SOUNDING OMNISCIENT, The Chatterbox says he does not want to be recorded or triangulated. He tells me to take his call at a payphone in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a short walk from the Midtown North Precinct. At the Terminal, the conversation is brief. We disconnect, and I call O’Neill. For expedience, Jimmy contacts his counterpart at Detective Bureau Bronx to have their own men secure the crime scene at the address given to me by The Chatterbox.
“Upton will drop a deuce,” Jimmy scolds me over the phone as if I’m responsible for Upton’s bowels. “Hasn’t got his feet under him and already you’re serving-up another Vic.”
“I’m just the messenger, Jimmy.” I put his mood down to the grief caused over my shootout in Central Park and the misery he’ll suffer owing to the most recent headline in the New York Post.
Gabby fetches me at the Port Authority Terminal in an unmarked vehicle. In light traffic, it’s a twenty-five-minute drive via the Henry Hudson Parkway to a building located at Nelson Avenue and W165th Street in the Bronx. To speed our progress, Gabby activates the flashing grill-lights. She wails the siren intermittently, prompting slower vehicles to move aside.
In the car, she says, “You okay, partner?”
“You keep asking me. Don’t I look okay?”
“You haven’t had much sleep lately, I know. With the late night calls, it could catch up to you.”
“What do you suggest, Gabby? A return to light duty?”
“Just saying.”
After a moment, I say, “Spend the night at my place. Man the phones.”
One eye on the road, one eye on me, she says, “Is that a proposition, Detective?”
Arrival at the crime scene cuts short my reply.