by Con Lehane
Campbell took a sip of his sparkling water. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your agency, I mean.”
“It’s a big agency.”
Ambler sipped his wine. “I spoke with Paul Higgins the other day.”
This sparked an involuntary response from Campbell, a shifting of his stance, a quick slip in his air of superiority. Ambler sensed cunning. “When did you talk to Paul?” He tried to sound casual but didn’t.
“Why do you want to know?”
“No reason. It’s not important. I haven’t seen Paul since his ex-wife’s death.”
“Do you think he killed her?”
Campbell regained his air of superiority, now a rebuke. Ambler had overstepped his bounds, embarrassed himself, and needed to be put in his place. “Paul’s a retired police officer, a hero many time over. What are you talking about?”
“I don’t necessarily think he did. I don’t think Gobi Tabrizi did either.”
Campbell’s reserve was now a shell of ice around him. “I actually don’t care what you think. This is a social gathering. I don’t have anything to discuss with you. You made yourself clear the last time we spoke.” He turned away.
“Right,” said Ambler. “By the way, do you remember Richard Wright, a union leader who was murdered in the early 1980s?”
Campbell, who had taken a step away from Ambler, turned. He didn’t speak but couldn’t hide his surprise.
“I’ll refresh your memory.”
A flicker of irritation crossed Campbell’s eyes.
He told Campbell what he knew—or guessed—about the police surveillance of Richard Wright. He didn’t mention Martin Wright or Paul Higgins’s book. “I discovered something called Operation Red Light. Was that yours?”
Campbell returned to leaning against the wall. “I headed the department’s Intelligence Division for many years. We conducted secret investigations of criminal activity. The operative word here is ‘secret.’ Do you understand? Secret. What we did was secret for a reason.”
“What I’m describing happened a long time ago, why should it be a secret now?”
Campbell was dismissive. “The thing about secrets that makes them secrets is you don’t tell them. A lot goes on in life you don’t know about. And you’re better off not knowing. No one likes a cop until they need one.”
Ambler didn’t like being lectured to. “Most people don’t appreciate librarians as much as they should, either.”
Campbell glared at him with pure hatred, but quickly got himself under control. His face was like granite. “What you ridicule is what allows you to be as flippant as you are.”
“That was a joke,” Ambler said.
“Humor may not be your strong suit.” Campbell pulled himself from the wall. “Neither might be investigative work. It’s over the line for you to besmirch Paul Higgins’s name. He’s one of the good ones.”
Before he’d taken two steps away from Ambler, he was approached by the couple Harry had been speaking with. As they fawned over him, Ambler looked for the wine tray and found Harry Larkin bearing down on him.
“Good to see you’ve made amends with Mrs. Young. You should meet a few of the other board members. They like to talk to the staff.” He gestured with his eyes toward the couple speaking with Campbell.
“I’ve done enough chitchat.” Ambler grabbed a glass of wine from a passing tray.
“You were talking to Mr. Campbell. Did you settle your differences with him also?”
“Maybe not.”
“Don’t misjudge him, Ray. For an important police official, he’s a compassionate man. He’s done much good he doesn’t take credit for.”
“What’s that?”
“His foundation works with crime victims. Not something you hear about. Nothing he takes credit for.”
Ambler finished his glass of wine. Some people had already left. He went for his coat. Before leaving, as he searched the room for Lisa Young, he met Brad Campbell’s gaze. Campbell bowed slightly, an acknowledgment, not quite a smile, but something like no hard feelings. Did Ambler look at him in a different way after talking to Harry? He caught Lisa Young’s attention, waved, and left.
Chapter 36
Monday evening when she got home from work, Adele knew something was wrong as soon as she opened the door of her apartment. Drawers in the hallway credenza were open. Papers and odds and ends from the drawers were scattered on top of the credenza and on the floor. She blocked the door to the hallway and ran down the stairs to get the super. He called the police and went with her to check the apartment. Drawers in the bureaus in the bedroom were open, clothes strewn across the floor and on the bed, makeup and such scattered on top of the bureau, clothes torn out of the closet on the floor or the bed.
At first, she thought robbery. Her TV was on its stand in the corner; the little jewelry she had was still in the small box on top of the bureau, so it wasn’t robbery. Someone had searched the apartment.
A squad car arrived. As soon as the uniformed officers learned no one was in the apartment, they called off their reinforcements, made a cursory check of the stairwell, the roof, and the basement, and left, telling her someone from the robbery team would get to her in a couple of days.
She called Raymond. “My apartment’s been broken into,” she said as soon as he answered. “It wasn’t a burglary. Someone broke in to search for something.”
“What?”
“How would I know? Johnny’s coming here soon. I don’t think he should.”
Ambler didn’t respond right away, and while she was impatient with him, she couldn’t rush him. Raymond was a lot of things; quick to answer wasn’t one of them. Finally, he said, “I’ll see if he can go to his grandmother’s. Do you want me to come over?”
“You may have to come get Johnny.”
