by Con Lehane
“We could.” Ambler leaned forward so that his face was close to hers. “That’s not what I’m here for. You’re in trouble. I was about to go to the police. Adele asked me to talk to you first.”
Emily signaled the waiter for another bottle of beer and finished drinking the one she had. She sat back stiffly, looking away from him.
* * *
Adele thumbed through the swath of papers she’d taken from Emily’s apartment. They looked like manuscript pages, not enough of them to tell what they were from. A story, from the point of view of a young girl, but the pages weren’t consecutive and nothing of much interest until she came to a passage and was frozen to her chair.
He would come and sit on the side of her bed. He would stroke her hair and her back, her chest, her legs, between her legs; he would bury his face against her stomach and kiss her along her stomach, below her stomach, and into the place between her legs, where he’d push his mouth tight against her, pressing her center against his mouth. She felt a reverberating current of pleasure, shudders of pleasure, before the shame. He rubbed something against her, rubbing, rubbing, and then she was gagging on it, the hard and soft-textured, thick, bulging thing like an inflamed and swollen finger he pushed into her mouth.
She’d read enough. She could put two and two together. But she didn’t want to believe what she was thinking until she knew who the man was who sat on the little girl’s bed.
* * *
Ambler tried meet Emily’s gaze but she wouldn’t look at him. “James Donnelly was carrying a briefcase when he was killed. The briefcase disappeared. A briefcase belonging to James Donnelly is in your apartment.”
She leaned back against her chair, raised her face toward the ceiling, and blew air out between her lips, like a whistle, before she faced him, glaring. “So that’s why Adele was snooping around, pretending to be my friend, both of you, lying, conniving—”
“You knew James Donnelly.”
The glare faded; her icy stare melted; the fire went out of her eyes. What he thought he saw was disappointment. “I thought she was my friend. I’m still a sucker—”
“She is your friend—”
Emily sneered. “Did I know James? You bet your ass I did. When I was a teenager, he—what do you call it—he statutory raped me.”
He wanted to say he was sorry for what happened to her. Yet he couldn’t, the sadness and embarrassment that colored her face stopped him.
“So now you know.” She stared at him with lifeless eyes. “What else do you want?”
“Why do you have his briefcase?” His voice caught in his throat.
“He gave it to me.”
He couldn’t tell anything from her face, which had relaxed into a mocking expression, nothing from her tone of voice, which was quiet and steady. What she said could be true; he didn’t know for sure the briefcase in her apartment was the one Donnelly carried at the time of his death. Stranger things had happened.
“It’s complicated.” She sighed. Her eyes met his, the mocking expression replaced by something innocent and vulnerable. “James found me a couple of years ago. My life was a mess. He told me he was still in love with me.… He was lying, of course. And I, of course, was stupid enough to fall for it all over again. He wanted to write a book.”
“Was the book about your father?”
She nodded. “About my father and me. My father didn’t know that part. James said we’d collaborate. I gave him some things, personal things. I trusted him. After a while, I didn’t like how it was going. I didn’t want to do it anymore. Whatever I thought was going on between us wasn’t. I told him it wasn’t working. He was okay about it. I guess he’d grown tired of me—and the book—so he gave me the stuff I’d given him and the manuscript. That’s why I have the briefcase. That’s what’s in it. He gave me the manuscript and the briefcase to carry it in.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know, six months … a year ago—” Color rose in her face; the expression in her eyes hardened. “What? You don’t believe me? Ask the people at the college, his secretary or something. They’ll remember I was there with him. It doesn’t have anything to do with him getting killed.”
“Slow down, Emily. If it turns out Dominic didn’t—”
She swallowed what she’d intended to say. “The police think Dominic—”
“The police don’t think anything. I haven’t told them—” He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he said it. He didn’t need to see her expression turn wily. “Emily, you need to trust me. You could lose your son.”
Ambler’s cell phone rang. It was Adele.
