Game (25 page)

No. That’s what he wants me to think. Even if he’s not consciously aware of it. He wants me to think none of this makes sense because if it doesn’t make sense, then I stop trying to figure it out. And then he gets to keep on doing what he wants.

“He’s the alpha male,” Jazz murmured. “Top dog. Top dog? Top hat?”

“Yeah, someone mentioned that a while back,” Montgomery said. “Anyone remember who?” he called out to the precinct in general.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jazz said. “I’m just thinking out loud. Somehow, it makes sense to him. It’s the most obvious thing in the world to him.” He stared at the whiteboard a little while longer, then rubbed his eyes. “Tell me what you have planned for your next step.”

“We’ve got a dozen possibles,” Hughes said. “Guys who fit the profile—”

“More or less,” Morales inserted.

“Agent Morales thinks we’re being a little too liberal in our interpretation of the profile,” Montgomery explained. “We prefer to think of it as casting our net a little wider. Just to be sure.”

“Anyway,” Hughes went on, “there’s a dozen guys. We’re bringing them in one by one, starting tomorrow. Setting it up
so that they’ll never see one another. Each guy will think he’s our only suspect.”

Jazz nodded. Good.

“We notified them tonight that we’d like to speak with them first thing tomorrow.”

“Then you’ll stick ’em in a room and watch ’em for an hour or so, right?” Jazz speculated. “The guilty guy won’t be able to sleep tonight, so there’s a chance he’ll nod off while waiting for you.”

“That’s the theory.”

“It might work.” Jazz shrugged. “But Hat-Dog is cold-blooded. There’s every chance he got your call and rolled over and slept like a drunk baby.”

“We’re just using everything in our arsenal.”

“Who’s conducting the actual interrogations?” Jazz asked.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Morales spoke up. “I am. Along with a male NYPD detective. This guy has issues with both sexes. We’re going to play off of that.”

“I want to be in the room, too.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Montgomery pronounced, in a tone that said he was used to having even jaded New Yorkers obey him. “Not risking it, for one thing. For another thing, you’re like a celebrity. These guys see you, recognize you, who knows what it’s gonna do to the interrogation?” Before Jazz could protest, he held up a hand. “You watch with the rest of us through the glass. If you have a problem with it, don’t even bother leaving the hotel tomorrow. That’s it.”

Jazz appealed to Morales, hoping for an override, but the
special agent shook her head. “It’s the right call, Jasper. You know it.”

“Fine. Give me whatever you have on these suspects. I’ll look at it all tonight. For now, I need some sleep.” He hadn’t even realized how tired he was until the words were out of his mouth. But something like fifteen hours ago, he’d been sitting on the floor of his father’s old room in the Nod, talking to Connie on the phone. He’d done so much since then that he couldn’t sort through it yet.

“Yeah, sure. Let me take you to the hotel,” Hughes offered.

Hughes ended up staying with Jazz at the hotel. Hat-Dog knew that Jazz was involved in the investigation, after all, and the last thing the task force needed was for Billy Dent’s kid to be killed while assisting on the case. The detective sacked out on a rollaway cot while Jazz slipped into the bathroom for some privacy while calling Connie.

But Connie didn’t answer. Jazz wondered if maybe her dad had confiscated her phone again. He left her a quick voice mail, ending with, “Miss you. I love you.” As he hung up, he wondered about that. When had it become so easy to say “I love you”? At first, he had stuttered and struggled to say it in person. Now he could toss it out to voice mail. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? It could go either way, he realized. It could be that the words passed so effortlessly through his lips because he meant them deeply and truly.

Or it could be that he didn’t mean them at all. And that—like all the lies we tell ourselves—it was easy to repeat.

He crawled into bed. It was better this way, he knew, the two of them separated. With Connie back in the Nod, it was safe for Jazz to lust after her, to yearn for her, to be weak for her. No one could be hurt if they were apart. And that was good.

Hughes’s snores already filled the room. Even though it was still relatively early and he was slightly horny from the mere thought of Connie, Jazz drifted right off to sleep.

Connie stared at her cell phone. A message. From Jazz. She couldn’t believe she had just let her boyfriend go to voice mail as she watched.

