Even so, I often ended up here.
Because just like all the others, the dream ended the same way. Nina holding the bouquet of roses I’d given her. Looking up to where I stood in our hotel window. Raising a delicate hand before disappearing into a big black car. Into the city for good.
And I was left with a gut-twisting feeling I was truly coming to hate for its stubborn fuckin’ tenacity. That I needed to find Nina Astor. That she needed me to find her too.
But she was nowhere to be found.
The problem was that I had so little to go on. I knew she was rich. I knew she was more or less local. But other than that? Not a whole lot.
The name, for instance, had to be a fake. I’d combed through New York city and state records until I was blue in the face. Marriage. Divorce. Even, with a heavy heart, death. According to public databases, the only Nina Astors in the general tristate area died during the Depression. So I’d gone to ground. Interrogated the front desk of the hotel for over an hour before I finally left. Interviewed people on the damn street trying to get the plates off the car she left in.
But like a buster, I always ended up on streets like this, hoping to run into her. I couldn’t have told you why I thought Nina was from the Upper East Side, but the prim, polished neighborhood seemed to fit. She was as classic as the nineteenth-century buildings and stately brownstones, as clean as their sleek facades, so different from the stained gray stonework of the Bronx neighborhood where I grew up or the pile of red bricks I now called home.
The funny thing, when this neighborhood was first built, it was as middle class then as Belmont or Red Hook were to me now. Buildings full of French flats—single-family housing where the upper-level working class of New York’s gilded age lived before they were usurped by the city’s bourgeoisie.
Nina had told me her family was wealthy, but she didn’t say who they were. Astor, though. Everyone in New York knew that name. Streets, buildings, subway stops. It was everywhere.
Unless, of course, that’s where she got it. Grasping for a fake name to offer, she’d taken one in plain sight.
It was a hard pill to swallow, thinking the woman who had stripped me bare might have lied to my face.
I stared up at a particularly fancy building on a tree-lined street off Madison. It was complete with gargoyles scowling at the corners and a green-tinted roof curling at the top.
I scowled back. Was this where she was hiding?
Or was I kidding myself? Nina probably wasn’t even in New York anymore. She probably never would be again.
Before I could keep walking, my phone rang with my assistant’s ring tone. I flipped on my Bluetooth and answered.
“Zola.”
“I know who it is. I called you.”
I rolled my eyes. Tiana was the best assistant I’d ever had. She didn’t put up with my shit, which was a very good thing. But she also came with a truckload of attitude.
“Ti, what’s up?”
“I just sent a file via the secure server. I would have waited, but it was straight from Ramirez. He said given all the work you’ve been doing on”—she paused before speaking the next word in hushed tones—“Carson…this was a natural extension.”
I frowned and pulled out my phone to look at the file. Since Derek and I had met with Eric downtown, I’d made hardly any progress on the Carson case. I had a few friends in high places, but it was clearer that any help I could offer those two would come from me and me alone. But that would require a break I hadn’t found yet.
“This is a file on a prostitution ring. Why wasn’t it sent to Human Trafficking?” I flipped through a few more pages. “Jesus, they don’t even have charges filed? What the hell does this have to do with John Carson?”
“Do you really think I know the answer to that?”
I groaned. I didn’t have time for this. I had a case heading to trial next week and another ready to go before a grand jury. Like just about every other government employee, I was overworked and overtired. I didn’t need this goose chase on top of everything else.
“Before you dig into it, though, I have a Caitlyn Calvert for you.”
I made a face. “Ah, no. Tell her I’m out.”
Unfortunately, no such luck. “That didn’t work this morning either, Zola.”
My scowl turned into a full-on death glare. I’d met Caitlyn Calvert during one of my late-night runs into the city. With her honey-brown hair and diamond earrings, she dripped polish and wealth. So close to the other perfectly bred creature I had been seeking. And after a bottle of wine, it was close enough.
