‘Meet me at the St Regis Hotel in half an hour.’
‘No.’
Silence.
‘What is this, Eddie? A shakedown?’
‘Call it whatever you want. I have something you desperately need. I want something in exchange.’
‘You want money?’
‘I want four things. A private jet, fueled and ready at Teterboro Airport. One pilot. Bring a hundred grand in nonsequential, untampered bills and I’ll give you the pen drive. You’ll get the DA to withdraw all charges against David Child and an immunity agreement for my wife. My wife and daughter are going to fly the hell out of here, and when I get a call to tell me the plane has landed, I’ll give you the password for the algo trace.’
Even though he muffled the microphone I could tell he was talking to somebody else in the room, relaying the information.
‘I’ll need two hours. You got a deal,’ he said.
I hung up, turned to David, and said, ‘We’re on. I’ve got just enough time to meet Langhiemer before I have to hit the airport.’
‘I’m surprised he’s agreed to meet you.’
‘It’s certainly interesting. Either he had nothing to do with Clara’s death and just wants to gloat – or he’s involved and wants to find out how much of the setup we’ve been able to figure out. Either way, once I meet him I’ll know.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
At three minutes past ten I drove by Ted’s Diner. It was a pretty small place, and my favorite spot for breakfast. The glass front meant that it was great for people watching. There were a couple of guys in high-vis coats, road workers probably getting a late meal; an old lady in a mock fur coat who was a regular, and a young man in a black hoodie with a MacBook open on the table in front of him. He was the youngest person in the place, fit the description David had given me, and he sat close to the door. It was Langhiemer. I’d bet on it.
I looped around the block and parked down the street from the diner. There were still plenty of people milling around at this time of night. I switched on my cell, locked Holly’s car, and tried to hail a cab. While I waited on the sidewalk, I selected the call forwarding service on my cell and entered the number for the cellular phone Dell had given to me. The diner was maybe a hundred yards away. I could see the light spill onto the sidewalk, but no one inside the place could see me. A cab pulled up and I got in the back.
‘Where to, pal?’
‘Sorry, I forgot my wallet. I’ll have to go back to my apartment,’ I said, climbing back out onto the street.
The driver shook his head. I closed the door and watched the yellow cab head away from the diner, toward the river, my cell phone tucked behind the seat.
I got back into the Honda and waited.
So far all of my limited dealings with Langhiemer had been on his terms; he had control and intel on me. I needed to switch that up.
My initial estimate was five minutes. I didn’t doubt that as soon as I turned on my cell, some kind of program alerted Langhiemer. He was probably sitting in Ted’s staring at the screen and wondering why I was headed in the opposite direction to the diner.
After four minutes the cell phone rang. Call forwarding. My own cell in the cab was on silent, and it shot the call to the phone in my hand. I answered it.
‘I’m waiting …’ said Langhiemer.
‘Sorry. Something came up. I can’t make it. Can we reschedule?’ I said.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Langhiemer, and disconnected.
I started the car. Langhiemer came out of the diner, a laptop bag slung over his shoulder. He made it over the crosswalk onto my side of the street and held out a thumb for a cab. A minute later, a yellow taxi picked him up. I gave it a few seconds before I pulled into a lane of traffic and followed him.
It didn’t take long for the yellow cab to drop him on Fifth Avenue. I parked, got out fast, and was maybe twenty feet away by the time he’d paid the driver and made for an apartment block overlooking the park. I watched him enter the building and hung back. I let a few minutes pass, then followed him. A doorman in full regalia, who probably preferred to be called a ‘living space concierge’ stood at the entrance, eyeing me.
‘Hi. I’m from Manhattan Cars. I just dropped off Mr Langhiemer. Thing is, I just found a cell phone in the back of my car. I cleaned the car before I started my shift and didn’t find any phones. I think this is his. Would you mind letting me up so I could show it to him?’
I didn’t expect to get a pass even though I thought I sounded convincing. I held the cell phone in my hand and looked tired and bored.
