Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

“So that would have been Diaz’s defense? ‘Aliens were writing me secret messages telling me to shoot up the Thanksgiving parade’?”

“Commissioner Carroll wants you to put it together,” Sanchez said. He emphasized “you.” He made no effort to hide how he felt about it. “On this end? Diaz shot up the parade. Diaz is dead. Case closed.”

“And you’re wondering why Carroll is putting a freelancer on the trail of a closed case.”

“I’m wondering if I should wonder,” Sanchez said.

“White shadow.”

“I’m not an idiot, Malone. I know damn well the parade shooting is mixed up with the bomb at Barrymore’s. And now we’ve got Philip Byron’s fingers coming to us in a box. And we’re keeping quiet about it. This is all real bullshit. Give me the force your old man ran any day.” He balled his hands together and tapped his knuckles against his lips. “Yeah. There’s a white shadow, hombre. No doubt about it. All I can tell you, Malone, is to be careful. You step into a white shadow, guess what?”

“Tell me.”

“You disappear.”

I MET ELIZABETH SCOTT FOR LUNCH AT OUEST. SHE WAS SITTING AT A table in the back room, next to the window, working on a Bloody Mary. She looked fuzzy. Her hair. Her eyes. Even the set of her clothes. I told her so. She’s my half sister, we can lay things out fairly straight.

“You look fuzzy.”

“Very perceptive, Fritz. That’s exactly how I’m feeling.”

“Rough night?”

“I’ve had rougher.”

I took a seat. “How are the Bloodies?”

“Soothing. Stingy.”

The waitress appeared. Her blond ponytail danced as if it were on a spring. I pointed at Elizabeth’s glass. “One of those.”

The waitress took off. Elizabeth’s eyes followed as she took another sip of her drink.

“She’s cute,” I said.

Elizabeth cocked an eyebrow. “You want to arm-wrestle for her?”

“Take her,” I said. “I’m loyal to the court of Princess Margo.”

“Of course you are. So what’s the scrabble there, anyway? Are you ever going to make an honest woman of that girl?”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“She’s not pushing for it?”

“Her mother married a private eye. She doesn’t want to be her mother.”

Elizabeth made a face. “Who does?”

“I don’t think you really have to worry about that,” I said.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Where would you like me to start?”

She put a finger to her lips. “Let’s see. Phyllis starves herself so she looks like Audrey Hepburn, while I like a nice bloody steak every once in a while?”

“Okay. That works.”

“She took a perfectly nice Jewish nose and had it whittled down to an afterthought, while I happen to be rather fond of my own lovely battering ram?”

“You exaggerate.”

My Bloody Mary arrived. Elizabeth reached across the table and tapped my glass. “May the wind always blow you down. Or whatever that is.”

I took a sip. Soothing. Stingy. Just like the lady said.

The brunch menu included a salmon-and-goat-cheese omelet. I ordered it along with a side of toast. The food arrived in under five minutes. Elizabeth took two bites of her eggs Benedict and moved on to my toast.

“I can call the cute waitress back and order some more toast,” I said.

“Fritz, do I look like a girl with any flirt left in her this morning?”

“It’s afternoon,” I reminded her.

“Oy.”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

The restaurant was full, but unlike a lot of places, it handled sound well. An acceptable level of murmuring and occasional laughter. High ceilings, that was a lot of it. Except for the window tables, most of the seating was large plush red banquettes. It was a relatively new restaurant in the relatively restaurant-starved Upper West Side. The room was warm; the window next to me was dappled with moisture up to the table line. It brought a thin chill to my leg.

While we ate, we shot the breeze. Elizabeth shoots it better than most, even when she’s nursing a hangover. As I finished my omelet, she was doodling a face with her finger in the moisture on the window.

I asked, “Anyone I know?”

“My du jour du jour.”

“Not bad.”

“No,” she said, smiling prettily. “Not at all.”

“Okay,” I said, draining my Bloody Mary. “Let’s get to it. What the hell do we know about what’s going on with Paul? His wife and his mother think it’s an affair. Does his sister?”

“Honestly, Fritz, why do you bother?”

“Phyllis says someone beat him up.”

“So his affair is with a married woman, and the hubby got wise. Don’t you watch your soap operas?”

“I told your mother I’d snoop. She seems worried. Don’t ask me why, but I’ve always trusted Phyllis’s instincts. So what can you tell me? Is it a rocky marriage? Linda has been like a ghost to me the few times I’ve met her. I don’t get a reading.”

“Linda doesn’t exactly set the world on fire. But then neither does Paul. Should be a perfect couple, right?”

“Are they?”

“I honestly don’t know. Maybe they’ve been having some troubles. It seems like every marriage does. Paul wouldn’t exactly confide that sort of thing to me even if it was happening.”

“Any idea who he might confide it to?”

“Not Le Phyllis, that’s for sure.”

“So what do we have? Two kids. Nice apartment in Murray Hill. I assume there’re no major money problems.”

“God love a trust fund.”

“What’s Paul’s latest job venture?”

“The vocation-phobic Paul? Let’s see. This week I believe it’s fund-raising. Unless I’m already behind.”

“Fund-raising for what?”

“It’s a company you hire to help you with your fund-raising. I guess they write grant proposals, help organize parties, shake down corporations for contributions. Paul’s managed to get himself on the boards of a couple of nonprofits around the city. He likes that sort of thing. He’s a prestige freak, as you know.”

“As I know.”

“He hits me up for contributions. He hits up our mother. He hits up her friends. I guess it makes him think he’s a real pro at fund-raising. Who knows, maybe he is. Maybe he’s finally found his calling. High-end handouts. Though it’s not the sort of thing that would have made Daddy proud: It’s not what he would have considered manly work. I guess Paul is doomed to never figure that one out.”

“It’s been fifteen years. There’s no Daddy to be proud or not proud about anything.”

She held up a hand. “Tell it to Paul. He’s the one stuck under the shadow. After all, he’s always saying there’s that one chance in a million that Daddy’s still out there somewhere.”

I let this pass. This was Elizabeth’s fantasy every bit as much as she was saying it was her brother’s. Which isn’t to say I haven’t woken in a full sweat myself a number of times over the years, thinking I’d just heard the old man’s voice. Or felt the presence of his shadow in my room. That’s the stuff ghosts are made of.

I pulled out my notebook. “What’s the name of this company Paul’s with?”

“It’s called Futures Now.” I jotted it down. Elizabeth asked, “Do you think he’s having an affair with someone at work?”

I shrugged. “High percentage. It’s either work, friends or from something else he does on a regular basis. That’s your standard affair pool. I don’t see him as the random-bar-pickup type.”

“No. Not our Paul.”

I put away the notebook. “I’ll nose around. I’d go right to the source and ask, but he’d just lie to me. The way Paul feels about me, I could ask him his shoe size and he’d lie. But if he’s fooling around, I’ll get the name. I’ll give it to your mother. She’ll know what to do with it.”