by Cleo Coyle
Buckman wiped his mouth with a napkin, brushed crumbs off his polo shirt. “The driver wasn’t careful. We found a wineglass on the seat. Good stuff, too.”
“You found alcohol?”
“I meant the glass. Quality. Real crystal. Like that gift registry crap they sell to rich stiffs on Fifth Avenue. I have someone tracing it now.”
“I see. Waterford only interests you if it’s a hood ornament?”
Buckman ignored my quip, reached into the backseat. When he turned around again, he held a laptop computer. “I hate to do this to you, Clare, but you need to watch this. It’s not pretty, but it is important.”
He opened the computer and placed it in my lap.
“What is this?”
“A surveillance video taken from the Hudson Antiques near your coffeehouse. They have lots of security cameras.”
Buckman hit play and the cursor began to spin. “It’s twelve seconds long. The footage is going to run twice. First at normal speed, then in slow motion.”
In black and white and shot from the second floor, the camera looked down at the street. Hudson’s asphalt was all grays and blacks, with the van suddenly streaking through the murk like a great white shark.
I was surprised to see two people in the vehicle’s path, not just Lilly Beth. The van clearly swerved, missing a man in plaid shorts before striking Lilly, dragging her out of the frame.
“God,” I choked.
“Watch it again,” Buckman insisted.
It was worse in slow motion, like some catastrophe that you’re sure you can stop, but you can’t. Buckman’s grim narration didn’t help. Then he suddenly punched the pause key.
“Nobody mentioned this guy, and I wish we could find him.” He was pointing to the man in plaid shorts.
“I’ve seen him in the Blend a few times. I’ll keep an eye out for him. Get me a screenshot of this, and I can have my baristas look for him, too.”
“Good. Now watch.” He restarted the video. “You see how the driver swerves to avoid the guy in the plaid shorts, then gets back on track and points the van directly at Lilly Beth.”
This time I looked away before the van hit my friend. Once was enough.
“What you saw just now tells me something you haven’t considered. It could easily have been you who stepped around your food truck and into the street. At that angle, the van driver may not have been able to tell the difference between you and Lilly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve got your hunch. Here’s mine. I think you were the target. I think the driver saw you earlier in the day, noted what you looked like, what you were wearing, and waited for a chance to kill you. I also think this driver isn’t finished. He, or she, is going to try again.”
TWENTY-TWO
BUCKMAN closed the laptop. “Do you understand, Clare? You could be in danger.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You need more reasons?”
“Please.”
“Here are my facts: (1) You and Lilly are about the same height, have similar hair color and attractive builds. At the time of the hit-and-run, you were both wearing jeans and yellow blouses. (2) The incident occurred in front of your coffeehouse, where you work every day. Lilly could have been run down at a lot of locations, easier ones than Hudson Street on a busy Friday night. This driver could have run her down near her home in Queens, where she takes her son to school every morning and picks him up every afternoon. Lilly’s mother even told me she jogs nearly every day on the streets of Jackson Heights—”
“You spoke to her mother?”
“At the hospital.”
“How is she doing?”
“Okay, considering what she’s going through. You know, I was expecting a waterfall as soon as I started to grill her. Don’t get me wrong. That’s just how it is after an accident. People are wrapped up in their own grief; they can’t think of anything else. But not Lilly’s mother, Mrs. Salaysay. As soon as we met, she treated me the same way you did.”
I drew a blank.
“She asked after me—wanted to know if I was hungry. Did I want to eat something? She had this box full of goodies beside her. Kept dishing out treats to the people at the ICU. Crazy stuff. Plantains and yam chips, or some damn thing…”
“She had a balikbayan box—”
Buckman blinked. “Looked like a regular box to me. Corrugated, about yea big—”
“A balikbayan box is tradition. Filipinos are generous by nature, with their families and friends, even with strangers. When they travel abroad, they gather gifts from that foreign place—trinkets, edible treats, toys for children. They pack the little gifts into those big boxes and ship them home. That’s how it started, anyway, as a homecoming gift.”
“So it’s a Christmas-all-the-time kind of thing.”
I nodded. “Lilly’s mom runs a small eatery in Queens, and lots of people in the community know and love her. These days, balikbayan boxes go both ways. She probably has boxes shipped to her all the time. The tradition itself is called pasalubong.”
“Sounds like pass-it-along.” Buckman smiled. “Nice. I like it.”
“You would like Lilly, too. I mean… I hope you get the chance to like her…”
“I like her already,” Buckman said with a softness in his voice that surprised me. “I spent some time at her bedside,” he explained. “I was hoping she’d wake up, that I could talk to her. But there were complications. Another surgery. Brain surgery.”
“I heard.”
