In This Rain (44 page)

“That’s why I thought it was you. Because it was a stupid mistake.”

“I have to say, I’m becoming annoyed with your tone and your constant one-upsmanship. Let’s pass some time in silence.”

She heard a click. “Walter, damn you!” she shouted, but he’d broken her connection out of this cell of black glass, black leather, black steel, left her with nothing but silence and the sensation of movement.

Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard

The rain had slacked to drizzle and the sky paled to gray by the time Joe Cole and Ford were free to go. Tom Underhill, roused and dragged to the scene by Ford’s phone call, spoke briefly with the detectives who’d caught the shooting and then turned his glare on Ford and Cole.

“What the hell was this?” He listened, glowering, while Ford filled him in, and then snorted, “You are flat insane.”

“It was a law enforcement operation,” Ford reminded him.

“It was two DOI cops, one of them on desk duty! And she’s out of control! You call that law enforcement?”

“Greg Lowry’s a DOI Inspector General.”

“Great! And where’s he now?”

“All right, that’s a good question. But we didn’t tell him to go running off in the dark without backup.”

“He thought he had backup,” Cole put in. “He’d called it in.”

Underhill snapped, “He should have waited until they showed!”

“And not chased a suspect?”

“You going to explain it to his Commissioner, Cole? He’s on the way here.”

Ford hesitated. “Tom, you understand there’s some thought Commissioner Shapiro might be part of the problem?”

“Yes, Ford, I do understand that. What should I have done, told him we’d rather he stay home while his IG is lost in Harlem?”

“Just as long as you know.”

“What I know is, this was a damn stupid idea!”

“It worked,” Ford said.

Finally dismissed, Ford and Cole headed out the garden gate. “Wish I knew what was going on at the hospital,” Cole said.

“Probably nothing, yet. Until they get Blowfish stabilized they won’t let Montgomery talk to him.”

“If they let her stay. I’m betting they’ll have kicked her out already.”

Ford found himself grinning. “Is she always like that?”

“Since I’ve known her.”

“Must’ve been interesting, being her partner.”

“Never dull.”

Ford dug in his pocket, handed Cole his phone. “Her number’s programmed.”

“I already know it.” Cole got Montgomery’s voice mail and left a message. Giving the phone back, he said, “You tell me where we can get a good breakfast around here, I’m buying.”

“In that case, follow me.”

A few blocks up and over, Ford pulled open a glass door to a low stucco building. The scents of maple syrup and frying bacon floated down a flight of stairs.

“Where are we?” Cole asked.

“Church’s.”

Up on the second floor, at long tables set on a flowered carpet, mothers fed applesauce to babies while older kids munched sugar doughnuts. Three bus drivers in MTA blue sat eating waffles, trying to make time with a table of young women, maybe students from City College. Ford led Cole to the cafeteria line. “I recommend the hotcakes. Or you can get ham hocks and biscuits with gravy, if you’re seriously hard-core.”

Cole stuck to scrambled eggs. Ford got hotcakes and bacon and they took their trays to a window table.

“Popular place,” Cole remarked, pulling out a folding chair. “I wouldn’t have known it was here.”

“What it really is, it’s the United House of Prayer lunchroom. Sanctuary’s through there.” Ford pointed his fork. “Still where the flock does Sunday dinner, and in between, a nice moneymaker. Some of the best home cooking— ” He stopped when his phone began to ring.

“Ann?” Cole asked.

Ford glanced at the readout— an unfamiliar number— and shook his head. He lifted the phone and said, “Corrington.”

“Mr. Corrington? This A-Dogg. Sorry it so early— ”

“No, no, no problem. You okay? Anything wrong?”

“I don’t know. Could be. Something going down, thought maybe you should know. Because of what you said.”

“About what?”

“Kong and T. D. Tilden, when you was askin’ what they got going.”

“You found out something?”

“Not, like, what it was or nothin’. Just, something happen last week, I ain’t told you.”

“And you want to tell me now?”

“Saw a guy. Talking to Blowfish.”

“Blowfish? What guy, A-Dogg?”

“In the park, near all them big trees. I expect they think no one ain’t seen them. But I was

sometimes I stay in one of them trees, you know?”

“You stay— you sleep there?”

