“Let’s talk about Ry Strauss first.”
I sit back and look at her.
“What?” she asks.
“You’ve done this before.”
Ema sits back too. And—I kid you not—she steeples her fingers.
“When Myron found his brother,” I say. “With your relationship with Mickey. I wasn’t really around for all that. I’m sorry about that.”
“Win?”
“Yes?”
“Let’s focus on you right now. We can deal with my past some other time.”
I hesitate, pulse a-flutter, but then I acquiesce. “Okay.”
“Back to Ry Strauss.”
“Okay.”
“We need to focus on who killed him.” Ema releases the finger-steeple and starts sorting through her notes. “The CCTV picked up Ry Strauss in the basement with a bald guy.”
“Yes.”
“And the FBI techs can’t get more details than that?”
“No. Bad pixels or something. Plus he kept his head down.”
Ema thinks about it. “Interesting he’d show us he’s bald.”
“Pardon?”
“Why not wear a baseball cap?” she asks. “Maybe he’s not really bald. Last year, at the talent show, a bunch of guys pretended they were the Blue Man Group.”
“Who?”
“Not important. But they bought these skin caps that make you look bald. So maybe it’s just a disguise. Maybe he wants us to look for someone bald.”
I think about that.
“Also”—Ema starts shuffling through the legal pad—“that barmaid from Malachy’s…”
“Kathleen,” I say.
Quick clarification: While I did tell Ema about my conversation with Kathleen in Central Park, I did not tell her about Kathleen returning with me to this very apartment. There is being honest—and there is being ew-gross.
“Right. Kathleen.” Ema has found the applicable section in her notes. “So Kathleen tells you that Ry was panicked about a robbery at his bank.”
“Correct.”
“Except we know that Ry didn’t have any money there. His money came from that LLC your grandmother—”
“Your great-grandmother,” I add.
“Hey.” Ema stops and smiles at me. “That’s right.”
I smile too.
“Anyway”—the smile drops and Ema is all business again—“let’s get back to your conversation with Kathleen. Ry, we know, never leaves his apartment except at night to meet Kathleen in the park, but suddenly he goes out in the middle of the day.”
“And,” I add, “on the day he gets murdered.”
“Exactly. So you”—Ema grabs a yellow sheet from the upper right-hand corner of the table—“use your contacts as Mr. Super-Rich Guy and visit the bank. The manager tells you that the robbers broke into safe deposit boxes.”
“Yes.”
“Which is odd, don’t you think?”
I shrug. “There are a lot of valuables in those boxes.”
“Yeah, I guess that could be it…” Ema says slowly.
“But?”
“But I have another theory.”
I sit back and spread my hands, indicating I would like her to continue.
“Ry Strauss rented out a safe deposit box at the bank, probably under a pseudonym.”
“That makes sense,” I say, not yet letting on that I had figured out that much already. “Any theories on what was in it?”
“Something that identified him in some way,” Ema says, tapping the pencil eraser against the tabletop. “Look, Ry Strauss probably used several identities over the years, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“So he probably needed a safe place to keep the various IDs and, who knows, maybe his real passport and birth certificate too. You wouldn’t throw those things out.”
“No,” I say, “you wouldn’t.” I mull this over. “Are you saying that the bank robbers weren’t really after money—that they broke into those boxes because they wanted to find Ry Strauss?”
“Possible,” Ema says.
“But unlikely?”
“Unlikely,” Ema repeats. “I have another theory.”
I confess that I am enjoying this conversation tremendously. “I’m listening.”
“Your FBI mentor, PT.”
“What about him?”
Ema checks her phone for the time. “Is it too late to call him?”
“It’s never too late to call him. Tell me why.”
“PT said they caught one of the robbers.”
“Right.”
“Can you get to him?”
“Get to him?”
“Ask him questions,” Ema says. “Interrogate him. Can you use your Mr. Super-Rich Guy persona to get access to this bank robber?”
I frown. “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask.”
