“No,” I said. “My two friends just left.”

  We smiled at each other and I pushed the table toward her. She shrugged off the backpack and pushed the suitcase up against the glass wall.

  “That looks heavy,” I said.

  “My whole life,” she told me, thumping the backpack with her small white fist.

  I smiled at her words and pulled out my souped-up MP3 player. I set the device down on the table and inserted the earbuds. Then I pulled out a book, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and turned to a dog-eared page.

  Bug’s little device, which looked very much like an iPod, was what Twill would call “way cool.” It worked as a regular player unless I pressed a button on the side. Once activated, the device itself gave off, from one side, the mild sounds of whatever song was playing while the left side worked as a directional microphone. All I had to do was point the thing at Angie’s table and turn my back with my nose in the book. The sound emanating from the device would seem to be coming from the earpieces, and so she and Prince would be lulled into a sense of privacy.

  And that’s just how it worked. John came with their coffees and the two moved close together and whispered.

  “I wish you’d let me come with you,” he said.

  “What would Michele Lee say about that?” she replied, sounding bravely playful.

  “This isn’t funny,” he said. “We should go to the police.”

  “How could I explain it to them? They’d throw me in jail for the rest of my life.”

  “That’s better than being killed.”

  “No it isn’t,” she said.

  They’d been quiet for a long while when he said, “At least get in touch with me so that I know you’re okay.”

  “I’ll have to wait for a while,” she whispered.

  “How long?”

  There was silence and then the subtle rustling of clothes. I imagined that they were kissing.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “Go on to work, John.”

  “I’ll go with you to the train station.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? These bags are heavy.”

  “I’m going to have to get used to carrying them on my own and, and I don’t want you to know anything about where I am. This way you won’t know if I left by train or bus . . .”

  Or plane, I thought.

  “I can’t just leave you here,” he said.

  “Yes you can. Go on now.”

  That loop in the conversation went on for ten minutes or so. Finally she got him on his feet and shuffling toward the door. Their parting was melodramatic but there was real feeling behind it.

  When he was gone I took off the headphones and turned so that I could look upon my unsuspecting client.

  SHE SIPPED HER COFFEE and stared ahead. I did the same. I wasn’t worried about disease from the used cup. One thing I was certain about—at least most of the time—my death would sneak up on me, a master thief that I’d never see coming.

  Seemingly staring off into space, I wondered. One thing I knew for sure about Alphonse Rinaldo was that he expected his instructions to be followed without question or variation. I was not supposed to talk to Angie. Breaking this rule would at the very least sour my relationship with the Big Man.

  Yes . . . definitely . . . I would be a massive idiot even to entertain such an idea.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said.

  “Yes?” Her smile was immediate and natural.

  “Um . . .” I hesitated, or at least pretended to. “Let me show you my card.”

  I took out my antediluvian red-brown wallet and produced a card printed with my real name, occupation, address, and office and cell-phone numbers.

  She read the information and handed the card back.

  “Yes?” she said again.

  “I just stopped by here to get some coffee,” I said. “I’ve been working a couple of cases at the same time and needed the stimulus. But it seemed to me that you and your friend were very upset.”

  Her eyes said that I was right but that she couldn’t talk about it. There was an intimacy to this communication that I had expected from the girl.

  “I understand,” I said. “Here I am, a stranger. But you’ve read my card. We’re both here, living completely different lives . . .

  “I solve people’s problems for a living. Before you finish that coffee, you could ask me a question, without giving any details, and I could give you my opinion on the situation.”

  I could see it in her expression, the unguarded belief that anything could happen. That was why she wasn’t suspicious when her rent turned out to be one-third the going rate in Manhattan. In Angie’s life good things, like me, just happened.

  50

  On the surface it really was a good offer. I had seen the distress in her conversation with John Prince but I couldn’t have overheard them. And even if I had, they hadn’t said anything that would identify her or her specific problem.

  Staring at me, Angie saw a chubby, bald black man in an off-the-rack dark-blue utility suit. I could have been an MTA manager or a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman in the old Midwest. I certainly was not a criminal mastermind or anybody who had anything to do with her life up until that moment.

  “What if a client came into your office and told you that they had been associated with a crime but they were innocent?”

  “I’d ask why they’d come to me rather than go to the police.”

  This, I could see by her breathing, was the right answer.

  “And if they told you that they had done . . . something, and the circumstances might make her look guilty?”

  “I’d say that the police are really very good at their job and that they can usually sort out the innocent from the culpable.”

  Angie sat back and smiled. It was a real smile, hinting at mirth.

  “You don’t seem to want to get hired by this woman,” she said.

  “This is a perfect situation,” I replied. “If some rich woman with an emerald necklace and a little lapdog walked into my office I might be more persuasive. But this is just a busman’s holiday.”

  She liked the collegiate language.

