“Hi!” she said, giving me a quick kiss as I crossed the threshold.
She was wearing another kimono—white, with gold and black dragon embroidery.
“I didn’t know where we were going, so I didn’t want to get dressed until . . .” she said, blushing a little.
“You’re perfect,” I said, holding up the gleaming cylinder.
“ Oh my God, this is the best Chinese food I ever had in my life,” she said, about forty-five minutes later.
I had opened the complex series of interlocking pots, each with its own dish inside. A few quick blasts with the microwave, and we had a five-course dinner that money, literally, couldn’t buy.
“I told you it would be a surprise,” I said.
“Where did you get it? I’m going to order from them for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, it’s not from a restaurant,” I said. “I know this old Chinese woman who makes special meals to order. She used to serve them in her house—”
“Oh, I heard about those kind of setups. You don’t get a menu or anything, and you have to book, like, months in advance, right?”
“Exactly. Only she’s not up to having people in her home anymore. She’s like a hundred years old,” I said, involuntarily tensing my neck muscles against a psychic slap from Mama. “I called her, gave her a few hours’ notice—that was what took so long—and she said she’d do it.”
“Wow. She really put herself out. It must have cost a—”
“Money wouldn’t make her do anything, not at her age. I told her it was very special, very important to me.”
“I . . . I wish I knew how to do things like that.”
“I guess I don’t, either. I never did it before. I was just thinking . . . about you, about going out to eat, how things . . . happened. Then I remembered this old lady, and . . .”
“Did you use to eat there a lot?”
“A lot? I ate there once. About, let me see, six, seven years ago? I was doing a profile on a big Chinese businessman. A puff piece, really, but I can’t support myself doing nothing but investigative stuff. He was the one who took me there.”
“Did you mention it in your article?”
“I wasn’t going to. It isn’t that kind of place, you could see that. But it wouldn’t have mattered. The piece got spiked, and I had to settle for the kill fee.”
“What’s a kill fee?”
“Say a magazine commissions a piece for five thousand. Then, after they see it, they decide not to go with it. If there’s a decent contract, they have to pay the writer some percentage of the fee, agreed on in front.”
“Why would they do that? Commission an article and then not use it?”
“There’s a hundred reasons.” I shrugged. “They decide they need the space for something else that month. Or the subject isn’t hot anymore. Or maybe they just don’t like the job you did on it.”
“But if they did that, you could just turn around and sell it to someone else?”
“If you can, sure. It doesn’t happen often. Every magazine is a different market, even when they’re competing with each other. What’s good for one isn’t always good for another.”
“ You don’t have to do that,” I said, later.
“You weren’t planning to return all the cookware without washing it?” she said, incredulous.
“No. I just meant, I could take it home, throw it in the dishwasher myself.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, dubiously. “I mean, not everything can go in the dishwasher. It’s easy enough to wash them by hand; I’ll be done in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Do you want to go out somewhere. Or just . . . ?”
“How about we go for a drive?”
“To . . . where? Oh. I guess that’s the point, right?”
“Sure is.”
“ Is this still Queens?”
“Yep. That’s Flushing Bay we’re looking at. You can’t see it from here, but La Guardia’s over to the left. The Bronx is on the other side of the water.”
“I was born, what, maybe forty-five minutes from here? And I never even knew it existed.”
“It’s a nice little community,” I said. “You got everything from working stiffs to big-time gangsters, with house prices to match.”
“With those other cars around, it’s like a drive-in movie, almost.”
“People come here for the same reason they go to drive-ins, true enough.”
“Did you know that in Singapore young couples go to drive-ins because the culture frowns on public displays of affection?”
“I didn’t have a clue. You know a lot about Singapore?”
“I’m hardly an expert. But everyone in the money game knows something about Singapore.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No. You?”
“Yeah, I was there, once.”
“What’s it like?”
“Very clean, very efficient. And very scary.”
“Scary?”
“I can’t explain it, exactly. Felt like everybody was so . . . anxious. Like something could descend on them any minute.”
“Were you there for a story?”
“No. I was on my way to Australia. But something happened with the connecting flight, and I ended up having to lay over.”
“I wonder why people would be so anxious there. It’s supposed to have a very low crime rate.”
“Maybe it was a misimpression,” I said. “I was only there for a short while. I wouldn’t ever write what I told you.”
“Why not?”
“I’m old-school,” I told her, trying to be Hauser in my mind. “I don’t like this ‘personal journalism’ stuff. Never did. What I told you, that was my own feelings, not facts. Private, not public.”
“That’s what this place feels like,” she said, snapping her cigarette out the open window and sliding in close to me.
Twenty minutes later, she moved back toward her side of the front seat. Rolled down her window, lit a cigarette.
“I never did that before,” she said.
“In a car?”
“Not just . . . in a car. Never.”
“Oh. I . . .”
“You don’t know what to say, do you, J.?” she said, a slight edge around the softness of her voice. “If you say you never would have known, it sounds like you’re calling me a liar. And if you say it was obvious I’d never done it before, you’re saying I’m not very . . . good at it, right?”
