by Con Lehane
“I’m walking with Adele. Do you want to talk to her?”
He did and they talked for a couple of blocks. Ambler didn’t get the gist of the conversation. Adele’s tone was soothing and reassuring and she listened for long stretches. When she asked Johnny after a while if he wanted to talk with Ambler again, he evidently said no. She said, “Goodnight. I love you, so does your grumpy granddad.”
As they walked up Ninth Avenue, Ambler suggested they have dinner.
“You’re trying to comfort me, I know.” She grasped his arm. “I appreciate it. But I’d like to be alone and remember Leila. I can’t explain it. It’s not anything about you. Do you understand? I’ll think about Leila. I might find a church and light a candle. I’ll be okay.”
He found himself alone walking down Ninth Avenue with no idea where he wanted to go. It was cold but not freezing; he was dressed warmly enough, and walking, even if not briskly, kept him warm. Leila’s death was on his mind. Johnny and Adele were on his mind. He wasn’t as good at thinking about himself as he was at thinking about things outside himself. It was easier to think about who would have reason to kill Leila and why the murderer stuffed her body into his bookshelf. Someone was bound to find it. It would have been him if someone hadn’t tipped the police that they’d find a body in the library. A sick joke? It made no sense. He tried calling Cosgrove again.
This time, the detective answered. “Where are you?”
Ambler looked around. “Ninth Avenue. I just crossed Eighteenth Street.”
“What are you doing?”
“Walking.”
“Wait on the corner of Fourteenth, northwest corner. I’ll pick you up.”
“So what’s going on?” he asked when he got into Cosgrove’s car a few minutes later.
“Everything’s going to hell. Troubles ahead. Troubles behind. There’s a joint on Eleventh Avenue where I can park without getting tagged. Let’s get a drink.”
“I haven’t eaten.”
“The hamburgers are pretty good.”
They sat at a vinyl booth across from a worn and battle-scarred bar whose old-fashioned stools had a chrome base and red vinyl seats. The hamburger was thick, juicy, and good. The tap beer was crisp and fresh.
Mike had missed Ambler’s calls because he’d gone home in the middle of the day due to a family situation, an altercation in an ongoing battle between his wife and daughter. “Denise slapped her mother, so Sarah called the cops. I’m a cop. The asshole. Why’s she got to call the cops? She was drunk so when they got there she acted stupid. They wanted to lock her up. One of the guys knew me—actually, a young guy, he knew my partner, so they called me.”
Cosgrove drank a shot of Irish whiskey before starting on his beer and burger. “I go out to Queens in the middle of my shift feeling like a fucking fool, both women bawling, cursing like truck drivers. I want to slug my wife.”
He shrugged, his expression sheepish, and took a drink of his beer. “You know I don’t mean that, right? I been through these things on the job a hundred times. The best thing is separate the combatants. Locking someone up is no good. But Sarah pissed off one guy, and he doesn’t want to leave it alone. Finally, I get Denise out of there, but Jesus!”
It was easy to sympathize with Mike. Ambler had his own train wrecks in life, with an alcoholic ex-wife and a son in jail for murder. He liked Mike’s daughter Denise, had taken her in when she ran away couple of years before. She was Johnny’s favorite babysitter, the few times he’d needed her. A pretty girl, full of life, she didn’t realize her mother was jealous of her youth and prettiness. It wasn’t his job to criticize her mother, so he didn’t.
“Good to get that off my chest.” Cosgrove looked down at the remains of his hamburger and a few leftover French fries and then up at Ambler. “You have one hell of a home life when a homicide investigation is a relief.”
Ambler told him Leila had showed up at Adele’s apartment in the middle of the night two days before she was killed to hide from her ex-husband. “She told someone at the scene. Strange no one’s checking into that.”
“Lots of things about this one are strange.” Cosgrove’s expression was a snarl. “We’re sorting out how we do the investigation.” His eyes widened. “Ever hear of that?”
