Lee Vance: The Garden of Betrayal

“Mark Wallace,” I answered.

“It’s Reggie.”

“How’s-”

“I’m on a taped line,” he interrupted immediately. “Joe and I are both all right, but everything went to hell at the motel after you climbed out the window. The detectives who caught the case want to talk to you.”

I pulled open the lobby door and entered the hotel.

“Of course. You got any idea yet who the guys in the parking lot were?”

“I can’t talk about that. The investigation’s being run out of One Police Plaza. Deputy Chief Ellison is supervising. He wants to send a car to get you.”

“Shit. Ellison the only senior guy you got in that department?”

“No. But he’s taken an interest.”

“Great.” I spent a moment thinking about everything I needed to get done in the interim. I had to wash up, ditch my shirt, and move my family. “Tell the chief that I’ve spent a lot of time at One Police Plaza. I can get myself there. Figure an hour, hour and a half, maybe.”

I heard a familiar voice in the background. It sounded like Lieutenant Wayland.

“Be better if we had a car pick you up,” Reggie said flatly. “Powers that be are anxious to chat.”

“Doesn’t work. I got a couple of things to get squared away first.”

The same voice spoke again, angrily. Reggie cleared his throat into the phone.

“You at your apartment?” he asked, suggesting the lie to me.

“Will be soon,” I replied, following his lead. It didn’t matter to me if Wayland dispatched a couple of cops to hang out in my lobby. “See you in an hour.”

“Right.”

I hung up and stepped into an available elevator, hoping like hell that Reggie was right about how his department was going to respond to everything. It hadn’t sounded like anyone wanted to give him a medal. I touched the button for my floor as two men boarded behind me. One pressed the button for the third floor. The other turned toward me, a gun in his hand.

“This is a good time for you to be very calm, Mr. Wallace,” the man holding the gun said. The weapon was small, but the opening looked like the mouth of a cannon. My heart was pounding, but my only thought was of Claire and Kate.

“You going to shoot me, shoot me now,” I said, the words coming out with surprising firmness. “I’m not taking you to my family.”

“We prefer not to shoot you,” the second man said. “And we’re not interested in your family. We want only a few minutes of your time. Our superior would like to speak to you.”

They were both big and swarthy-Italians maybe, or Greeks. The guy with the gun spoke like an American, but the second man had a familiar, nasal accent I couldn’t place.

“This superior of yours have a scar on his face?” I asked, thinking they might not have heard about the shoot-out. “Because if he does, you’re on a fool’s errand. He’s not going to be talking to anyone.”

“You can find out for yourself,” the man with the accent said. The elevator doors opened on the third floor. “Shall we?”

I didn’t see that I had any choice. He led me off the elevator and to the right, the man with the gun following. The floor was all function rooms, vacant in the pre-dinner interlude. Passing an open door, I saw a uniformed Hispanic man setting a banquet table with glassware and thought about yelling out for help. The guy behind me must have followed my gaze.

“No call to get any civilians involved,” he whispered, nudging me with his weapon.

We walked to the end of the corridor, passed through a metal fire door, and ended up on the landing of the emergency stairs. The man with the gun spun me around and pushed me against a wall, holding me by the collar while his companion searched me. The only thing he seemed interested in was my phone.

“A disposable,” he remarked, taking it from my pocket. “I would have expected something more high-end from someone in your income bracket. Any particular reason?”

Despite the weapon to my back, it struck me that neither man had been particularly threatening thus far. They sounded almost conversational, entirely unlike Smith. It made me wonder if I was dealing with another outfit altogether.

“I had something more high-end. Someone reprogrammed it as a listening device. You know anything about that?”

He shrugged, looking thoughtful.

“The man you’re meeting might. Let’s go.”

We walked down the stairs and exited the building onto Fifty-sixth Street. A white delivery truck was double-parked a few yards away, gold lettering on the side advertising an appliance dealership in the Bronx. I remembered Joe’s description of the vehicle at the motel and came to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk.

“You’re the guys who shot those men in the parking lot. You just changed the sign on the side of your truck.”

“Lot of trucks like ours in the city,” the man behind me said crisply. He pressed the gun into my side. “Keep moving, please.”

I glanced left and right as much as I could without turning my head. The sun had set, but the street was crowded with pedestrians, and I could see a police car on the corner across Sixth Avenue. It was the best opportunity I was going to get to make a break for it. An expression I’d heard once came back to me: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I took a deep breath and stayed close to the man in front as he edged between two parked cars and opened the passenger door to the truck. He tripped a lever to fold the seat forward, hoisted himself up, and ducked through a dark curtain into the cargo area. Fighting back my fear, I followed.

A hand gripped my arm and guided me as I stepped through the curtain. A sickly red light illuminated the area beyond, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The interior was partitioned, the rear section hidden from view. The space I was standing in was about eight by ten. Three captain’s chairs were bolted to the floor in front of a counter that ran the length of the side wall, the space above filled with racked electronics. The center chair was occupied by a man with a shaved head who appeared to be in his early fifties. He was wearing an open-collared button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and khaki pants. The red light made him look ghoulish.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing toward the chair to his right. “Please.”

He had the same accent as the man still holding my arm. The passenger door slammed behind the curtain, and the truck’s engine roared to life. Being in the truck seemed like a much worse idea than it had when I was on the sidewalk.

“I’d like to know who I’m talking to first.”

“Shimon,” the bald man said, indicating himself. He pointed to the man standing next to me. “And Ari.”

“You’re Israelis,” I said, the names helping me place the accents. “I don’t get it. What are you doing here?”

The vehicle jerked forward without warning, and I would have fallen if Ari hadn’t caught me.

“Sit,” Shimon repeated. “We’ll talk. I’d hate for you to get injured. A mutual friend of ours always spoke very highly of you.”

“What friend is that?”

“Sadly, a friend who isn’t with us anymore. The name you knew him by was Rashid al-Shaabi.”

Ari had to help buckle me into one of the captain’s chairs, the combination of movement and surprise making me clumsy. Shimon touched a button on the console over the counter; the red light winked out and a dim fluorescent came on. It was an improvement, but the entire situation still seemed surreal.

“Rashid was an agent of the Israeli government?”

“We don’t talk about things like that,” Shimon replied solemnly. “But I can tell you that he was an Israeli citizen. The medical examiner here just released his body to my government. His will stipulated that he be buried in Jerusalem.”