18
The diner smelled the same as I remembered it. Diners
never changed, but I had a history with this one.
Fried onions, eggs, hash browns, stale coffee. Today
was only the second time I’d ever set foot in here, and
once again my only companion would be Paulina Cole.
I wasn’t a big fan of diner food in general, with the exception of Sunday mornings when a late breakfast consisting of a mushroom-and-Swiss omelet with a cup of
hot coffee was better than a Swedish massage.
Meeting Paulina was pretty much the opposite of all
of that.
Paulina Cole was waiting for me in a back booth, a
half-empty cup of coffee in front of her. There was no
food, no condiments, just the coffee. She was wearing a
flannel shirt over a tank top, her hair done back in a bun.
Her eyes, a fierce green that normally seemed to ache for
you to put up a fight, were subdued. She wore a minimum
of makeup, no perfume that I could smell. This was
unlike Paulina, whose switch seemed to be permanently
set to “on.”
“Thank you for coming,” she said as I sat down. I
nodded, unsure of how to feel.
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“The last time I was this close to you,” I said, “I was
ready to hurl you in front of a speeding bus.”
“Understandable,” she replied.
“You tried to ruin his life,” I said. “Jack O’Donnell
has done more for this city and for this industry than you
ever will. And you try to throw it all away for what? To
sell a few extra copies? To put a big old smile on Ted
Allen’s face?”
“Henry,” Paulina said.
“Don’t try and justify it to me,” I said. “You’re a coward.”
“If I was a coward,” Paulina said, her voice taking on
a metallic edge, cold and lifeless, “I would have hidden
a drinking problem for years. I would have mortgaged the
futures of my coworkers and my employer by reporting
with enough liquor in me to inebriate all of Green Bay. I
wasn’t the coward, Henry. Jack was. If I’m the coward
for telling the truth about Jack, you have a pretty warped
view of what it means to be a reporter.”
“Jack wasn’t news,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Millions
of people are losing their livelihoods. So what gets plastered
on your front page? An old man and his drinking problem.”
Paulina laughed, and I felt anger rising within me.
“Jack is news, Henry, and it’s time you realized that.
Maybe right now he’s a broken-down old man, but he still
has a name. A reputation. And a man with that kind of reputation is beholden to the public. You just don’t get it,
Henry. And you’d better soon, because even if Jack is back
he won’t be around for much longer. And Harvey Hillerman’s paper is going to need someone else to step up and
be the next golden calf. And if it isn’t you, like Wallace
hopes it will be, then they might as well declare bankruptcy and use their papers for a grade school art class.”
“You called me, and you’re lucky I’m here at all. So
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if you want to throw mud, I’ll get up and leave. I’ll need
a shower after this anyway.”
“If you had any intention of leaving without hearing
what I had to say,” Paulina said, “you wouldn’t have
come in the first place.”
I sat there, staring at her, willing my body to stand up and
walk right out of the diner. But after what happened to Brett
Kaiser, after the murder of my brother, I needed something
I could control, something I could follow through to the end.
“Talk,” I said. “Why did you call me?”
Paulina sat back and took a long drink of her coffee.
I wondered if she’d had more than one in the time it took
for me to get there. Then she looked at me and said,
matter-of-factly, “A few days ago, I was kidnapped.”
My jaw dropped. “Wait…what? What do you mean,
kidnapped?”
“Well, not kidnapped in the usual sense. It’s not like there
was a ransom note and the whole thing lasted about an hour
in total. Somebody posing as my driver took me to Queens
and…” I heard a slight choking noise come from Paulina’s
throat. I wondered if she was faking this, doing something
to get me to sympathize with her, but deep down I knew it
was real. Paulina Cole was never one to let anyone see her
bleed, and the only thing worse than that would be to
pretend. She wouldn’t allow herself to be seen that way.
And I knew whatever had happened to her a few days ago
must have scarred her deeply. “He threatened someone I
care about very much. And I believed him. I still do.”
“He just threatened you and left?” I said. “Did he hurt
you?”
Paulina hesitated for the briefest moment before
saying, “No.”
I didn’t want to press. But I knew she was lying.
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“Not me,” she said. “He threatened to hurt someone
close to me.”
“You have someone close to you?” I smiled at the dig,
but she did not. And for whatever reason, I felt somewhat
guilty for it. “I’m sorry. Go on.”