“It’s a homicide.”
Cosgrove signaled for the check. “Not just homicide.”
“National security?”
Cosgrove’s eyes sprang open. “Why would you think that?” He waved his hand to ward Ambler off. “Don’t answer. Think what you want. The walls have ears.”
“It’s national security because someone discovered an Arab in the building?”
“More complicated. Not one of your detective novels.”
“I can figure that out, too.”
Cosgrove locked his gaze on Ambler. “How about you sit this one out, take a short vacation? You stick your nose in I’ll end up walking a beat in Staten Island.”
“Someone dumped Leila’s body in my office. I didn’t—”
“Look, Ray. I’m in a tough spot here. Usually, I don’t have the brass looking over my shoulder; I have some say-so in what happens. In this one, I don’t. Everything I do is being scrutinized. You’re a suspect. The brass find I’m talking to you pretty soon I’m a suspect, too.”
“You don’t want to tell me why everything is so hush-hush?”
“No.”
“You want me to tell you?”
Cosgrove let loose his penetrating cop stare.
“Leila Stone was an operative working undercover. If this gets out, becomes public, NYPD or another agency is embarrassed.”
“That’s speculation based on what?”
“Call it a working hypothesis. My guess is Leila was a confidential informant for NYPD.”
Cosgrove’s jaw muscles began to work, his eyes opened wider, moving as if something behind them was trying to escape. You forgot sometimes that Cosgrove was a powerful man. Ambler knew his friend’s rage wasn’t directed at him. But he didn’t want to get in its way either.
“You don’t want to fuck with these national security people, Ray. They’re an army onto themselves. Resources you can’t imagine. And you’re in their sights.”
“There’s got to be more than a body dumped in my reading room to—”
“Not dumped.” Cosgrove stood.
“Oh?” said Ambler. He stood, too. “I’ll get the check.”
“Next time.” Cosgrove took the check and some cash to the bartender.
Chapter 9
Ambler was climbing the broad marble stairs in the rotunda of the library the next morning when an out-of-breath Adele ran up behind him.
She grabbed his arm. “There are men! They snatched Gobi off the street.” She yanked at his arm. “You’ve got to come!”
He ran back down the stairs with Adele following him. She caught up near the bottom of the steps that led to the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue. “Right there,” she shouted. “A black SUV with a black car behind it and a black car in front of it. A bunch of men jumped out of the cars. Two men grabbed him, another one frisked him; they handcuffed him and pushed him into the back of the SUV.”
Crowds brushed by, pedestrians walking quickly that hour of the morning on their way to work, scraggly lines of tourists climbing the stairs. He and Adele stood looking down Fifth Avenue, as if they might catch a glimpse of the receding SUV.
“They grabbed him and were gone like that! She snapped her fingers. “It’s a good thing I saw what happened or we wouldn’t even know he’d been arrested.”
Ambler continued to watch the traffic flow down Fifth Avenue. “That’s what you’d think, the police. Who else would snatch a man off the street in broad daylight?”
She turned on him a look of dread. “What do you mean?” Her voice rose. “What are you saying?”
“No police cruiser? Did you see badges?”
Adele shook her head. “Who else would it be?”
“The Syrian police?”
As they walked back up the steps into the library, Adele again grabbed his arm. “I know why I thought the police. I recognized one of the men, a tall, thin man, chiseled face, brown hair. He stayed in the second car with the window rolled down, smoking a cigarette, watching everything. I saw him yesterday. He was in charge of the men questioning Gobi.”
When he got to his office, Ambler called Cosgrove, who listened, didn’t comment on what happened to Gobi, and said he’d see what he could find out. Still rattled, Ambler called McNulty to get his lawyer-friend’s number but got his answering service. It was easier to find a vampire in daylight than to find McNulty in the morning. He left a message and then sat at his desk staring into space.