After the call with Raymond, she went through the apartment again. It didn’t take long. She didn’t have much in the apartment. Her notebooks and folders of poems had been rifled through but nothing was missing. The main thing she felt was an uneasiness bordering on fear, and a sense of violation. She flashed back to the men who’d abducted her, saw them again in her apartment, ripping apart her things, going through her poems and journals, her bureau, her underwear for God’s sake.
She didn’t know it was them. She’d told Paul Higgins Leila had been in her apartment. He might have come looking for something he thought she left in the apartment. She had the wild thought Raymond broke into her apartment to see what was in the letter Gobi had written to her. The idea was ridiculous.
She went back through the folders in the credenza. She didn’t remember where she’d put Gobi’s letter. Then she remembered it was in the drawer of the small table near her bed. She rushed over and pulled open the drawer. It was there, inside an Eric Ambler book she’d been reading, A Coffin for Dimitrios; funny, she’d never thought to ask Raymond if they were related. It was an unusual name. But wouldn’t he have told her if he was? She sat down on the bed, the letter in her hands. Why in God’s name was she thinking about that now?
She reread the letter. It signified the end of something. She’d come to think this was how it should be. Things would never have worked out between them. Their backgrounds and beliefs were different. She was attracted to him. That didn’t mean she loved him. The buzzing phone interrupted her reverie. Hearing Raymond’s familiar voice was calming. He’d arranged for Denise to take Johnny to his grandmother’s.
“I can’t understand why someone broke into my apartment. I don’t know what they could have been looking for.”
“I have the glimmering of an idea,” Raymond said. “But I’ll hold onto it for now.”
Adele took a deep breath. “You’re not going to like this but please hear me out.” He didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t; and he probably knew what she was going to say; he was clairvoyant about her sometimes. She wanted to say it in a way that didn’t hurt him. She’d done enough of that. She told him she wanted him t
o help her find Gobi, with the help of the imam he talked to.
“It’s not what you think, though I guess I don’t know what you think. Gobi might know who’s behind what’s happened to me. He might be hiding from the men who abducted me and they might be who broke into my apartment.”
“If you’re wrong, it could be dangerous.”
“But you’ll be there if it is.”
“I will?” What a strange sound to his voice, surprise, and a kind of delight.
“I want you to come with me. Gobi knows he has nothing to fear from either of us.” Her voice softened. “… and he won’t get the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea?”
She didn’t answer. She was shaken by what happened and she thought about asking if she could stay at his place, deciding against it because being with him would be too complicated. He might get the wrong idea, too. Or maybe it would be the right idea. She didn’t know anymore.
It was a good thing she’d thought this through because he called back a little bit later and asked her that very thing. She told him she wanted to stay put and tough it out, while part of her wished he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She slept better than she thought she would. In the morning, Mike Cosgrove called and wanted to meet her at the library at lunchtime. Raymond had told him about the break-in.
Sometimes work is a relief. For that morning, she was filling in on the reference desk in the catalog room. It was busy, a waiting line the entire morning, so she didn’t have time to think about anything other than the research questions she was answering. Near noon, Mike Cosgrove joined the end of the line, so she took her break, and they went to her module to talk.
He wanted to know about the break-in, and she got the feeling he had some idea what it was about. “You forgot to tell me a couple of things about Gobi Tabrizi,” he said, after she described the break-in. “For one, that you removed some things from his apartment.” Cosgrove seemed weary, as usual, as if the questions he asked were tiresome to him, or more likely he was weary of people lying to him whenever he asked a question.
She decided to come clean and told him what she’d taken from Gobi’s apartment, including the gun, and how she met him at a restaurant and returned everything to him. The detective’s expression was blank as he listened, no surprise, taking in what she said seemingly without judgment.
“There was nothing left in your apartment from the things you took from his apartment?”
She shook her head.
“You know handguns are illegal in New York?”
She looked at him blankly. She may have known that. She should have known. At the time, she didn’t think about it since she was so freaked out about the gun anyway, legal or illegal.
He seemed not to mind her nonanswer. “When you were abducted, did those men ask about what you took from Tabrizi’s apartment?”
“No. Do you think that’s what happened? The break-in, they were looking for something of Gobi’s?”
“Is there anything else of his in your apartment?”
This time, there was a hint of judgment, of disapproval. She blushed. He didn’t say anything about Raymond. But it was there. She felt like a harlot and couldn’t even acknowledge the implication that was so obviously there, couldn’t do anything except feel mortified and blush. She told him about the letter.
“They didn’t take it? Did they see it?”
“I don’t know. It’s nothing important, nothing political, nothing about Lelia or anything.”
“Can I see it?”
She was horrified. “No. it’s personal. You don’t need to see it. I told you what was in it.”
His voice was flat. “No. You told me a couple of things that weren’t in it, not anything that was.”
She remembered Gobi wrote in the letter that he was going to escape the country and that was certainly something Mike Cosgrove would want to know. She didn’t care; she was entitled to her privacy. “I’m not going to let you read the letter. I’ll burn it first.”
Cosgrove closed his eyes and massaged his temples. When he opened his eyes, she saw sadness, and weariness again, and possibly sympathy, not accusation.
