Just the same, she nodded and accepted the business card Kersh extended to her. “I’ll call. I swear I’ll call. I’ll have one of the boys hold ‘em down if I have to. You’ll see.”
“All right,” Kersh said. He leaned across Heidi’s lap and popped the door open for her. “Go on.”
“I’ll call,” she reiterated, and pulled herself from the car. She stumbled once by the curb, righted herself, and headed back toward the club down the middle of the empty street.
“You believe this shit?” Kersh whispered from the back seat.
“Yeah, I …” John paused, turned, opened the driver’s door.
“What?” Kersh called, also stepping from the car. Like Heidi, he staggered a moment as he got out of the car, the crumbling pavement uneven beneath his feet. “John?”
John caught up to Heidi just before she reached the front doors of the club. “Hold on.” She turned, still wary. Her purse was covering her chest like a shield. Behind her, the large bouncer peered at them above folded arms. “What’d you do with the bill?”
“Which one?”
“The last one—the one he gave you three days ago.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she offered him something very close to a congenial smile. It did nothing to brighten up her features. From nowhere, John wondered why a place like the Black Box had so many mirrors.
Heidi reached into her purse, shuffled around. Moving closer to the club, she used the lights over the door to peer inside the bag. She produced a wad of bills and peeled a hundred from it, held it out. “Here,” she said.
He took it by one corner, pinched between two fingers. He’d studied the bills enough to recognize it on the spot.
“Christ.” She uttered a laugh, but her eyes were dead. “Such a rip.” And she turned and sauntered back into the club.
The bouncer nodded in John’s direction. “Knew you two were cops,” he said offhandedly.
“Yeah? So how ‘bout givin’ us our thirty bucks back? Seeing how we’re working and all …”
The bouncer only stared down at him, his branded arms motionless across his broad chest. Then, surprisingly, he smiled. There was a huge gap between his two front teeth. Then, even more surprising, the bouncer hooked a thick wad of bills from his back pocket, counted off thirty bucks, and held it out to John.
“Come back some night you’re not working,” the bouncer said, “you and your partner. On me.”
Back at the car, Kersh was now behind the wheel. He had the engine running and his head bent forward and very close to the steering wheel. John climbed in the passenger seat, slammed the door, and tossed the thirty dollars into Kersh’s lap. The older agent cocked an eyebrow as he scooped up the cash.
“You believe that?” John said, grinning. “Shit!” He slammed a hand against the dash. “Some break, huh? You want me to drive?”
“You wanna do this now? Tonight?” Kersh said.
“What, are you kidding? Let’s roll.”
Kersh slipped the car into drive and gunned it down the alley. There were streetlights here, and bars of horizontal lights rolled over the car’s hood, over the windshield, over the roof.
“Rolling,” Kersh said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MOST OF THE MEN WHO WORK THE pound at Pier 76 are near-retired NYPD. They wear standard police uniforms, carry handguns, and usually betray an unpalatable disposition toward anyone not associated with law enforcement.
The night was growing late as Kersh wound his sedan along the causeway and onto Pier 76. As they drove, John watched the lights of Weehawken glitter across the Hudson River. He could make out the red and green lights of the tollbooths for the Lincoln Tunnel from this distance as well. So many people living their own lives, oblivious to the things that crept along the world beneath them. He watched the tollbooth lights for some time. The night was windy and clear. With the passenger window cracked slightly, the smells of the river penetrated the car—grim, salty smells. And beneath those smells, somehow hidden and less obtrusive, was the diesel-and-oil reek of the cruise ships that docked several piers to the north.
Cops maintain a different view of the docks along Manhattan’s West Side than most ordinary people do. For cops, it is not so much about boats and fisheries and cruise ships weaving in and out of ports, the burning stink of fuel perpetually infused in the air. For them, it is a depot of clues for cases that just moments earlier seemed hopeless. The number of criminal investigations solved, thanks to automobiles seized and searched within the city limits, is staggering. Yet just as often as cases are solved along the docks, they begin there as well. The number of bodies pulled from the Hudson River in a year is tantamount to the number of home runs hit by the Yankees in a single season.
