Just Watch Me

by Jeff Lindsay

  Whatever, I didn’t lollygag on the rooftops. I raced across the city—uptown, down to street level to cross Fifth Avenue, then up again and crosstown to West End and down at 66th Street. I loved traveling by parkour on a day like this one. Every time I launched into space, it felt like I would live forever.

  When I finally came down at 66th, I was smiling. It was a short walk to my goal, one of the last working phone booths in Manhattan. I love these old things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-tech. I use cutting-edge techno toys every day, and the edgier, the better. But I still think it’s a true shame that phone booths are dying out. Especially for somebody who every now and then needs to make a call that doesn’t leave any kind of cell signal, no ID, nothing at all to track you. Sure, somebody could figure out where the call was coming from. But by the time they could do anything about it I’d be long gone.

  That was exactly what I had in mind this morning. So the old phone booth at West End and 66th was perfect.

  I slid into the booth, no problem—can you believe nobody was using it? Not even to piss in? I dropped a quarter into the slot and dialed a number I’d memorized this morning. After three rings, a woman’s voice came on. She sounded like a cross between a robot and a high-priced hooker, a pretty good trick, if you think about it.

  “Grey Wolf Securities, Elmore Fitch’s office,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “Yes, hello,” I said in a British Oxonian accent I’d used before. And I have to say, it was pretty good. “I’m calling from Sotheby’s? I have an extremely important message for Mr. Fitch.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Fitch is in a conference,” the woman said, and her reply sounded so automatic it might have been recorded.

  “Well, of course he’s in a conference,” I said, trying to sound amused and patronizing. I mean, there’s more to doing Brit than just the sound. You’ve got to cop the attitude. “If he wasn’t in a conference, I’m sure we’d all be terribly worried. So be a dear girl and simply convey a message, won’t you? As I said, it’s rather urgent.”

  “Yes, sir, and what was your name, please?”

  “Tell Mr. Fitch that the Jasper Johns painting he purchased recently is a forgery,” I said, very happy, like all Brits are when something goes wrong. I mean, for somebody else. “If he’ll carefully examine the lower left-hand corner of the canvas, he’ll see proof of this. He will have to look rather closely, but I assure you, the proof is there. Lower left, yes? Can you do that like a good girl? Brilliant.”

  “And your name, sir?” the woman repeated.

  “Now please make sure he gets the message immediately, or even sooner, all righty? Brilliant. Ta,” I said, and hung up the phone. I was sure I’d been just superior and annoying enough. That, combined with the Oxonian accent, and the poor woman would have to assume I was the kind of asshole who can only live at the high levels. I had to be important and official, and she’d deliver the message. “Brilliant,” I said to myself, and I snorted. I mean, why do they always say that? Stupid habit. Fucking Brits.

  And then I dropped the whole lighthearted Limey thing and walked back down West End. The phone call and the parkour were fun, but that part was over now.

  From here on, things got serious.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Frank Delgado got to Syracuse bright and early his second day. He’d last been there about twelve years ago. Not much had changed. It was still Syracuse. The leaves already had changed colors and fallen to the ground, brown. And he still didn’t like Syracuse much.

  The police station was in the same place, and Delgado parked, went in, and presented his credentials. No problem. And the cops found the file easily enough. Of course, there was a little routine foot-dragging first. Delgado had expected it. He’d been in the field his whole career with the Bureau, and he knew very well that no local cop worth his badge was going to jump up and run through some hoops just because a Fed asked him to. But Delgado was patient, and eventually, when the locals had proved they didn’t give a shit about any Fibby, they turned him over to a Sergeant Valducci, a fireplug of a man in his fifties, broad across the shoulders, with arms like Popeye. Valducci was bald on top, with a short white fringe and massive black eyebrows.

  “We love to cooperate with the Bureau, Special Agent Delgado,” he said, and his gigantic black eyebrows moved as he spoke. “Let’s hike on down to Records.”

  Delgado nodded and followed the sergeant.

