by James Tucker
Mayor Blenheim seemed shaken. But she said, “Nonsense.”
Buddy said, “We’ll do a DNA test on you and on Sloan Richardson’s body. The truth will come out.”
Mayor Blenheim glared at him.
“Your own daughter,” Buddy said. “Murdered in the name of your career.”
Mayor Blenheim pointed at him. “You have no idea, Detective. You’ll never achieve what I have, and you don’t know the cost of that achievement. But everything I’ve done has been in the service of this city, the greatest city on earth.”
“No,” Buddy said, shaking his head, “it’s been for you. And the costs have been borne by your daughter and many other residents of Chinatown and the surrounding area you’ve had killed over the past fifteen years. In return”—Buddy pointed at her—“you got campaign contributions and fame and power, and the holdouts got death. Russians supported you financially and in God knows what other ways, and as mayor you did nothing to stop their use of Cromwell’s condo projects to launder money. You and Stella Bannon and Erica Fischer—all of you made a devil’s bargain. Now all of you are going to pay. I’ll make damned sure of it.”
The mayor crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s crazy, Detective. And you can’t prove any of it.”
“You sure about that?”
She looked down her nose at him. “Of course.”
Buddy said, “You’re wrong.”
The mayor raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, Mayor. I’ve seen the photo. I have the photo,” he told her, although in fact Henry Lee had the photo in its white envelope. He said, “Do you remember the photo, Mayor?”
She didn’t react.
“No?” he said. “Then let me tell you about it. I found it with Sloan Richardson’s birth certificate. It’s the image of Sloan as a young girl. She’s standing on an Oriental rug. For a few days I thought it was the rug that was familiar to me, that I’d seen it before, and recently. But it wasn’t until three minutes ago, when you were bent over Rachel Grove, that I remembered the thing in the photo that was familiar.”
Buddy paused to see if the mayor would say anything, but she remained silent. He said, “I’ve learned a lot about jewelry over the past week. It can mean commitment or the end of commitment, such as an engagement ring. It can mean a symbol of war, like the one Chen Sung wore when a fisherman found his body off Long Island. It can also be a status symbol or a gift from one’s adoptive father, like the stainless-steel Rolex that Sloan Richardson wore when I saw her in this very building. But jewelry can also be a way of remembering the dead. Or the missing. When I was a kid in middle school, one of my teachers wore a silver bracelet with the name of an American soldier and the date he went missing in Vietnam. I’ve always remembered that bracelet because the missing soldier wasn’t a relation or even a friend to my former teacher. At the time, I thought it was strange to wear a bracelet every day to remember someone you’d never met. But other people wear those silver bracelets for people they do know. For friends and family members who’ve died or are missing.”
The mayor shrugged. “What of it?”
Buddy stared at her and said, “Didn’t your husband go missing in Iraq, after Desert Storm?”
She didn’t respond, but she glanced down at her right wrist. As she’d bent over Rachel Grove, her right jacket sleeve had been pulled back. Even in the dim corridor light, the silver bracelet flashed.
Buddy said, “The NYPD lab will blow up Sloan’s photo and increase the resolution of the bracelet. I’m confident we’ll find the name of your missing husband stamped into the silver.”
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her face lost its marble perfection. The firm set of her mouth softened. Her eyes dropped down to the floor, to Rachel Grove, and a single tear descended her cheek. For a long while she was silent. Then she said, almost in a whisper, “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have . . . I shouldn’t have treated Sloan that way. I shouldn’t have let her go, shouldn’t have abandoned her. It was a difficult time for me. With work and the first election coming the next year. And she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t the result of anything, really, just a warm day in San Francisco with a man whose name I never learned. But I shouldn’t have listened to Rachel. I shouldn’t have let her . . . let her arrange to have Sloan taken up in the plane and . . .” The mayor shook her head and sobbed once, only once, loudly, and then continued, “But what I’ve done, what I’ve accomplished, those must count for something. Weren’t my mistakes a small price to pay for making this city great?” She raised her head and stared directly at Buddy. “I stand by what I’ve done. In my shoes, wouldn’t you?”
Buddy looked at her and didn’t turn away. In her eyes he saw the pain recede, to be replaced only by endless darkness. He said nothing.