Kersh pulled in along a chain-link fence tipped with barbed wire, and double-flashed his high beams at an attendant who was standing by the pound’s entrance gate. The attendant swaggered over to the car, crouched down, peered inside. Kersh flipped his badge, and the attendant nodded and waved them through the gate. On the other side of the gate, two gray-haired attendants stood watching the car roll by, one with his arms folded across his chest and the other with hands on hips.
This is where cops go when they get old, John thought, watching the men through his window. Towed away from the reality of the city streets to this impound lot for cops.
And for one insane moment, he thought of his father.
The lot was engorged with automobiles of all sizes, shapes, makes, models, colors. Some looked new and shiny in the moonlight; others appeared as brittle as bone and just as lackluster, coated in filth and grime and sea salt. Up ahead and to their right, the pound office stood against the backdrop of night, the lights warm and yellow in the main lobby. Kersh shut down the car, and they both stepped out.
It was cold on the water. Toward the west, John could hear the soothing lap of the river against the dock pilings; to the east, the muffled din of the city was still audible. He zippered up his leather jacket and followed Kersh to the pound office, the older agent humming Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in an easy contralto.
In contrast to the night air, the inside of the office was stiflingly warm. A tall, gaunt gentleman in a chambray shirt stood behind a large desk. The nameplate atop the desk read Kroger. Kroger—if this, in fact, was Kroger—glanced up as they entered the office, his face expressionless and his eyes haunted. He had one hand digging around inside an open can of black olives on his desk.
“Help you?”
Again, Kersh produced his badge. “Special Agent Kersh, Secret Service. This is Agent Mavio. We need some information on a car that was towed on 41st Street near Times Square three days ago. Outside a club called the Black Box.”
“Three days?” Kroger said, turning to a computer terminal on his desk. His fingers dripped olive juice on the keypad.
“That’s right.”
“Any other information?” Kroger asked. “Make, model? VIN numbers? License plate, maybe?”
“No numbers. An older, big car,” John said. He unzipped his coat, the office uncomfortably warm. “Dark red exterior.”
“Yeah, yeah, here it is,” Kroger said. “Here’s the car.” He licked his lips with a small, pink tongue. “Yeah—three days ago. Sure.” He tapped faster on the keyboard. “A 1979 Lincoln Towncar, metallic carmine, alabaster interior, plate numbers EGA-419, New York plates. Registered to a—a—to Evelyn Gethers.” Kroger whistled. “Lives on the Upper East Side. I’ll print the address.”
“Evelyn Gethers,” Kersh said under his breath. John looked at him, curious to read the older agent’s expression. But Kersh had none.
“Name sound familiar?” John asked him.
Kersh frowned, cocked a pair of bushy eyebrows, shrugged his bulky shoulders. His white dress shirt plumed from his pants. Just above his belt and through the fabric of his shirt, John could make out the ribbed band of Kersh’s boxer shorts. That sight, coupled with the contemplative countenance on Kersh’s face, made John
grin to himself.
“Here we go,” Kroger said. A printer on the counter behind his desk began spitting out paper. Kroger examined the information, then tore the paper from the printer and handed it over to Kersh. Kroger, leaning halfway across his desk, watched Kersh’s face with interest.
Kersh stared at the printout, chewing at his lower lip. “Well,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “Loft on the two hundredth block of East Seventy-second Street.”
John frowned. “East Seventy-second? Wow. Nice crib.”
“According to her date of birth, she’s sixty-four.” Kersh looked at Kroger. “You sure this is the right car?”
“Oh, sure,” Kroger said emphatically.
“Bizarre,” John marveled.
“Hey, uh …” Kroger was clearing his throat, looking at them both now from beneath wiry, pepper-colored eyebrows. “This have anything to do with that head?”
“Head?” John said. Kersh did not even look up at Kroger; he was still occupied with the printout.
“That head they pulled from the river a couple days ago. Right here off the dock.”
