Smoke
Page 14
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said, unlocking the doors of the Caprice for his partner. Jesamyn climbed inside to get out of the cold and shut the door, peering at him through the glass. He walked over to the driver’s side and leaned on the roof and watched the traffic roll on Riverside. He listened as she told him what they’d learned since he saw her last night and how the logo on the van in the photograph was the same as the building in the Bronx.
“There’s nothing in those hotline transcripts,” he said, feeling slightly defensive suddenly. Was she going to start trying to tell him he hadn’t done a thorough job with the leads they had? “We’ve been following up.”
“Yeah,” said Lydia. “I know you have. We’ve got some trainees going over them too. So far we don’t have anything there, either. We’re moving forward with The New Day.”
“Sounds like vapor to me, Ms. Strong,” he said. It had taken her less than twenty-four hours to go off in a direction he’d never even considered and come up with a more substantial lead than he’d approached in two weeks. It pissed him off a little.
“Call me Lydia,” she said. “And I think you’re wrong. If you have something better to go on, please share it.”
He smiled at her though she couldn’t see him. What had Kepler said? Pit bulls. They were like pit bulls.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can find out about The New Day. Maybe they have some complaints against them, something in the system.” It’s not about me, he reminded himself. It’s about Lily. That’s why I hooked Lydia Strong in the first place.
“I was hoping you’d say that, Detective. Call me back?”
“As soon as I get back to the station.”
He hung up and contorted himself into the Caprice.
“Who was that?” Jesamyn wanted to know.
“None of your business,” he said. His bad mood had turned foul.
“Girlfriend?” she teased, punching him on the arm.
“Let’s talk about your love life,” he said, starting the car.
“Let’s not,” she said. He nodded and raised his eyebrows at her.
She frowned at him. “Man,” she said when he stared blankly ahead and pulled out into traffic too quickly. “Who dropped your ice-cream cone on the sidewalk?”
She walked through the elevator doors and stepped onto the hardwood floor. Before entering the giant loft space she bowed. The hours Jesamyn had to herself were precious and few. And she used them well at her kung fu temple. This was the place she cleansed herself with sweat and hard work. She’d come to the martial arts while attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to learn how to defend herself and to develop skills that would help her compensate for her size when she joined the New York City police department, really the only thing she had ever wanted to do with her life. What she’d learned there had taught her valuable lessons about herself, what she was capable of, what she could endure. When she first arrived, young, a little out of shape, lacking confidence, she found a group of people, her Shifu and his black-belt students, who taught her, then gently pushed and cajoled her with respect and faith, into doing things she never would have thought herself able. Her Shifu had a way of believing she could do the things she didn’t believe she could do, and then demanding them out of her with a hard, knowing stare. All her life she’d been told she wasn’t athletic, she wasn’t physical, by a mother who wasn’t those things herself. Her controlling and critical father had considered her a failure for choosing to go into law enforcement, but his disdain for her and for women in general had communicated itself to her in a thousand different ways all her life. She had been in the endgame of a relationship characterized by terrible infidelity and emotional abuse. She came to the temple on Twenty-Seventh Street feeling bad about herself in ways she didn’t even realize. But forced to look at herself in the long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows for two hours, three days a week, she met a whole new woman, one who was defined by her accomplishments and through her actions, not through the negative messages of others who were acting out of their own misery. At the temple she found her strength and speed, she found her center, she found her power.
“Detective Breslow, you look tense,” her Shifu said from his office behind glass walls. He wasn’t even looking at her.
“It’s been a long day, Shifu,” she said with a bow. “Difficult.”
“Leave it at the door.”
“Yes, Shifu.” Passing him and going into the women’s locker room to change. Her Shifu was a badass, the indisputable king of the world he had created. All the black-belt students respected and revered him, the boys wanted to be him. Jesamyn was just profoundly grateful for the things he’d taught her about kung fu and about herself, for his endless patience and the way he’d helped her to hone her techniques. It was the way a father should be: patient, knowing, and understanding. Pushing without insulting, correcting without humiliating, demanding more and better while praising the effort and small successes. She’d never had that kind of instruction growing up, and the little girl inside her worshipped him just a tiny bit for it.
In the locker room she changed into black baggy pants, wrestling shoes, and the school tee-shirt. She was one of three women at the school, which could be annoying. Sometimes it felt like she was fighting her way through a jungle of adrenaline and testosterone, with everyone several inches taller and many pounds heavier than she was. But she figured if she could hold her own with these guys, highly trained fighters with the boundless energy of people in extraordinary shape, she could handle herself with most of the out-of-shape street fighters she ran into on the job… and the criminals, too.
On the floor, they did forty minutes of killer calisthenics, endless push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks. It could be longer or shorter depending on what kind of mood whoever was teaching the class was in that day. Then there was a half an hour of drilling and stances. Once you learned a technique, the philosophy was you had to throw it a thousand times before you would begin to get it right. Drilling forced your head and your muscles to remember the techniques, and eventually they became more instinct than thought. By the end of the first hour, most of what she was wearing was soaked through with sweat. Then it was time to spar.
