“Okay. Sorry,” said Ted. “Esther, you stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I nodded and said nothing, not wanting to attract Danny’s attention by speaking. I held my breath until he and Ted disappeared from view, then let it out in a rush and sank into a chair, wondering what had happened to set Danny off like that.
After my nerves stopped vibrating, I considered changing back into my own clothes, but decided I’d wait for Ted to return. He seemed satisfied with this costume, but I was pretty tired of changing clothes by now; so in case he wanted to take one more look at this dress before settling on it, I decided to leave it on until I was sure we were done here. And since I was a little chilly, I slipped on my coat while I waited.
I checked the time and was surprised to discover how late it was. No wonder I was feeling hungry. I decided I’d pick up some food and go to Max’s place after I left here. Now that I had deposited some of my modest movie salary into my bank account, it seemed like it should be my turn to buy dinner. And I wanted to confer with Manhattan’s resident mage.
I was starting to think we’d been wrong about Evil’s voracious appetite on this occasion. If there had been any mystical murders in Chinatown since Benny Yee’s death more than two weeks ago, we hadn’t heard about them; and between the three of us, we’d been doing our best to follow events closely in this neighborhood. But no one connected to Uncle Six or Benny Yee had died, and there seemed to be no local gossip about mysterious mojo, death curses, or fresh corpses found clutching broken gourmet cookies.
Maybe we had overlooked the fact that killing Benny Yee was just business to someone like Uncle Six. If he had found a clever way to do it, a mystical means that wouldn’t be detected as murder, it didn’t necessarily mean that such a cool-headed man was going to go off the deep end and start sending misfortune cookies to other enemies, too. If Benny had been a high-profile problem for him, then maybe Uncle Six had just wanted a one-time low-profile solution, a method he didn’t intend to use twice.
And since Lucky refused to leave town until we were sure no more cookies would hit the street, so to speak, I thought it was time to rethink our strategy. The Chens loved Lucky, but he was starting to drive them crazy after three weeks as their resident fugitive. They were getting pretty tired of Nelli, too, who was still keeping Lucky company more than a week after Max and I had left her there. Thanks to the disguise John had fashioned for the old mobster, Lucky and Nelli could go outside once or twice a day, but they still had to be careful. The rest of the time, the inactivity and uncertainty of his situation was making Lucky pretty stir-crazy, three weeks on.
There had only been one more Gambello arrest this past week, and that one had occurred out of town. Detectives Lopez and Quinn had driven to Saranac Lake, a town five or six hours upstate by car, to work with local authorities there to apprehend their suspect, so they’d been out of town for a few days. Before leaving, though, Lopez had made good on his promise to help Ted, and the slow process of getting the necessary location permits was now underway.
There was no question of doing a location shoot during the firecracker festival, though. Ted should have applied months ago if he wanted to do that. But it looked like most of the other locations would be approved, thanks to Lopez’s help—though not as fast as Ted had hoped. The wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly, even with grease.
Growing bored, I checked the time again, and was surprised by how long I had been waiting. Realizing Ted must have forgotten about me—and that I probably should have expected it, knowing him—I decided to leave. I grabbed my purse and headed for the stairs, trying to remember the directions that Ted had started giving to Danny before the dai lo had insisted that the director show him the way.
After several turns, twists, and switchbacks, though, I was lost and had no idea where I was. That was when I realized that I was also still in my costume. No longer chilly after I’d donned my coat, I’d been comfortable enough to forget I wasn’t wearing my street clothes.
I wondered if I should just resign myself to wearing Alicia’s party dress for the rest of the night and keep looking for an exit. I’d be chilly once I got outside, but at least I wouldn’t waste additional time wandering around here. Trying to find the clothing section and the dressing room again could turn this into a long evening.
“Oh, great, Esther,” I muttered. “Just great.”
“Hello? Is someone there?” called a male voice—one that sounded familiar.
“Hello?” I called back, trying to figure out where he was. “Who’s there?”
“Esther? Is that you?”
“Yes,” I called. “Lopez?”
“Yeah. I think I’m lost,” he said. “Well, no, I’m definitely lost.”
It sounded like he was somewhere in the area on my left, beyond the tall painted privacy screens and hanging textiles that surrounded me. “Stay where you are,” I called. “Keep talking. I think I can find you if you hold still.”
“This place is like a mystery wrapped up in a maze and concealed in a rabbit warren,” he said. “I’m not even sure what floor we’re on.”
“I think we’re on the third floor,” I called. “So you’re back in town now, huh?”
“Yeah, we got back from Saskatchewan last night.”
“I thought it was Saranac Lake.”
“That place feels like Saskatchewan. I’ve never been so cold in my whole li—Oh! There you are.” He smiled at me as I popped my head around a corner and found him. “Did you bring provisions? I’m not confident about finding our way out of here before the spring thaw.”
“I’m going to call Ted and tell him to come rescue us. He was supposed to come back upstairs and never did. Probably forgot about me.”
“Probably,” said Lopez, who obviously knew him by now.