“None of that’s right, Laura. Not one word of any of it. Some people, they do things perfect the first time they try. Others, they could do it a thousand times and still . . . not do it very well.”
“I only meant—”
“But what’s really not right about what you said was the other part. It would never cross my mind that you were lying.”
“I thought reporters were supposed to be cynics,” she said, expelling smoke in a harsh jet.
“Cynicism is for adolescent poseurs. A person who’s been around the block a few times learns better.”
“What’s better?”
“Better is knowing some people are liars. I don’t mean they just told a lie, I mean they’re liars; that’s what they do. Better is knowing that even essentially truthful people lie sometimes, for different reasons. Better is knowing how to tell the difference.”
“You know when people are lying?”
“Not always,” I said, reaching over and taking her hand. “But I know when they’re not.”
We were both quiet for a while. Then she said, “I never asked you. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I have a sister.”
“Older or younger?”
“She’s my baby sister.”
“Is that why you asked me, before, if John was protective? Because you were?”
“No. I was just trying to get a picture of the whole family dynamic.”
“But you were, weren’t you?”
“Protective?
Sure.”
“You think that’s normal, don’t you?”
“I’m a reporter, not a judge.”
“J., I’m just asking you an honest question. Can’t I get an honest answer?”
“Ask me your question,” I said, watching her eyes.
“If someone tried to hurt your sister, what would you do?”
I saw pieces of Michelle’s childhood, playing on the inside of my eyelids like a movie on a screen. The kind of movie freaks sell for a lot of money. Felt the familiar suffusion of hate for all of them—from her bio-parents, who used her like a toy, to the agencies that treated a transgendered child like a circus freak, to the predatory johns who took little pieces of her in exchange for survival money, to . . . Oh, honeygirl, I wish I had been there, I said to myself. Again.
I waited a beat, still on her eyes.
“Kill them,” I said.
“ Do you have something to pick up?” Laura asked me, as I wheeled the Plymouth into the gigantic parking lot for the Pathmark supermarket in Whitestone. At just after two in the morning, the lot was almost empty.
“Nope,” I said, pulling over to the side. I put the lever into park, opened the door, and got out. I walked around to her side of the car, opened her door.
“You’re leaving the engine run—”
“Just come on,” I said, taking her hand and pulling her around the back of the car. “Get in,” I told her.
“You want me to—?”
I was already on my way back around to the passenger side. We both closed our doors at the same time.
“This isn’t like your Audi,” I said, as she wiggled around, trying to find the best driving position. “The gas pedal isn’t hyper-sensitive, but if you step on it hard we’ll launch like a rocket. The brakes are a little stiff when you first touch them; they take a little pressure. But if you floor them, we’re going to stop. I mean, right now, like someone dropped an anchor into the road behind us.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“Oh, great,” I said. “The first time I ever let anyone drive my baby and you tell me you’re nervous.”
“J.,” she giggled. “Stop it.”
“Your Audi’s a front-driver. This one’s not. If you get on the gas too hard in a corner, the rear end’s going to want to come around.”
“You make it sound like a ticking bomb.”
“It’s nothing of the kind,” I said. “Only reason I’m saying all this is that it’s a great contrast to what you’re used to driving. Take it slow, get used to it, and it’ll practically drive itself. You’ll see.”
“I . . .”
“Come on, Laura. I’ll bet you’ll be perfect at it, the first time.”
She gave me a look I couldn’t read. Then she put her left foot on the brake and pulled the lever down into drive.
I nodded approval. Laura took her foot off the brake, and the Plymouth started to creep forward. She delicately feathered the gas and we picked up speed.
“There’s nobody around,” I told her. “Give it a little gas.”
“This isn’t so bad,” she said. “I could just . . . Oh!” she gasped, as the Plymouth shifted stance and shot forward.
I had expected her to deck the brakes, but she just backed off the gas, got it under control instantly.
“It is fast,” she said.
I made her try the brakes a few times, to get used to the pedal.
“I can feel the power,” she said. “Like a huge dog, on a leash.”
“Let’s give it some running room,” I said, pointing toward the highway.
“ What a wonderful car this is, J. It was so nice of you to let me drive it.”
“My pleasure.”
“I was . . . wondering.”
“What?”
“Well, how come you . . . The outside of the car is so . . .”
“Grungy?”
“At least. But it runs so beautifully. Is it the money?”
“If you mean, did I put my money into the engine and the transmission and the suspension and then kind of run out of cash, the answer is ‘yes.’ But it’s been this way for a long while now, and I think I may actually like it better.”
“Better? Why?”
“It’s kind of . . . special-sweet to have something very fine, something that most people wouldn’t even recognize. They’d have to drive my car to know what it was.”
“And you’re not going to let them?” she said, smiling in the night.
“Why should I?” I answered. “I’m building her for me. Not for my ego.”