‘I’ll call him and ask him. Wait here,’ said the doorman.
A couple of brown leather couches beside the security desk looked real comfortable and I took the one facing the elevators. From where I sat, I couldn’t hear the conversation with Langhiemer.
If he was half as smart as I thought he was, he’d figure it out.
‘Mr Langhiemer will be down to see you directly,’ said the doorman.
Sure enough, before I could get too comfortable, the elevator doors opened and I saw the same man who’d left Ted’s Diner. A light beard, dark spots around his eyes. Slim, dressed all in black. The slight tremble around the lips and the broad-eyed stare gave away his jittery anger.
He launched himself out of the elevator with his hand extended. I took the handshake as I rose and felt him pull me toward the door. I let him. I’d been thrown out of plenty of bars, and this felt eerily similar.
‘Let’s talk outside,’ he said.
‘Everything all right, Mr Langhiemer?’ said the doorman.
‘Just fine,’ he said.
Out of the building, on the sidewalk, he let go of my hand.
‘You shouldn’t have come here. I waited in the diner, like you asked. Nice touch with the doorman. I’ve got my phone and you knew that. I guess it was your phone taking a ride around Manhattan in the back of a cab. Clever.’
‘I thought the message I left the doorman might give you a hint. You’re not very hospitable. I was looking forward to taking a look at the view from your apartment.’
‘What do you want?’
This was why I’d come. I wanted to unsettle the guy before I popped the question. And I remembered that when he’d first called me, there was a female voice in the background telling him to hang up. The phrase that she’d used was strange: ‘Hang up. No calls.’
‘You sure you don’t need your girlfriend’s permission before you talk to me?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘When you called me in the diner today, out of the blue, I heard a female voice telling you to hang up. No calls. It’s good to know who wears the pants in your house,’ I said.
It was a cheap way to antagonize him: playing on his anger. I’d expected him to explode, to loosen his tongue and maybe, just maybe, he might give something away that he wouldn’t have done if he’d been calm.
Langhiemer didn’t explode. He didn’t let his temper go wild. The opposite.
He stumbled backward, shaking his head. I could tell by the look on his face that he was scared. Not the reaction I’d hoped for, but I decided to take advantage.
‘Where were you on Saturday night around eight?’
No words passed his lips. He simply studied me for a moment, giving himself time for the venom to flow back into his system. ‘I was murdering David’s girlfriend. Is that what you want me to say?’
A flicker from his right eyebrow, and his hands dove into his pockets.
‘Where were you?’
‘I was at home. Alone. Now get your crummy ass away from me or I’ll call my lawyer.’
He didn’t move. Neither did I. Then he backed away, holding my stare.
‘I value my privacy highly, Mr Flynn. Now leave.’
‘Pity you don’t think much of other people’s privacy,’ I said, and I took out my cell phone and snapped a pic of Langhiemer. He thought about making a grab for my phone, thought better of it and went back
inside. The doorman got yelled at and fingers pointed at him.
He was holding something back. I knew it. Whether that had something to do with Clara’s death, or David, I couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, it had something to do with the woman’s voice I’d heard on the phone. The fact that I’d heard her scared him. And I had no clue why.
I turned swiftly, conscious that I had to get to the airport for midnight. Just as I turned, something registered in my peripheral vision. Somebody standing still across the street at the park. The man with The Scream tattoo. I froze in his stare and began making calculations. Holly’s car was parked around fifty feet away. The man was probably seventy-five feet away from me and fifty feet from the car, but on the opposite side of the street. A steady flow of cars on the avenue meant he would have to bob and weave through the moving traffic to get to me.
I thought I could make it to the car, start it up, and get away. But it would be tight. If he was too close by the time I got to the car, I’d have to open the trunk and hope Holly kept a tire iron handy.
The car keys jingled in my hand, the surge of fear in my chest strangled my breath, and I felt my legs itching to take off.
