In This Rain (34 page)

“No. He’d already told them. He said so. But Joe, this was O’Doul. He’d have wanted to cover his butt with DOI, or lord it over us or something. Maybe he insisted.”

“If reception couldn’t shake him they’d have passed him to Lowry, not to you, so Lowry could blow him off personally.”

“So maybe they did. Maybe Greg told him to call Luis Perez and O’Doul said no, I have something I want DOI to see.”

“Then Lowry would have known O’Doul called. Either he’d have gone up to see O’Doul himself, or he’d have told you to. Either way, there wouldn’t have been a message from O’Doul on your voice mail.”

Ann sat for a silent moment. Then she hefted her bag onto her lap. She rummaged through it, pulled out her cell phone. “Dennis? It’s Ann.”

Joe drank his beer, listening to the one-sided conversation. “Thanks,” Ann said. “No, I know. Yes, you’re probably right. I just hope it blows over soon. I’ll do that, thanks. Well, actually, there is something. I was wondering, Dennis, did Sonny O’Doul call you last week? I mean, did he not know you’d been transferred? No, of course not, there wasn’t any reason you should have. But wouldn’t that mean if he had something to say he’d have called you, not me? Did you give him my name?” Her brow furrowed as she leaned over the phone. “All right, Dennis, I appreciate it. Yes, I will. Thanks.”

She clicked the phone off and looked up. “O’Doul never called him.”

“So how did he know?” Joe asked. “To go to you?”

Sutton Place

Ann swung the Boxster alongside the guard booth on the Mott Haven site and flashed her badge. The guard shrugged; badge or not, there was no place to park, and he pointed her back to the street. In your dreams, buster. She wheeled around in the mud and pulled across the rear of a 4Runner. Let the s.o.b. who owned it wait until she was done.

With the guard’s shout filling the early-morning air, she took the steps, threw open the cheap door, and stalked through the trailer. She palmed the badge to Sonny O’Doul and the three men in his office. “Beat it,” she said to the others, and when they didn’t move she said, “All right, stay. The more the better. I have an arrest quota to fill.”

“What the fuck— ” O’Doul began.

“Why did you call me, Sonny?”

“I didn’t call you. Get the fuck out of here,” he yelled to the other men.

“Last week!”

“Last week?” O’Doul got up and slammed his door. “About the chain? I called you because I found that fucking chain. What the hell’s your problem, lady?”

“Who told you to call me?”

“I called your fucking office and they told me you was on this case. I— ”

“Bull, Sonny. You didn’t call my office and you didn’t call the guy from my office you’d already spoken to. Dennis Graham. Why didn’t you call Graham?”

“He wasn’t on the case anymore! Jesus, lady— ”

“How did you know that?”

A heartbeat of hesitation, just enough. “I don’t remember. Someone must’ve told me. Who the fuck cares? I seen in the news how Glybenhall’s suing your ass. You fucked up bad, lady. So now you’re looking to find someone to hang it on? Get out. I don’t have time for this shit, I got work to do.”

“All right. Whatever you want. I’ll subpoena your phone records. Here, home, your cell phone. Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for. It’d be too bad if I also found a call to a bookie or something, though.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sweat beaded on O’Doul’s lip as if her words had raised the temperature in the room.

“You used to play the horses, didn’t you? That’s right, I thought I remembered that. What does that hurt, a little action? Nothing that I can see, but it is a parole violation. What do you have left, Sonny? Three years?”

“You can’t. You can’t subpoena nothing. You’re in the fucking doghouse: it’s all over the news.”

“My boss will do it. If it helps clear DOI’s name, you bet he’ll do it in a second.” Actually, it was completely possible Greg Lowry wouldn’t touch any of this with a stick. But Ann said it as though it were stone fact.

“You think you’re so smart.”

“No, I don’t, but I’m way smarter than you. And I have smarter friends. One of my friends figured out that one of your friends is telling you things that maybe you didn’t know.”

“What, that this was your case? Since when is that some kind of secret? So what if someone did tell me?”

“Nice try, but forget it. Because the real question’s why. First you tell me who, then you tell me why.” She leaned forward, fists on his desk. “Who?”

“Fuck you.”

Ann took out her cell phone. She’d punched three buttons before O’Doul growled, “Wait!”

She looked up.