We had gone to a hotel in Chelsea to get what I thought we both needed. For her, it was an escape from her humdrum life of committee meetings and planning a wedding she apparently didn’t even want. For me, she was just close enough to the woman I actually wanted to pretend for a few hours that I’d found her. One night was enough for me, though—I was never into fakes.
Ms. Calvert, however, had other ideas. I’d given in the last two. But today, I was in no mood.
I scowled. “Come on, Tiana…”
“Don’t give me that look—she’s been calling all damn day. You’re taking this call, Zola.”
“How do you know what my face looks like?” I shook my head. This wasn’t even a video call.
“Because I know,” Tiana said shortly. “I’m putting her through.”
And before I could say another word, the line clicked over.
“Z? Are you there?”
The single-initial thing bugged me, but she’d been doing it since we met. I pegged it as her weird little way of establishing intimacy, the way rich women did when they couldn’t do it with hugs or kisses like normal people.
“Caitlyn, I’m at work,” I huffed. “I need to get back. What is it?”
“I was surprised, that’s all, when you declined my invitation,” Caitlyn said. “I honestly thought it was too good to be true. Imagine it. You and me? Alone? A whole weekend away from your sad little shack?”
On the other end of the line, I could hear Caitlyn’s nails clinking against her glass. If I remembered correctly, they were French tipped, painfully white at the ends, paired with diamond rings so bright they could probably be seen from space.
I frowned. Insulting the house in Brooklyn that I scrimped and saved for wasn’t the best way to get on my good side. Sure, the house I shared with my sister and her kid was no palace. But in a city of renters, owning my own place was so far the crowning achievement of my financial life. I didn’t even remember telling Caitlyn about it, but that didn’t mean a few glasses of wine hadn’t loosened my tongue at some point.
“Like I told you,” I said, kicking my foot in the direction of a bunch of pigeons that instantly scattered. “I can’t get away this weekend. I’m buried in work, and I just don’t think—”
“Lover, please. It’s been eons since our last night. Don’t make me beg. It turns me into a dreadful bore.”
I rolled my eyes. We’d seen each other three days ago. I hated the ones who talked like this—like they were characters out of The Philadelphia Story. Katherine Hepburn without the smarts. Cary Grant without the swagger. I wasn’t any more special to Caitlyn than she was to me—but like so many trust funders and trophy wives, she thought she was entitled to plenty. Including my company.
“Look, we had some fun, honey, but now we can just leave it at that,” I said bluntly. “I don’t have time for anything more than the one night, and you’re, well, engaged, right? This was never going anywhere.”
There was a long pause. Long enough that I might have wondered if Caitlyn had hung up if it hadn’t been for the sound of her breathing. Good fuckin’ God. These kinds of people really couldn’t take the word no.
“I see,” Caitlyn said finally, although I wondered if she really did. “I—well, I’m not one to beg.”
Aren’t you? After all, hadn’t she been doing just that in a suite downtown just last week?
I had the good sense to
keep that to myself. It was hard, let me tell you.
“You’re a class act, Cait.” I decided to be generous instead and lie. “I hope you and your fiancé can work it out. And if not—you’ll find what you need in the end. You deserve it.”
“Thank you.”
Her voice was suddenly soft, and I felt bad. I forgot sometimes how vulnerable women like her really were. So many of them were neglected, stuck in their posh apartments like museum pieces, pretty things for their husbands to look at when they tore themselves away from the stock markets and men’s clubs. Caitlyn was desperate for someone, anyone, to make her feel seen. Loved, even.
But the truth was painfully clear. I was useless to any woman but the one I couldn’t find. In the meantime, I was just another asshole, another sinner using them as much as they were using me.
“You take care, Cait.”
Maybe one day she’d find a real Prince Charming to rescue her. But that prince wasn’t me.
No sooner had the conversation ended than my phone rang again.
I groaned. “Tiana, what now?”
