Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

I looked at the clog of cars and trucks all around me. The sense of permanence, of taking root, was growing palpable.

“I’m going to age gracefully,” I said. “Right here on Thirty-fourth Street. Maybe you’ll come by someday and visit me.”

“Maybe.”

“Get moving,” I said.

We hung up. I surveyed the scene again. You, too. For Christ’s sake, get moving. I checked the time. It was approaching two.

A minute later, it was a minute later.

DOUBT EVERYTHING.

I drove to Midtown North and asked to see Remy Sanchez. I was told that he had left five minutes earlier to go downtown for a meeting with the police commissioner. I returned to my car and got onto the West Side Highway, which was a safer road to run red lights on than the more congested so-called surface streets. I parked a block from One Police Plaza and jogged across the bricks to the glass doors leading into the building. I took a seat on a metal bench out front. Unless Sanchez had driven down with his cherry light spinning, I was pretty certain I’d beaten him.

I had. After a few minutes of waiting, I spotted Sanchez coming across the plaza. I rose from the bench as he approached.

“Captain Sanchez.”

He stopped. “What are you doing?”

“I need to talk with you.”

“You want to- Suddenly, I’m Mr. Popular.” He indicated the glass doors. “ El jefe wants to see me.”

“I need to talk to you about the problems in the Ninety-fifth. It’s important.”

“That’s not my precinct.”

“I know. I also know that inside dope the rest of us never hear has a way of making its way from precinct house to precinct house. The old invisible stream.”

“What if it does? Why should I talk to you about it?”

“I think there’s a link between the problems at the Ninety-fifth and the crap that went down on Thanksgiving. I’m not exactly sure what it is.”

“That still doesn’t explain why I should talk to you.”

“You know the latest on Philip Byron?” I asked. “Another one of his fingers ended up in the mouth of a murdered woman last night?”

He nodded tersely. “I got that.”

“The guy who’s holding Byron, he’s a punk out of the Nine-five. I think he’s got a substantial tie-in with some of the cops up there. They might even be helping him stay hidden, I don’t know.”

“Does Carroll know all this?”

“Some of it,” I said. “Truth is, I don’t really know how much he knows.”

“Look, I’ve got to get in there. Carroll said he’s got to be somewhere at three. I don’t know what all this is about. Why don’t you just talk to Carroll?”

“I want street-level information,” I said.

Sanchez smiled, but without much humor. “Muchas gracias for the demotion.”

“You know what I mean. Carroll’s half cop, half politician. That’s the job. You’re a captain, but you still hear the beer talk.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Let me give you a quote: ‘When pieces don’t fit together, the truth is usually in the cracks between them.’ You remember saying that to me? You were talking about a white shadow. You said a white shadow was all over this thing. You were right. And right now I don’t need the kind of light Tommy Carroll is going to shine on it. All I can ask you to do is trust me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my cards. “There’s my cell number. You said Carroll’s got to be somewhere at three, so you’re only going to be in there for half an hour. I’ll stick around. Call me when you get out of your meeting. I just need to bounce a few things off you.”

Sanchez looked at the card, then pocketed it. “I’ll call you. It might be to tell you to stuff it, but I’ll call you.”

“Good. And listen, don’t tell Carroll we talked.”

He had pulled the glass door open. He paused. “Look at me, Malone,” he said. “What do you think? Was I born yesterday?”

The sky had darkened while we spoke. Low gray clouds were settling in over the city. I had time to kill. I realized that Paul Scott’s office was nearby. There was nothing I could think to do about Angel Ramos until after I’d talked with Sanchez, so I decided I might as well rattle a chain for my other client. I called Information and got the address of Futures Now. They were located on the west side of City Hall Park, near the Woolworth Building. I hoofed it over and took the elevator to the eighth floor.

“I’m looking for Paul Scott,” I said to the woman at the front desk. The words FUTURES NOW hung on the wall behind her in silver block letters. The woman was wearing a headset. They’re plenty popular now, but they still make me think of air-traffic controllers. She directed me to take a seat as she punched a button on her console.

“Paul? There’s someone to see you.” She looked up at me. “May I have your name, please?”

Almost without thinking, I replied, “Nicholas Finn.” That’s the name I keep at the ready for those times when my job requires an identity dodge. I’ve got a folder full of falsified Nicholas Finn documents back at my office. The name had been an easy one to choose. The real-life Nicholas Finn had died not ten feet from me back when I was still attending John Jay. It wasn’t an easy death to forget. Let’s say, impossible. Years later, when Charlie Burke suggested I put together an alias to have at the ready, Nick Finn had slid into my skin so quickly I’d felt an actual chill. Why I gave it to the receptionist, I can’t say. She repeated it into the phone, then said to me, “He’ll be right out, Mr. Finn.”

A minute later, Paul appeared. He saw me and automatically scanned the reception area.

“Mr. Scott?” I said, standing up.

He fixed on me. “What the hell is this about?”

“I was in the neighborhood. I thought maybe you had time for a coffee.”

“What’s this about?” he said again.

I asked, “Is there a place we can talk?”

Paul said nothing. The receptionist was watching with increased interest. Paul glanced at her, then at me. “Come on.”

I followed him through a door to a large room that was divided up into clusters of cubicles. The walls were celery green and the cubicles a pale blue. People were sitting at their desks tapping away on keyboards and talking softly on phones. In the center of the room was a copy machine. A woman with red hair stood in front of it. The lid was lifted and the lightning-blue light from the copier was playing over her face. She looked up as Paul and I paused at the door. Paul led me along a row of cubicles, past a room with a swinging door and into an office about the size of a roach motel. He ushered me in, glancing out at the sea of cubicles before closing the door. I looked around for a place to sit. The only chair was behind the small desk. Good breeding told me not to grab it. Paul didn’t take it, either. He remained at the door, loading his weapons.

“What are you doing here, Malone?”

I flipped a conceptual coin. It came down on the side of not pussyfooting.

“Your wife and your mother suspect that you’re having an affair,” I said. “I was asked to look into it. It’s a dirty job, et cetera, et cetera. I begged off, but Phyllis said she’d rather keep it in the family, so to speak. Better me than some other Joe Gumshoe. I’ve been preoccupied lately, but since I was in the area, I thought I should try to earn my nickel.”

Paul’s skin had turned the color of putty. “My mother is paying you to spy on me? I can’t believe this. Does Lizzy know about this?”

The question was pure Paul. The nervous sibling. Paul Scott could be in a room all by himself, and he’d decide the shadows were ganging up on him. He hated that Elizabeth and I got along 100 percent better than she and he did. He hated this nearly as much as he had hated my relationship with our old man. I threw him a bone.