“Then that’s our first step, Win.” Her face breaks into a smile that reaches deep into my chest. “Call PT and set up the meet.”
CHAPTER 28
If you’d expect an FBI interrogation room to look like what you see on TV, you would be correct. We are in a tight windowless/airless room with a generic table in the middle. There are four generic metal chairs of which three are taken. I sit alone on one side of the table. Steve, the captured robber, and his attorney Fred are across from me.
“My client has already cut a deal in respect to the alleged bank robbery,” Fred begins.
“I don’t get it,” Steve says. Steve is petite and small boned with the hands of a pianist or perhaps a safecracker, who’s to say? His enormous bushy mustache dominates his diminutive face and monopolizes your attention. “Who the hell is this guy?”
Fred puts a hand on his forearm. “It’s okay, Steve.”
Steve glares down at the hand. “You mind?”
Fred’s hand slides off his arm.
“What do you want?”
“Information.”
“You don’t look like no prosecutor.” His accent is a thick combination of the Bronx and dese-and-dose.
“I’m not,” I say. “I also don’t care whether you’re guilty or innocent or any of that. I just care about one thing.”
Steve’s eyes narrow. He has almost no eyebrows, which appears strange on a man with such a prominent mustache. “What’s that?”
“The contents of a certain safe deposit box.”
I watch closely as I say this and see immediately that he knows precisely to what I’m referring.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“You don’t play much poker, do you, Steve?”
“Huh?”
“I really don’t have time for any of this, so let me make an offer. You can then say ‘accept’ or ‘decline.’” Ema had been the one to put most of it together. If I am able to get the information from this, she will feel justifiably pleased. “I want you to tell me all about the contents of that one particular safe deposit box. That is all. Just the one. In return, I will give you five thousand dollars and not blow up your immunity deal.”
“The immunity deal is set in stone,” Fred says. “You can’t just”—air quotes—“‘blow it up.’”
I just look at him and smile.
“Can he do that?” Steve’s mustache bounces up and down when he speaks, like Yosemite Sam’s.
“Yes, Steve, I can. Accept or decline?”
“Decline,” he says, and there is fear in his voice. “I don’t want the money.”
He starts to pet the mustache as though it’s a lapdog.
I’d expected this to go easier. “Of course you do.”
“It’s healthier for me if I stay quiet.”
“I see.”
“If it gets out I said anything, I’m a dead man.”
“But it will get out,” I say, “if you don’t say anything.”
Steve frowns. “What’s that?”
“Yes,” Lawyer Fred says, sitting up. “What are you talking about?”
“Simple.” I lean back and steeple my fingers. “If Steve chooses not to talk to me, I will inform everyone that he did.”
This confuses them both for a beat.
Then Steve snaps, “But you don’t know anything.”
“I know enough.”
“If you know what I’m going to say, why are you trying to get me to talk?”
I sigh. “Got me there, Steve. I have a theory. Do you want to hear it?”
Fred says, “I don’t like this. We agreed to see you as a courtesy and now you’re throwing threats around. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”
I look at him and put a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”
Steve sits back and continues to stroke his mustache; it looks as though he and the mustache are conferring. “Okay, pretty boy, let’s hear your theory.”
“Well, it’s not really my theory. It’s—” I almost say “my daughter’s,” but I don’t want Ema brought into this dank room in any way. I also decide to dive right into it: “When you broke into the safe deposit boxes, you came across information on the current whereabouts of one Ry Strauss.”
The mustache twitch tells me I struck gold.
“Wait,” Fred says, eyes widening. “The Ry Strauss? If this is about—”
“Shh,” I say to him again, keeping my eyes on Steve. “You then gave or sold that information, I’m not yet sure which, to an individual who killed Mr. Strauss. That, my facially hirsute friend, makes you an accessory to murder.”
“What?” Steve and his mustache are appropriately still, but Fred is ready to do faux battle for his client.