  “Well, shit,” Valducci said when he’d pulled the file. “This is sealed—court order, the perp is a minor.”

  “Was a minor,” Delgado said. “It was twenty years ago.”

  “Uh-huh,” Valducci said. “But it’s still sealed. That might mean he went straight, never arrested again . . . ?” He raised his giant eyebrows inquiringly.

  Delgado said nothing.

  “Oh. Like that, huh?” Valducci said. The sergeant frowned and brushed some dust off the folder. “I can get this unsealed, but it’ll take some time. Couple weeks minimum, and more likely months.” He shrugged and looked at Delgado. “Unless you can pull some Bureau strings?”

  Delgado looked back and studied Valducci’s face. One important reason he needed to see inside this folder was that the copy of the arrest report from the FBI files had no accompanying photograph. This might have been omitted originally to protect a juvenile. It might also have been removed later, for more sinister reasons. Either way, Delgado was still not entirely sure what Riley Wolfe looked like. So if Valducci was stalling, continuing the old Cops vs. Feds game, Delgado wanted to find a way around it and open the folder.

  But the dark eyes under the massive eyebrows looked back at him with nothing but patience. Delgado nodded. The sergeant wasn’t being a jerk. A file sealed by a court has to be unsealed by a court. Just as Valducci said, that could take weeks or months, and Delgado could end up using his entire leave just to get to his starting point. Unless—

  “Is there anything written on the outside?” he asked.

  The sergeant glanced down, turned the folder over, nodded. “It says, ‘Remanded to custody of Jefferson County Probation Department, Juvenile Services.’” He glanced up again. “Jefferson County, that’s Watertown. North of here?”

  “I know where it is,” Delgado said.

  “So what it means, they knew him up there, they came down and got him.” He slapped a hand against the file folder and waggled his eyebrows one more time. “You don’t need this thing. Jefferson County’ll have what you really need.”

  Delgado nodded. “Thank you,” he said. And he was gone before Sergeant Valducci could put the folder away.

  * * *

  —

  The drive north to Watertown took a little over an hour. Delgado took Interstate 81 all the way, and the traffic eased up after Liverpool, a few miles outside of Syracuse. He drove at a steady eighty miles an hour, until he reached Watertown. He left 81 on the Arsenal Street exit. That took him straight through town—a town that had grown much larger and busier since the last time he’d been to Watertown, on a security case at Fort Drum. And Watertown had grown because Fort Drum had gotten bigger and more important. There were a lot more census-conscious franchises like Arby’s and Taco Bell, which wouldn’t open a location unless the population hit a certain density. But it wasn’t just size; the flavor of the town had changed, too. There were even a couple of sushi restaurants, which would have been unthinkable in the decaying, blue-collar Watertown Delgado had known before.

  There were so many new shops and strip malls and cafés that Delgado wasn’t quite sure where he was. But the county probation department office was right on Arsenal, so there was no chance of getting lost. Twenty minutes after leaving the interstate, Delgado was standing in front of a desk and showing his credentials to a trim, middle-aged African-American woman who wore a lavender blouse and an expression that said she’d seen everything, and i
t mostly just made her weary. The sign on her desk read, “MAVIS WOLCOTT—Director Juvenile Services.” She frowned at his badge for a few moments, then flicked her glance up to his face.

  “All right,” she said. “How can I help the FBI, Special Agent Delgado?”

  There was a steel folding chair against the wall. Delgado moved it closer to the desk and sat. “I’m collecting background on someone who was in your system twenty years ago,” he said.

  Ms. Wolcott’s lips twitched. It was probably intended to be a smile, but it didn’t make it that far. “A little before my time,” she said.

  Delgado nodded. “I’d like to see his file,” he said.

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Riley Wolfe,” he said.

  Delgado was watching closely for any sign of recognition, but there was none. “What’s your interest in Mr. Wolfe?” Ms. Wolcott asked.

  “He’s a dangerous criminal,” Delgado said.

