by Con Lehane
The window shades went up. “You weren’t spied on.”
“How do I know that? Why should I believe you?”
He seemed taken aback, which pleased her. “I won’t tell you the nature of her surveillance work. I can’t. I can say she didn’t spy on you.”
“She was spying on Gobi Tabrizi.”
He accepted this without acknowledging it. “I understand you’re angry about being misled.”
“What if Gobi isn’t guilty?”
The man’s attempt at sincerity might have succeeded if she hadn’t already decided she didn’t trust him. “If he’s not guilty, he has nothing to worry about.”
“Do you have evidence that he’s guilty? You’re supposed to have evidence before you decide someone’s guilty, right? Why aren’t you investigating Paul Higgins?”
He looked down at his coffee, which from where she sat didn’t look like such great coffee, more like it was brewed that morning and sat around since lunch. It was a bar after all, not somewhere to have coffee in the late afternoon.
She could tell when people were exasperated with her—it happened when someone tried to push her around—and he was exasperated. “I’m not investigating anyone. That’s up to the police. I can’t tell you about evidence or the case against someone. I—”
“You run a private security company. Who says you can’t tell me something?” He was less sure of himself than when he started, which was fine with her. If he thought he’d sit her down and bombard her with questions with no explanation, he had another think coming. “You want me to tell you something about Leila. Stop beating around the bush and tell me what.”
“I don’t know what you know that would be helpful. Perhaps you don’t either. Did she at any point before she was killed give you anything to keep for her? Did she tell you where she might have put something for safekeeping?”
That one set off an alarm. “Put what for safekeeping?”
He shook his head. “She might have gathered something in her surveillance work that would tell us more about why she was killed.”
“Wouldn’t she give it to you?”
“She might not have had time.”
“She didn’t give me anything to hide.”
“What did you talk to Paul Higgins about?”
“When?”
“In the library.”
“How do you know that? Was someone spying on me?”
He couldn’t control his face muscles as his exasperation shot up a few levels. Scowling, he glanced around the bar, anywhere but at her. “No one was spying on you. Why was he there?”
“He donated his papers to the library. He wanted to look at some of them.”
“Did he find what he was looking for?”
She shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”
Campbell looked at his coffee twice as if he’d finally tasted it; then he looked at the service station by the bar and at McNulty as if he thought someone tried to poison him. When he turned back to Adele, he said, “Are you protecting someone?”
Adele met his gaze. “I’ve told you the truth. I’m not hiding anything from you. You’re probably not used to that.”
His bold stare right into her eyes told as clearly as if he had spoken that he didn’t believe her. “Why did you go to her father’s home in Texas?”
“I went to her funeral. If she was so important to you, why didn’t you?”
He sighed and called for the check.
Chapter 38
Adele called Ambler as soon as Campbell left and told him about his questioning. “I wonder why he asked me about Leila’s father in Texas?”
“Do you know how to get in touch with her father?”
“I have his phone number.”
He asked her to call and find out if Leila’s father’s house was searched after she visited him. She said she would and meet him at his apartment after work. He went back to Higgins’s files, hoping Higgins overlooked something about Richard Wright’s murder when he was expunging Operation Red Light from his files, a long shot but possible.
A little before six, having found nothing of interest, Ambler closed up shop and walked home. When Adele arrived, he made her tea while she told him about the phone call to Leila’s father. “Men in suits, driving a big black SUV, probably the same men who stopped me, told him they had a warrant and searched his house soon after I left.”
“Does he know what they found?”
“He’s not the most forthcoming man in the world, but he didn’t think they found what they were looking for.” Adele fiddled with her tea, waiting for something. How she knew he had something to say at this moment was beyond him. But she did and didn’t have to ask, only look at him in that certain way.
“I’m beginning to realize—and should have thought of this before—the person who was with Leila, her murderer, may not have gotten the files he or she wanted. Perhaps what they were looking for was already gone. The killer believed Leila either took them or knew where they were. When she wouldn’t say where the files were, she was murdered.”
Adele smiled slightly. “That would put Gobi in the clear. He didn’t have any interest in Paul Higgins’s files.”
“We don’t know that if we don’t know what was in the files.”
Adele wore a pale brown sweater that was soft to the touch like cashmere. It had a V-neck and her breasts poked against it on either side of the V. He remembered touching her breasts the other night and how her shiny black pants fit snugly against her thighs, and fetchingly against her rear. Thinking about how unconsciously desirable she was made him sad.
They didn’t speak for a moment, sipping tea in silence. After another few minutes, she stood. “If Leila took those documents from the file before she was killed, could she have hidden them somewhere in the library?”
Ambler put down his teacup. “She could have stuffed them in a file box of some obscure writer, and it might be fifty years before anyone looks in it, the next generation of librarians.”
“Could whatever she took be in her apartment?”
“Her apartment would be too obvious.”