A half hour later, he snapped out of his trance, pulled up his notes, and went back to work on the catalog that would accompany the Century-and-a-Half of Murder and Mystery in New York City exhibit. But he kept drifting off into his thoughts. He couldn’t stop thinking about why Leila’s body was found in the crime fiction reading room. He gave up trying to work and went down the hall to his boss Harry Larkin’s office. McNulty’s lawyer friend had represented Harry when he’d been a person-of-interest in a murder case a couple of years back, so he might remember the lawyer’s name or have his phone number. He found him in his office and told him one of the library’s readers, Gobi Tabrizi, had been snatched off the street and hauled away.
“The man the police questioned yesterday? They must have learned something damaging about him.”
“I’m going to get him a lawyer.”
“You assume he’s innocent?”
“Don’t we all, ‘until proven guilty?’” He asked about the lawyer.
“Levinson,” Harry said. “I don’t remember the first name.”
Ambler rolled his eyes. “Do you know how many lawyers named Levinson there are in New York?”
Harry shuffled around in his desk drawer looking for Levinson’s business card that he was sure he had somewhere.
“I want to ask you about Leila Stone.”
Harry shook his head. “I’ve been told not to talk about her.”
“By whom.”
“The police.”
“The police can’t tell you who you can talk to and what you can talk about.”
Harry looked up from digging in his desk drawer, knitted eyebrows, pursed lips, wrinkled brow. “I don’t want to run afoul of them.”
“You won’t. Was it Cosgrove?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know who it was, someone very authoritative.”
“Jesus, Harry, get a grip. Leila was part of some sort of surveillance network in the library, right?”
Harry’s jaw dropped. He bent to the desk drawer and didn’t look up until he found the lawyer’s business card. He handed it to Ambler.
“I think we should have a drink later,” Ambler said. “Library Tavern after work?”
* * *
Ambler called David Levinson from the phone in his office. The attorney himself answered.
“I thought I’d need to go through a whole rigmarole of secretaries and assistants to get to you,” Ambler said.
“Would that were true. The Mystery Writers were right: Crime doesn’t pay enough. What can I do for you?”
“Brian McNulty—”
“Shit. McNulty’s the main reason I can’t make any money. He preys on my conscience. Go ahead.”
Ambler told him about Gobi’s arrest.
“A legitimate concern,” said the lawyer. “I’m in a taxi on my way to a trial I’m late for in Brooklyn. When we hang up, call back and give me all the particulars on my voice mail. If I need more, I’ll call you. Is he legal?”
“I think he’s here on a student visa.”
“Call me tonight if you don’t hear from me.”
* * *
A few minutes later, Adele tapped on the door to the reading room and came in. Her face was drawn, circles under her eyes, her expression dull and dolorous, when almost always it was bright and full of life.
“Feeling any better?” he asked, though he knew she wasn’t.
Adele shook her head. “I’m trying to find out what the arrangements are for Leila’s funeral. No one knows.” She collapsed onto a chair. “I feel totally defeated. Why bother? What difference does it make? Leila thought there were important things she was going to do in her life. In the end, they turned out to not be important at all. She won’t do any of them because she’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Ambler said.
“And the stupid police arrest Gobi, whisk him away like the Gestapo. He didn’t kill Leila. Why would he? Why won’t they listen to me about her ex-husband? He told her he’d kill her.”
She stood and walked slowly around the small room absently looking at the books on the shelves. He followed a few steps behind. After a moment, she changed direction, turned and came back toward him still looking at the books on the shelves until she stopped in front of him and looked into his eyes; hers were misty. He opened his arms slightly and began to say something about sorrow and memories. The next thing he knew she was in his arms, pressed against him.
After what seemed a long time, she put her hands on his chest and gently pushed herself back from him. “What’s going to happen to us, Raymond?” Her tone was flat, so he didn’t know what the question meant. Did she mean life in general? Did she mean now that Leila was killed? Did she mean them romantically?
He didn’t want to give the wrong answer, so he said, “I don’t know,” which would pretty much suffice no matter which question it was. “Why don’t you come with me to pick up Johnny this afternoon? He’s been asking to see you.”