But she knew what would have happened if she’d answered. He would have known something was up, the way he
always
knew something was up. That bizarre, slightly creepy sixth sense he had. He could read your mind by reading between the lines. And she would have told him about the texts and then he would have warned her off—
It’s too dangerous, Con! Call G. William!
—and Connie wasn’t about to be waved off. Not this time.

I can do this. I can help. I saved Jazz from the Impressionist. I found the Ugly J clue in Brooklyn. I. Can. Do. This.

She would be careful. She would be
more
than careful; she would be super-careful. And she would let Howie in on it, so that someone knew what was going on, where she was headed…. That was the responsible way to handle it. Almost
eighteen, almost a legal adult. Who could tell her
not
to handle this?

i kno something abt ur boyfriend

Simple as that. That made it Connie’s business to find out.

And maybe
…

The little voice tickled at the back of her brain, right on the edge of her thoughts. She chased it away, but she knew what it wanted to say.

And maybe you get on TV doing this. It’s like a reality show, but better because it really
is
real. And maybe
…

Stop it.

And maybe that’s how you get noticed and get famous.

The voice, having had its say, went silent, and Connie pretended she’d never heard it in the first place.

Convincing her parents to let her out of the house would be nearly impossible, Connie knew. But the mystery texter had given her her first instruction—
go 2 where it all began
—and Connie was damn sure that whatever “it” was, it hadn’t begun in her bedroom, where absolutely nothing remotely interesting or important had ever happened.

It was getting late, but Howie would most likely still be awake, so she called him. He answered on the fourth ring, just as she had resigned herself to being sent to voice mail.

“Sorta busy here, Connie,” he said brusquely.

She glanced at her clock. It was almost eleven at night. “Doing what? Masturbating?”

“Jeez!” he exploded. “No! Gross! I don’t do that. I’m saving myself for that special someone, and that special someone is not me.”

“Howie, you’d jerk it if you saw your mom’s bra in the dryer.”

“I would not. I so totally would not. My mom’s bras are like, like
grandmother
bras, okay? Strictly utilitarian. Functional. Not like that sexy lacy number you wore last week when we all went to Grasser’s for burgers.”

Connie felt herself blush. “Howie! You peeked!”

“If you wear a white shirt with a red bra underneath, you’re just asking for it. I’m sorry, but in this isolated instance, you really, really can’t blame me.”

Connie made a mental note to watch what she wore around Howie. She liked being sexy and looking good, but she didn’t want one of her best friends thinking about her bras.
Ew.

“In any event,” Howie went on, “I’m busy, doing the exact opposite of playing with myself, for your information.”

“What’s the opposite of that?”

“Trying to get Jazz’s aunt into bed,” Howie said with a matter-of-factness that was both hilarious and horrifying.

“You’re doing
what
?”

“She’s hot,” Howie said. “Older-lady hot, you know? Cougar-y? MILF-y? Plus, Jazz doesn’t want this to happen, so she’s got that whole ‘forbidden fruit’ thing going for her, too. I just can’t resist that. I’m, like, a slave to my passions and stuff.”

Connie’s head spun. Howie… and Jazz’s
aunt
? Billy Dent’s
sister
? “How the hell did this happen?”

“Well, nothing has happened yet. But I’m over here helping her get the crazy racist lady to sleep and I’m using all my
best moves. Trust me, this is happening. The ladies always eventually succumb to Howie Gersten.”

“When has anyone
ever
succumbed to you?”

“The succumbing part is strictly theoretical at this point,” he admitted. “But I have high hopes.”

“If you can stop thinking with the contents of your jock strap for a second, I need your help.”

“Yes,” Howie said solemnly, “I can teach you how to be more ‘street.’ ”

“For God’s sake…”

“Or is it ‘urban’? I can’t remember. Anyway, I can teach you, grasshopper. Or hip-hopper.”

“Be serious for just a minute. I need help in your area of expertise.” Before Howie could say “pleasing women of all ages,” she pressed on. “I need to sneak out of my house.”

“How do you get to the ripe old age of seventeen without knowing how to get out of the house?” Howie demanded. “Hell, your bedroom is on the first floor! You don’t even have to climb down a trellis or sneak down squeaky stairs.”

