Justin bit down on his lip until it turned white. She wants to help. She’s trying to help. Think, think, think. “How about this?” he asked. “Who has the authority to remove a file from the computer system? Not this file. Not the file for tail number NOV 6909 Juliet. I don’t want to know who has that file. But who can remove any file? Can you?”
“Oh no,” Cherry said. “I could get in a lot of trouble for that. I can only do that when someone tells me to.”
“So your boss can tell you to do that?”
“Well, not really,” she said now, and her words were very breathy now, as if she were starting to realize that she was getting in too deep. “I mean, he could, I guess, but he would get in trouble, too. We’re not allowed just to alter or delete a file. I think it’s against the law.”
“Well, how about his boss, then?”
“Oh, his boss could do that. She’s probably allowed to take any file she wants out. She sure should be, anyway.”
“And who’s your boss’s boss, Cherry? Can you tell me who that is?”
“Well, sure. There’s nothing wrong with saying who the chain of command is, is there?”
“No, there isn’t.” He waited. Silence. “So who is your boss’s boss, Cherry?”
“Martha Peck.”
“Uh-huh. And what’s her job exactly?”
“You don’t know Martha Peck?” Cherry was astonished.
“I’m afraid not.”
“She’s the head of the FAA.”
“In Oklahoma City?”
“No. Uh-uh. She’s all the way in Washington, D.C.”
Justin let this sink in for a moment. “Someone in Washington told you to get rid of the file?”
“I never said that, did I?” Cherry sounded extremely worried. “I never said we got rid of that file!”
“No, you didn’t,” Justin reassured her. “You absolutely didn’t.” He could feel her relax. “I just have one more question, Cherry. That’s it. Then you can go back to work.”
“What is it?”
“The file you weren’t told to remove. When was that?”
“Four days ago.” He could hear her bang something, presumably with her fist. “That was a trick question!” she said. “That wasn’t fair!”
Four days ago.
Someone got rid of the pilot’s file the day before his plane crashed.
Somebody knew what was going to happen.
No. More than that. Somebody with clout knew what was going to happen.
“Thank you very much, Cherry. I appreciate all your help.”
“Damn it!” she said. “And have a nice day.”
7
Around six that evening, Justin left his third or fourth message, he couldn’t remember which, for Chuck Billings at the Fisherman Motel. Soon after that, all five members of the East End police force appeared at the station. Gary Jenkins said that they’d decided they should take Justin out for a drink. Maybe even dinner if he was free.
“Not to celebrate exactly,” Gary said. “’Cause, you know. . But to kind of celebrate.”
“I wouldn’t mind a kind of celebration,” Justin said. “But I’ll do the treating. My first official act.”
Nobody argued, and within fifteen minutes they were a block down from the police station at Duffy’s Tavern. Justin liked Duffy’s because it was the last remaining place in East End-or anywhere in the Hamptons as near as he could tell-that hadn’t gone upscale. For that matter, it seemed not to have changed at all in twenty years. It was a no-frills bar. If you wanted to eat there, you got a tuna fish sandwich wrapped in plastic and a bag of potato chips. Their wine list had two listings: red and white. But Donnie, the bartender, made sensational martinis, and he didn’t stint on the shots of liquor. Duffy’s was dark and quiet. There was often a sports event playing on the TV over the bar. There was a dartboard and some strange game where you tried to swing a piece of string with a metal loop attached to it onto a nail embedded in a wooden beam. That’s what passed for serious entertainment at Duffy’s.
By 8 P.M. that night, the place was crowded. And the entire East End police force was reasonably bombed.
They weren’t rowdy, the way they usually were. Duffy’s as a whole was subdued, had been since the bombing. The guys on the force were doing the same thing everyone else in the place was: slowly sipping beer or tequila or scotch or bourbon, talking about life and death and the present and the future, while half listening to Charles Barkley on TNT.
At some point, Mike Haversham said to Justin, “I think that guy over there knows you.”
“Of course he knows me,” Justin said. He was feeling a little wobbly. “I’m the police chief. What’s he wanna do, buy me a drink?”
“I don’t think so,” Haversham said. “He just kinda seems to like starin’ at you.”
Justin nodded, as if this made perfect sense, then shifted in his seat so he could turn around and look at his admirer. As soon as the man came into his line of sight, Justin’s posture straightened, his eyes hardened, and his lips twisted into a small but distinct smile.