  “What if I told you the woman in question had been threatened by a man already and when she went to the police they told her to call again if he did something else?”

  I sighed and shrugged.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d believe that.”

  “And then if she told them that men had tried to kidnap her in front of her house but still the police did nothing?”

  “Nothing?”

  “They came to her place and went through the motions. They said that they’d look into it but never called back. I . . . she called them, but they never even returned the call.”

  I sipped my secondhand coffee and wondered. The direction I had imagined for the morning had done a U-turn. I had to choose my words very carefully.

  “The main job of the private detective is an emotional one,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “There’s an insecurity in the client’s life and it’s my job to advise them on how to alleviate the anxiety. A cheating spouse or an embezzling employee, it doesn’t matter. I have to shed light on the uncertainty. Sometimes the cause is money, and other times it’s love.”

  “There’s no love in this situation,” Angelique Lear said.

  “I can see that.”

  “So what advice would you give your client?” she asked a stranger.

  “That depends on the nature of the criminal situation that this hypothetical client has been drawn into,” I said. “If it’s a physical crime I’d ask if there was any way that the evidence can point at the client. Could there be any witnesses? Someone who might have seen her, even in passing? Did she touch anything or leave any physical evidence like hair, handwriting, or maybe a bill from some purchase? Like I said, the NYPD can be very efficient. And a serious crime will have a bright light shone on it.

  “It might take years, but the wheels of justice do turn and often they catch onto some scrap that the client has left behind.”

  Angie had to swallow before asking, “And, and if it’s not a physical crime?”

  “I don’t think that’s a question in this case.”

  “Why not?”

  “The hypothetical client has been threatened with violence twice. And, if there’s no love involved, the crime would almost have to be a physical one.”

  I waited patiently, wondering where I’d be taken from there while Angie assessed her life along the lines that I had presented.

  “So, Mr. McGill,” she said at last, “how would you advise your client in this situation?”

  “I’d tell her that running was an option but not an easy one. She’d have to change her name and get a new Social Security number. I could give some suggestions along those lines. But I would have to tell her that she’d have to abandon any hope of reconnecting with her former life while living among strangers. And even in this new life she would remain a stranger. She could never tell the truth about her history or upbringing or education. And that young man who just left would never see her again.

  “That’s what I’d say about long-distance running. But, regardless, she’d have to run for a little while. If I took her on as a client I’d tell her to go to ground for a week or so while I investigated the threats and attempted kidnapping. I wouldn’t want to hear about any supposed crime that she might be implicated in. That way I could keep my nose clean if the cops got involved.”

  “But what good would it do if you couldn’t prove that she’s innocent of the crime?”

  “If the threats and the attack are the cause of the crime, I should be able to prove it—blind, as it were, to the circumstances.”

  “That seems kind of self-defeating,” Angie Lear said.

  “Yes, it does,” I agreed. “But it protects the client from admitting any involvement with a crime and it shields the detective from prosecution. Later on, if it comes to an interrogation room, or a courtroom, the detective can say that he was simply trying to help a young woman where the authorities had failed. And if the crimes are connected, it will serve to add weight to the client’s innocence.”

  Of course I didn’t mean what I was saying. I already knew her crime. I just wanted Angie to feel comfortable talking to me about her problems.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Tell me about the threats and the attack and I’ll give you a number.”

  Just the topic, even though she was the one who raised it, brought suspicion into my client’s face.

  “Can I see your card again?”

  I handed it over.

  She studied the information for a full minute and then got out her cell phone.

  “What’s your receptionist’s name?” she asked.

  “Mardi.”

  “Marty?”

  “Replace the ‘t’ with a ‘d’ and you’ve got it.”

  She entered the number, stood up, and walked away from our little tables. I watched her talking but couldn’t hear what she was saying. That didn’t matter, though.

  Later on, Mardi told me that Angie identified herself by name and then waited to see if it was recognized. When Mardi had no particular reaction, Angie left the message that she called.

  She came back to the table and sat down. There was decisiveness in her movements now.

  “Four weeks ago a man named Shell called me at my office,” she said. “He told me that he was a headhunter and that he had a job for me. It was the perfect job at a start-up ad agency in San Francisco. The salary was great. They’d agree to move me and all my things, and help to find me an apartment. I’d, I’d just broken up with my boyfriend and wanted to make a new start. It was everything I wanted.”

  “Sounds too good to be true.”

  “It was, but in my life I’ve had a great deal of good luck. Scholarships, good jobs, even my apartment was a lucky deal. I got into college because a counselor from Hunter came into a diner where I worked one day and we had a talk about how much I wanted to go to school.”

  “So you went to see this Mr. Shell?”

  “Yes. At first it was all pretty straightforward. He knew about my education and my work for Laughton and Price . . . that’s where I worked. But then he knew other things that had nothing to do with the job. He asked me about a man I never heard of.”