“You’re not near as smart as you think, lady. And your asshole friends, either.”

She pointed at the phone.

“He’s playing you.” O’Doul’s smile was a poisoned gleam. “And you know what? You’re fucked. He got what he wanted. You think you’re the cat but you’re the mouse. No. You know what, lady? You’re the motherfucking cheese.”

“You’re not making sense, Sonny, and I have no time for it.”

“He thinks I can’t figure it out. ‘Just do it, Sonny, do what I tell you.’ Well, fuck him. I see what’s going on. And I’m not taking this fall for nobody. But you are, lady. Ask me, you were all along.”

“For who, Sonny? Goddamn you, for who? Someone in my office? Some rat at DOI?”

“DOI?” O’Doul laughed. “I don’t know squat about that. Maybe everyone at DOI is crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But so what? Even if they was all straight, they couldn’t save your ass. Not from Walter Glybenhall. No way in hell.”

Heart’s Content

“Cole! Break time! You want coffee?” Palmer’s shout carried over the traffic.

“Black, large. I’ll come with you. I have to make a call.” Joe caught up with Palmer and they crossed the road to the diner.

“They got those mile-high pies,” Palmer said. “Look at those things.”

“Taste like cardboard, though.” Joe stopped at the pay phone inside the door, fishing in his pocket for change.

“All that dust I been eating, I couldn’t tell the difference.” Palmer headed to the counter and Joe dropped quarters into the phone.

A ring and a half; then, “Ann Montgomery.”

“It’s Joe.” He turned to the window, as though something were going on he didn’t want Palmer to know about. As though Palmer, hitting on a gum-cracking waitress while he placed four men’s orders, gave a damn.

“Joe? Where are you? Aren’t you working?” He could hear a tension— not excitement, something darker— in Ann’s voice.

“Coffee break. How’d it go? Were we right?”

“Something’s going on, for sure. Listen to this: O’Doul swears he got my name from Walter.”

“From Glybenhall himself?”

“He said I thought I was the cat but I’m the mouse. Then he said no, I’m the cheese.”

“That’s a lot of imagination for Sonny. What the hell does it mean?”

“I don’t know. He suddenly clammed up, like he was sorry he told me that much.”

“Why did he?”

“I threatened to bring Lowry down on him and put him back inside.”

Joe felt something he’d never have expected: a pang of sympathy for Sonny O’Doul. “All right, but I don’t get it. O’Doul’s claiming Glybenhall personally talks to him? And how did Glybenhall know it was you?”

“Well, I’d been to Walter already, so that’s how he knew. But it’s way out of character for him to speak to anyone as low on the food chain as O’Doul. The only reason I can see for it, if it’s true, is that Walter knew O’Doul was going to have something to say, and he wanted to make sure I heard it.”

“So you’re saying Glybenhall knew that chain was on the roof? That Kong told him he’d lost it?”

“That would put Walter and Kong knowing each other, just like Blowfish said they did. Before he retracted that.”

“Why would Glybenhall want you to know about it?”

“To make the case for sabotage?”

Joe gazed out over the traffic, squeezed by the roadwork into two potholed lanes. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s not sitting right. Have you told Lowry?”

“Oh, Joe! Told him what? A guy’s boss gave him the name of an investigator to cooperate with? And I learned that by visiting the guy while I’m supposed to be on desk duty?”

“What are you going to do?”

A pause. “Joe? What would you do?”

What would I do? I just spent three years in prison for doing what I do. “I guess,” he said slowly, “I’d look at the discards.”

“The what?”

“There are always ideas I start out with that I don’t end up using, when things start to move. If I get stuck I go back and look at one of them.”

Palmer appeared at Joe’s elbow with a cluster of coffee cups in a cardboard box. He cast a significant glance at the clock.

“I have to go,” Joe said. “Be careful.”

“Of course.”

“Call me later?”

A brief pause. “Of course.”

Sutton Place

Ann strode into the office carrying her usual Starbucks latte and a large shoulder bag. She’d barely gotten her coat off when Lowry materialized beside her.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“The mayor told me to clean out my desk.”

“You’re crazy. Are you trying to scuttle whatever career you have left?”

“I have no career left.” She faced him squarely. “No matter what happens. If Glybenhall fell on his knees and confessed today, I’d still be out of here. That’s what happens to the messenger, Greg.”

