Loud Pipes Save Lives

by Jennifer Giacalone

  Corey Connolly’s reputation tended to be that of a very decent man. Everyone that she’d casually asked at the precinct had said so (she wasn’t concerned that they were simply being polite, as she’d certainly gotten an earful or two when she’d asked the same people about what it was like to work under Captain Ramirez). There were even a number of surprisingly specific anecdotes about his kindness, his talent for empathy with those who worked under him; he was the total “tough but fair” package that everyone wanted to believe all cops were like. She’d heard just about everything except a story that ended with him rescuing a kitten out of a tree.

  So, it didn’t add up in her mind that this type of man would order the killing of an innocent kid to cover up a murder, unless he were under some sort of incredible duress. Unless he was owned by someone or something big. Something as big as, say, a multi-billion-dollar international investment bank.

  She picked up the phone and called Gary Crick again.

  “Detective,” he half-groaned, trying to be polite but frustrated he was having to deal with this again. “I really don’t feel comfortable with you calling me.”

  “It’s not about the crash articles,” she cut him off, her tones quiet and clipped. “I just need to know… How would I find out if a certain public official’s trusts are held by a particular financial institution?”

  A heavy sigh came over the line. “Okay, well, that’s easy. That’s a matter of public record—they have to disclose it annually. Business interests, trusts, anything like that.” He paused. “Detective, I know there are cops that work finance cases, why aren’t you talking to them? Why call me?”

  Lily smiled. It was a smart question. “You’re a good reporter, Gary,” she answered with a quiet chuckle.

  “Flying under the radar, huh?” he poked, turning suddenly jovial. He could tell she was doing something she didn’t want anyone on the force to know about. “Okay, well, you’ve got to request the disclosure forms from the COIB. I request them on all the high level officials every year as a matter of routine, so I probably have what you want; it’s just up to you whether you want to ask me for it or request the forms yourself. And if you’re trying to fly under the radar, that means you’re probably going to want to ask for everyone’s forms so that you don’t call attention to whoever it is you’re snooping on.”

  “Investigating,” she corrected.

  “Well, whatever you want to call it, I probably can give you the information you’re looking for and you can trust me to keep it under my hat.” He paused. “I came up under your dad, Lily. I’d sooner go to jail than give up a source, and I think you know that having to back off on Lyonsbank is killing me. I almost quit over it.”

  Her voice shook a little. “I’m glad you didn’t.” When it came to journalistic ethics, having both come up learning Graham Sparr’s staunch approach to it made Gary Crick a brother of sorts, even though they barely knew each other, and the thought made her inexplicably emotional. She looked over both shoulders, and once she was confident that nobody was lingering and listening, she pressed: “Gary, I can’t tell you why I want it, but I need to know whether Commissioner Connolly has any trusts with Lyonsbank, and if he does, I need whatever you can give me about their status.”

  He whistled. “No wonder you didn’t want to ask any other cops about this.” After a pause, he asked, “And this is not about the crash articles, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Is this the best number to reach you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. It’s gonna take me a little time to pull this stuff up for you. I’ll try to get back to you in a little bit.”

  Lily heaved a sigh of relieved gratitude. “Thanks, Gary.”

  “I really hope I don’t regret this,” he warned.

  I hope so too, she wanted to say, but didn’t. She ended the call.

  Ray appeared in front of her desk and plunked down a folder. “Hey Sparr!” she exclaimed, seeming excited.

  Lily jumped. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I think you’ve probably found the same trend I did with these assaults?” Without waiting for Lily to answer, she plunged on: “It seems like the time frame between the acquittals and the assaults is usually about two weeks. Is that what you’ve been finding too?”

  Lily had actually not reviewed as much of the data as she was supposed to have done, but she bluffed forward because she didn’t want to admit she hadn’t been doing her job because, well, she’d been secretly investigating the goddamned police commissioner because she suspected him of covering up her father’s murder. “Pretty much. A few outliers here or there.”

  Ray nodded. “So, what do you think?”

  Lily rubbed her temples for a moment. Suddenly, she sat up. She realized something: “Ray, where do you live?”

  “Whitestone.”

  Queens. “So you know about that St. John’s case, the frat rape case?”

  Ray nodded. “Yeah, they acquitted those guys…”

  Lily remembered watching the news at her mother’s place after the dinner that evening. “Two weeks ago,” she finished.

  They looked at each other. “We should go talk to them,” Ray declared after a moment.

  Lily shook her head. “What do you mean ‘we,’ Ray? You’re a desk officer, and you’re not my partner. Not that I don’t want you along, but Chernov’ll get pissed if you go with me.”

  Ray looked disappointed. “Okay, you’re right, but just…be careful?”

  Lily nodded. Chernov wasn’t around, so she added over her shoulder as she strode quickly away, “Just…tell Chernov where I went, all right? I’m going to the frat house.”

  Ray nodded.

  Out on the street, she sped down the sidewalk in the chilly air, her grey trench hanging open and billowing around her legs; in her haste, she’d not even buttoned it. She pulled out her phone and called Miri. “Are you busy right now?”