  Since she did not know Frank Delgado, Ms. Wolcott waited for details. He offered none. Finally she raised her eyebrows and said, “Well, I don’t see why not. I guess.” She picked up the phone on her desk and, after a moment, said, “Trish? I’m sending somebody down to see you. No, an FBI agent. Delgado. What? He can tell you that himself.” She hung up and said, “Trish Wolcinski, in Records.” And as he stood to leave she said, “Fair warning, Special Agent Delgado? Trish loves to chat.”

  Delgado just nodded. “Thank you for your help,” he said.

  Ms. Wolcott’s warning had not been an exaggeration. Before Delgado even had both feet into the records room, Trish was already talking.

  “You must be the FBI guy, right? Yeah, of course, I mean, who else would you be? Not that many people come here—I mean, duh, records, right? Who really cares enough to want to get all dusty? But I gotta say, you don’t really, really look like an FBI guy. I mean, no offense or anything, but you know. You look more like a drug cop, right? What is that, DEA? I mean, those guys are more—not that I’m, you know, it’s just—see, I’m from Detroit, you know, I just came here cuz my hubby was at Drum? Tenth Division? And he deployed and I thought, what the hell, it’s not such a bad place. I mean, it gets colder than you can believe in the winter—that’s, you know, that’s why they put Fort Drum here, okay? Because the winter is—”

  “I need to see a file,” Delgado said, much louder than he’d intended. It didn’t seem to bother Trish.

  “Sure, of course, why else would you be here? But I gotta say, most of our files are on computer now? Which is totally NOT a lot easier and more convenient like they said it would be—”

  “It’s from twenty years ago,” Delgado said.

  “Okay, sure, no problem. And it’s a local juvenile who was in our system at the time, right? I mean, Mavis didn’t say, but I just figured that—”

  “He used the name Riley Wolfe,” Delgado said. “I don’t think that’s his birth name.”

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh, they do that sometimes, I mean, I guess it’s a good idea and all, if you’re breaking the law, and so they get away with—”

  “The relevant date is here,” Delgado said. He passed her his copy of the arrest report from Syracuse.

  “Right, there it is, okay. Yeah, that’s not gonna be on computer, that’ll be an actual old-fashioned paper file, which means it’s gonna be right over here—you know, they were going to put all the old paper files onto computer a few years ago? But they suddenly, I mean the government, I guess, I don’t know which one, local or, you know, Washington? Anyway, it was probably some jerk in Congress saving money, but like suddenly we didn’t have a budget, so—”

  Trish whirled away toward the back of the room, talking full speed and running a finger along the front of the file cabinets as she chanted the dates, interspersing that information with haphazard comments about computers, filing, winter, her husband—there was so much, all of it random noise, that Delgado tuned her out and didn’t notice what she said again until the flow of talk stopped abruptly.

  “Huh,” she said suddenly. She looked up at him and frowned. “It should be right here, but . . .”

  Delgado crossed the room to the open file drawer, where Trish held a finger on an olive green hanging file. “Right here,” she said definitely. “You can tell, this is where it would be, matching the date and the—”

  “You’re sure?” Delgado asked.

  “Oh, absolutely positive, not the tiniest bit of doubt, it oughta go right here, and you can see, there’s even this empty hanging file where it went? Which means it was here, and now it isn’t, and that has to mean—”

  But Delgado didn’t hear what it had to mean. He was out the door before Trish could finish her sentence. He already knew what it meant.

  Riley Wolfe had been here first.

  Of course, he thought. Naturally he’d cover his tracks. There was no way to know how long ago—it might have been twenty years ago or yesterday. Getting in and out of this room would be child’s play for someone with Riley’s skills. He might have come during the day in one of his disguises. Just as easily, he could have gotten past the security at night. It didn’t matter how he’d done it; it was done, and there wasn’t much doubt who had done it.

  And although Delgado was a little disappointed, he already knew his next move by the time he got to his car. Watertown was still small, and twenty years ago it had been smaller. That made finding some things a lot easier. A few moments with his phone and Google, and he had the address.

