“What did you find?” Lester was waiting in the hall outside.
Ted didn’t want to talk there. He was spooked. “Let’s get outside first.” He needed space to think. It wasn’t merely the vandalism that had him reeling; it was the audacity of it and what that might mean in terms of scope. Someone had taken a great risk, one that could be easily discovered, if not connected to the perpetrator. That someone was protected. And protection meant power.
Lester took the lead going up the stairs, climbing them two steps at a time. Ted followed, matching his urgency as they sped out past the police and metal detectors in silence. The small group of protestors on the sidewalk chanted, “Keep the light! Kill the spike!” They carried signs: stop the tower. An earnest young woman with a wild mane of red hair blocked Ted’s way and thrust a flyer at him.
“The developers are at it again, and we are the ones who will pay. Your neighbors are being evicted to make room for luxury condos. Again!” She was fired up and speaking much too fast, but she had a voice like a young Lauren Bacall. Or Barbara Stanwyck. Ted almost stopped to hear her say something else. A voice like that worked directly on the more primitive parts of his brain.
He forced himself to keep going. Beautiful women were a distraction at the least and potentially dangerous. He stuffed the flyer in his pocket.
“Hey. Where’re you going?” she asked.
“Sorry, I don’t speak English.” Her mouth dropped open. He stepped by her before she could close it. “Let’s go, Lester.” Ted took his elbow and propelled him down Sutphin Boulevard.
“If you’re not part of the solution,” she yelled after him, “you’re part of the problem!”
A bodega near the corner was doing a good business in Powerball tickets. A half-dozen believers were queued up for the window on the street. The faces, though ranging in color from pale white through various shades of tan and brown to deep black, all shared the same expression—stony acceptance of defeat combined with the anxiety of hope. Ted passed them and pulled Lester aside outside a stationery store that specialized in leases, deeds, wills, legal forms.
“Where did you come from?” Ted asked, pushing Lester back against the building. “Who the hell sent you to me?” Ted didn’t know exactly what to believe at that point, but finding Lester was no coincidence.
“Take your hands off me,” Lester said, though after the initial push, Ted had kept his hands at his sides.
“Answer me,” Ted said, leaning in and over the smaller man.
“Nobody. I heard about this deal Richie was working, and I wanted in. That’s it.”
“Who tipped you to it?”
“Are you kidding? Richie bragged to anyone who would listen. He was finally hitting a homer, he said.”
Ted backed off. It made perfect sense. That was exactly what Richie would have done; he had always talked a better game than he played. And Lester? Ted couldn’t blame him for having the balls to insinuate himself once Richie was gone.
And Lester had already shown he had potential. Ted needed him. He made a decision.
“I’ll pay a hundred a day—that’s a lot more than Richie ever cleared—and if there is a payout at the end of this, I’ll see you get a cut. Don’t ask me how much, because I don’t want you wasting time calculating it in your head. Odds are, we work this and end up with nothing. Are we good?”
“You pay expenses.”
Ted smiled. Exactly what he had told Cheryl. “Agreed.”
“We’re good,” Lester said. He stepped away from the wall and shrugged the tension out of his neck and shoulders. “And one thing. You don’t ever put hands on me again. Clear?”
“Clear. Let’s walk.”
They hustled toward Hillside Avenue, Lester matching Ted’s longer strides.
“The file’s a dead end. It was signed out to Barbara Miller. She’s in her nineties. I very much doubt that she was down in the records room today destroying her own case file.”
Lester nodded. “I talked to the guards. They said anybody could walk out with a bunch of loose pages. All they check for is the blue folder. And I don’t think they’re too careful about that either. They ask to look in briefcases, backpacks, and bags, but anyone could tuck a case file down their pants and walk out with it.”
“Whoever did this was smart. She must have used Barbara Miller’s ID. If we hadn’t shown up, that file would have gone into the stacks with nobody checking it. It might never have been discovered.”
“You’d think all those records would be scanned and kept online,” Lester said.
A semi with a long trailer was trying to make the turn and had traffic blocked in all directions. Lester marched into the intersection, holding up one hand to part the waters. Ted stayed close on his heels. Whatever juju was keeping Lester from getting run over might not extend to a lagging follower.
“Where we going?” Lester asked when they had landed safely on the far corner.
“Down the block,” Ted said, pointing toward a strip of storefronts. “It’s always about money. Property records are all online because there’s real money involved. Civil case proceedings? Nobody cares. That’s why I’m able to make a buck at this. If it was all on the web, anybody could do it.”
“Are those the only records? No copies?”
“The lawyers would keep files,” Ted said.
“How do we get a look at them, then?”
Ted imagined calling Jacqueline Clavette and begging to dig through her files. “Not gonna happen.”
“So what will you do?”
He weighed the question. He owed no one a thing. Not Cheryl, not the cop, and not Richie. He could walk away and feel no responsibility. That was the smart move. But someone had taken a big chance just to hide information. He had a strong urge to kick the hornet’s nest.
“We follow the money.”