“While you’ve been avoiding me?”
“I haven’t—”
“Don’t.” She held up her hand. “Forget I said that.” She went back to browsing through the bookshelves. Something caught her eye. She went to the file boxes under the stairs and knelt.
Ambler followed her to the file boxes—the boxes containing Paul Higgins’s papers—knowing as soon as he looked that something was different. The sealed box, the box with the restricted papers, was the top box. When he piled the boxes there, it was at the bottom of the stack.
“Has it been opened?” Adele asked.
The tape had been replaced carefully, the tear in the tape imperceptible unless you bent closely to see if it had been tampered with. The box had been opened.
* * *
Adele hauled the box over to the library table in the middle of the room.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find out what’s in here. It’s already been opened.”
“That doesn’t mean you can open it, too.”
Adele paused. “Are you serious?”
“I told Paul Higgins no one would see what was in those files. I gave my word.”
“Someone already did. It’s been opened. The seal is broken.”
“You can’t open it.”
She turned on him. “You’ll stop me?” Her face registered incredulity and anger. Before this moment, he couldn’t have imagined her looking at him like this.
“I’m not going to physically stop you. I’m telling you it would be wrong.”
Adele’s eyes narrowed. She scrunched up her face, a look of disgust. “You’re such a fucking Boy Scout. You … You—” She stomped out of the room.
* * *
Ambler called Mike Cosgrove to tell him about the opened file box and to ask him to let Higgins know. He spent the afternoon in the exhibition hall setting up displays for the upcoming crime fiction exhibit. When he returned to his desk, he saw that the lawyer David Levinson had called. He called back.
“Is it unusual for an arrest not to be recorded? Yes.” Levinson said. “Is it legal? No. Does it happen? More often than you’d think. They arrest someone, move him from precinct to precinct; they don’t book him, hoping he’ll talk before an attorney can reach him.”
Ambler described the arrest as Adele
had described it to him, with more detail than in the message he’d left on the answering machine.
“This person in charge, brown hair, high forehead, thin face, smokes cigarettes?”
“Yes, and well dressed.”
“The man you saw, I’d bet, is Bradley Campbell. He used to be in charge of the NYPD Intelligence Division, a gentleman police officer.”
“What’s a gentleman police officer?”
“Someone who grew up amongst silver spoons and crystal chandeliers, part of the aristocracy, the one percent, who, for reasons known only to him, became a cop. He retired a few years ago, set up a private security agency, does work for Wall Street and the banks, foreign princes and potentates.”
“Gobi Tabrizi was snatched by a security agency?”
“Possible. Campbell works closely with the NYPD; sometimes you can’t tell them apart.”
“Isn’t snatching someone off the street kidnapping?”
“You want to call the police on them?” Levinson’s tone was cheery but his syntax clipped. “I’ll let Campbell know I’m looking for Mr. Tabrizi. See what that stirs up.”
* * *
Ambler arranged for Mike’s daughter Denise to pick up Johnny at school and bring him home. He then went to find Harry for their after-work tête-à-tête. When they arrived at the Library Tavern, McNulty stopped in the middle of taking an order from a waitress to walk to the opposite end of the bar to greet Harry. “I was afraid you’d leave if I didn’t greet you since I obviously grievously offended you the last time you were here however many months or years ago that was.”
“What was that?” Harry asked as McNulty walked back to the service bar.
“He expects loyalty from his regulars,” Ambler said. “You should stop in more regularly.”
Harry wouldn’t tell him if there was a surveillance program in the library. He did weaken on the who-told-him-to-keep-quiet part. It was Brad Campbell.
“What did he ask you about Gobi Tabrizi?”
“I’m not going to answer that. You may be out of your league on this one, Ray. It’s not a simple murder case—”
“Murder isn’t simple.”
“This is different.”
“Why? Because it involves a government informant?”