“My daughter,” she continued. “He threatened to hurt
my daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling an odd combination of guilt
for making light of the situation, and surprise that Paulina
had a daughter. In our brief time working next to each
other, she never had any pictures. Never talked about her.
“That’s okay. I didn’t ask you here to sympathize with
me.”
“Good thing for both of us.”
“I asked you here because I want to find the guy who
did it.”
I sat there, watching her. “And?” I said.
“And I need your help.”
I laughed. “You need my help? What can I do that
you can’t?”
“You have friends,” Paulina said. “Friends that I
don’t have.”
“You’re talking about cops,” I said. She nodded. “It
doesn’t matter if they like you or not, this is a criminal
matter and they’ll investigate…”
“I can’t go to them,” Paulina said. “I can’t go to the cops.”
“Why not?”
“He told me if I did, he would know.”
“You think he has an informant in the department?”
“I have to assume he does.”
“How do you know he was telling the truth?” I said.
“Because if I assume the other side, and I’m wrong,
my daughter is dead.”
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“Dead… You say he threatened to hurt her, not…”
“I was being kind. Maybe to myself, because I didn’t
want to think about it. But yes, he threatened to kill her.”
I sat there in silence. Paulina was staring at me, a
curious look on her face.
“What?” I said.
“I bet there’s a part of you that’s a little happy about
this. You
feel like I had it coming.”
“I’m not like you,” I said. “I don’t take joy in the
miseries of others.”
Paulina smiled, a mischievous grin. That was the
Paulina Cole I remembered. The one who pushed your
buttons until they bled.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” I said. “You and
I, we’ll never be friends, but I wouldn’t wish that kind of
thing on anyone. Not even you, whether you want to
believe me or not.”
“You know,” she said with an odd smile, “I actually
do believe you.”
“Well, that’s peachy. But I still don’t know why I’m
the right person for this.”
“My daughter is closer to your age than mine. You
have access to the cops, and you know the world she
lives in better than me. You could figure out how someone
got a photograph of her.”
“What do you mean?”
“My daughter, Abigail. The man showed me a photograph that my daughter said came from a set she posted
online. Only this particular photo was never posted, the
only one from the set that wasn’t available online. This
one was private, yet somebody got it.”
“What’s the photo of?”
Paulina shifted in her seat. She looked uncomfortable.
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“It’s a recent photo. Taken within the last year. Abigail
wearing a pink bikini, and she’s standing in front of a big
hole on the beach. And she’s smiling.”
I took out a notepad and wrote it all down. I tried not
to look at Paulina. This couldn’t be easy for her.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Nobody sees this but me.”
Paulina nodded, but it was clear this was as enjoyable
for her as an endoscopy.
“Do you know how to use MySpace? Facebook?
Whatever the hell else people do to exploit themselves
these days?”
“I have accounts,” I said, “but I really don’t use them.
I had a cyberstalker once and…long story, but let’s just
say my girlfriend won’t let me go to Staten Island anymore. Go on.”
“Well, if you know how to log on you’ve got a leg
up on me. Between that and your access to the cops,
you can get information. There’s bound to be a news
story in this. And even though I’m still pissed about the
last time you boned me over on a scoop, if you come
up with a trail that leads to something printable…it’s
yours. And I think you’re the only person I could trust
to keep it a secret.”
“I’m not sure if I should be flattered.”
“You need to find out who the man is who got the
photo,” she said.
“And who he could have gotten it from.”
“That’s right.”
“And what makes you think there’s a story in this?” I
asked. “Beyond what this guy did to you. How do you
know he wasn’t some random nutjob?”
“Because he asked me to do a favor for him, too,” she
said. “And this favor wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that
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a nutjob asks of you. It was something planned. It’s part
of a much bigger plan.”
“A plan?” I said. “What did he ask you to do?”
“It’s not important,” she said. “Well, it is, but important
enough that I’m only going to trust you with so much.”
“Are you going to do it?” I asked.
Paulina met my eyes. “You’ll know in a few days.”
“I assume that means you’re no longer taking any
personal time and that your column will be back shortly.”
“Safe assumption, Sherlock.”
“You’re a real charmer, Paulina. You know that, right?”
“Listen, Parker. There’s a story here. Trust me on this.
That’s all I can say. And that’s the trade-off. You find this
man, you get to follow the trail to wherever it leads. We
both come out ahead. And I promise you, this trail will
lead somewhere.”