They fought without guards, avoiding shots to the head, the groin, and the breasts. The principle was that a fighter had to learn how to take a hit. You had to condition your body to endure blows and understand what it feels like to be hit. Someone who had never been hit would be shocked if on the street a blow was delivered. It’s painful, it’s shocking, and it’s very upsetting. So for the rest of the class, they basically just beat the crap out of each other… but with discipline, technique, and control. So pumped with adrenaline, they never felt a thing while sparring. It was hard play, fun in a way she could never explain to someone who hadn’t experienced it. It was only after that all the aches and pains would set in, the bruises would bloom.
When she left, she was clean. All the stress and negativity of her day had drained from her. She felt light and relaxed, happy and confident. Even though she would be two hours later getting to Benjamin, she was a better person when she got to him; not wound up from the job, not tense and snappish.
“Hey, ass-kicker.” A sexy male voice she didn’t expect surprised her when she stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Mom. You’re a badass.”
She turned to see Dylan put a hand on Benjamin’s head. “Hey, little dude, I told you no swearing around your mom.”
“No swearing, period,” she said, kneeling down and taking Benjamin into her arms. His little body always felt so good.
“But you swear all the time,” he said into her hair. He wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed.
“Never mind that,” she said, standing and taking his hand. She smiled at Dylan, hating herself for how happy she was to see him. “What are you guys doing here? I thought you were going to the movies.”
“We saw Spy Kids. Benj was so impressed that I though
t he might like to see his mom in action. I can’t believe you never brought him here.”
“You were like, pow! And like, wham!” said Benjamin, imitating her techniques. He was pretty good.
“I figured I’d start him up next year. I thought he might get scared seeing me fight.”
“No way, Mom! You’re like Jackie Chan.”
Dylan shook his head but gave her a smile. You baby him too much. That’s what he was thinking but he didn’t say it. “How ’bout some pizza?” he asked.
“Sounds good. I’m starved. There’s a place around the corner on Broadway.”
They walked up the street together, Benjamin just a few feet ahead of them throwing kicks and punches with sound effects. Dylan took her hand and she didn’t pull away. Normally she didn’t like Benjamin to see them holding hands or being affectionate with each other. She’d quashed the hopes he harbored that they’d be together again, live under the same roof. She didn’t want him to be confused. But there was something about the three of them together, walking on the street. It just felt right. It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. Just that their relationship was easier; they could be together with Benjamin, be kind to each other and not fight, not get ugly with each other. It was progress. That’s all it was.
Ten
Jeffrey had taken off to go talk to Christian’s jeweler and Dax sat in a spare office among the trainees trying to find out what he could about the specialized security system installed at The New Day. Lydia did something she thought she wouldn’t do. She went into her office and closed the door, got on her computer, and entered a name into LexisNexis. Arthur James Tavernier.
Most of the listings were not related to her father. But one of the early entries was his obituary. Short and simple, it said only that he had died and when the services would be. Would she have gone if she knew? Maybe. Out of curiosity. Maybe not. It did lead her to wonder however who had held the services. She didn’t have to read far.
The next entry was a brief article on her father’s death that had run in a small local Nyack paper. He died of an apparent heart attack in his small two-bedroom home. He was found three days after the incident when neighbors complained of the smell. At the bottom of the article, which she almost skipped, there was a single sentence that felt like a blow to the solar plexus. “Arthur Tavernier is survived by his wife of fifteen years, Jaynie, and their daughter, Este, from whom he was estranged.”
She put her head in her hand and exhaled deeply. She’d always imagined him as alone in a single-room apartment, with no one in his life. But he’d had another family. And unless Este was his stepdaughter by marriage, Lydia had a sister she never knew about. She wasn’t sure what to do with that information. She searched for some kind of feeling about it, about the way her father died, about the fact that she might have a half-sister somewhere, and came up with a kind of emptiness, a numbness that she was afraid wasn’t normal. What kind of person felt nothing when faced with these types of things?
From the leather bag at her feet she fished out the business card that Patricia O’Connell had given her when she and Jeffrey picked up the box.
“Ms. O’Connell,” said Lydia when she finally got the woman on the line.
“Yes, Ms. Strong, what can I do for you?”
“I need to know, is there a way for me to get in touch with Mr. Tavernier’s wife or his daughter?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line and Lydia heard her moving papers around.
“Well,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s my place to give you their contact information. There was nothing in his final instructions to that effect.” She hesitated, then added, “As I understand it, they were also estranged from Mr. Tavernier.” She said it like a woman who had made judgments about things she didn’t understand.
“All right,” said Lydia. “Well, did they all share my father’s last name?”