But when I tried Ted, I got his voicemail. “Oh, for God’s sake. He’s not answering.”
“He’s good at that.” As the flaps of my coat swung open, Lopez said, “I don’t know why you’re risking pneumonia on a night like this, but that dress looks great on you.”
“I came here for a costume fitting.”
“Oh, of course.” His gaze roamed over me, and the store suddenly didn’t feel chilly anymore. “Are you sure you’re not playing a hooker?”
“No, just an exhibitionist.” I put my phone back in my purse. “So why are you wandering around here?”
“I was supposed to meet Ted. His mother told me he’d be up here with you. I had no idea what I was getting into when I said, ‘Okay, I’ll just go upstairs and find them.’”
“Fools rush in,” I said.
“And if Ted’s not up here with you, and he’s still not answering his phone . . . I’d bet real money that he’s forgotten I was coming here tonight.”
“I have a feeling you’re right,” I said. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Great. Well, I’m too busy to waste time trying to track him down. So I’m ready to get out of here.”
“So am I,” I said. “I don’t suppose you remember how you got to this spot?”
“Um . . .” He led me to the other end of this aisle, then stopped and frowned in puzzlement. “I could have sworn I came this way . . . But this is definitely not the stuff I walked past before. I’d remember seeing a few hundred old telephones, radios, and analog TVs. Does anyone buy this stuff?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know that there was stock like this on this floor.”
“Well, if we just keep following along the wall,” Lopez said, “sooner or later, we’re bound to come to an exit door or some stairs.”
“You say that with the confidence of someone who hasn’t spent much time in this place.”
As we passed bookcases filled with about five hundred copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, he said, “Weird. Well, if we get stuck here for a long time, at least we’ll have some light reading material to help pass the hours.”
“Hey, look—stairs!”
; We descended these, but when we got to the next floor, we couldn’t find a way down to the main floor. I called out a few times, hoping Lily (or someone—anyone!) would hear me, but there was no response. “I sure hope she hasn’t closed up shop for the night.”
“Probably not, the lights are still on. But if we wind up trapped here overnight, I sure hope there’s something to eat.”
“Me, too.”
“You’re hungry?”
“Starving. I haven’t had . . . Hang on.” I looked around and said, “I’ve been here before. I remember this couch.” It was the elaborate nineteenth-century piece from Hong Kong that I had noticed on my first visit.
“Jesus, at that price, it would be hard to forget,” Lopez said, looking at the tag. “It is made of gold or something?”
“I think if we keep going this way, we can get back down to the main floor.”
“So if you’re hungry,” he said, following me in that direction, “how about I buy you dinner when we get out of here?”
I stopped so abruptly that he bumped into me. I staggered a little, and he caught me by the shoulders. I jerked away from him, saying, “Don’t touch me!”
His removed his hands immediately and backed away. “Sorry, sorry.”
“You’ve lost touching privileges,” I snapped.
“Am I supposed to just let you fall down?”
“Oh, like that would be the worst thing you’ve done to me!”
“I told you why I arrested you,” he said. “Why I had to be the one who arrested—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about!”
He blinked. “Oh. You mean that.”
“Yes, that,” I said. “How could you think I’d go out for dinner with you tonight after you—”
“Had sex with you and then didn’t call,” he said wearily.
“Yes!”
There was a long, tense silence between us.
“Okay. Here it is,” he said. “And you won’t like it.”
“I really, really believe that.”
“I didn’t know it was a week. I wasn’t thinking about time. I was . . . preoccupied.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“No . . .” He ran a hand over his face, then sat down on a chair that probably cost more than he earned in a year.
“Don’t sit there,” I said in alarm. “You might—”
“A chair that costs that much should be able to support a person for a few minutes,” he said irritably. “And I’m kind of tired. No, really tired. I can’t even remember the last time I wasn’t exhausted.”
“Fatigue is not going to get you out of—”
“I know. I’m just saying.” He blew out his breath, a weary gesture that made the dark hair hanging over his forehead flutter a little. “It’s been . . . a bad few weeks. Right now, I can’t think of a single person in my life who isn’t mad at me.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve given some of us really good reasons to be mad at you.”
“True enough.”
He did sound exhausted. But I didn’t care.
“Do you have any idea how humiliated I’ve felt? And how . . . how . . .” Okay, if we were going to have an honest talk, I might as well say it. “How hurt?”
He looked at me, his expression softening. I realized his blue eyes were bloodshot again. “I was mostly getting angry from you. But now that you mention it . . . Yeah, I can guess. It must have hurt.” Holding my gaze, he said, “I’m sorry, Esther. I’m really sorry. I screwed up.”
Just like that.
They were the words I’d been waiting weeks to hear. Not eloquent and flowery, as I’d imagined his apology on a few occasions. But stark and sincere. And, as apologies go, sufficient.
It kind of took the fight out of me.
I sat down on a chair that definitely cost more than I made in a year.
After a long moment of absorbing his apology in silence, and realizing that hearing it had helped, I nonetheless knew that I still needed an explanation.