“But once I’m out, I’m screwed—I don’t have a car.”

“Ah.” Howie chuckled. “You’ve come to the right place, ma’am.”

An hour later, Connie slipped silently out her window into a frigid January midnight. She willed her teeth to stop chattering. At Howie’s suggestion, she’d lubed the tracks of the window with some hand lotion (good stuff, too—fifteen bucks a bottle) so that it would open and close quickly and quietly as she came and went. Howie was a goofball of the
first order, but a lifetime of parental fascism had inculcated in him some truly spectacular sneaking skills.

She darted to the cover of a cluster of firs at the end of the driveway and waited. Soon Howie’s old car drifted into view, its headlights and engine both off. Connie wasn’t sure how necessary this next part was, but Howie insisted.

As the car passed, coasting down the hill, Connie emerged from cover and then, jogging alongside, wrenched open the passenger-side door and threw herself in.

“Close the door!” Howie said. “Close it!”

Connie managed to slam the door. “This is ridiculous,” she panted, catching her breath. “You just wanted to be able to say you pulled this off.”

“You want your parents to see or hear a car driving by this time of night?”

“My parents are asleep.”

“People wake up.”

Once they were out of sight of Connie’s house, Howie gunned the engine and flicked on the headlights. “Where to, Miss Daisy?”

“I think you have a couple of things reversed,” she told him drily. “And I’m not sure where we’re headed yet.”

In short, clipped sentences, she told him about the Ugly J discovery at the dump site, as well as the note in the Impressionist’s pocket, followed by the mystery texts. In the dim light of Lobo’s Nod’s ill-spaced lampposts, Howie’s face became more and more pale as she went on.

“Are you nuts?” he asked. “Is Jazz’s kind of crazy an STD
or something? This isn’t something for you to mess with. It’s for the cops. This is G. William territory.”

According to Jazz, Howie always balked at first but invariably caved in the end. She hoped she could be as persuasive as Jazz.

“I’m just going to do some preliminary investigating.” She liked the way that sounded. Very official. Very safe. “Then I can point G. William in the right direction.”

“Some crazy person—probably a serial killer—is texting you and you want to get the cops
started
? Not sane, Connie. Not sane at all. This is Jazz-level idiocy.”

“You broke into a morgue with him. I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”

“Jazz is my bro.”

“I respect that. But maybe a little of his bro-hood rubbed off on me.” She regretted it as soon as she said it. Howie’s eyes widened and he started to speak, but she said, “Can we just stipulate that you made a killer double entendre with ‘rubbed off’ and then move on?”

“I guess.” Howie’s shoulders slumped in disappointment and Connie almost felt sorry for him. Howie lived for innuendoes. He signaled and took a right turn out of Connie’s neighborhood, onto the main road that cut directly through the center of the Nod.

“This is for Jazz,” she reminded him. “It’s about him, at least.”

“ ‘I know something about your boyfriend,’ ” Howie quoted. “That could be anything. That could be someone who knows where he buys his underwear. Or it could be that jackhole
Weathers trying to lure you into an interview. Cell number was blocked, so it could be coming from somewhere around here for all we know. Probably is.”

Connie hadn’t considered that. Doug Weathers was just the sort of devious, bottom-feeding scumsucker who would plant a string of clues to pique her curiosity and try to trap her into some kind of compromising position that he could splash across a newspaper:
BILLY DENT’S SON’S GIRLFRIEND IN CONTROVERSY!
Or maybe just lure her into an interview. “If that’s what it is,” she said with measured cool, “then all he’s gonna get is a pissed-off sister all up in his grill.”

“I love when you go all hard-ass.” Howie shot her a pleased smile.

She returned it. “So does that mean you’ll stick around and see this through?”

“Well… I mean, if you’re gonna do something stupid, I guess I should stick around. That seems to be my function. And besides, Sam went to bed already.”

“Sam? Is that what she goes by?”

“It’s what I call her. If you give a girl a nickname, it’s endearing and forges a bond between the two of you.” He glanced over at her. “I read that on the Internet.”

Connie melted. Howie was so desperately pathetic in so many ways that she could never stay angry or disgusted for long. She reached out to pat his shoulder, but he flinched and said, “Whoa! Careful.”