  “Kind of, Lil. I’m on duty, but what’s up?”

  “Look, I’m going over to the Zeta Sigma Tau frat at St. John’s. I have a feeling those guys are going to be the next targets, and I need to get a look at their situation, talk to the guys, see if they’ve seen anything unusual.”

  “Well, you know St. John’s isn’t in the 104th.”

  “I know,” Lily answered after a pause, “but I don’t have a partner. I’m not expecting any trouble; I just want to check it out, and if you aren’t busy, I’d like to have you there.”

  Miri fretted a little. “Well, look, I can probably slip out, but I think we really ought to call the 107th. I’ve locked horns a couple times with those guys, and Captain Resnikov gets really pissy about other precincts punking around on their turf.”

  “Look, we’ll call them after, as a courtesy, to let them know,” Lily promised before dipping down into the subway. “I mean, if it seems like these guys have anything to worry about, of course they’re going to want to go to the 107. But at this point, I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. I just have a feeling based on the track record of these assaults that these guys might be the next target.”

  What she left out, of course, was the venom in Ainsley’s reaction when they watched the report on television. The argument they’d had in which Ainsley essentially advocated for the activities of these bikers. Miri knew all that.

  Isabella León dragged her wheeled suitcase behind her through the brightly lit hubbub of Kennedy Airport. She was dying for a cigarette, but she hadn’t told her mother that she’d started smoking. This was absurd, of course; she was nearly thirty, an account supervisor in the “issues and crisis management” group in the Buenos Aires office of the communications company left behind by her father, but the weight of her mother’s expectations was no less crushing. She was willing to wager that even Tommy, who was now the actual mayor of New York, was no freer of that than she was. In fact, it was probably ten times worse for him, since Mom had gotten him elected and was one of his chief advisers.

&nbs
p; Everyone Isabella worked with smoked. Everyone, it appeared, in the entire city of Buenos Aires smoked. It had been inevitable that she would start. But she knew her mother reserved the same sort of disdain for smokers that the well-meaning Christian ladies of temperance during Prohibition reserved for drunkards. And so, she’d put off telling her.

  She saw her mother waiting outside the terminal, leaning against a black town car, wearing a radiant smile that looked as if she’d been saving up months of sunshine just to smile for her right now. She knew her mother missed her, but Isabella was happier in Argentina, far away from her aggressive, stifling, smothering “love.”

  “Isabella!” Lina exclaimed, crushing her in an embrace.

  “Mom,” Isabella acknowledged, returning the hug, but with far less gusto than her mother.

  “How was your flight?” Lina asked, opening the car door for her to sweep her briskly inside of it, then getting in after.

  “Fine,” she sighed, hauling her suitcase in and then positioning herself in the corner, relaxing and stretching her long legs out in the roomy back of the car. “Too long, though.” She yawned. “How’s Tommy?”

  The car started and purred away from the curb, heading toward the highway back to Manhattan.

  Her mother started running through the “best of” reel of the six months since they’d last seen each other. Isabella listened quietly but was finding herself too twitchy to adequately pay attention, so she surrendered, and casually as she could, she pulled the grey and burgundy pack of Jockey “Suaves” from her purse, rolled the window down, popped a cigarette between her lips, and moved to light up.

  Lina broke off in mid-sentence. “What the fuck is that?” she demanded coldly.

  “Jockey Suaves,” Isabella replied. “One of the most popular brands in Argentina. They’re a client of ours.”

  Lina continued giving her the cold stare, saying nothing.

  “Mom, everyone in Buenos Aires smokes.”

  It didn’t matter. The driver noticed that she was about to light up and apologized in heavily accented English: “I’m sorry, miss, there is no smoking in the car.”

  Isabella frowned and put the pack away. “Lo siento, amigo. En Buenos Aires, fuman en todas partes.” I’m sorry, friend. In Buenos Aires, they smoke everywhere.

  The driver smiled, a little surprised, and nodded. “Si, si. Lo sé, lo sé.”

  Lina was clearly about to give Isabella a berating of some sort, but mercifully, her phone rang. She answered it. “Yes?”

  Isabella listened but couldn’t make out what the other person was saying. She just saw the intent look on her mother’s face that usually scared her a little.

  “Yes,” her mother was saying. “Gary Crick. Are you sure? And what is she looking for? Do you have any idea what he said? Where is she now? Are you sure about that? Is she alone? No, no, that’s good. Thank you, Ray.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “What was that?” Isabella asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

  “Bad news.”

  28

  Purple Asters and Goldenrod

  The days were getting colder and shorter, and Erik and Quin had decided to enjoy what remained of the milder fall weather while they had the chance. They sat on a low stone wall in the pale, late-afternoon light that crept through the trees and trellises of the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park; they fended off its accompanying chill with enormous lattes from Starbucks and complained about the early dark.

  “I hate when it gets to this part of fall and the days start to get so short,” Quin said, sipping at his drink and blowing steam into the air. “I don’t do so well in the winter with all the dark.”

  Erik nodded. “I know what you mean. I never got the whole seasonal depression thing, but I always suspected Terrance had it. He did always seem to drink more in the winter.”