After a few moments, he realized Adele was staring in front of her, sitting like that for some time before he’d noticed. “I have another idea.” She told him about Barbara Jean Allen, Leila’s—or Susan’s—childhood friend in Texas. “The way Barbara Jean acted when I asked about the last time she heard from Susan didn’t ring true. I felt like she wanted to tell me something, but wasn’t sure she should. At the time, I let it go, Now, I wonder.”
It was a possibility, one of many. The files hidden in the library where only Leila could find them was a more likely and a more disturbing possibility. “Calling her friend, this Barbara Jean in Texas, out of the blue wouldn’t work. Why would she tell you over the phone if she didn’t tell you when you talked to her?”
“She invited me to dinner. I should have gone.”
Before they’d finished their tea, Denise arrived with Johnny. She’d played basketball after school, and he let Johnny stay to watch. The two of them had come to be like a big sister and little brother, each an only child, with discord in their lives. These last few days they’d been whispering and conspiring, as Johnny was going to see his father in prison for the first time and Denise had a court date that might send her to reform school.
This evening, Denise, surprisingly to Ambler, asked Adele to walk down to the street with her to get a cab to go home. When Adele returned, and Johnny was watching TV, she told him Denise wanted her to intercede with him. Johnny was afraid Ambler would get in the way between him and his dad but didn’t know how to say this to his grandfather.
Adele got the idea across to Ambler, despite his not grasping what she was saying right away. She seemed to understand better than he did what would be happening in the prison visiting room, how emotionally fraught it was for everyone. “It will be awkward for both of them. You have to step out of the way and let them work through their awkwardness. Don’t he
lp.”
Ambler had made stew a few days earlier, which they ate for dinner. During dinner, out of nowhere, Johnny asked Ambler what his father was like when he was Johnny’s age, so Ambler told him about a quiet boy who loved baseball and music, who taught himself to play the guitar and the piano.
“Maybe I’m musical,” Johnny said. “My music teacher said I am.”
He hadn’t thought of that, getting the boy a guitar or piano lessons. “We can look into that,” he said. “Maybe get you a guitar.”
“My dad will know what the best kind to get is. I can ask him.” He said this with such certainty and joy that it almost broke Ambler’s heart. He looked to Adele for help and saw tears in her eyes.
“He had a dog then, too. A stray dog followed him home from a baseball game one afternoon. The dog ended up staying. John named him Duke and kept him for a long time. You might ask him about the dog.”
“Maybe I could get a dog.” Johnny’s excitement was palpable. Ambler looked again to Adele. She laughed.
When Johnny finally went off to bed, he and Adele talked quietly in the kitchen for some time. Murder forgotten for the moment, Ambler talked about John’s childhood and his regrets. Later, he walked Adele to the corner to get a cab. They hugged when the cab stopped and kissed ever so lightly.
Chapter 39
Denise’s family court hearing went much the way Mike Cosgrove hoped it would go, except for the embarrassment. He hadn’t expected that. He was mortified; every dumb thing he’d ever done as parent flashed through his mind. Everyone knew terrible parenting was the cause of teenagers’—like his daughter—problems.
Denise was an angel in the courtroom, respectful and polite in speaking to the judge. She accepted responsibility for what she did, not passing blame onto her mother or father. The judge, a middle-aged black woman, was stern but seemed to like Denise, certainly more than she liked him or Sarah.
The judge did ask about family life. Denise tried to answer without criticizing her parents. It was difficult, so she stumbled trying. Cosgrove stepped up to rescue her. He told the judge about difficulties between her parents, so things weren’t entirely Denise’s fault, though he was proud of her for taking responsibility for her mistakes. He spoke carefully, taking a lot of the blame that he thought rightly belonged to Sarah. Sarah wisely kept her mouth shut. Denise was given probation and a mighty admonition to stay out of trouble. If she came back before the judge, she was told, she faced incarceration.
When they walked out of the Queens courthouse, Cosgrove felt like he’d been released from prison. He breathed in the fresh air and smiled at the world like a free man. He took Sarah and Denise to lunch at an Italian restaurant with white tablecloths not far from the courthouse and made sure neither he nor Sarah had any alcohol. Denise was happy and chatty, talking about getting better grades in school and going to college to become a lawyer and perhaps someday a judge, like the one she appeared before. He dropped them at home and headed for the city. He had a couple of things to check on before he told Pat Halloran, his boss at homicide, about Campbell, Ostrowski, and the withheld evidence in Denise’s arrest.
* * *
“I wish you hadn’t told me, Mike.” Halloran looked aggrieved. “Why couldn’t you keep it to yourself?”
“I can’t have Campbell holding anything over my head.”
“You said Ostrowski.”
“Carrying water for Campbell.”
Halloran gripped both arms of his chair and pulled himself forward, his eyes bulging. “Tell me you’re not going to get both of us fired before I can collect my pension. Tell me you’re not going after Campbell.”
Cosgrove held his ground. “He’s been in the way since we found the woman’s body in the library. She was one of his. That’s okay. He should care, want to help. Not take it over, which is what he did. Not squash the investigation.”
Halloran pushed himself back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment before he spoke. “It’s not just him, Mike. Intelligence took it out of our hands. That came from upstairs. You wanna talk to the commissioner about this? I don’t.”
