Tony Newler pulled into the parking lot in Greenpoint and cut the engine, just sat there looking through the windshield at Andy like he expected her to go over there and get in. She didn’t. Working undercover jobs for the last fifteen years had made her wary of tight spaces, even when she completely trusted the company. But this was the first time she’d laid eyes on Tony in ten years, and the mere sight of him was making her itch in weird places. Palms of her hands. Sides of her neck. Allergic to him.
He got out, came around, and sat on the hood of his car, which was nose-to-nose with hers, ten feet away. He’d put on a few pounds and his hair was white at the temples. She guessed that’s what too many press conferences and cadet graduation banquets did to you.
“Blond, huh?” he said, huffing a little surprised laugh, trying his hand with friendly and light. Andy shifted, told herself not to touch her hair. Her scalp prickled. She didn’t do “friendly and light.” Not with him.
“Is that for this job, or from the last one?”
“The last one,” Andy said. She glanced over at the next lot, a hire place for construction vehicles. Razor wire and bright orange lights and yellow diggers dripping with grease. “I’m not set up here yet.”
“What was the last job?” Newler asked.
“Pedophile in a daycare center.” Andy resisted the urge to pluck at the front of her shirt. Sweat was tickling its way down her ribs. “I went in as a broke divorcée, new in town.”
“Where was that?”
“Michigan. It was for the local PD.”
“Huh, interesting.”
She waited.
“It’s just—I heard you were mostly working private undercover jobs.” Newler shrugged. “I knew you weren’t doing anything for the bureau. But you always hated working with police departments. Too many swinging dicks.”
She didn’t comment on that.
“Did you catch the guy?”
“Them,” Andy said. “I caught them. Can we get on with this?”
Newler folded his thick forearms. She remembered the long sigh. The guy could sigh for five seconds straight. “I guess I should have thought to offer you something involving kids. All those times I tried to get in contact with you, and you didn’t answer. You’ve always been a sucker for kids.”
She dug her hand into her jeans pocket and pulled out her car keys.
“Okay, okay, okay.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Luna Denero worked for a snooty art college in SoHo. She taught pottery classes. She lived out in Newark with the kid, Gabriel. Met Benjamin Haig on the job.”
Andy paused to let a squad car with sirens blaring pass behind her on the service road between the two parking lots. The red lights in Newler’s eyes made her queasy.
“She was last seen heading to work,” Andy continued. “Night classes. She’d drive the kid to the grandmother’s place, five minutes away, then fight the traffic to Lower Manhattan.”
“Who saw her last?”
“Haig,” Andy said. “They’d been living together a couple of months at that point. In a relationship eight months all told. He said in the letter to Detective Johnson that he was home sick with stomach flu that night. Luna left the apartment with Gabriel. No red flags. But she never made it to her ex’s mother’s place, and never made it to the studio. The car’s still missing.”
“Who raised the alarm?”
“Ben,” she said. “He woke up at midnight, found she wasn’t there, and blew up her phone and the studio phone with calls looking for her.”
“If he was home sick, why didn’t he take care of the kid that night himself?”
“You haven’t looked at the case?”
“Not in detail,” Newler said. “I gotta be honest with you, I’m not here for the kid and the mother. I’m here for the robberies he talks about in the letter. That’s the only thing that got this case to bureau level. That’s the meat in the sandwich.”
Andy sighed.
“Doesn’t mean I’m not curious. Who doesn’t love a puzzle, am I right?”
Andy didn’t bite.
“So why didn’t he—”
“He was real sick,” Andy said. “Sick enough that he didn’t go in for his shift at the firehouse, which from what I can tell is out of character. The guy hasn’t had a day off work since he came out of the womb.”
Newler thought. A stray cat slunk into the edge of the parking lot, followed a trail of weeds in the cracked pavement, keeping an eye on Andy and Newler toe-to-toe between their vehicles. Andy watched the cat disappear through a gap in a wooden fence.
“I’ll look closely at Haig,” Andy said. “But I don’t see him throwing himself on his own sword like this if he killed his girlfriend and her child.”
“Why not?”
“The letter says he’s been pulling jobs with his crew for the last ten years. The main two, Matt Roderick and Englemann Fiss. Jake joined later,” Andy said. “He hints at them being big jobs.”
“So…”
“So the guy grew up in foster care. Which would make him prone to hoarding. He almost certainly has a runaway stash somewhere. They probably all do. If Ben just snapped and killed Luna and Gabriel, he would have run. He wouldn’t stick around and rat out his whole team.”
“Hmm.” Newler shrugged. “Could be the other way around, though. Maybe the woman and the kid have run from him. You said he blew up her phone when she didn’t come home right away. Maybe he’s such an abusive, possessive asshole that he’s ratting out his crew just to hunt them down.”
Andy said nothing. Newler seemed to read the silent codes in the air. “Just guessing.” He shifted awkwardly. “What about the ex? The kid’s father?”
“Dead. Cancer,” Andy said. “The ex and his family were the only avenue of investigation the initial detective looked at after he’d given Haig a good sniff.”
“Who was the initial detective?”
“Guy named Simmley.”
“Don’t know him.”