“Oh, no. You did not just ‘what now’ me, Mr. Attitude. I am just doing my job, and you think it’s okay to serve me that kind of mouth?”
I sighed. This fuckin’ day was never ending. “Tiana, I’m sorry. I’ll bring you a whole cheesecake from Junior’s on Monday. Thank you for dealing with my mouth.”
She sniffed. “That’s more like it. I have Leona Parker for you.”
I stood up straighter. That was actually someone I wanted to talk to. “Put her through, please.”
Leona Parker was a classmate from Officer Training School who had turned her time in Special Forces into a thriving career at the CIA. She and I had known each other for fifteen years, and she was one of the few people I would trust with my life. Mostly because I already had. After meeting with Eric, I’d sent her the full file on the de Vrieses with hopes the feds would finally pay attention to the fuckin’ disaster that was the Carson case.
“Lee,” I answered. “Tell me it’s good news.”
The long sigh told me my request was not going to be granted. “I’m sorry, Zola. I wish I could.”
“Fuck. The director too?”
We had to speak in veiled terms. I worked in a government office whose lines were probably monitored 24-7, even via cell phone. Leona was a legitimate G-man. Or, G-woman, I supposed. She lived her life under surveillance. And a conversation about John Carson wasn’t something we wanted tracked back to us. Not immediately, anyway.
“We said that’s how it might go. He’s powerful, Zo. You know that. Lots of ties to lots of people. People in government. People with very deep pockets.”
I understood immediately what she meant. John Carson’s company held about forty percent of the U.S. government’s munitions contracts. The armed forces needed him as much as he needed them.
“Still, though,” I said. “Even after Korea—”
“Stalled,” she interrupted.
When they had come home from South Korea in January, Jane and Eric had enough evidence against John Carson for ten indictments. Kidnapping. Conspiracy. But the worst by far was nuclear arms production. And here was Leona telling me that the CIA still couldn’t be moved.
“I’m so sorry I don’t have better news,” Leona said. “But that’s just the way the cookie crumbles, my friend. You know the director isn’t going to act against the DOJ. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Think about Guantanamo.”
Again, her meaning was clear. The president, in all his glory, was basically wielding the attorney general like a shield for anything he wanted. Carson had been one of the president’s largest campaign contributors. And now he was reaping the benefits.
I sighed. This was bad. Maybe not wholly unexpected, but bad, nonetheless.
Another dead end.
“Better take it back to Ramirez. He’s got the cojones, so to speak, and he’s supporting your investigation. These days a lot of justice seemed to be happening…where you are.”
I rubbed my forehead viciously. I honestly didn’t know what else to do. This was all state-level attorney generals and district prosecutors had been hearing since the last election. Suddenly our job wasn’t just fighting the bad guys in our own communities. We were doing what the feds couldn’t—not with corruption infecting Washington like a virus. I’d been an ADA for seven years, but these days, it felt more like twenty. Talk about added stakes.
I considered the file Tiana had just sent. What had seemed like yet another task in my overworked life now felt like a final ray of hope.
“Thanks, Lee,” I said. “I’ll, uh, let him know.”
“Sorry, Zola. Say hi to your family for me.”
“Sure,” I said. “Tell Greg what’s up.”
With that, we hung up, and I pulled up the file to read on my way to the subway.
A few minutes later, it was obvious why Ramirez had sent it. The NYPD had been running surveillance on a trafficking suspect with ties in Downtown Manhattan, Hunt’s Point, Jamaica Queens, and, yes, Brooklyn, at an address located right smack in the middle of “The Hole”—one of the last crime-ridden no-man’s lands on the boundary between Queens and Brooklyn where even law enforcement barely dared to go. Some called it the second Wild West, both for its apparent lawlessness and because it was home to the New York Federation of Black Cowboys. Rumor had it, there were actually fuckin’ horses out there. In New York City.
I scanned the names that had been attached to the trafficking. No one new. Small-time crooks, people we’d tried to pressure time and time again on a variety of investigations over the years. New York was a big city, but the organized crime scene was relatively small. This felt like old news.
