Red on Red (60 page)

“Do you think it’s weird?”

“A little, Grace, but we’re all a little weird. You’re all right, though. Get some rest.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

“We’ll be there, even when you don’t see us.”

Nick looked at her picture on his desk one last time before he went home, in the silly pose, the ghastly, trashy getup. He wished he had another, like Napolitano’s communion pictures of his kids, the sweet piety not at all false despite the canned emotion and hokey costumes. Then he thought this photograph was a better icon, just as it was, a reminder that things were not as they seemed.

A
cold night, a cold dawn. It was barely sunrise when Garelick and Nick set up on a rooftop with binoculars, and they remained for two hours before Grace left her apartment, across the street. No one expected anything to happen during the morning, but rehearsal would limit the risk. An older undercover had been borrowed from Narcotics to keep watch in the lobby, singing sentimental songs, sipping brandy. Perez was the passenger on the bus, but he was forbidden the use of hidden microphones, which might have tempted him to have sustained conversations with his sleeve. He had been instructed to remain aboard for several more stops past the school—two, no five—just to be safe. Garelick and Nick would have the sleeve-mikes, earpieces concealed below wool caps. It was late morning when the two of them walked onto the school grounds, in green coveralls. Sister Agnes was waiting at the gate. She did not acknowledge Nick as he passed. The air was fierce and frigid, with sudden gusts that approached gale speed, and the snow had begun to fall. That would have explained why Sister Agnes’s eyes were so red.

The sister couldn’t stay there; she was too visible, too effective in her pose of warning. Nick didn’t want to approach her, equally wary of countersurveillance and of her fiery eyes. He had to tell someone, and he found the priest, pacing on the edge of the pallid lawn. Lieutenant Ortiz wore a cassock of the old style, the black robe with the long row of buttons down the middle, thirty-three of them. When he saw Nick, the lieutenant tapped him on the shoulder, beckoning him with a nod to follow around to the side of the school. He shivered, the white skullcap on his head offering little warmth. Nick was appreciative of the efforts he had taken, until it occurred to him that only the pope wore the white cap.
Nick stared at it until the lieutenant noticed the scrutiny and responded with a hint of petulance.

“Garelick gave it to me. It’s a yarmulke from his family. He wanted me to have it today. For luck. I felt bad that he didn’t get to do the priest bit. God damn, I want a cigarette.”

They withdrew farther into the grounds until they found an alcove in the walls, a hidden garden in the gap. There were four bare rosebushes, a plaster saint, three girls huddled around a single unlit cigarette. Lieutenant Ortiz strode in among them and snatched it out of their hands.

“Gimme that.”

He slapped his chest, his hips, where he might have expected to find his lighter in ordinary clothes. The cassock had no pockets. He took the matches from one girl’s hands and lit the cigarette, ducking down and blocking the wind with his shoulders. He could have done it at sea, during a typhoon. He drew deeply on the cigarette, twice, then passed it back to the girl.

“Thanks.”

The girl blinked, then nervously returned it. Lieutenant Ortiz took the cigarette and winked at her before turning to lead Nick away. Nick could hear them as he left: “What’s up with Father? He’s so
ghetto
….”

The snow fell more heavily, started to stick to the ground. Though Lieutenant Ortiz was calm again, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, Nick fumed at the needless risk of the encounter, the attention it could attract. Yes, just another day in the convent, nothing to see here, nothing at all, just the pope bumming smokes from schoolgirls in a storm. They walked to an outbuilding, a shed that held some landscaping equipment, some tools. Nick stepped inside to assess the possibilities—a bit of a workshop, a bit of a clubhouse. It would do. The shed was almost warm, and Nick calmed down. The lieutenant waited at the door, looking outside.

“You have to tell Sister Agnes to go back inside,” Nick said.

“I’ll tell her. We might as well hole up here for a few hours, till the afternoon. I’ll call the other guys, tell them to set up again at two. Have them pass by, every half hour or so, see if somebody’s lurking around. The weather’s on our side. It doesn’t feel like it, but it is. Here comes Garelick—looks like he’s got some supplies. Good. Don’t complain about the hat, Nick. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

Garelick came inside and closed the door after him, stamping his feet
like a Yukon trapper back at his cabin. Nick had doubts about whether he was up for it, if he had the heart or the strength for the labors ahead. Garelick cared about Nick, not the girl or the perp. When Nick had shown him Grace’s picture, on the rooftop earlier, he’d barely glanced at it. Garelick carried a brown grocery bag in his arms, and cleared a table of oil cans and paintbrushes to lay out sandwiches and coffee. After the meal was arranged, he shook out the bag, and two packs of cigarettes and a lighter fell out. Lieutenant Ortiz smiled. If he’d had doubts about Garelick, they had been laid to rest.