She didn’t bother with “Hello.” “If you’re with Emily, don’t say anything. Go somewhere you can talk.”
He looked at Emily over the top of the phone. “I have to take this. I’ll be right back.”
Adele began talking before he’d gotten outside. “Does Emily know I took those papers from her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk about what’s in them?”
“No.”
“Don’t. I read some things I really need to ask her about. I’m on my way to her apartment to wait for her. But don’t tell her.”
“Hold on—”
“I’m sure Johnny will let me in, so I can wait. I don’t think she’d let me in after what I did. And I really need to talk to her.”
“Wait, Adele. It’s not a good idea to go to her apartment—”
“You didn’t have any trouble sending me before when you wanted to trick her.”
“You don’t understand. Dominic—”
“Dominic doesn’t live there.”
“Wait.”
She hung up.
When he got back inside, Emily’s chair was empty. He thought about the ladies’ room. On his way to check, he asked the waiter, “Is there a back door?”
“A side door onto 20th Street.”
Chapter 22
“What’s this?” Gannon’s hard stare went from Cosgrove to Anne and back to Cosgrove. Gannon was a big guy, broad shoulders; Cosgrove had known him since they were kids. A couple of years younger, a cowboy, a loudmouth; not someone he’d ever liked.
“His daughter ran away, Gary.” Anne looked frightened.
“And you came to console him? You said nothin’ was goin’ on … my imagination. This ain’t my imagination.”
“I asked her for help, Gary. Your daughter, she knows Denise.”
“Why not ask me, Mike? Who the fuck you think you’re kidding?”
“I’m looking for my daughter. I don’t have time for this.” He made to walk by the bigger man. Gannon’s arm shot out and grabbed the front of his jacket, bunching it into his fist. Cosgrove stumbled as Gannon yanked him. Anne jumped up and tried to come between them, clawing at her husband. He swatted her away with his other arm. “Come sniffing around my wife again, you son of a bitch. Let’s go outside.”
“I’m going to find my daughter.”
Gannon laughed. “A chickenshit for a father; no wonder she’d run off.” He let go.
As Cosgrove walked toward the door, he saw Gannon grab Anne’s arm and pull her toward him. He kept walking.
* * *
Ambler tried to call Adele. She didn’t answer. He crossed the street, the phone pressed against his ear, and tried to flag down an uptown cab. Dozens streamed past, none of them with a vacant light on. He finally got a cab that was headed downtown, almost breaking his leg stumbling across the foot-high cement barrier median on Park Avenue South.
There was no reason to call Cosgrove again; he’d left messages. He could call the precinct. But it would take half the night to explain what was going on. Closing his eyes, he tried to bring himself back to the evening Nelson was killed and remember Cosgrove’s truculent protégé whom he’d had a run-in with at the time. Mike had confidence in the guy, if Ambler didn’t. Not like Cosgrove, thickheaded, but he was working on the case and knew the players. Now what the hell was his na
me? It was short. Detective Blank. Detective Stout.… Font.… Bart.
The cab swerved and screeched almost to a stop, the cabdriver fuming. “Did you see that asshole in the Ford—”
Ford! That was it. He called Cosgrove’s number at the precinct and pushed 0 for an operator. “Detective Ford, please.”
She put him through. The cab crawled in traffic uptown on Eighth Avenue approaching the Port Authority, cabs piled up double and triple into the street in front of the terminal. He stomped his foot impatiently on the floor of the cab.
“Ford.”
“You may not remember me. Ray Ambler from the library, a friend of Mike Cosgrove’s.”
Silence. Ambler could picture the cop bristling. “Yeh. So?”
“I can’t reach Mike.”
“He took some time off.”
Cosgrove take time off in the middle of a homicide investigation? Ford wasn’t about to volunteer anything, so Ambler bit the bullet. “Something’s come up. Some information’s come my way.”
“I get it. You’ve outsmarted the dumb cops again.”