And then the mayor’s composure fully returned. She pushed back her shoulders, glanced once more at Rachel Grove by her feet, and said, “It’s late. Goodbye, Detective.” Then she turned toward the stairway at the end of the corridor and began to walk away from Buddy and Ward.
Buddy stepped forward, grabbed one of her arms, and held her tightly. He took her other arm as well and pushed her up against the tan plaster wall. He put her hands behind her back and held her. “You have the right to remain silent,” he began.
He had no cuffs, but the sirens outside became terribly loud, then stopped. He heard the sound of the lobby door opening below and many footsteps coming up the stairs.
138
Buddy walked west along Canal Street in Chinatown, his head bent into the rising wind from the west. Snow reached the ankles of his boots and made the sidewalk slippery, yet he kept going, zipping up the jacket Ward had given him. When he looked up, the flakes stung his eyes, but in a pleasant way. All around him the city was coated with white like confectioners’ sugar. Few cars passed by, and in one of those rare moments that came only a few days each year, the city was quiet and exceptionally beautiful. In these moments, the snow covered up the imperfections, the dirt and broken sidewalks and potholes, the buildings with roofs that needed repair or replacement. To him, the city looked like one of those photographs from the eighteen hundreds, all black and white and somehow easier to understand. And that was why he was outside rather than underground in the subway.
At a café, he stopped and ordered a large black coffee. After taking it with him outside into the cold wind, he held up his burner phone and dialed Ben’s number.
After eight rings, the line went to voicemail.
Sadness hit him. He couldn’t talk with Ben. Yet he left a message. “Ben,” he said. “It’s Buddy. I want you to know that you and Mei can come back home. The city is safe.”
Then he ended the call.
He walked north up Lafayette until it turned into Fourth Avenue and then Park Avenue. Kicking up snow as he went, he walked at a rapid pace through the bitter cold, his chest warming with the effort. He walked for a couple of hours, all the way to the Carlyle Residences on East Seventy-Sixth Street, and then he stopped.
In the darkness he watched his breath rising in the frigid air until it faded and disappeared. He stood by the familiar canopy and stared through the plate-glass window to the lobby that for months had been his. But now he remembered it was his no longer. He had no home or fiancée, no hoped-for son. And no job. Because the next morning, he was going to tender his resignation to Chief Malone. He was leaving the NYPD.
His chest hurt with the anguish of these losses. He was damaged and melancholy and shocked by the extent to which everything and everyone he cared about had been stripped from him. Yet he also felt something new. Something unexpected and surprising.
Hope.
Even freedom.
He could change his life. Nobody could stop him. And he would.
He’d chart a path to win back Mei. To become Ben’s father. He’d earn a living as a pianist. Somehow. And if not, he’d figure something else out. He wouldn’t give up, because giving up wasn’t in his nature. But as he thought more about it, he r
ealized his hope was tinged with uncertainty. Not fear of failure but of his ability to live without the job, without the badge. He’d known for years that he needed it more than it needed him. He’d built his life around it until the job had become part of him. By resigning he’d be cutting off something as important to him as his left arm. Maybe more important. And yet the sacrifice would be worth it.
As he turned and wandered almost aimlessly in the direction of Central Park, he wondered if he truly could give up police work. He’d have to think about it. When he was done thinking, he’d act. He turned again and looked back down Seventy-Sixth Street toward his former home and above it, the canyons formed by the buildings and above them, the sky brushed amber by millions of burning lights.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Will Roberts, a literary agent with a deep understanding of how stories are made; Jessica Tribble, for her support of this book and her suggestions to improve it; Peggy Hageman, for her careful readings; and the rest of the team at Thomas & Mercer. Most of all, thank you to my wife, Megan, for your partnership in our life together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2017 Jonathan Conklin
James Tucker is the author of the acclaimed Buddy Lock Thrillers Next of Kin (Book 1) and The Holdouts (Book 2). He holds a law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School and has worked as an attorney at an international law firm. Currently he manages real estate strategy at a Fortune 50 company, where his work includes frequent travel throughout the United States. Fascinated by crimes of those in power, he draws on these cases for his novels. One of four fiction writers awarded a position at a past Mentor Series at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Tucker has attended the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop in Portland, where he was mentored by author Walter Kirn. He lives near Minneapolis with his wife, the painter Megan Rye, and their family. Visit him at www.jamestuckeronline.com, or follow him on Twitter @JamesTuckerRTR.