Buckman rubbed his prominent chin, glanced away. “Why does a woman look so small in a hospital? Is it because the beds are so big? Or because she’s just fading away…”
As his voice trailed off, I wondered if he was talking about Lilly, or flashing back to his late wife—the first one, the soul mate who’d died at the hands of a hit-and-run driver. Did Mrs. Buckman linger in a hospital bed? Did Max watch helplessly while the love of his life slowly slipped away from him? I wanted to ask, but it wasn’t appropriate—and the last thing Quinn would want was for me to betray his confidence.
“Lilly’s not fading,” I said instead. “She’s too gutsy for that. She won’t give up, Max. She’s a fighter.”
He turned back to me. “I got that impression from the article in the paper.”
I stared the man down. “I want you to know something about that article, about the way she came off. Lilly’s seen the hardships and heartbreak that pediatric diabetes can cause, especially in poor communities. If the article makes her sound strident, a little too John Fairway, that’s just a measure of her passion.”
“Nice speech, Cosi. But we’re on a detour. I’m asking why this incident went down in front of your coffeehouse, and I’m concluding it was because of you.”
He reached into the glove compartment, brought out a narrow notebook and a pen.
“Let’s do this by the book, shall we? Have you noticed any suspicious people hanging around your place of business? Your home?”
“They’re one in the same. And I run a coffeehouse, so I have lots of people ‘hanging around.’ You might also define ‘suspicious,’ and bear in mind we’re talking about New York.”
“Okay, anyone following you? Phone calls late at night? Hang-ups? Threatening letters or e-mails?”
“Nothing! The only thorn in my side is Kaylie Crimini.”
Buckman nodded. “We covered her.”
I swallowed the last of my coffee. “So you’ll get statements from her and her crew?”
Buckman nodded again.
Great, I thought. “And you’ll get fingerprints from Kaylie and her staff to check against what you’ve found in the van, right?”
“As long as their prints are in our database.”
“What if they aren’t? Can’t you bring them in, get their prints that way?”
Buckman massaged his eyes. “That won’t be my first order of business, no.”
I bristled at that. “Why not?”
&n
bsp; “Because my theory that you were the target has no hard evidence to back it up—not yet anyway; that’s what I’m looking for. Meanwhile, that New York Times piece quoting Lilly gave half the food-truck drivers in the city a reason to go after her. Any half-wit lawyer could stop me from compelling Kaylie and her staff to give me fingerprints by showing a dozen other food vendors as angry as Kaylie about Lilly’s statements and proposals. Others may have argued with her publicly, too, even made threats.”
“Listen, I know the Times piece gives cover to Kaylie. But don’t you find it suspicious that this whole thing seems to center around Chinatown? Kaylie rents a kitchen down there. Vans and trucks are constantly loading and unloading with their motors running. I saw it myself today. She could have snatched that van easily, or a member of her staff could have done it for her—I’d bet my new coffee truck on the boy with the dragon tattoo. I even saw that kid involved with some black market activity today. Nothing I can prove, but…”
“Are you arriving at a point?”
“Yes. Your team is lifting fingerprints, right? So why don’t we save some time here and cut through the legal red tape. Let’s say I happened to collect something that had Kaylie’s fingerprints on them or, even better, a very suspicious member of her staff—prints that were legally captured in a public place and freely given?”
The idea lit up Buckman again. Like a lot of cops, he was half in love with getting around the law—as long as it got the bad guy.
“Tell you what… my team would be compelled to check any fingerprints that you provided against the ones we find in the van. And if one of those prints should happen to prove a match, then we’d get a warrant and enough proof to arrest the SOB.”
“Good, and I know someone who can help…” I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text message to my daughter’s boyfriend. Sergeant Emmanuel Franco was the youngest member of Quinn’s OD squad, and he’d happily backed me in the past.
Seeing my frantically moving thumbs, Buckman shot me a warning look.
“Just so we’re clear, I have a philosophy. Pushing too hard, too fast, usually ends in a crash. I like results, but this isn’t some Crazy Quinn stunt you’re planning, is it?”
“I don’t know. Define ‘Crazy Quinn stunt.’”
Buckman waved me off. “There are too many to recount.”
“Tell me one.”
“I don’t know if I should.”
“For heaven’s sake, why not?”
“For one thing, it’s a bad example for you—”
“Bad example? What, am I in grade school?”
He folded his big arms, pointed a thick finger. “What you are, Clare Cosi, is a latent vigilante.”
“Certainly not.”
“I checked up on you. Over the past few years, you’ve done an awful lot of testifying for the prosecution.”
“I’m a fixture of the West Village, Buckman. I’m the ‘Coffee Lady.’ People come to me with information. I see things, hear things… sometimes what I see and hear helps an official investigation. That’s all.”
“Pull the other one.”