“On this one branch. It’s real wide and kind of curved. I got a super at the Hampton Houses lets me stay in the boiler room when it get cold, but he don’t want me there in summertime. Thing about this guy,” A-Dogg said firmly, switching subjects, “I seen him before. White guy. I seen him with Kong. Don’t know his name or nothin’, but I seen him.”

“What does he look like?”

“Just, you know. Regular.”

“Tall? Silver hair?”

“No way. Just regular.”

Not Glybenhall himself, then: someone working for him.

“Kong just call him Boss. Kong always sayin’ ain’t no thing to him, dude paying him good, he call him any shit he want. Anyhow, Blowfish don’t know I seen him with this guy, and I ain’t said. But later, Blowfish tell me, keep my eyes open, if I help him out could be something in it. He say somebody be looking for Shamika.”

“Did he say why?”

“Say Shamika got something belong to this guy, he want it back bad. So Blowfish, he go see her moms, tell her he a friend of hers, he worried, ain’t seen her around. Her moms say Shamika get real scared when Kong come looking for her and she take off. Say she staying with her brother’s baby mama in Jersey City.”

Jersey City? Ford flashed on the Georgia area code and the antagonistic voice of cousin Ralphie.

“So Blowfish go over there. Baby mama say Shamika meet some Dominican, go off with him. José or Jesús or something, she don’t know and she don’t care. She say Shamika no fun, always tell her what to do, so she could go to hell, all she cared.”

Well, I’ll be, thought Ford. A private witness relocation program. The underground railroad comes into the twenty-first century.

“But dig,” A-Dogg went on. “This guy? He just call me. Say he get my number from Blowfish. Say Blowfish got a little problem, so he wonder could he deal with me direct. Ask did I find Shamika yet. Mr. Corrington, yo, street say Blowfish get smoked this morning. In your garden.”

“The street’s fast but not quite right, A-Dogg. Blowfish was shot, but last I heard he’s still alive. He’s at the hospital.”

“Damn! What go down?”

“I don’t know.” Not quite true, but not really a lie, either. “This man looking for Shamika— is that what he meant about ‘Blowfish’s problem’?”

“Don’t know. But what I’m thinking, how do he get my number? Blowfish ain’t about to give it to him, in case I be trying to cut Blowfish out. But if Blowfish ain’t give it to him, only way I can think of he could get it, must be he got Blowfish’s phone. Now how he gonna get that? How he gonna get it, he ain’t the one shot him?”

Ford was wondering whether A-Dogg had too much of a juvenile record to get into the Police Academy when the boy said, “Mr. Corrington? Reason I ain’t told you about this dude before, this the first time Blowfish ever ask would I help him. He always be laughing at me, like I’m some little kid, you know? And the crew, lot of them do like Blowfish do. You know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Probably I should’ve told you. But Blowfish, Carlo, the crew

yo, they got my back, you know?”

“I understand, A-Dogg. But now tell me, do you have a way to get in touch with this man?”

“That why I’m calling you,” the boy said. “I mean, I don’t know what the fuck’s going down, but Blowfish getting popped, that’s wack. My man Carlo, he buggin’ out, first someone smoke Kong, now this. So I tell this dude, yeah I found Shamika, but you got to pay me. He say sure, bring her, I pay you. So we gonna meet in the park, that path under Noah’s Ark. About a hour.”

Sutton Place

Don’t sleep.

It seemed forever since she’d first told herself that, forever since it had become all she could say. She watched out the black glass of the left-hand window, then the right-hand one: she burned her stare through the privacy barrier and tried to make out the world beyond the windshield.

Normally (you mean, if Walter weren’t taking you somewhere to kill you?) at this hour she’d be asleep and not near waking; under the circumstances (you mean, no move possible back here, with Walter taking you somewhere to kill you?) she might suggest sleep to herself as a way to conserve strength. But as matters stood (you mean, a knock on the head, so that sleep could slip into an oblivion you might find it hard to wake up from, making it easier for Walter to kill you?) she was doing everything she could to stay awake.

The sky lightened but the rain kept pounding. On either side, obscured by dark glass, rounded hills disappeared into low clouds. Headlights and taillights flowed toward them, and past.