Another pause. “Ms. Strong, there was nothing about them in your box?”
Now it was Lydia’s turn to go silent. She looked across the hall through the glass wall that separated her office from the hallway; she could see the entrance to Jeffrey’s office. The box was in there waiting for her to get up the courage to open it.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to go through it yet,” she said.
“Well, perhaps there’s something in there to help you find out what you want to know.”
Lydia sighed. She hated people who didn’t easily give things that were easy to give, people for whom rules and procedures were more important than other people.
“Can you do this for me?” she said, trying to keep patience in her tone. “If you have their contact information, can you please call one or both of them and tell them I’m interested in speaking with them? And then give them my name and number.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Ms. Strong,” she said vaguely. “I’ll get back to you.”
Lydia said her thanks but the lawyer had already hung up.
She felt a swell of emotion now, some combination of anger, resentment, and sadness. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want a box from her dead father waiting for her in Jeffrey’s office. She didn’t want to learn that she might have a sister somewhere. But like with all the mysteries of her life, there was this eternal flame inside of her, this burning to know. She could take that box to the Dumpster, call Patricia O’Connell back and tell her not to bother. And that would be the end of it. But she couldn’t. She just wasn’t hardwired to walk away from a question mark.
“Shit,” she said out loud to no one.
“What’s up?” Dax filled the doorway. She hated him at the moment. He had hurt her feelings. And since her feelings were so rarely exposed for the hurting, vulnerable to so few people, they were still smarting.
“Nothing,” she said flatly. “What do you want?”
He walked in and sat down, unperturbed by her mood.
“Well,” he said. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
She looked at him with an expression that she hoped would encourage him to just spit it out.
“It looks to me like the security system installed at The New Day is a custom job. We’re talking motion detectors on the exterior, roving security cameras, infrared beams in entrance hallways, security shutters over doors and windows. Retina and palm scan entries on certain areas, heat sensors on doorknobs, serious stuff. A system like the one they have would cost a hundred grand, at least. It would be nearly impossible to get in-or out-once the system is activated.”
“And the building behind was connected by an interior walkway?”
“There are two connections. One on the first floor and one in the basement of the building.”
Lydia cocked her head at him. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“That’s because I just found out.”
“How?”
“I know the guy who designed and installed the system.”
“I guess that would be the good news?” she asked.
He nodded and gave her a smile.
“Doesn’t seem very secure,” she said. “You pay someone a hundred grand to secure a building and then he runs around telling people how to subvert the system.”
“That’s the problem with mercenaries,” he said with a shrug. “Loyalties shift.”
“So he told you how to get in?”
“Not exactly. He gave me the specs of the system. But he’s so good at building these things that even he couldn’t get in. I’ll have to figure it out.”
“When the alarm goes off, who gets alerted?”
“It’s not connected to the police department or to any outside security agency.”
“So presumably there’s a security staff on the premises.”
“My guy didn’t know anything about that, said that the client was highly secretive and that when his people were installing the system, there was no one around. But presumably, yes, I imagine there’s a security staff. We’ll have to assume.”
“It’s a good question. Another question would be how they found out about the guy that designed this system. I mean, it’s not like he’s in the phone book or anything. You need to know people to get in touch with him.”
“What kind of people?”
“People you don’t want to know. Like, bad guys… gangsters, mobsters, guerillas, the CIA. Really bad.”
Lydia looked at him. “And where do you know this guy from?”
“We served together. He’s former British Special Forces. Now he’s freelance.”
“Like you.”
He nodded. “Yes, like me.”
He’d gotten a serious tone to his voice and the stony expression to his face that he always got when she asked too many questions. He’d give her a little bit of information, stuff she already knew like the bit about his having served with the British Special Forces, then he’d shut down.
“So does that mean your loyalties are prone to shifting?”
He gave her a look. “That hurts.”
“Hmm. How long will it take you to figure out a way in to The New Day?”
“A couple hours,” he said. “We’ll go tonight if you want.”
“I want. I haven’t been able to find anything about them on the Internet other than their own website. Detective Stenopolis said he’d check to see if there was anything in the system about them but I haven’t heard back from him.”
“So we go find out for ourselves,” said Dax, standing. “I just need to find a way in.”
Jeffrey walked down Broadway to Forty-Seventh Street, New York City’s diamond district. The street was mobbed with people, as it generally was. They walked slowly, stopped suddenly to stare at the glittering gems on display. He made his way through as quickly as he could, dodging and weaving between window-shoppers. He came to the address Christian had given him and walked inside and stood at the door. He could see in the shop a young man, a Hasidic Jew dressed in traditional garb, sitting behind a cash register. Jeffrey noticed wires coming from behind the long curls that hung at each of his temples. There was an Apple iPod sitting on the glass counter in front of him. It took the kid a minute to notice him standing there. He quickly took the headphones from his ears. He reached beneath the counter and the door in front of Jeffrey buzzed open.