  “What man?”

  “Rinaldo.”

  “Rinaldo what?”

  “I forget. That might have been his last name.”

  “And you never heard of this Rinaldo?”

  “No. I had no idea who he was. That’s what I told Mr. Shell, and he started listing things—like grants and scholarships, even my job—things that he said I’d gotten over the years because of this Rinaldo. But I told him that I never heard of the man.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “Up until then he was very professional, nice. I mean if he wasn’t I would have left. But then he said that he hoped I was lying. I asked him why and he said because if I did know this Rinaldo he could do a lot for me, but if I didn’t that still wouldn’t get me off the hook.”

  “What’d he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to explain to him that I had no idea what he was talking about, but he didn’t listen. He told me that he’d wait a few days but that if I didn’t get back to him by then there’d be consequences. He also told me that if I spoke to this Rinaldo about our talk that I’d end up being collateral damage.”

  “And you really don’t know this guy?”

  “I never heard of him.”

  I didn’t think that she was lying. If she wanted to cover her relationship with Rinaldo she’d never have mentioned his name.

  “What did this Shell look like?” I asked.

  “White guy,” she said. “Kinda tall.”

  “Fat? Skinny?”

  “Just normal. You got the feeling he was pretty strong. His hair was dark but I don’t think that was his natural color. Here’s the card he gave me,” she said, handing it over.

  There was just a name, Oscar Shell, and a phone number with a 917 area code. I tried the number right then but the automatic operator told me that the line had been disconnected.

  “Where was it that you met him?” I asked.

  “The Leontine Building, on Park and Thirty-first.”

  After that she told me about the attack in front of her building. I pretended to listen as if this were all new information. I even asked a few questions about the men. But none of that mattered.

  Three-quarters of an hour had gone by when we had finished with her stories.

  “Three thousand dollars,” I said, “plus expenses. You can pay me when I prove that you are innocent on all counts.”

  “But you don’t even know what you’re saying you’ll prove me innocent of.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure that this Shell is dirty. All I have to do is show him to the cops and they’ll do the legwork.”

  “And if you don’t prove it?”

  “You save three thousand dollars and you can still run away.”

  “I never told you that I was going anywhere.”

  “Your bags did that.”

  “And so I should just stay here until I hear from you?” she asked rather hopefully.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so. You need to go where nobody knows you. You need a new name and identity.”

  I fished a Visa credit card out of my wallet. It was in my daughter’s name. This I handed over to Miss Lear.

  “Michelle Constance McGill,” Angie read. “Is this your daughter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Won’t she mind?”

  “She doesn’t even know the card exists. It has a fifteen-hundred-dollar limit. But remember—every cent you spend will go for expenses. Go find a cheap hotel someplace and call me at my office every day at four-thirty. If I’m out, Mardi will put you through to me wherever I am.”

  “Why are you doing all this?” she asked.

  “You look like a good kid,” I said easily. “If it works out, I make my weekly nut and see that justice is done—for a change.”

  51

  It only took a minute for Tiny “Bug” Bateman to disengage the lock on the shamrock-green, reinforced metal door to his underground apartment/workshop. This door was eight feet below street level on Charles, near Hudson.

  The electronics lab that had once been a living space was now a series of rooms lined with worktables containing every sort of gadget that a spy-store devotee could imagine. Listening devices, hidden lenses, specialized walkie-talkie telephones, motion sensors, and a lot of things I couldn’t even begin to explain.

  I was walking down the hall toward the one-time master bedroom that was now filled with a dozen or more linked CPUs that combined to make one of the fastest civilian computers in the world.

  Bug met me in the hall.

  I had never seen Tiny outside of the hole cut into the round table that dominated his control room. There he always sat, surrounded by more than a dozen screens, swiveling this way and that between keyboards and other, more exotic, devices.

  I had never seen his fat, café au lait feet before. As usual, he was wearing blue-jean overalls with no shirt and the red-and-blue iridescent glasses used to track the otherwise invisible spectrums that appeared on some of his more bizarre screens. He was four inches taller than I, close to three hundred pounds, and very, very soft. His curly hair was longish and unruly.

  “Tiny?”

  He lifted his hinged ultraviolet lenses, so that they flipped up over his forehead, and gave a rare smile.

  “Did you talk to her?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Zephyra,” he said as if he were the pope and I a priest who had somehow forgotten the Latinate Lord’s Prayer.

  “No, man,” I said. “I’ve been on a case. I’ve been working.”

  “You couldn’t make a call?”

  “Zephyra Ximenez is not a call girl,” I said. “Not when it comes to something like this, anyway. I was thinking that if I survived the next few days I’d meet with her at the Naked Ear and we’d talk. But now that I see you got feet that actually work, maybe all three of us could meet there.”

 

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