She was grateful for the cold. It was unpleasant and uncomfortable, and comfort, right now, was the enemy. She concentrated on leaning with the car, on anticipating Glybenhall’s driving, and his thinking, too. She worked on making a plan for their arrival, on making contingency plans for failures in the plan. That’s how Joe would do it, and Joe clearly had the right approach to things because she was locked up in the back seat of Walter Glybenhall’s car and he wasn’t.

Finally, finally, she felt the weight of the car shift to the right and slow. They were pulling off the highway, onto a long, well-graded exit. At a traffic light, they stopped. Glybenhall unfolded a map. Too bad, Walter; a car this fancy must have GPS but you can’t exactly call in for directions, can you? The rain pelted the roof, sheeted the windows. Glybenhall spun the wheel and started up again. Left; a straightaway, and then up a hill.

She leaned back against the seat. It wouldn’t be long now.

Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard

Ford called Tom Underhill and gave the detective a recap of his conversation with A-Dogg. “It’s the guy Kong was working for,” he finished. “The guy his crew thinks killed him, and A-Dogg thinks he might be the one who shot Blowfish. He’s meeting the kid in the park in an hour.”

“Damn! This a new craze sweeping Harlem? Crazy setups by civilians?”

“After this one I’m out of business.”

“You’re out of business right now, Ford. And tell the kid to be a no-show, too.”

“I already did. I told him I’d take it from here and to keep his head down. You’ll be there?”

“Shit, sure we will. Citizen goes to all this trouble, least we can do is take advantage. But I don’t want anyone cluttering up my sight lines.”

“You planning on shooting this guy?”

“I’m not planning on anything. But he might not want to come down to the precinct for coffee and doughnuts.”

“You should serve Church’s doughnuts. Everyone would come.” Ford clicked his phone off and looked at Joe Cole. “He doesn’t want us there.”

“I used to be in law enforcement,” Cole said. “I see where he’s coming from. But after all this? I’d sure like a look at this guy.”

“Would you?” Ford regarded him. “I’m finding that I would, too. And I’d like to make sure we’re the only ones.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a little worried A-Dogg might show after all.”

“To make a quick buck? Pretend he really does have the girl?”

“No, more like to see his clever idea work out.” He stood. “Up for a walk in the park?”

Out on the avenue, jazzed on coffee, adrenaline, and exhaustion, Ford felt oddly saw-toothed in a soft-edged world. The mist had thickened to a warm fog. Buses and cars drifted by, pedestrians trudged, drunks snored in doorways. Here and there a streetlight still spread a dull gleam. Reaching the park, they found it dreamlike: arching trees, curving paths, gigantic boulders looming from the mist.

“You put us more than two feet from the action, we’ll miss the whole show,” Cole said.

“The meeting place is around that way. We’ll be able to see from up there”— Ford pointed— “and stay out of Tom’s way. And there’s something there I think you’ll enjoy.”

He led the way to an uptilted slab of granite colossal enough to support trees growing out of its clefts. A steep path curved up a fissure, mud puddles everywhere and the stone slippery with rainwater. Ford scrambled up, stepped through a gap between two slabs of rock, and waited for Cole. Right behind him, the man slipped through and looked around. Slowly, he grinned. “Wow.”

Ford smiled also. “Amen.”

A series of stone slabs, the broken top of the boulder, formed a ragged circle fifteen feet across. But this hidden crater, though surprising enough, was just the beginning. All around them was painted, in great detail and vivid colors, a vast and violent ocean storm. Giant waves towered and crested on the slabs’ jagged tops. Rain slanted and roiling clouds released explosions of lightning. Damp with the slickness of real rain, the mural was breathtaking: more powerful, Ford realized, than he’d ever seen it before.

“Over here.” He tapped one of the stones. “Noah’s Ark.”

The hopelessly small ship, barely the size of his hand, keeled half over as it climbed a wave. Tiny, terrified horses and giraffes were tethered to the mast, while two monkeys clung to each other in the rigging above.

“I’d have missed that,” Cole said. “In all this. Who painted it?”

“No one knows. Sometime in the early eighties, some kids came up here to party and found it, freshly done. Spray paint, mostly. Some graffiti painter who got tired of subway cars.”

“And no one’s tried to cover it, tag over it?”

“They don’t tag stained-glass windows, either. Now we’d better get set.” He stepped through a break in the stones to a wide granite shelf. Crouching, he worked his way close to the edge. Cole joined him. From here, they could look down onto the path.