“You know him?” Gary Jenkins asked.
Justin nodded. “Yes. I know him.”
“From around here?”
“No,” Justin said. “He’s from another life.”
He stared over at the man, then nodde
d. One firm nod. Taking his cue, the guy at the other table stood up and came over to the group of cops.
“Guys,” Justin said. “Say hello to Bruno Pecozzi.”
There was a murmuring from the five cops and an easy wave in return from the man, who was still standing.
“You’re a big motherfucker,” Thomas Fronde, the youngest, cockiest, and drunkest cop at the table, said. “What do you go, six-three?”
“Four,” Bruno Pecozzi said.
“Two-forty? Two-fifty?”
“Two-sixty-five. But I’m very sensitive about my weight, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it again, please.”
There was something about the man’s tone-it wasn’t just the hoarseness of his voice, a rasping that made it seem as if someone had driven a knife into his vocal cords; it was also that he spoke so quietly you could barely hear him, and said the word “please” like it wasn’t really a request, more like an order-that made the cocky young cop sober up quickly and say, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Thank you,” Bruno Pecozzi said. Then, turning to Justin, “Can I buy a round?”
Justin nodded again; Bruno caught the eye of the bartender and signaled for more drinks, then pulled up a chair, and wedged his huge frame in next to Justin.
“Good to see you, Jay. I was hopin’ I’d bump into you.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Justin asked.
“Me?” Bruno Pecozzi said. “I’m shootin’ a movie.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I’m in the fuckin’ movie business now. Can you believe it?”
Justin couldn’t believe it. But over several more rounds of drinks, Bruno explained his new job.
“Been doin’ it for almost three years now. It’s a great gig. It started with this picture, Dead to Rights. .”
“Hey, I saw that,” Gary Jenkins said.
“Yeah, it was a good little picture,” Bruno said.
“What’d you do on it?”
“I was kind of a facilitator.”
“What does that mean?” Gary asked.
“It means,” Justin said, “that Bruno knows a lot of people. He’s very well connected.”
“Your boss is a smart guy,” Bruno said. “You got it exactly right. We were shootin’ in the city, mostly down in Little Italy. The producers or the director needed to get something done, something, you know, a little out of the ordinary, they’d call on me.”
“Like what?” That was from Thomas Fronde. It was the first time he’d spoken since Bruno mentioned the weight issue.
“Well. . I’ll tell ya. Here’s a good example. The director wanted to shoot somethin’ over by the East River around six o’clock. He wanted the sun to look a certain way, to be settin’. These directors, they’re kinda crazy. Very artistic. Anyway, he had about an hour, hour and a half, to get his shot. Only these planes kept takin’ off and landing at La Guardia and Kennedy, they kept screwin’ up the shot. So he asked if I could do somethin’ about it.”
“What’d you do?” Mike Haversham asked.
“Made a couple of calls. Got ’em to hold off on the flyin’ for about an hour or so.”
Gary looked at Bruno in amazement. “You got them to stop taking off and landing at the airports?”
Bruno nodded and shrugged modestly.
“Who did you call?”
“Hey, if I told you that, you could get my job, you know what I mean?”
The cops all laughed. Justin started rubbing his eyes, partly in disbelief at the way Bruno had taken over and changed the mood of the entire table, partly because he was already beginning to anticipate the next day’s hangover. Bruno slapped him on the back and immediately went into a story about the star of Dead to Rights, an actor who usually played tough guys. There was a scene where the actor had to crawl through a swamp and mud to get to the villain. He wouldn’t agree to do it until the director found someone to warm the water-and the mud-to exactly seventy-eight degrees.
“Not seventy-seven, not seventy-nine. The guy actually checked the thermometer himself and wouldn’t put a toe in until it read exactly seventy-eight.”
Bruno told stories of his movie experiences for the next hour, and had everyone at the table howling with laughter. He was so huge that his self-deprecating manner was irresistible. It was hard to know exactly how old he was, maybe mid-forties. He had a couple of scars around his eyes, and his nose looked liked it had been broken once or twice. Bruno looked like an ex-fighter, and he had that gentle demeanor that fighters sometimes have out of the ring. It was as if he knew he was scary-looking, so he went out of his way to soften whatever he could about himself-his voice, his eyes, his smile.
“So are you still a facilitator?” Gary asked, calling for one more round.
“Nah. Now I’m a technical consultant. I mean, I still do some facilitating if they ask me.”