I exhaled. “Look, if someone I know is harmed or in trouble, it drives me a little crazy—maybe just like ‘Crazy’ Quinn. Maybe that’s why we’re together. But I’m no John Fairway. I share my information with the police. I don’t think I’m above the law, and as much I’d like to exact my own punishment against scumbag criminals like the one who ran down Lilly, I have principles. I know the difference between vengeance and justice.”
“You sure do like speeches.”
“You’re the one who accused me of—”
“Take it easy, Clare. I’m not accusing. I’m recognizing.” His lips quirked in a little smile. “Let’s just say it takes one to know one.”
It takes one to know one? What did he mean by— I froze, the realization hitting me. The year off… Buckman was talking about his leave of absence from the NYPD.
He must have done something during that year—from his own admission—something akin to what I do. Was it a private investigation? A stakeout of the driver who escaped punishment for killing his wife? Did Buckman watch the man until he found a reason to put him in jail?
The way Buckman was looking at me now, like he had a secret, like we were two of a kind—I knew I was right. And I strongly suspected Mike knew the truth, too. That was probably the reason he’d been so careful on the phone, telling Buckman’s story in the vaguest of terms.
“As far as the Crazy Quinn stuff,” Buckman continued, “I like Mike. The fact is, I owe him, and I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of your guy.”
“Oh, come on. One story…” Spill it, Bucket-mouth, you’re dying to tell me.
Buckman shrugged. “You twisted my arm.”
He retrieved his coffee cup from the dash and drained it. “So here’s your Mike Quinn, three months maybe on the narcotics squad, and he’s stuck doing the grunt work: scooping up street sellers, interrupting trade, stop and frisk. That sort of crap.
“One reason he can’t move to bigger stuff is because he won’t skell up—grow the hair, the beard, wear crap clothes, behave like a dirtbag drug buyer. He was still trying to make that underwear model wife of his happy and she wouldn’t allow it.”
“That I believe.”
“One day Mike’s on the street. He collars this guy just out of the joint who’s looking to take up his old crack-dealing ways. The scumbag’s got a jacket as long as Trump’s tax return and he’s facing twenty more years mandatory time if he’s convicted again. Well, Mike figures he’ll turn the guy, get him to wear a wire when he goes in to talk to one of the biggest independent suppliers in the Bronx, a thug who’s familiar with the perp and seems willing to do business with him.
“Only on the day Mr. Parole Violator is supposed to get wired and go to the meet, he pulls a Jimmy Hoffa.” Buckman gestured with his hands. “The dude is gone. Most cops would pack it in at that point, but not Crazy Quinn. He wires up and goes in himself, all alone, as is, police-academy haircut and all. He’s even wearing his badge.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Now you see? Crazy Quinn. What he did was suicide, and everybody knew it—including the dealer. But Mike is so ballsy and so convincing that the dealer actually buys his off-the-cuff story that he’s a bad cop ready to facilitate smuggling in exchange for bribes!”
Buckman laughed, relishing the memory. “For three months Quinn takes bag money from this dealer. All the while he’s learning the dealer’s routes, his connections, even the names of cops who really were on the take.
“When the hammer finally came down, fifty guys were taken off the street. The kingpin decided to shoot it out and was killed—good thing for Mike, because the dealer would have reached out from prison to get revenge.”
I cringed at the thought of Mike taking a chance like that. But he didn’t have to prove himself anymore. He was a necktie guy now, off the street, for the most part, behind a desk, safe.
“Wait for it.” Buckman laughed. “Because this story gets better. One of the deputy mayors, a total political animal, hears about the busts and comes up to the precinct to glad-hand. Wants to meet Mike personally and find out how he did it. Crazy Quinn could have been vague, mumbled something about solid police work and that crap. But no, Mike tells the DM the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s wrong because this guy knew zero about police work. He comes out of the meet, calls the police commissioner, and ‘suggests’ Mike be investigated by Internal Affairs for corruption because he admitted to accepting bribes in the line of duty!”
“What did the commissioner do?”
“For once, ‘politics’ worked out for the good guy. The commish had a strong bond with the mayor—and he couldn’t stand that DM. Out of spite, he did the exact opposite of the man’s ‘suggestion,’ and kicked Mike upstairs. Bigger job. More responsibility. Mike passed his sergean
t’s exam the following year, and the rest is an NYPD success story.”
“Then maybe Quinn wasn’t so crazy after all.”
“You’ve got a point. Only now I hear Mike’s big rep is finally giving him blowback. Uncle Sam has been watching—and now they want him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“In a short window of time, Mike brought down an illegal Internet pharmacy and then exposed a rotten apple high up inside the NYPD. An ambitious U.S. attorney took notice, singled out Mike to be part of a special team based in D.C.”