“Hang tight,” said the lieutenant. “I’m gonna have a talk with the sister. Back in five. Don’t eat without me.”

With that announcement, he strode back into the storm.

“What’s up with him? It is cold out, dammit…. Nick, are those shoes waterproof? You really should—Anyway, I brought coffee. I’m having mine. I’m not waiting. They’re all black. I got cream and sugar on the side. Real cream, Nick. I know you like that.”

Garelick stamped his feet again, and unzipped his green coveralls. He was wearing a suit underneath, dark blue, with a white shirt and a yellow checked tie. He might have bought it on sale twenty years before, he might have worn it once a week since, but the effect was elegant, as if he had crawled up through the surf at a moonlit tropical beach, shedding his wet suit for a tuxedo, monocle, and martini. He fixed Nick a coffee and made another cup for himself, lifting it in casual salute. How old was he? Was he sixty? He couldn’t be much more, but he wasn’t less; today he had come here, slipping through a blizzard, in disguise, trying to help snatch a serial rapist. He had semi-contemporaries who were Sunbelt evacuees, arguing over shuffleboard scores, nudging someone else’s widow in the diner nearest to the golf-condo townhouse community.
I don’t care about my pressure. Would you give me the dessert menu?

Even as Nick had begun to recast him, sloughing off old assumptions, Garelick raised a hand with unexpected authority; he put his coffee down, and Nick felt obliged to do the same.

“Nick, let me tell you this as advice, as a friend. Before the lieutenant comes back. No one has more than one stomach. You can’t eat twice. Do you follow what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“This fight with Esposito. I don’t know why you and him hate each
other now, but I don’t know why you connected in the first place, let alone got so close. You were the only one who ever really got along with him. Not for nothing? Nobody really got along with you, either, Nick. You were a putz; he was a prick. But it worked! Now, both of you, you’re driving everyone crazy. Everybody can feel it. Nobody has fun anymore. And there’s more than hard feelings at stake. On days like today, you don’t need the distraction. Somebody could get hurt.

“Don’t say anything. I wasn’t looking for an answer. I didn’t ask a question.”

Nick understood and agreed, though the desert wisdom of the two-stomach bit was still obscure to him. Lieutenant Ortiz came back inside. He found a seat on a stool and hiked up his cassock, taking a cigarette and coffee. He had jeans on beneath his robes, which somehow seemed indecent. As they ate, they worked through the possibilities. When the rapist had first attacked Grace, conning his way inside her house, was the gun real? Was he from this neighborhood, or had the next meeting been by chance? At this stage, the perp appeared to be a planner, a strategist. He knew where she went to school, how and when, that she walked alone. Nick remembered what he could about the pattern. Most of the victims were young, suggesting that there was a preferred target, which meant selection and study. The rapist didn’t just knock on random doors. But a third of the victims were middle-aged and beyond. What did that mean? That he made mistakes, but he didn’t mind when he made them. Everything was good for him, each one a win. When Nick asked the lieutenant if he knew anything else, he replied that his counterpart at Special Victims had brusquely informed him that the details were confidential. It would be sweet for Lieutenant Ortiz if his squad carried the day.

When they finished eating, conversation dropped off. The lieutenant took the one good chair, and Garelick shaped bags of grass seed into a bench. Nick went to the window to check the snowfall. Sodden flakes began to pile up; the noontime sky could have passed for dusk. The lieutenant was right, the storm was on their side. Whoever was out there couldn’t see them, and no one could see through them, to their lesser motives. The boss wanted revenge on a rival lieutenant; Garelick wanted to show he could work, when it mattered. Nick wanted to believe his luck had changed, that his heart still beat. That he could be a powerful help to a child who needed him, and accomplish something without his partner.
What mattered was that they were here. But Garelick was right, too. Differences had to be put aside to focus on the matter at hand. Nick called Esposito.

“Hey, Espo.”

