Lee Vance - The Garden of Betrayal

I drained the cup while she checked my blood pressure and fussed with my bedclothes.

“He has to go,” the nurse said, jerking her head toward Reggie.

“Soon,” I promised. “We just have a few more things to cover.”

She left, muttering unhappily.

“You have any details from the hotel?” I asked Reggie.

“You sure you want to hear?”

“Yes. I need to know.”

He sighed.

“Had a quick word with a guy on the scene. Best our people can figure, someone rigged a phone with a shaped charge inside the earpiece. Rashid put it to the side of his head, and they detonated it by remote control.”

I closed my eyes for a second, overwhelmed by a sense of unreality.

“You like to take a few minutes?” Reggie asked.

“No. I’m okay. What’s a shaped charge?”

“Explosive designed to project force along a single axis. You were at a right angle to the axis because of the way Rashid was holding the phone, so you didn’t catch much of it. Bodyguard was at a less oblique angle, so he caught more.”

“So, Rashid was the only target?”

“Seems like. Else they would have used something with a bigger spread.”

“Anybody get a good look at the guy who handed him the phone?”

“Security camera grabbed a decent shot of him. He was dressed like a hotel employee, but he doesn’t work there. Feds will be able to check his picture against their digital photo records. Technology on that is pretty good now. They might get lucky.”

I wiped sweat from my forehead, wincing as I inadvertently tugged at my bandage.

“Rashid was a good buddy of yours, wasn’t he?” Reggie asked gently.

I shrugged, not ready to start down that path. Rashid had been a friend, a colleague, and a mentor. He was one of the few people I could talk to about almost anything, and he’d always been there for me. At the end, I’d suspected him of betraying me, and he’d died before I could ask him for help on the one thing that mattered to me most.

“I’d like to get out of here now.”

“Doctors want to keep you overnight.”

“No. Fix it for me, please.”

He tapped a thumb against the side of his leg, frowning.

“Doctors aren’t as suggestible as regular people. And we got another problem.”

“I can’t deal with any more problems.”

“I hear you. But you’re going to have to make a statement. Investigating officers will be here soon to talk to you. You have to decide how much to tell them.”

“Why not everything?”

“Might be the right thing to do. But the department likes to keep things simple. You start talking about all that stuff you have taped to your hotel-room wall and their heads are going to spin. That whole cold-case thing is only on TV. Real life, the powers that be only worry about what’s in the paper today and what’s going to be in the paper tomorrow. First priority will be to nail a guy for doing Rashid. Beyond that, it might play either way.”

“Meaning?”

“NYPD side of things is being supervised by Deputy Chief Ellison, guy you met in Walter’s office.”

“Great.”

“Chief’s not stupid, no matter how many pops he has in him, but he is political. He might assign a team of people to get to the bottom of this whole thing, or he might decide to leave well enough alone. It depends on what he thinks will work better for him with the mayor and the press.”

“What do we care if he decides to leave it alone? We can still keep working on this thing ourselves unofficially. Right?”

“Not as easily,” Reggie said, shaking his head. “It’s one thing for me to be poking around outside my territory when no one’s paying attention, but it’s another for me to keep at something when I’ve been ordered to stand down. Chief doesn’t let much slide, and I want to clear some more names off my list before I pull the pin.”

“So, you’re suggesting I keep my mouth shut about everything except the basic facts.”

“It’s a judgment call, but yeah, that’s how I’d play it right now. We might be able to lean on the Feds later for some informal help, if we need it. I have good relationships there.”

I crossed my arms and tucked my fists up into my armpits, struck by a sudden chill. There were too many powerful people in the mix for me to risk coming clean just yet-Senator Simpson, Walter, the Saudis. Any of them could bring intense political pressure to bear to orchestrate a cover-up, if necessary.

“Fine,” I said, feeling shakier by the moment. “But I got to tell you-I can’t take any more people dying. It seems like everything’s been going sideways on me for a long time, and now it’s all picking up speed.”

“I been there,” he said. “Lots of times. You just got to hang on.”

One of the green curtains jerked sideways. I expected the nurse, but it was Deputy Chief Ellison at the foot of my bed, Lieutenant Wayland directly behind him.

“Irish Reggie Kinnard,” the chief said. “As I live and breathe.”

“Chief,” Reggie replied evenly.

“He got that nickname in the four-one,” the chief confided to the lieutenant sotto voce. “First year out of the academy. You know why?”

“Boozer?”

“No more than anyone else,” the chief muttered irritably. “No, they called him Irish because he was old school, inclined to solve problems with a minimum of paperwork.”

“New department these days,” the lieutenant observed piously. “New rules.”

Reggie laughed. The lieutenant looked angry, but the chief smiled.

“I been meaning to look you up,” he said to Reggie.

“Why’s that?”

The chief pointed his chin at me.

“Because I looked him up, and I learned that he’s got a missing kid, and that you’ve been beavering away on it for the better part of the last decade. Very admirable. Makes the department proud. But I’m guessing that also makes you the guy who’s been leaking confidential information on one of our priority cases to him. And that’s not so admirable.”

“Fidelis ad Mortem,” Reggie said. “My bad.”

The chief kept smiling.

“Happens again and you’re going to have a lot more free time to fish for stripers with your old partner Joe Belko, no matter how many pals you got on the community boards. You read me?”

“Loud and clear, chief.”

“Good.”

The chief turned to look at me, the lieutenant’s head following as if it were attached.

“And what about you?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Either you’re the unluckiest son of a bitch in the city of New York or you’re dirty in this up to your elbows.”

I was tempted to tell him to fuck off, but I decided to follow Reggie’s lead. I didn’t feel strong enough to get involved in a pissing match.

“Unlucky, I guess.”

“I see. And what can you tell me that might shed light on the untimely demise of the city’s esteemed Arab guest Mr. al-Shaabi?”

“Zero. Rashid and I got together periodically to talk about the energy markets. He called yesterday out of the blue and asked me to stop by. We spoke for a while, and I woke up here.”

“Spoke about what?”

“Ongoing production problems in Iraq, and how the rest of OPEC will respond.”

“So, it’s pure happenstance that I’m bumping into you on two separate murders in the same week.”

“I thought Alex was an accident,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry again.

“We have an expression in the department: Who the fuck knows? We say suicide, his rich and well-connected father says accident. We say accident, his father says maybe someone put him in the tub. I don’t mind admitting that we’re a little confused. You haven’t had any more thoughts on Mr. Coleman’s death, have you?”