John blinked. “That’s a good question,” he said, humoring the man. “We’ll run some tests back at the office. Thanks.”
Kroger interpreted John’s sarcasm as genuine appreciation. “Yeah, good thing. Find a head in the river, work slows down like you wouldn’t b’lieve. It’s one thing they wanna talk about it on their lunch breaks, but we got some work to do here—you know what I mean? Lunch breaks is one thing. Some stories. I mean, it’s just a head.”
Kersh looked up, folded the printout, and stuffed it into the rear pocket of his slacks. A film of perspiration had materialized on his upper lip. “Were you here when it was picked up?”
“Picked up? The head?”
“The car,” Kersh said.
“No.”
“Who was?”
“No,” said Kroger, shaking his head, “car’s still here. Out in the lot. You wanna go see it?”
Kersh just stared. “Yeah,” he said.
John said, “We’re gonna need a slim jim and a punch.”
“I’ll get some tools,” Kroger said, feeling like a conspirator, “and show her to you m’self.”
Evelyn Gethers’s Lincoln Towncar was a flashy piece of work, now nestled snugly between a banged-up Volkswagen and a Mercedes with flattened tires. The Lincoln’s front end was partially dented, and the windshield boasted a number of conchoidal fractures in the glass. The car’s paint job was indeed the color of blood, as Heidi Carlson had suggested. The windows were grimy and covered in filth, decorated with star-shaped splotches of bird crap. Peering through the windows, John could make out the whitish interior—cracked and worn leather. A plastic shamrock with a pair of googly eyes hung from the rearview mirror.
John noticed the lock was open on the driver’s side door. Behind him, Kersh and Kroger were busy searching through Kroger’s tools for a punch to open the trunk. John grabbed the door handle, popped open the door. He saw Kersh look up in the reflection of the dirty glass of the driver’s side window.
“Unlocked,” John said, sticking his head inside the car. The dome light in the ceiling was broken and did not come on. “Jesus, smells like a sewer in here.” He tried to imagine how anyone could be coerced into copulating in a car that smelled as bad as this one did.
“Anything?” Kersh called to him.
“Empty pack of Marlboros, some loose change in the ashtray
… something that looks like a turd stuck to the passenger seat. A Tootsie Roll, I think it is.” He leaned farther into the vehicle, holding his breath, and pushed the passenger seat forward. The back seat, too, was virtually empty. “Nothing,” he said. “Just a balled up sock and a wet box of tissues.”
“Come on—we’ll check the trunk,” Kersh said, unearthing the lock punch from Kroger’s collection, and walking around to the back of the vehicle. He inserted the punch into the keyhole of the Lincoln’s trunk, pushed down on it, and popped out the lock. “Love that sound.” Stepping back, Kersh dropped the punch on the ground.
John and Kroger gathered around either side of Kersh—three psychics desperate to see the future in the same crystal ball. Kroger was shaking, the cold getting to him. Kersh reached out two fingers and slipped them beneath the hood of the trunk. He hoisted it, springs creaking, till it opened with a bang, and the three men stared inside.
The first one to speak was Kroger. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “ain’t that a sight?”
The trunk’s inventory: a ski mask, a bullet-proof Kevlar vest, and a small handgun with a screw-on silencer. The gun was a .22-caliber semiautomatic, often referred to as a “hit” gun. Discreet, compact, and lacking a larger weapon’s knockdown power, the .22’s smaller caliber bullets are designed strictly to kill, capable of ricocheting off bone to achieve maximum damage.
After a few moments, John and Kersh turned to look at each other in partial disbelief.
“Looks like we’re going to need some evidence bags,” Kersh said eventually.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AMOLTEN SUN BURNING DOWN ON THE acropolis that is Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and a slew of automobiles caught in the upheaval of rush-hour traffic, John steered his Camaro through traffic. His window down, he moved his eyes repeatedly toward the fantastic display of buildings to his left. The radio was tuned to a modern rock station. Beside him, Kersh sat seemingly refreshed despite his lack of sleep. Not for the first time, John wondered what Kersh thought of him. Normally an excellent judge of character, John found Bill Kersh too difficult to crack—a fascinating new species of man. He knew Kersh tolerated most people, and there were a select few he truly detested, but he really could not think of anyone Bill Kersh genuinely liked. Which made him all the more interesting to John.