“He didn’t kill Leila. If I thought he did, I’d tell you everything.”
This time she struck a nerve. Irritation flashed in his eyes, and then quieted down but still smoldered. “Oh, so who did kill her? I’m having a hell of time figuring that out.”
She shook her head.
“I’m not going to get a warrant to search your apartment … yet. Your life’s been upended enough.” His expression softened and he looked at her with what might be amusement. “Not that you didn’t bring it on yourself. You don’t have to burn your letter. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“I talked to Paul Higgins,” Adele said.
This sparked some interest. “Did he ask you to hide anything of his?”
“No. But he might think I had something of Leila’s. I told him she came to my apartment. He might have thought she left something that implicated him in her murder.”
Cosgrove’s eyebrows went up. “Thanks for the tip. Do you know what that might be?”
“No.”
* * *
Ambler had asked Mike Cosgrove to stop by the crime fiction reading room when he finished interviewing Adele. He wanted to talk about Brad Campbell.
“He’s a legend.” Cosgrove said, “Born of old money, to a family that may actually have come over on the Mayflower. When he graduated from college, he got a commission in the army, saw combat in Vietnam, decorated. He joined the department when he got out.
“A guy who could have been sitting in a Wall Street office, he drove a squad car out of Fort Apache in the South Bronx, worked vice in Manhattan, youngest guy in history to pass the captain’s exam, became an assistant chief and head of the Intelligence Division—ran it until he retired a few years ago. People thought he’d be commissioner. Instead, he opened a private security company.”
“He acts like he still runs the Intelligence Division.”
“It’s a shadowy operation, always was. They do what they do. No one asks. After 9/11, the feds came in. Homeland Security. If you weren’t connected to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, you’re an ordinary cop, detective or not, you might as well be driving a bus for all you knew of what they did.” He looked Ambler in the eye. “I do my job. They do what they do. I’m good with that. Until they won’t let me do my job. I ain’t so good with that.”
For a moment, silence hung between them. “I got Denise’s family court hearing pushed up,” Mike said. “‘Expedited,’ I guess is the word. This coming Friday. If it works out, I should be a free man. I won’t owe Campbell. One deal I don’t mind reneging on.” He smiled. “It lets me try another line of thinking on the Leila Stone murder. Meanwhile, I’m getting my ducks corralled.”
“I don’t think you corral ducks. I think you line them up. Get your ducks lined up.”
“You corral them first.”
“I don’t think so, Mike.”
“Well, I do. I corral my ducks before I line them up.” He glared at Ambler. After a moment, by way of a peace offering, he said, “Martin Wright will talk to you again if you want. Did I tell you that? He thinks what he thinks. That doesn’t mean a cover-up, by the way.”
“I’m talking about more than a cover-up.”
When Mike left, Ambler forced himself back to work. Not long after, his phone rang. It was Adele. “The strangest thing,” she said.
“Among many strange things,” said Ambler.
“Mr. Campbell of Campbell Security wants to meet with me. What should I do? He said he understood I was a close friend of Leila’s, that I knew Gobi Tabrizi and Paul Higgins.… He said he was asking my help.”
“My guess is he has a reason for talking to you he didn’t mention.”
“I arranged to meet him at the Library Tavern, so McNulty can keep an eye on me. Will you have Johnny tonight?”
“Yep. Come over when you’re finished. We’re going to see his father this weekend. I need all the help I can get preparing him.”
Chapter 37
Adele had only seen Brad Campbell from a distance, and from a distance he seemed aloof and forbidding. Up close, he made an effort to connect with her but what must be a vacant place inside him made connecting impossible. He was gracious and said things in a way that was almost charming, yet she felt the distance. Raymond was like that when he worked on something, distant, but you could snap him out of it, and while he wasn’t so gracious and charming, he connected with you. You connected with him, too; at least she did.
“A beer would be fine,” she said. “McNulty will know.” They sat across from one another at a booth. Campbell ordered the beer for her and coffee for himself. She was surprised how slim he was, almost too thin. She was surprised, too, he didn’t order a drink. It was that time of day. His hands, which he placed on the table in front of him, were nicotine stained; she hadn’t seen that in years.
“I know Leila is as much a loss to you as she is to me.” He sipped his coffee, made a face, and looked her in the eye over the lip of the cup. “She worked for me for a long time, more like family than an employee.”
“What was she doing in the library?”
“She conducted surveillance. It was—”
“On Gobi Tabrizi. Anyone else? Why Gobi?”
His eyelids were like a window shade. “That’s not something I can talk about.”
“Why do you want to talk with me?”
“I understand you saw Leila shortly before she died. She came to your apartment.”
She wondered how he knew that, probably from Mike Cosgrove. “She was afraid. Her ex-husband discovered where she was and she was afraid of him. Paul Higgins.”
“That’s what she told you?” He sounded skeptical.
She looked at him incredulously.
“Did she ever talk to you about her work?” He was poking around, trying to get her to tell him something without letting on to her what that something was.
“We talked about our work at the library. She didn’t tell me about the devious part of her life. I didn’t know she was spying on us until after her death.”