  Delgado drove south for about a mile before he came to Watertown High School. It was the only high school in Watertown, except for a Catholic school, and Delgado chose to go with the odds and try the public school first.

  His badge got him into the principal’s office very quickly, where a worried woman in a pantsuit sat behind a desk that read, “JANE CRONK, Principal.” She stood up as he entered and offered her hand. “If this is about one of our students, I’m going to have to see a whole lot of paperwork from a judge,” she said by way of welcome.

  Delgado shook her hand, then sat down. “A former student,” he said. “From twenty years ago.” He hesitated, not used to volunteering anything, then added, “I’m collecting background information.”

  Ms. Cronk stood a moment longer, watching him. Then she said, “Hmp,” and sat back down. “I guess that’s a little different.” She leaned back in her chair. “All right,” she said. “What can you tell me, Mr.— Do I call you ‘Agent’? We don’t get many federal agents in here, and I’m not sure of protocol.”

  “Special Agent Frank Delgado,” he said. “Frank is fine.”

  She gave him a brief, businesslike smile. “All right, Frank. What can you tell me about this former student?”

  “Not much,” he said. “I was hoping you might have a teacher on staff who was here back then.”

  “Twenty years ago? I think we have three,” she said. She ticked them off on the fingers of her left hand. “Mr. Deutsch, the industrial arts teacher, has been here twenty-seven years. Ms. Caprino, I think it’s about the same, maybe twenty-eight. She teaches English? And Mr. Berdichevsky has been here for a whopping thirty-four years.” She raised an eyebrow.

  “The shop teacher first, please,” Delgado said. He thought for a moment. English sounded like a class Riley Wolfe would skip whenever he could. “What subject is Berdichevsky?”

  “Algebra,” Ms. Cronk said. “And he does the chess club.”

  Delgado nodded. “I’ll talk to him next.”

  Ms. Cronk tilted her head to one side. “No interest in the English teacher?” she asked.

  “If needed,” Delgado said.

  “All right.” She pointed to her left. “Conference room down the hall there. You can use that.” She turned to lead the way. “I’ll tell Abbie to bring them in one at a time.” She paused in the doorway, hesitated, then turned around to face him. “Wo
uld you like some coffee?” she said, a little uncertainly.

  “Yes. Thank you,” Delgado said. Ms. Cronk nodded and spun away.

  The coffee was pretty bad. Delgado didn’t care. He sat at the conference table and sipped as Cronk’s assistant, Abbie, brought in the first teacher, Mr. Deutsch. He was a burly guy with a buzz cut and a large tattoo on his forearm. Delgado glanced at it, just long enough to recognize the eagle, globe, and anchor of the US Marines. Deutsch sat across from Delgado practically at attention as Delgado questioned him. He answered carefully after thinking over each question for several seconds. But all Delgado learned was that Deutsch had served two hitches in the Corps, mostly embassy duty. He’d never heard of anybody named Riley Wolfe and didn’t really remember any students from twenty years ago, except one kid who’d cut off a finger in the band saw.

  Mr. Berdichevsky was no better. Riley had always shown remarkable planning skills, and Delgado had thought that because of that, there was a chance he’d been a chess player. But Berdichevsky had no helpful answers. Perhaps his memory was going; he showed more signs of advanced age than Deutsch had, and the broken veins around his nose indicated a heavy drinker. In any case, he was no help.

  From a habit of thoroughness more than from any real hope, Delgado sent for the third teacher, the English teacher, Ms. Caprino. She came in with quiet grace and confidence, a pleasant-looking woman around fifty, with unnaturally red hair. She sat down, smiled at him, and crossed her hands on the table in front of her.

  “Thank you for speaking with me, Ms. Caprino,” Delgado said.

  She inclined her head. “Abbie said you were asking about a former student? One of my students?”

  “I don’t know,” Delgado said. “I don’t even know his real name.”

  Caprino cocked her head. “Really. Do you know his un-real name?”

  Delgado almost smiled. He liked this woman. “He calls himself Riley Wolfe,” he said.