Cosgrove grimaced. “It’s a bigger mess than you think.”
The pain in Halloran’s eyes gave Cosgrove pause. It was as if he knew what was coming.
“He may be trying to frame the Arab guy. That’s different than clogging up the investigation. There’s a long shot possibility the murder might be over something in the files Paul Higgins donated to the library.”
Halloran slumped in his seat. “Okay, tell me what you think you’re after. Get it all out. Get it off your chest—every detail. Because I doubt this story, once you tell me, is ever going to leave this room.”
Cosgrove’s heart sank. Halloran was a stand-up guy—a pain in the ass when you wanted to stick with a case he wanted you to let go of—but he did the right thing. Now, he sounded like he knew what Cosgrove would tell him and would kill the investigation before it got going. You could say it was his call. This one wasn’t going to be.
The first thing he told Halloran about was something he’d confirmed a half hour before he came to his office. “Hector Perez, the inmate who killed Devon Thomas, was Ed Ostrowski’s CI when he was on the street. No telling how many scrapes Ed got him out of.”
“You talk to Ed?”
“To find out what? The truth. Would you?”
Halloran laughed.
“The word was the Devon Thomas killing was a hit. Now I find out the hitman belonged to Ostrowski. That’s what I got. Not something I’d take to court. Not something I’d want to ask Ostrowski about … not yet.”
“Do you have Ed for the library murder, too?”
“I don’t know.”
Halloran didn’t press.
“Paul Higgins is possible. The murdered woman was his ex-wife.”
“Any other suspects?”
Cosgrove met his boss’s gaze. Their eyes locked and held.
Chapter 40
Johnny’s visit at the prison went well, or as well as introducing inhumanity to a child can go. When Ambler looked at his grandson’s face as they went through the entry procedures, he couldn’t imagine how all of this—bored, perfunctory guards, agitated and angry visitors, mostly women and children, mostly black and Hispanic, almost all wearing the unmistakable weariness of poverty—would be seen through a child’s eyes, processed through a child’s mind.
Johnny stayed close to him. Too old to hold his hand, he made sure they were touching or almost touching through the processing, his expression full of wonder as he looked around him at sights Ambler was sure the boy would remember all his life.
Fortunately, John was still on good behavior, so they met in the honors visiting room, with tables and chairs not unlike a school cafeteria. Ambler was as nervous as Johnny; he couldn’t imagine how John felt; his expression, a mix of embarrassment, joy, caring, astonishment, was indescribable.
It took Johnny a while to look at his father. For the first few minutes, he stared at the table they sat at and answered his questions in monosyllables. Ambler stayed out of the way, going to the vending machines to get snacks and sodas, sitting a little distance from Johnny, watching the other goings on in the busy room, pretending he didn’t listen or couldn’t hear their conversation. He pretended not to but he did listen. It pleased him that John was patient with his son, accepting his mumbled responses. After a while, Johnny did look up.
“Do you like it in here?” he asked his dad.
John caught himself beginning to laugh and smiled instead. He shook his head. “Nobody likes it in here.”
Johnny was embarrassed but persistent. “I mean is it okay?”
John caught that also. Ambler was surprised at how easily he intuited what his son was trying to get across. “I get along. It’s not a good place. A lot of stupid rules. But you follow them, even when you don’t want to, you get by okay.” He regarded his son for a moment. “Like school in some ways, lots of rules, only here, more rules.
You gotta do this. You gotta do that.”
“So the guards are like teachers.” He watched his dad for confirmation.
“Something like that, like some teachers are okay; some teachers are mean and you can tell they don’t like you. Like I said. I’m okay. I mind my business and stay out other people’s business—”
“Me, too. That’s what I do at school, mind my own business.”
“Good.” John paused, looking out over Johnny’s head. “The other kids at school know I’m in here, your old man in jail?”
Johnny looked troubled. “I don’t think anyone knows.” For a second, he looked worried, the look a kid gets when he may have done something wrong without knowing he had. He searched his father’s face for help.
“Right,” John said. “None of their business.”
Pretty soon, they got around to baseball and after that music. At one point, Johnny called Ambler from his pretend disinterest to tell him the brands of guitars his dad suggested. Ambler was hoping they wouldn’t get around to dogs, but they did.
By the time he and Johnny were ready to leave, the awkwardness was gone. A bond that had grown between father and son glowed around them. John reached to hug his son. The boy lunged for his dad’s middle, wrapping his arms around him. Ambler was afraid he’d have to pry the boy off and drag him kicking and screaming out of the visiting room. But he let go. John said a couple of words to Johnny about staying out of trouble. Johnny asked when he could come back.
“Ask your grandfather,” John said.
“Soon,” Ambler said.
“The guitars I told him about,” John said. “They don’t cost a lot. You might pick one up at a pawn shop.”
Right before they left, John pulled Ambler aside. “Something’s going on with Perez. I’m not sure what.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been getting to know him a little.”
Ambler felt his heart quicken. “That’s dangerous, John. I’m not so sure—”