Until I came to a name at the bottom of the list.
Someone new.
Someone important.
Jude Letour was the heir to a DC-based import-export empire. His family had deep pockets in Washington, but they hadn’t yet handed the reins over to their son, who was a bit of a black sheep.
Looked like he was doing his own import-export work of the human persuasion. Letour had been spotted coming in and out of the trafficking address in Brooklyn at approximately two in the morning, and the detective on the case had gotten at least three of the lower-level henchmen to name him specifically as the head of the trafficking project.
But I was more interested in another element. Eric had mentioned him more than once because he was part of Janus, a secret Ivy League society that originally connected the de Vrieses to the mess they were in. As it happened, Jude Letour happened to be the right-hand man to John fucking Carson. If he was doing underground business here in the city, there was a good chance his boss was too.
“I see you, motherfucker,” I muttered as I paged through the notes. It was too late now to call the detective assigned to the case, but first thing Monday morning, I’d get Derek on it.
I turned back toward Central Park. Instead of going home, I’d be making another stop on the other side of the island. This was the kind of thing I needed to tell Jane and Eric in person.
Chapter Three
It was nearly dark and starting to rain when I emerged onto Central Park West. I pulled my favorite fedora low as I wove through the heady mix of buskers, shoppers, tourists, and businesspeople, crowded by the ring of pedicabs and horse-drawn carriages looking for the last few fares.
The Upper West Side was one of those places that was just plain nice. It still had hints of the grit that coated New York—you could never completely escape that anywhere—but it lacked the marks of poverty and neglect that tore at other parts of the city, like mine.
Here, the bases of the buildings were washed and white instead of tagged with graffiti and filth. The sidewalks were clean and mostly uncracked. Across the street, the greening trees of early spring waved in the breeze like friends instead of people who wanted to mug you. Above, rain clouds threatened, but right now, it was just a nice place to walk aro
und.
You fuckin’ liar.
I shook away my subconscious, cloaked in the voice of my best friend, Jamie Quinn. Over the last few months, I’d developed an alarming recurrence of internal monologue, usually taking the form of someone close if it wasn’t her. A friend. A sister. Someone who knew me well enough to call out my bullshit.
Go the fuck away, Jay, I told him mentally.
Not until you admit what you’re really lookin’ for.
Or who, I thought with him. Fine, fine. Fuck the pretty brick buildings. I was walking an extra twenty blocks under the threat of a downpour for the same reason I often got off halfway between Brooklyn and Belmont every Sunday just to meander Central Park. The reason why I’d suddenly started visiting every museum on Fifth Avenue more than I went to Mass.
“Can you walk a bit, doll?” I asked Nina as she hurried on a gray cashmere coat. “Might warm us up. I need a bite to eat after all that wine.”
“I—yes, I could eat. Somewhere close, though?” She looked at her feet. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid these shoes weren’t made for long treks.”
“Don’t ever apologize for those shoes.”
I was rewarded with another mild blush and a murmur of something like, “I’m glad you like them.” I took Nina’s hand, and for a split second, the cold disappeared as a shock of heat passed through my fingertips. Jesus, Mary, this was some kind of electricity.
Nina started as if she’d felt it too. Her bright eyes found mine, then drifted to my lips. For a moment, I considered kissing her. I’d wanted to for hours at that point, and I was pretty sure she wanted it as well. But she had a skittish quality that reminded me of the stray cats by my house, like if I took a step too soon, she’d bolt.
Instead, I raised her hand to examine it. Her skin was so fair, almost translucent. I could practically see her pulse moving. Slowly, I pressed a kiss over the lace of veins that crisscrossed just below her knuckles.
When I dropped our hands, she had her other one pressed to her shirt, as if to hold her heart in place. I couldn’t blame her. One brief touch, and mine was practically jumping out of my chest.
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 3