“What’s the movie they’re shooting now?”
“It’s a cop movie. Blue Smoke.”
“So what kind of technical stuff do you consult on?”
Bruno glanced over at Justin, rolled his eyes, as if to say, What is it with these guys? Justin shrugged in return.
“You know,” Bruno said. “On whatever needs technicalizing. The language, some of the action, the behavior.”
“That is so cool,” Gary said. “Your stories are unbelievable.”
Bruno smiled modestly.
“Tell them the story about Marty Braunheimer,” Justin said.
“Ahhh, I don’t know if they’d really like that one,” Bruno answered.
“Yeah, yeah, come on,” Thomas said.
“Yeah,” Mike Haversham said. “What’s the story?”
They were like eager children waiting for their father to buy them toys. Bruno cocked his head to the side, closed one eye for a moment. “Okay. This was a while ago. Up in Rhode Island. And this guy Marty Braunheimer, he was a gambler. Not a pro, you know, just some schmuck who liked to bet on the games. He couldn’t pass up a big football game. And he liked basketball, pro and college. And he had a bad run. That’s why they call it gambling, right? He was into this guy. .”
“His bookie,” Thomas said, in case the other guys didn’t get it.
“Right,” Bruno said. “His bookie. He was into him for a lotta money. Over ten grand.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. It’s some dough. Anyways, this bookie was kind of a tough guy. He didn’t like nobody, you know, skippin’ out on a payment. I knew both parties, the bookie and Marty, so I was asked to intervene. I went to Marty, told him he had a week to pay up or he could be in some trouble. Marty said he’d have the dough in three days, no problem. He said he’d meet my bookmaker friend at the track.” Bruno rubbed his nose with his two forefingers, took a sip of beer. “So three days later, they’re both at the track and, sure enough, Marty comes up to the bookie, gives him a hug, and pays him ten grand.”
The guys all nodded appreciatively. But Bruno said, “There’s more. The thing is, Marty was kind of a pickpocket. I mean, that’s what he did for a living, you know? And when he hugged my bookie friend, he picked his pocket. That’s why he wanted to meet at the track, he knew the guy’d be carrying a wad.”
“He paid the bookie back with his own money?” Gary said.
Bruno nodded and the cops all burst into laughter.
“Good story,” Thomas said.
Justin finished off his shot of scotch. “It’s still not over.”
“Ahh,” Bruno said. “I don’t think the rest is. .”
“Tell ’em the end,” Justin said. “I think they’ll like it.”
Bruno shrugged his wide shoulders. “Well, the thing is,” he said, “when the bookie goes to the window to place his bet, he realizes what happened. He didn’t get paid ten grand, he actually got picked for three.”
“Christ,” Thomas said. “What’d he do?”
“You know,” Bruno decided, “this part’s not really too interesting.”
>
“Tell ’em what happened,” Justin said. His voice was flat but insistent.
“Yeah, what’d the bookie do?”
Bruno shrugged again. “He got some guy to glue Marty’s hands to a piece of cement. And then they tossed Marty in the river.”
Mike was still laughing. “And then what happened?”
“Nothin’ happened,” Bruno said. “That’s the end of the story.”
“I mean, what happened to Marty?”
“He died.”
“They killed him? They killed Marty?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God.” This was Thomas. “Did they arrest the bookie?”
“Not really. See, he had an alibi. Pretty airtight.” He glanced over at Justin, whose expression was still neutral. “And the cops never could find out who did the actual, you know. . deed. Marty was kind of a scumbag, so I don’t think they looked all that hard. That’s my theory, anyway.”
“Geez,” Thomas said. “The ending’s not so funny as the beginning, is it?”
Bruno yawned and glanced at his watch. “I got an early call tomorrow. Big scene comin’ up.” He put his meaty hand on Justin’s back. “Can I buy you dinner tomorrow, Jay? We can do a little catchin’ up. Maybe you’ll actually do some talkin’ so I don’t have to listen to my big yap anymore.”
Justin nodded. Bruno stuck his hand out and Justin shook it. They all watched as the big guy lumbered out of the bar, first tossing a hundred-dollar bill down on the table, saying, “For my round.”
When he was out the door, all the cops started talking about what a great guy he was, what great stories he told.
“You good friends with him?” Mike asked Justin.
“We used to be pretty friendly. Haven’t seen him for a while.”
“How do you know him?”
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