Ambler stomped again, staring at the ceiling of the cab. Why the hell did Mike have to take time off now? In a second, he knew why. The only thing that would take Cosgrove away from a case at a critical time: something happened to his daughter.
“A woman might be in danger. And it’s my fault. I need help.”
“Cut the bullshit. Who’s in trouble? Where is she?”
Ambler told Ford about the briefcase in Emily Smith’s apartment and that she was Nelson Yates’s daughter living under an assumed name. When he told him about Dominic, he realized he didn’t have anything concrete to tie Dominic to anything.
“Does this Dominic guy have a last name?”
“I don’t know it.”
“Don’t know where he is right now?”
“No.”
“Where he lives?”
“No.”
A moment of silence, before, “What you’re doing is stupid.”
“I—”
“What your lady friend is doing is even stupider. If you weren’t Mike’s friend, I’d hang up.… I’ll ask the precinct to send a squad car to bring this Emily person in for questioning. You thinking you found someone’s briefcase isn’t enough to go barging in. If the uniforms happen to come by for something else, they’ll smell trouble if it’s there. She’ll have to agree to come in. If she’s been around the block more than once, she’ll know she doesn’t have to.”
* * *
“My mom said not to let anyone in when she’s not here.… I don’t know if it’s okay even if it’s you.”
“Johnny, I’m trying to help your mom.” Adele stood in the doorway, fighting off the temptation to push past him. “I know this is hard to understand.”
Johnny hesitated, his eyes searching hers for some kind of answer to a question that was too hard for him.
“You can let me in now. I’ll wait with you until your mom gets home and explain what I’m doing. I’ll tell her it was my fault that you let me in. She won’t be mad at you.”
Johnny lowered his voice. “It’s not just mom—”
“Dominic?” Adele heard the alarm bells, saw the flashing red lights. “Is he here?”
“He’s coming.”
Adele turned to go but it was too late.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Dominic climbed the stairs purposefully, his rock-hard gaze locked on her.
“I was just leaving.” She hated the tremble in her voice; she knew he’d hear it—and Johnny would hear it, as he’d hear her lies and excuses.
“That ain’t what I asked you.”
“I came to see Emily. She isn’t home, so I’m leaving.”
Johnny’s face was expressionless.
“She’ll be here. You can wait.”
Her heart beat faster and louder, loud enough that she thought he could hear it. She had to get out of there. But how? If she tried to walk by him, he’d grab her. One look at his stance and his expression and she knew he not only expected her to try to get by him; he wanted her to.
“I’m sorry. I can’t wait.” She took a step toward the stairs.
He shifted his legs, a wider stance, taking up more space on the landing. On his face a smile, or sneer, or leer, or whatever it was, a challenge and a threat. “You wait. Your boyfriend goes downtown to see Emily and you come here. You think we’re idiots?” He turned toward Johnny. “What did she ask you?” His tone was threatening enough to scare anyone, certainly a child.
Johnny flinched but stood his ground. “She asked for mom.” He wanted to help her, he tried, but his wavering voice gave him away.
“You lying to me?” He took a step toward the boy.
Adele stepped in front of Johnny. “You’re not going to hurt him.”
“What are you going to do?” His face tightened with sudden rage. “What the fuck are you going to do? I’ll hurt you and him both if I want.” He rolled his shoulders. “You’re—” The sound of the downstairs door opening, followed by the sound of voices, interrupted him.
One of the voices belonged to Emily; it was high-pitched and agitated. Adele couldn’t make out what she was saying. The other voice, a man’s, was muffled, maybe more than one voice. Dominic cocked his head toward the sound.
Footsteps slapped against the steps, along with creaking, rattling, and jangling. Adele couldn’t take her eyes off Dominic, who looked trapped. He paid no attention to her, focused entirely on the sound coming up the stairs.