“What does that mean, for you, not your ego?”
“It means she’s perfect for me. Just for me. I don’t care if anyone else thinks I’m driving a rust-bucket; I know I’ve got a jewel.”
“Is that the way you are—?”
“About everything,” I assured her. “Everything in my life. Right down the line.”
O’Hare was in its usual state of high cholesterol, but the three of us had plenty of time to catch our connector to Cedar Rapids. On the way out, Pepper had ended up seated next to an elderly lady; Mick and I were side by side. By the end of the trip, the old woman wanted to take Pepper home with her. Mick and I hadn’t exchanged a single word.
All they had left at the car-rental agency was an Infiniti SUV. Mick kept calling it a stupid cow every time he had to take a curve.
He found the address easily: a smallish wood-frame house on a side street. Pepper turned around in the front seat so she could face me.
“You want us to go in with you, chief?”
“I think it might help if you did,” I said. “But if Mick’s going to pull his—”
“I’m in the fucking room,” he said.
“Mick!” Pepper said, punching him on the arm hard enough to floor most middleweights. “Come on!”
“The paper says she’s from around here,” Mick said. “She came home. If anyone here scares her, it’s not going to be me.”
“Let’s go,” I said.
“ Miss Eberstadt? My name is Michael Range. This is my assistant, Margaret Madison. And her husband, Bill. We apologize for coming by without notice, but I thought it would be better if you got to look us over before we asked you anything. People can give a real false impression over the phone.”
“I . . . What do you—?”
That’s when Mick took over. “We all work for a lawyer, ma’am,” he said. “Mr. H. G. Davidson, from New York City. I don’t mean I’m from there; I guess you can tell,” he went on, a warm, friendly smile on his transformed face. “I’m a paralegal, Mr. Range is an investigator, and Margaret here is an administrative assistant. Anyway, there’s a case back there that concerns you, a little bit, and we were sent out here. Well, I guess the truth is, the boss sent Mr. Range out, and we came along for the ride. I wanted to take Margaret home to see my folks, anyway.”
“What does this have to do with—?”
“Could we come inside for a little bit, ma’am?” Mick asked, in a voice I never would have recognized. “Unless this town has changed a lot since I was last home, I wouldn’t want to be talking about stuff like this out on the front step.”
“I . . . All right,” the target said.
Pepper and I watched in respectful silence as Mick danced with Eileen Eberstadt for almost an hour. We listened to her explain that her initial report had “all been a big mistake, like going to New York in the first place,” and how she “had nothing against anyone.”
Mick countered gently, explaining that Wolfe, the only one who had ever prosecuted Wychek, was now being charged with shooting him, and any help she might be able to provide would be greatly . . .
But the woman held firm, until I stood up and walked over to where she was sitting.
“Everything costs,” I said, softly. “And everybody pays. The only question is when, and how much. There’s a lot of people behind Ms. Wolfe. Serious people. Very committed. You’ve got your reasons for lying—don’t waste my time,”
I said, when she opened her mouth to speak—“and nobody cares about them. We’re not cops, and we’re not the bad guys, either. We’re not on anyone’s side except Ms. Wolfe’s. But we have a job to do, and now you’re it.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Just tell me what he took,” I said, even more softly. “Just tell me that one thing, and we’re gone.”
I tossed “forever” into her long silence.
“A skirt,” she said, looking down. “A little red pleated skirt. It was the bottom half of my cheerleader’s outfit. From high school.”
“ I got a call,” Davidson said.
I didn’t say anything, just watched the smoke from his cigar turn blue in the band of sun that came in the top of his office window.
“Toby Ringer, you remember him?”
“That’s a long way back,” I said.
“Sure. From when he was an ADA in the same office that’s prosecuting Wolfe now. Toby’s gone up in the world since then. Moved over to the feds. He was the boss of Narco there for a while, then he kind of dropped out of the public eye. But he’s the same man.”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning, you know how it works in our business. A man’s no better than his word. And Toby’s has always been gold.”
“Okay,” I said, neutral.
“So, anyway, Toby gives me a call, says we haven’t had lunch in a long time. How about Peter Luger’s, his treat?”
“Did he pat you down when you showed up?”
“Asked me to give my word that I wasn’t wired.”
“This was about Wolfe, right?”
“I’m getting to it,” Davidson said.
I went quiet again.
“Toby said it would be in my client’s interest not to push for discovery right now. He said, if we could be a little patient, he was absolutely confident—that’s the exact phrase he used—that the case would just go away.
“I told him we weren’t interested in a case going away. That happens, the case can always come back. He said he meant go away for good. Disa-fucking-peer.
“I told him he knows the game as well as I do. I can’t just sit on motions, or I end up waiving my right to them. He went over the time lines with me, said another few weeks and it would all be over.”
“So he’s just trying to save you time and aggravation?”
“I asked him the same thing. He fenced for a while. Finally, after he could see he wasn’t getting over, he told me Wychek’s going in the Grand Jury soon.”
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