“You can’t prove—”
“Steve, right now, I alone know this. I won’t say a word to the authorities. Not ever. I won’t make it public. I won’t let it get back to whomever you so dreadfully fear. You will tell me what you know, and then we will all continue our lives as though this never happened. The only change in your life? You’ll be five thousand dollars richer.”
No reply.
“If you choose to decline my offer or lie to me or claim you don’t know what I’m talking about, I will walk down the corridor to my friends in law enforcement and tell them that you are an accessory to murder. Fred here can tell you that I have friends. Lots of friends. You don’t get the chance to come in here and chitchat alone with a bank robber in custody if you don’t have friends. Am I right, Fred?”
“You can’t—”
“Shh.” I look over at Steve.
Steve shifts in his chair. “What exactly do you want to know?”
“I want to know the contents of the safe deposit box. I want to know who else knows about the contents.”
Steve looks at Fred. Fred shrugs. Steve turns his attention back to the mustache. “How about ten grand?”
I can easily afford it, but what fun would that be? “I take that as a ‘no deal’ then.” I put two fists on the table as though to push myself to a stand. “Have a good day, gentlemen.”
Steve waves his tiny hands at me. “Just…stop that, okay? You promise it doesn’t leave this room? I mean, forget the cops. If it gets out I talked—”
“It won’t,” I say.
“Promise?”
I mime crossing my heart.
Fred looks as though he’s going to argue, but Steve shakes him off.
“Yeah, okay, we broke in. We all know this. And the cash in the safe is light. One of our guys got it wrong. He thought the pickup…never mind, that doesn’t matter. So we are already in there, that’s the hard part, so I suggest we go for the boxes. We have the tools. You interested in the technical details?”
“Of how you broke into the boxes?”
“Yeah.”
“Not in the slightest,” I say. “Skip ahead.”
“Okay, right, so anyway, we get the stuff back to our safe house. It’s in Millbrook. You ever been? Gorgeous place. Not far from Poughkeepsie.”
I stare at him.
“Right, right, not important. Anyway, we get a lot of good stuff. People keep all kinds of great stuff in those boxes. Watches, diamonds.”
I gesture for him to speed up with my hand. “And Ry Strauss?”
“Right, sorry. Yeah, I find this birth certificate. All official-like. I’m about to throw it out, but then I figure maybe one of the forgers can use the paper stock. It’s got a raised seal too. So I hand it to Randy, that’s my brother-in-law. Anyway, Randy reads it and is like ‘Holy shit, let me see the rest of his stuff.’ And it’s just more paperwork, fake IDs, a deed on an apartment, stuff like that. I say, ‘What’s the big deal? Who is Ryker Strauss?’ See, that was the name on the certificate. Ryker. So Randy, he says, ‘Dummy, it’s Ry Strauss,’ and I’m like, ‘Who?’ and then he explains about how famous he is and that he’s been missing and all that. You want to know what our first thought was?”
I’m not sure, but I reply, “I would, yes.”
“We could sell this stuff to, like, a TV station.”
“A TV station?”
“You know, like one of those magazine shows or cable news shows. 60 Minutes or 48 Hours. It could be a huge story. But I’m thinking Geraldo too.”
“Geraldo?”
“Geraldo Rivera? You know who he is?”
I let him know that I do.
Steve looks wistful. “I always liked Geraldo. Tells it like it is. And I think he got a bum rap on that whole Al Capone vault thing, do you remember that?”
I let him know that I do.
“So I’m picturing a bidding war for this information, or maybe, I don’t know, like I said, I really admire Geraldo, so maybe we just make the deal with him. I bet I could meet him too. Geraldo seems like a regular guy. Tells it like it is.”
“And you two have the mustache in common,” I say, because I can’t help myself.
“Right?” He’s animated now. “See? And maybe, who knows, but maybe I can even get my picture taken with Geraldo or something. I mean, look what I’m bringing him. Geraldo, he’s a regular guy. He’d be grateful. And talk about redemption. If he’s the one who finds Ry Strauss, I mean, wow, people forget that stupid Capone vault was empty, am I right?”