She took a deep breath as she saw something dark blue float in the space at the top of the stairs, first morphing into a face, and then into the form of a uniformed New York City police officer. Behind him, leaning back over her shoulder to complain at a second officer, Emily was in high dudgeon, demanding a search warrant and telling them they couldn’t come into her apartment.
“We’re not searching, ma’am. We don’t need a warrant. We’re not going into the apartment unless we see something’s wrong.”
Hearing this, Dominic started for the apartment door.
“Hold it, fella,” the officer said. “If you go in, I’m coming in after you.”
Emily, Dominic, and Adele stood together on the landing in front of Emily’s apartment door, with the two police officers seeming to surround them.
“What’s the problem here?” The older cop looked at Adele. She started to answer. So did Dominic and Emily.
“One at a time,” the cop said.
“Nothin’s wrong. Nobody has a problem,” said Dominic.
“Is that right?” The cop looked at Adele.
“Not exactly. If I could leave, that would be fine.”
Both cops stiffened.
“Leave.” Dominic seemed to growl rather than talk. “Who’s stoppin’ you?”
“You were—” The buzzer from the downstairs door interrupted her.
Johnny, still in the doorway, looked at his mom.
“Open the door,” one of the cops said.
Johnny pushed the buzzer. Everyone turned to see who would come up the stairs.
Adele saw him first. “Raymond?”
“Are you all right?”
“Who the hell is he?” the older cop asked Adele.
“My friend Raymond Ambler.”
After a few minutes, the police sorted things out and told Emily they wanted her to come with them to the precinct to answer some questions from the homicide detectives.
Ambler nodded toward Dominic. “I think Detective Ford might want to talk to him.”
The cop appraised Ambler. “How would you know?”
“I spoke to him—”
“I think we’ll do what we were asked to do.” He turned to Dominic. “Can I see some identification?”
Dominic showed him something, glaring at Ambler as he did.
“I don’t want to go to the precinct.” Emily folded her arms across her chest. “They want to ask me something, let them come here.” She spoke lou
der than necessary and her voice shook.
“Ma’am, you’re not under arrest. We’ll give you a ride if you want to talk to Detective Ford. If you don’t want to come with us, we won’t force you.”
Ambler tried again. “Would you please check with Ford? I’m sure he’d like to talk to Dominic and Emily.”
“Who the fuck asked you?” Dominic rolled his shoulders.
“The talkative cop turned to Adele and Ambler. “You two can leave.”
“I don’t think—” Ambler began.
The cop folded his arms, a copy of Emily’s stance.
As soon as he and Adele reached the bottom of the stairs, Ambler called Detective Ford on his cell phone. “Dominic is here. They’re letting him go. They won’t listen to me.”
“Good for them,” Ford said. “I’m in the neighborhood, maybe I’ll stop by and say hello if he’s still there.
* * *
“What are you doing?” Adele asked as Ambler ducked into a doorway across the street from Emily’s building.
“Making sure Dominic waits for Detective Ford.”
“That’s a stupid idea. He’s dangerous.”
“We don’t know where he lives. He might have given the cop a false address.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Talk to him.”
Adele squinted, lowering her eyebrows, as if she wasn’t seeing him quite right. “Somehow, I don’t see that working out.”
Ambler’s cell phone rang. It was Benny. Benny never called him. “Of all the times—” He flipped the cell phone open. “Benny? Sorry. This is a bad time. I’ll have to call you back.”
“No.” Benny’s voice was hushed. “You can’t. I’m at the runaway center. I’m not supposed to do this.”
The door to Emily’s building opened. Dominic! Ambler cupped his hand over the phone and whispered. “I can’t talk now. Call back and leave a message on my voice mail.”
* * *
“Wait here,” Ambler told Adele and headed after Dominic, who walked quickly toward the blur of lights and traffic sounds of Ninth Avenue.
“Say, Dominic,” he called. No cars moved on the street. The sidewalk was empty. The streetlights reflected off the windshields of the cars parked along the curbs on both sides of the street.