I said, “I don’t suppose . . .”
“What?” he asked.
“. . . that you were abducted by space aliens?”
He gave a puff of laughter. “No. Sorry. Is that what you were hoping?”
“It would have been an acceptable explanation. That, or being dismembered by marauding bandits. Or maybe having your tongue cut out by—”
“I get the picture,” he said. “Ouch.”
“I just kept trying to think of . . . why.”
“My reason’s not as good as any of your theories,” he said. “Or as colorful.”
“Well?” I prodded.
“It’s so complicated, I don’t even remember where it . . .” He gave himself a shake. “Yeah. Wait. I do. When I got to work that morning. Christmas Day. After I left your apartment. I was still floating on cloud nine. Didn’t even mind when Napoli gave me a hard time for being late. All I could think about was . . . well, you. Us. That night. I was sleep-deprived and flooded with good hormones and really relaxed, and I thought . . .”
“What?”
“That it would be smooth sailing for us from now on. You and me. Because, of course, one night of great sex completely fixes everything between two people.” He shook his head. “God, I’m an idiot.”
“You know, it helps a lot of if you use a telephone at some point after the sex,” I pointed out.
He decided to ignore that and press on. “Anyhow, then reality intruded. The way it does. I was supposed to be writing up my report about Fenster’s. That’s why I’d gone to your place that night. To find out what the hell you were doing in the middle of that mess, in the middle of the night, with Max, his neurotic dog, a Gambello capo, and a bunch of really confused elves and reindeer.” He paused, maybe hoping I’d jump in and explain—or maybe just bemused all over again by that image. “So that morning, I still didn’t know what to say in my report, and I didn’t really want to think about it. Not right after we’d . . . I just didn’t want to think about you and a police report in the same space that morning. You know?”
“I appreciate that.”
“So I set it aside. And since it was Christmas Day, there wasn’t much else to do besides paperwork. So I decided to start sifting through the mountain of stuff we’d been collecting on the Gambellos during the Fenster investigation. Someone had to do it, after all, and it was a good way to avoid worrying about out how to keep you out of a police report—again.”
And that was when he found it. While sleepily leafing through scattered pieces of evidence that had been collected in the past week or two because OCCB was looking in the wrong place for the Fenster hijackers, he found solid evidence that Bella Stella was laundering money—and he could connect various members of the Gambello crew to it, as well as Stella herself.
“I was jazzed at first. Barely awake,” he said, “but pretty excited. OCCB had known—or had assumed—for years that Stella’s place was a laundry for the Gambellos. But we’d never had any proof. And suddenly, there it was. Right in front of me. Before lunch on Christmas Day, when I’d only been poking around in that pile because I didn’t want to write a report that was going to mess with my love life.”
Speaking of which . . . Then he remembered that I worked for Stella—and that I considered her a friend. Above all, he recalled that I was broke, down on my luck, out of work after Christmas Eve, feeling low, and counting on working at Bella Stella after the holidays.
“And that’s when I really lost the plot.” Lopez’s voice was heavy with self-recrimination. “I knew what I should do—what I was supposed to do . . . But I stalled. And then . . .” I could see that this was hard for him to say to me. Hard for him to remember or admit—even to himself. “I buried the evidence.”
“You did what?” I blurted.
“I still can’t believe I did it. All I could think about was . . . Look, I’m not putting this on you, Esther. I’m not. It�
�s all on me. No one else. But all I could think about was what it would mean to you. How upset you’d be. Stella in jail, your job gone, no income . . . And so I did the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“Lopez . . .” I shook my head, having no idea what to say.
Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. I knew he had fudged some reports here and there to protect me, to keep my name out of things—and that his conscience troubled him over that. Troubled him a lot, in fact.
So if anyone else had told me that Lopez had deliberately buried evidence against the Gambellos . . . I just wouldn’t believe it. No way.
I stared at him in stunned amazement.
I knew it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t known about it, and I certainly hoped I wouldn’t have asked him to do it . . . But when I recalled how angry and upset I had indeed been when he shut down Stella’s that night, I couldn’t pretend that this really was all on him. I knew he’d concealed that evidence for me. And I knew he must have despised himself for it—and must have been wrestling with some pretty complicated feeling about me, too, as a result of that.
He continued, “I was so wrapped up in that . . . that whole thing all day, I didn’t even check my phone for the first time until I was on my way out to Nyack that night to see my family.”
By then, I recalled, Max’s festive Christmas gathering at the bookstore was winding down, and I was starting to wonder why Lopez hadn’t called me yet. It was the beginning of my long, steep slide into tail-chasing craziness.
“That’s when I got your message,” he said. “The one you left me after you woke up. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t want to. You know? I didn’t want to tell you what I had done. I didn’t want to lie to you. And I couldn’t think about anything else. So I figured I’d call you later, when I wasn’t such a basket case.”
By the time he got to his parents’ house that night for a late Christmas dinner, his exhaustion, his tension, and—above all—his shame had put him in such a rotten mood that he had quarreled badly with his mother, his father, and both of his brothers.
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