Just before I broke into a sprint, the man across the street smiled, lit up a cigarette, turned his back on me, and wandered away, into the park.
Before he could change his mind, I took off as fast as I could, got into the car and spun the tires into the asphalt.
CHAPTER SIXTY
The wind licking off the runway of Teterboro Airport rocked the little Honda as I drove north along Industrial Avenue, headed for the Homeland Security hangar that served the FBI and a handful of federal agencies whenever they needed a ride. Teterboro sat around ten miles northeast of Manhattan, in Bergen County, New Jersey. It was home to a bunch of private air charter companies which hauled goods and people. I’d once dated a girl in nearby Moonachie, and we’d drive down Industrial Avenue and then sit on the hood of my beat-up Chevy Tahoe and split a six-pack while the planes roared overhead.
As I drove I tried to keep Christine out of my thoughts. In my mind I replayed my conversation with Langhiemer. He had no love for David. Probably hated him. But was that enough to kill Clara to set up David for murder? At my core, I knew David didn’t kill Clara. But I wondered if I was either being conned by David, or if I was conning myself into believing he was innocent.
One way or another, I needed to stop this before the firm’s tattooed man dropped a bowl of acid on Christine, David, or me.
The Honda slammed over a speed hump that I hadn’t seen. My head hit the ceiling and I swore.
As soon as I relaxed my mind and stopped thinking about David and Langhiemer, my mind went straight to Christine. Replaying our phone call not a half hour ago.
Christine told me she didn’t want to leave New York. She wanted to stay and tough it out. She was plenty tough, but in the way that lawyers are often tough: crusading against the odds and playing the risks. This was a different situation. I told her she wasn’t safe and that if she didn’t get on the damn plane with Amy that I would throw her on board and tie her to the seat.
Guilt.
I blamed Ben Harland and Gerry Sinton for their greed, for their cowardice in using the junior associates at their firm as patsies for their fraud.
And I blamed myself.
When Amy was born Christine said she didn’t want to work until Amy was well into her teens. I figured it was to do with Christine’s upbringing. Her mom had worked long hours and Christine had spent most of her early years with nannies and babysitters, rarely getting much time with her parents, even on weekends.
Guilt.
The only reason Christine took the job with Harland and Sinton was because I couldn’t make ends meet for my family. Christine had worked in prestigious firms after she passed the bar exam and so her résumé opened a lot of doors. Just before Christmas, Christine took the job at Harland and Sinton, part time at first, then more hours. By the end of this January she was doing sixty-hour weeks. She didn’t want the job. She wanted time with Amy. Time that I denied them both by not bringing home the dollars.
A light rain had begun to fall, and I struggled to see much ahead of me in the tiny headlight beams. After ten minutes with my nose close to the windshield, watchful for speed humps, I saw the taillights of a small aircraft up ahead on the right and the beacon light from an airfield hangar just beyond the plane. I turned in to the lot and made for the hangar.
As I got closer I saw Dell’s car parked outside the open hangar doors.
Christine, her sister, and Amy would be arriving soon.
I parked the Honda, folded the collar of my suit jacket around my neck, and jogged to the hangar door. By the time I’d stepped inside, I was wet through. A yellow-orange glow from the overhead lights gave a false impression of heat. The hangar was like a meat locker. Standing by the small plane I saw Dell, Kennedy, and two or three other agents in suits, Ferrar and Weinstein among them. Weinstein still cradled his strapped-up fingers.
A hand in the air from Dell silenced Kennedy as I approached them. Both men wore long overcoats and gloves.
‘I knew I could rely on you, Eddie,’ said Dell. He nodded and smiled.
‘Kennedy knows I always deliver,’ I said.
‘Thank God,’ said Kennedy, in a way that somehow made me understand that he was against the whole setup from the start. While Kennedy and I would never be buddies, I suspected he didn’t appreciate Dell’s methods. Kennedy had a family, too.