“Luna’s brother-in-law used to chop cars for a cartel. Simmley liked that as a storyline for all this. The ex’s brother and the cartel he belongs to don’t like Luna’s new life—the fancy job in Lower Manhattan, the white boyfriend raising her kid. Simmley looked at the disappearance for about two weeks, then told Haig that’s almost certainly what happened. Luna got snatched up by the cartel, smacked around a bit, and told to go the fuck home across the border where she belonged.”
“And Haig didn’t believe it,” Newler said.
“No.”
“Sure wasn’t going to offer an alternative theory.”
“He gave it a shot,” Andy said. “He pointed his own crew out to Simmley. Said so, in the letter. Didn’t say they were thieves. Just said there were some dangerous people there. Simmley didn’t bite.”
“Do you think Haig’s right? That it’s someone in his crew?”
“Maybe. Plenty of contenders there.” Andy looked at the skyline. “Matt Roderick is a classic hothead. As you know, Englemann Fiss has been picked over before about his wife’s disappearance in Aruba. Jake Valentine doesn’t seem dangerous, but he’s weak. He’d do what he was told.”
“How long are you going to need?” Newler asked.
“There’s no way of telling.”
“Look,” Newler sighed. “It’s like I said. I’m not here for the woman and her kid. I’m here for the robberies. There are some big, big open cases which might lend themselves to being solved here. Millions of dollars lost. So I can justify the cost to the bureau of bringing you in and all the off-the-books stuff that’ll be required. But I can only do that if you hit pay dirt early on the heists.”
Andy didn’t answer.
“There’s a specific case we’re interested in,” Newler continued. “Guy’s penthouse apartment was robbed in Kips Bay. Looks like the safe was cut from the floor with a tool … a Hurst machine. It’s like the Jaws of Life. Forensics specified the model used. There was also a fire in the building two floors below this same apartment, only six months earlier.”
Andy listened.
“Now the guy, the owner of the apartment”—Newler flicked a hand—“he was some Singaporean gangster asshole. So there was money there. A lot. A headline-making amount, if we can close the case. But it gets better. We think an off-duty cop, Officer Ivan Willstone, ran into the thieves in the side street behind the building as they were loading the safe into a van. They shot him dead.”
“Right.”
“If I can solve that…” Newler’s eyes glittered. His words trailed away, the enormity of it snuffing them out. Andy didn’t need him to finish. She could see it, too. The political glory on offer. “I’ll give you anything you need to find those fucking guys that shot that cop.”
Andy folded her arms.
“I assume you’ve made the initial contact. Did Haig say which—”
“Tony.”
“Of course. Of course. You’re not even in yet.” Newler stared at the horizon.
“If you jump too early,” Andy warned, “you’ll have him on nothing. If you’re patient, and smart, I’ll give you the crew for the heists, the cop shooting, maybe the mother and child.”
Newler’s face broke into a smile. “Maybe it’ll be Christmas for everyone, and you’ll wrap up that murder in Aruba as well.”
Andy didn’t speak, didn’t smile.
“Well. It’s a tricky one. Plenty there to tempt you back in.” His eyes traveled up her body. “I just wish I’d found something like this earlier. Ten years. It’s too long.”
“Is it?” She knew her lip had twitched as she spoke, and she blazed with anger at herself now. She straightened, shook herself off. “I’ll need fifty grand up front.”
“Fifty! Jesus!”
“You don’t get to question my process,” she snapped. “That’s what it costs. I need papers. I need an apartment. Clothes. Research. I’m going to have to spend some time with an expert, get myself trained up.”
“I can get ten without saying what it’s for.” Newler shook his head. “But beyond that, the bureau will want to know who I’m working with and what I’m doing.”
“Well I guess you’ll just have to dip into your personal account,” Andy said pleasantly. “Because that’s what this is, right? This is personal. The only reason you would bring in a specialist on a case like this is because you want to engineer the story about how it was solved. You’ll tell no one I’m involved, take everything that I’ve gathered at the end of the job, and you’ll claim it as your own work. You and a couple of handpicked cronies you let ride on your coattails will look like heroes. You’ll be riding the political clout this generates long after you’re in the grave.”
“Something like that,” Newler sighed. “People have done worse things.”
“Uh-huh. Including you.”
“For fifty fucking grand, I want my grandkids riding on the political clout I get from this.” A flash of ferocity in his eyes. “This can’t fail, okay? So you can’t—”
“Oh no.” She held a hand up. “No, no, no. Don’t use your next breath to tell me you need to babysit me through this.”
“Well—”
“I’m not gonna come crawling to you every ten minutes because I’m broke,” she said. “I’m not checking in with you at all until this is over, in fact. It’s too risky.”
“Well that’s not going to work for me.” Newler shook his head. “I wanted to see you once a week. Like I said. I have to remain involved, even if this is all off the books. You’re unpredictable. You’re heavy-handed at times. If you want to be smart about this, you’ll let me take overwatch, like we did in the old days.”
She stood. “Good luck with the next guy.”
“All right! All right.” Newler pinched his brow. “All right. Jesus. You are…”
He looked at her, and Andy stood there with her jaw vise-tight and her eyes lasering through his skull, daring him to give a word to what she was these days. What she had become since the last time they’d been together. There were so many words available, and she could see them dancing on the tip of his tongue. But Newler knew her. The real her. So he kept his mouth shut.
“Just be careful,” he said.
Andy got in her car and drove away before she did something she’d wanted to do for a decade.