  Quin nodded. “I don’t miss using, but in the winter, I remember why it was so hard to give up.”

  A moment of quiet passed while they drank and listened to the traffic audible just beyond the treeline. “You know,” Erik mused, “we could probably be mistaken for a gay couple.”

  Quin snorted. “How do you figure?”

  “Well, look at us.” Erik gestured with his prosthetic. “Stylish haircuts, black peacoats, and the very odd coincidence…” He tapped at his plaid cashmere Burberry scarf, which happened to be identical to the one Quin was wearing.

  Quin dismissed him. “Maybe you’re handsome enough to be mistaken for a gay guy, but I certainly am not.” They chuckled.

  “Well, then,” Erik sighed, “I guess I’m stuck alone, being mistaken for your gay uncle.”

  Quin laughed and shook his head. “You know, this is the first time I’ve been back to the garden since before the accident.”

  Erik raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s a long time.”

  “Yeah.” Quin nodded at the landscaping around them. “This is probably the hilliest part of the park. All these winding steps that twist around the hills, obviously not a great choice for me when I was in the chair.”

  Erik nodded. That made sense. It was a shame that Quin had been kept from this place. The finest looking plantings, the tulips outside of the thatched cottage, were out of season, of course, but the purple asters and goldenrod near the fountain still burst with color.

  “This is one of those things that I forgot I even missed when I lost my legs,” Quin commented, swinging his new ones lightly and listening to the heels of the rubber-padded feet making soft thuds against the stone wall. Erik noticed that Quin often didn’t bother with shoes; he didn’t need them, and he seemed to like the sleek, high-tech look of his prosthetic feet. He looked at Erik then, and said very sincerely, “Thanks again.”

  Erik waved him off. “It’s nothing. It’s not like I bought them for you. I just put you in touch with the right people.”

  “Yeah,” Quin persisted, “but you put me in touch with the right people. I wouldn’t have known about these if it hadn’t been for you. I know it’s been a tough year for you too, and I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

  You have no idea how tough, Erik thought, but bit he his tongue. “Quin, I really haven’t done anything but be a friend.”

  And he felt his gut plummet into his shoes as Quin looked hard at him and said, “Yeah, but I really needed that. Things seem to be coming together now with my family. It’s hard to explain, but I was feeling really alone for a while, and it’s…it’s meant a lot, that’s all.”

  Erik smiled, a little pained. “I’m glad I could do a little to help. I know what it’s like to lose a part of yourself physically and then feel like half your life went down the drain along with it.” He held up his right hand, the prosthetic one, and quipped, “On the upside though, this is the one part of me that isn’t chilly right now.”

  Quin laughed a little, and they had one of those awkward silences that they often did, smiling at each other, Erik wanting to say much more and never being able to bring himself to do it.

  Erik’s phone began playing something bluesy loudly from his pocket. He fished it out. It was Lina. He had no choice but to answer it. “Hi, Lina.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Central Park. Why?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  Erik didn’t like the way this was going. “Why? What should I be worried about?”

  “I told you if Corey didn’t take care of things, that I was going to. She’s getting too close, Erik. I’m taking care of things.”

  He closed his eyes. “Lina, look, I’m with Quin Sparr right now…”

  “I fucking told you,” she snapped. “I fucking told you, and now he’s your alibi for this. I told you it was a terrible idea, and you didn’t listen.”

  A long silence went by. Erik’s mind was racing, trying to work out what in hell was the right thing now. “Right now?” he finally asked.

&nbs
p; “Yes, right now. Take your pet Sparr out for dinner or something,” she ordered. “Then take him home and come by my place. Use the Lyonsbank car service so that there’s a receipt and a record of it. Your niece got in from Buenos Aires this afternoon and she’s dying to see you.”

  Erik’s jaw stiffened. “Fine.” He hung up and looked at Quin, who was gazing at him with concern.

  “You okay, Erik?” the younger man asked, his voice worried.

  Erik gritted his teeth. He couldn’t. He couldn’t lie to this kid anymore. He couldn’t let his sister do what she was going to do while he used Quin as an alibi for it. “No, uh…not really.”

  Quin stood up, walking closer. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Erik let an agonized groan bubble up from somewhere in his chest. “Quin, you have to get hold of Lily. She’s in danger.”

  This clearly had not been what Quin was expecting. “What?” he mouthed silently. It was as if he was so confounded he couldn’t even get the word out.

  “Lily. She’s in danger. Wherever it is she’s headed right now, there are going to be people at the other end waiting to make sure she doesn’t go home.”

  Quin was still having trouble processing what Erik was saying. “What? Why?”

  Erik sighed. How much could he give without giving away everything? He clenched his good hand inside of his coat pocket. “She’s investigating something, Quin, and she doesn’t have any idea the can of worms she’s about to open up. And there are some powerful people who really want her to stop.”

  Quin was looking Erik up and down, now. “Is this a joke?”

  “No. Please believe me. I wouldn’t joke about something like this, Quin. Not after what you’ve already been through.”