“You shouldn’t have come in while this is ongoing.”

“I have some personal things here. I didn’t want to wait months.” She picked up a silver-framed photo of her father, slipped it into a padded envelope, and placed it in her bag.

“It looks bad. It looks as though we’ve already told you you’re through, without waiting for the results of our investigation.”

“I hope you don’t mind if what looks bad for DOI isn’t my most pressing concern right now.” From a drawer she started removing hand cream, breath mints, nail polish, and a brand-new paperback book. When she reached into a deeper drawer and lifted out a pair of slingback heels, Lowry threw in the towel.

“Finish up and clear out fast.” He stalked toward his office.

She watched after him, but didn’t answer. When he disappeared behind his door she turned back to her desk. From the deep drawer she lifted out a vase. Years ago, Joe used to bring in flowers from his garden. He’d stand them on the windowsill, arranged in the spare coffeepot. The first time she’d seen that, she’d laughed. The next day she’d brought in the vase. The office hadn’t had flowers since he’d been gone. But she’d never taken home the vase.

She found a padded envelope for it, too, and put it in her bag. She walked around the desk, shifting the bulky bag as though it were in her way. With both it and herself between her in-basket and Lowry’s door, she slid a thick folder from under a pile of memos and mail.

When she left the office five minutes later, the bag heavy on her shoulder, she was grinning. She’d always liked to read, and she had lots of good reading ahead of her. The new Lisa Scottoline paperback, which she’d barely cracked when all this began. And three years’ worth of Walter Glybenhall’s subpoenaed financial statements, forgotten on her desk when things started to move.

Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard

Yvonnia buzzed Ford. “Ann Montgomery’s asking to speak to you.”

“Tell her— no, wait. I’ll tell her myself.” Ford pressed the speakerphone button. “Inspector? This is Ford Corrington. I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

“I need your help.”

“No. Those windmills turned out to be dragons.”

“All the more reason to go after them.”

“Or stay away from them.”

“Walter Glybenhall will eat Harlem alive.”

“He’ll find us indigestible.”

“If he can’t devour you he’ll destroy you. That’s how dragons work. I have new information.”

Ford had been about to cut the connection. He hesitated, finger above the button. “You were suspended.”

“And you were smeared. I stand to lose my job and five million dollars. I think you have more to lose than that.”

“Damn right I do. I don’t know how I got between you and Walter Glybenhall, but it’s not a position I like.”

“I want to know how you got there, too. And a lot more. I can be at your office in fifteen minutes.”

“Absolutely not. I don’t want you seen anywhere near here.”

“Meet me somewhere else, then.”

“Inspector, I don’t want to be seen with you at all.”

“Well, I can’t make myself invisible. And you’re well known. How about somewhere neutral Sunset Park? Red bean buns on me.”

Yellow cabs, illegally, refused to cruise Harlem, but car services, illegally, did. Ford flagged a car and gave the driver the Brooklyn address Montgomery had given him. Twenty minutes later they pulled up on a street lined with produce stands, restaurants, and check-cashing joints. He climbed from the cab in front of a fish market where two old ladies haggled with the fishmonger. Young men with dangling cigarettes gave passersby hard looks. Kids played tag and horns honked and the air smelled like fried food and the whole thing was a lot like Harlem, except the people all were Asian and the signs all in Chinese.

He spotted a pink neon teapot radiating neon steam. The Chinese characters above it read “Moon Garden Teahouse,” according to Montgomery.

Already, he thought, he was back to taking her word for something.

Inside, it didn’t look much like a garden, even one on the moon. Fluorescent lights buzzed above gray tile floors and white walls. Battered metal chairs edged gray Formica tables. Below a framed painting of a single pine branch, Ann Montgomery gestured from a table at the back.

“I appreciate your coming,” she said as Ford pulled out a chair. A teapot and two cups sat before her, next to a lacquer tray of pastries.

“I’m still not sure meeting you is a smart idea. But if it had to be someplace, Sunset Park was a good call.”

She smiled and didn’t answer, not putting into words what Ford knew they were both thinking: the they-all-look-alike thing cut both ways. To the newly arrived immigrants in New York’s newest Chinatown, they were a black man and a white woman— meaning not Chinese— sitting down to tea. As long as they didn’t start throwing the crockery, no one would look at them closely.