I nodded, thought about it. If this man who kidnapped
Paulina did have a photo of her daughter and did go so far
as to pose as her driver, it meant the crime was planned out
well in advance, weeks if not months. Nobody went through
that kind of trouble unless the ends justified the means.
“Tell me about this man,” I said. “What did he look
like? Please be specific.”
“Tall, about six-one or two,” she said. “Weighed, I’d
guess, between one-ninety and two-ten. In good shape,
too. Good-looking guy.”
“Black? White?”
“White,” she said. “He had blond hair. Kind of wavy.”
“Any tattoos or identifiable features?”
“Not that I could see. He was wearing a suit. I think
his eyes were green, but I’m not sure.”
“Did he walk with a limp? Anything else that could
identify him in that way?”
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“I don’t think so,” she said. “He made some sort of reference to fighting in a war. I don’t know if he was telling
the truth or not. He’s not an old guy, so he would have
had to fight in the last twenty, twenty-five years. And he
talked like he’d lost someone. Someone close to him.
Maybe a family member. Again I don’t know if that was
a lie or not.”
“Is there anything else?”
Paulina thought for a moment. “Chester,” she said.
“He said his name was Chester.”
An alarm went off in my head. Chester. Blond hair. It
couldn’t be…could it?
“What are you thinking?” Paulina said. “You look like
something just made sense.”
“No, nothing,” I lied. “Just thinking how I’m going to
approach this.”
She nodded. “You have my cell phone. Don’t call
me at work.”
“No problem.” We both stood up. Paulina extended her
hand. I looked at it for a moment before shaking it.
“Henry?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Drugs,” she said. “This guy…he has something to do
with drugs. A lot of them.”
“What do you mean?”
Paulina looked down at her cup, then back up. There was
a look in her eyes I hadn’t seen, and I could tell that something was eating at her beyond what she was telling me.
“Just trust me,” she said. “Drugs.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Henry?”
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“What?”
“Thank you.”
I shook my head, laughed. “I bet that was hard as hell
for you to say.”
“You’ll never know. And don’t expect for it to ever
happen again.”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to thank me for
anything. We haven’t found him yet. And to be honest, I
don’t know if I could turn down this request from anyone.”
Paulina smiled, but I noticed a slight smirk in there,
like she found that statement funny. “That’s why I love
you,
Henry Parker. Everyone’s knight in shining armor.”
“Goodbye, Paulina. I’ll call you when I have something.”
I turned around and walked out of the diner, hoping
she wouldn’t notice that my palms were practically bleeding sweat. She couldn’t know. Not yet.
Because I was pretty certain that the same man who
threatened to kill Paulina Cole’s daughter was the same
man who just blew Brett Kaiser halfway to hell.
19
It sure didn’t look like a financial company. In fact, if
Chester had told Morgan that they made rivets and
girders, or maybe the occasional swamp creature there,
he would have been more likely to bite.
They were somewhere in Queens, a borough just off
the island of Manhattan but a world that couldn’t have
looked or felt any more different. It wasn’t that Morgan
hadn’t traveled to the outer boroughs, but as soon as he
landed his first job the rest of New York City became a
foreign territory. He used to have friends in Queens,
Brooklyn, Staten Island. But when you work fourteen
hours a day, you hardly have the energy to get out there.
So he kissed that life goodbye, and hadn’t thought much
about it since.
For a brief moment, as they were driving up to the front
gate of what looked like an abandoned factory, Morgan had
second thoughts. They only lasted a moment, but they were
pure, pungent. A shot of hesitation mixed with an ounce of
fright, stirred with a straw of what the hell am I doing here?
Did he really know this guy, Chester? Sure he came
with a recommendation from Ken Tsang, but Ken was
dead so obviously his hunches didn’t always pan out.
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But then Morgan remembered his debts. His mortgage.
That bank account that had swollen so large and was now
deflating like a punctured balloon. Even if this turned out
to be nothing, even if Chester was full of crap and offered
him nothing more than being a three-card monte dealer
in Times Square, it was worth the trip. Not like he had any
plans today, and even if there was a one percent chance
of paying off his mounting debts, it was worth the trip.
As the Town Car approached the gate, Morgan saw a
man approach from the other side of the chain link fence.
He was big, about three hundred pounds big, and Morgan
couldn’t be sure but what looked like a rifle or machine
gun of some sort dangled from his left shoulder.
Morgan’s eyes went wide, and he turned to Chester.
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