“You get much sleep last night?” Kersh asked.
“Some.” He couldn’t help but think Kersh was feeling him out. “We could’ve hit this place last night. Didn’t have to wait.”
“Doesn’t matter. This is going to lead us in some wild circles,” Kersh said, almost to himself. “This Evelyn Gethers business. You just wait. I have a feeling.” Kersh pushed himself back against his headrest. “Tell me something?”
“Shoot.”
“You really listen to this garbage?”
John laughed and turned the radio up louder. “You’re pretty damn close-minded for a guy supposed to be so smart.”
Kersh drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “Smart? Me? To whom have you been speaking, mah deah boy?”
Turning down 72nd Street, John kept his eyes peeled for Evelyn Gethers’s building. The polar opposite of the cramped, filthy network of streets surrounding the Black Box, this section of the city was resplendent and quite visibly teeming with wealth. The buildings were solid and magnificent, boastful in the way some buildings can be. It occurred to John that this must be the only city in the world where the excruciatingly wealthy lived with their asses pressed against the faces of the agonizingly destitute.
“There,” Kersh said, pointing to a gold and white awning. “Find a spot down the street.”
“Some neighborhood.” He could see chrome finish around the ground-level windows and a monkey-suited doorman beneath the awning. “How the hell you think our guy’s mixed up with some old woman here? Think maybe it’s her son, grandson, or something?”
Kersh bit at his lower lip. He wasn’t looking at John, wasn’t looking at Evelyn Gethers’s building anymore, either. His eyes were set straight ahead, as if some answer lay unfurled in the street before him. He said nothing.
Five minutes later, after a slow elevator ride to the top floor, John was knocking at Evelyn Gethers’s door. The hallway—white, meticulously clean, minimally yet sophisticatedly furnished—was a museum.
The door opened and an urgent, severe-looking man in shirtsleeves and a bow tie stood opposite them. His face was ruddy, his nose large and blunt, like the stop on a roller skate. The dome
of his head was enormous and absent of even a single hair, his scalp reflecting both John and Kersh. When he spoke, his tone suggested mild irritation and a disinterest in all things living and breathing.
“The police,” he said, seemingly addressing himself over anyone else. “The doorman phoned just a minute ago.”
John and Kersh introduced themselves and held up their badges.
“Come in,” said the butler. He opened the door and stood beside it, emotionless, as John and Kersh entered the apartment.
The place was like something out of a Fitzgerald novel. The main foyer was a massive expanse of herringbone parquet floors and lofty, high-beamed ceilings with crown molding. To the west, a bank of lancet windows looked out upon similar buildings and, beyond those, the colorful, burgeoning ribbon of Central Park. The decor suggested a certain sentimentality toward the forgotten Golden Age, and the walls bled with the colors of exquisite paintings framed in heavy bronze or lacquered mahogany.
“Mrs. Gethers will be down shortly,” the butler said. He was standing beside a marble statue of some Greek warrior, the butler’s stoic, unenthusiastic posture almost mimicking it. “Is there anything I can get for you two gentlemen in the meantime?”
“We’re fine,” Kersh said. He was moving slowly around the room, admiring the paintings. “These are—”
“Impressionists,” said the butler. “Cézanne, Manet, Monet …”
“Are they real?”
The butler did not humor Kersh with an answer.
“Mrs. Gethers lives alone?” John asked, watching the butler work. “I mean, aside from you. She have a husband? Any kids?”
“Her husband was C. Charles Gethers, and he is dead. Mrs. Gethers never—” There was a slight hiccup in the butler’s speech here as he searched his vocabulary for the most insipid response. He decided on: “Mrs. Gethers never had any children.”
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