“Hey.”

Garelick and the lieutenant both stirred when Nick spoke, then took pains to appear as if they hadn’t noticed. It was awkward enough as it was, and Nick stepped outside.

“What are you up to? You in the office?”

“Nah … have to meet somebody. Quick trip.”

“Anything going on … with that? Either brother?”

“Haven’t met him yet…. The connection’s kind of bad here.”

The connection was fine. Esposito didn’t want to talk about it on the phone, and he was right to remind him. The Cole brothers didn’t matter as much to Nick today, somehow; not Jamie Barry, either. Today was for possibilities, not the past.

“Yeah. How’s the driving?”

“Not too bad yet, but it’s getting there. When we set back up again, it’s gonna be tricky to find a spot, to make sure we’re not stuck when your guy shows up.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, Nick? Let’s go out tonight, get something to eat, have a couple of drinks. I’m not gonna drive back upstate in this weather. I mean, after this wraps up, however it goes. This guy, maybe he forgot his galoshes, you know? Maybe he puts it off today … Maybe he’s not even the same guy from the pattern. Besides, the kid—she’s a little off, isn’t she?”

“No, she’s solid. And he’ll be here.”

“Okay. I’ll check back in a bit. You someplace warm?”

“We got a roof over our heads. Catch you later.”

At first, Nick was glad they had talked. Dinner would be good. They might clear the air. Maybe Malcolm hadn’t panned out. He couldn’t control his brother, or he wasn’t trying, or there was no need. Nick could talk Esposito into “finding” the video for the DA, letting the case work its way through court, getting Malcolm a lenient plea for his cooperation. Maybe there was an innocent explanation for the flowers in the jacket—two of them meant that he had seen Mama, not Daysi, after all. Let the past pass. Nick was astonished to realize that it was work that had made
him this happy, that vitalized him, called him back to life. And it was the thought of work that bothered him about the conversation with Esposito. What was wrong here? Nick was planning the capture of the most wanted criminal in New York, arguably the worst man out of eight million, and Esposito was planning dinner. Maybe if it wasn’t his case, his collar, he wasn’t much interested. Leave it alone, Nick thought. Stick to work. Work and weather.

Nick grabbed a shovel that leaned against the wall, telling Garelick and the lieutenant that he was going to give the grounds a once-over. Garelick pointed out a snowblower in the corner of the shed.

“These make it a lot easier, Nick, trust me. I got one, and I don’t even use it. I pay the neighbor kid. Shoveling is not fun. You wouldn’t know. It was a shock to the system when I had to do it, when we first moved out of the city—”

“The snowblower might be better, but it’s a lot louder. I’m not gonna have an engine roaring next to me, if I need to talk or listen. Don’t worry. You can wait here for now.”

Garelick made a sour face, considering the manual labor that awaited him. He stamped his feet again, knowing they would get colder still. When they looked at the lieutenant for a decision, they knew the answer. The shovels were the better tactical option, and the lieutenant would not have to lift one. He extended a hand and traced a blessing in the air. Nick went out into the blizzard, and shut the door behind him.

The snow was an inch deep, a little more, on the path from the garage to the school. It was coming down harder, and Nick pushed the shovel ahead, skimming the powder and slush from the path, scraping against the concrete. He could see fifty feet, maybe, but he was looking at buildings and trees, not trying to make a face in the crowd. At the school, he followed the path to where it angled out to the gate, the street. An iron gate, with the chain wrapped around the center bars like a garland, pretending to be locked. Nick took off the chains and walked off the grounds, closing the gate after. The bus stop was farther up the block, closer to the shed. How could he pick out Grace in a crowd of girls, if any of them knelt down to check their shoes? Nick couldn’t wait far from her, couldn’t wait here. The shed would have been perfect in other weather, except for the stone wall that blocked the view of the street. Nick cleared out a narrow trail from the school to the gate, a single file walkway. It took him fifteen minutes, and he was soaked in sweat. He looked at his
watch—quarter to one. Sister Agnes must have sent the custodial staff away for the day. No, she would have gotten something out of them, had them mop and buff the assassination tower. Nick should have looked into that, so the detectives could have blended in with the staff instead of taking over their work. No, this was best; no one would react, ask questions, show a break in the routine. His back ached, and he trudged back inside to the shed, to rest for the last hour.