I look at Fred. Fred shrugs.
“But Randy, he slaps me in the head. Not hard. Gentle like. Randy and me, we’re close. It’s why you have to keep his name out of it. Anyway, Randy says we can’t sell it to a TV show because it’ll be a huge story and draw a lot of attention. The cops will be all over the place, and they’ll pressure the TV network or whatever and then it’ll be over for us. I argue that Geraldo would never sell us out. He wouldn’t. He’s not the type. But Randy, he says that even if he doesn’t sell us out, there’ll be so much heat on us, something will crack. I’m disappointed—I mean, I really figured Geraldo could use this—so I start defending Geraldo, but then Randy says it’s too dangerous for another reason.”
“That reason being?”
“Look, it’s pretty well known in certain circles that the Staunch family has been after this Ry Strauss for a long time. That’s what Randy tells me. The whole group of them. Rumor is, they found one of the guys years back and the old man, well, Nero skinned him alive. Literally. Like, it took weeks for the guy to die. Scary stuff. That’s why. That’s why you can’t talk, okay?”
Steve is stroking the mustache like a long-lost lover.
“Okay,” I say. “I won’t talk.”
“Now my crew, we don’t work for the Staunches. We steer clear, you know what I’m saying? We don’t want no trouble. But Randy, he sees a chance to do them a favor and maybe make a few dollars too.”
“So Randy sold it to the Staunches?”
“That was the plan, yeah.”
“The plan?”
“I mean, I assume it all went okay, but I got picked up a month ago. It’s not like I’m going to ask Randy about it.”
CHAPTER 29
The Staunch Craft Brewery was packed with—I shouldn’t stereotype—annoying hipsters. Located in a tony warehouse in Williamsbur
g, the epicenter of the hipster, the bar drew a crowd in their twenties, maybe early thirties, who were trying so hard not to appear mainstream that they simply redefined the mainstream. The men had hipster glasses (you know what they are); asymmetrical facial hair; flimsy scarfs draped loosely around their necks; suspenders on strategically ripped jeans; retro concert tees that struggled to be ironic; man buns or a potpourri of awful hats, such as the cable-knit slouchy beanie, the Newsie flat cap, and of course, the carefully tilted fedora (unwritten hipster rule: Only one guy per table can wear the fedora at a time); and of course, boots that could be high or low or any hue but somehow you’d still label them hipster boots. The female of the species offered up a wider range—secondhand vintage pickups, flannels, cardigans, unmatching layers, acid wash, fishnets—the rule being nothing mainstream, which again makes them just mainstream with a desperation stench.
I’m being too harsh.
The many, many beers on tap—IPAs, stout, lager, pilsner, porter, autumnal, winter, summer (beers now have seasons), orange, pumpkin, watermelon, chocolate (I almost looked for a Cap’n Crunch artisanal)—are being served in mason jars rather than glasses or mugs. One entrance has a sign saying BREWERY TOUR. The other reads TASTING ROOM, the crowd of which had spilled outside to the sticky picnic tables. As I pass through them, I hear a swirl of the following terminology: bro, bae, edible, gluten, FOMO, kale, sesh, self-care, fleek, screenplay, kombucha, I can’t even, the struggle is real.
Clarification: I do not literally hear all those terms, but I think I do.
In the old days, gangsters hung out in bars or restaurants or strip joints. Times, they do a-change. As I duck inside, a pretty young barmaid with pigtails in cutoff shorts approaches me.
“Oh man, you have to be Win,” she says. “Follow me.”
The floors are concrete, the lighting low. In the right-hand corner, someone spins vinyl records. Eco-friendly yoga mats that appear to be as comfortable as tweed undergarments are laid out to the left; a flexible man with a beard the approximate dimensions of a lobster bib leads the mildly inebriated through a sun salutation. The barmaid takes me down a corridor lined with beer kegs and for-sale merchandise until we reach a big metal door. The barmaid knocks and says to me, “Stay here.”
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