A tech opened up a laptop on the hood of a black truck, and Dell held out his hand for the pen drive. Farther back in the hangar I saw another black SUV, but I didn’t pay it any further thought.
‘We want to make sure you’re not conning us, Eddie. If you don’t mind, we want to look at the kind of data that’s on the drive,’ said Dell.
‘You won’t be able to read it, not without the password,’ I said, handing it over.
The tech inserted the drive into the laptop and I heard the machine purr as it came to life, running its checkups and alert systems as it began to access the memory.
A thumbs-up.
‘There’s a lot of data here,’ said Dell.
‘It’s there. Let me see the money,’ I said.
An agent produced a large sports bag and opened it. One hundred dollar bills – twenty-five of them in each bundle. I emptied the money onto the poured concrete floor and tossed the bag away. Stack by stack, I flicked through the bills, making sure there were no devices like a tracer or an ink bomb and that each bill carried a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. As I assessed each bundle I piled them up neatly beside me and began to build a small tower of cash. They all looked the same, felt the same, and weighed about the same.
‘If I find any tracer spray on these bills …’
‘They’re good,’ said Dell.
Satisfied, I stood. The rain grew louder on the aluminum roof of the hangar. Even over the pounding noise, I heard a car approach and saw the headlights reflected in the sheets of fat, heavy rain. The car stopped outside the hangar. It was Carmel’s Lexus with Christine and Amy inside.
‘Your passengers?’ asked Dell.
‘That’s them.’
‘Then we’re all here. The password, please, Eddie.’
‘The agreements first.’
Stepping forward, Kennedy drew out two envelopes, placed one of them on the hood of the truck and gave the other to Dell.
The first envelope contained an immunity agreement for Christine – signed by both Kennedy and District Attorney Zader, confirming that no state or federal criminal charges of any kind would be filed against Christine Flynn arising out of her employment at Harland and Sinton.
But there was a condition.
There’s always a condition.
Her immunity hinged on her testifying against Benjamin K. Harland and Gerald Sinton at their subsequent trials.
I folded the document back into the envelope and slipped it into my jacket. D
ell mirrored my move and placed the second envelope into his coat.
‘I need to see David’s agreement,’ I said, extending my hand.
‘We don’t know what you’ve really got on that drive. If it’s good, he’ll get what he deserves,’ said Dell, who began walking toward the open doors. He gestured for me to follow him. Ferrar grabbed an umbrella, stepped in beside Dell, and winced as he tried to open it. He switched the umbrella to his left hand. His right arm must’ve still been ringing from the brass knuckles.
I joined them at the threshold of the hangar, where the wind whipped the rain into our faces. The rain seemed to chill the hot, leaden pain in my neck. I let it wash over my face – breathed it in.
‘We had a deal. The agreements first,’ I said.
‘Where are you taking my plane?’ said Dell.
‘You don’t need to know.’
‘She’ll need to tell the pilot, at least. He’ll have to radio in the destination, so you might was well tell me now.’
‘When the plane is in the air, I’ll let you know,’ I said.
‘I don’t suppose it matters much,’ he replied, sniffing the air and letting his gaze fall into the dark sky. ‘There’s a storm coming,’ he said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The jet doors hung open. A small staircase built into the frame of the aircraft door beckoned to me. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had to stay behind to complete the deal and make sure the charge against David got dismissed in the morning.
I hated saying goodbye.
Christine’s hair smelled of cigarettes. She’d quit before Amy was born, but I’d always known that she’d sneakily enjoyed the occasional Lucky with a glass of wine. I held her close. Both of us wrapped ourselves around Amy and hugged in the rain. Letting go, I gently cupped her face in my hands and kissed her. Her lips were cold and sweet, and I tasted the smoke on her tongue. It was the first time we’d kissed in months. Somehow, it almost felt like our first kiss – there was excitement and fear, but this time there was also love and regret. She broke away, looked at the ground, and knelt beside Amy.
Eddie Flynn 02-The Plea Page 23
