The notorious Manhattan traffic had eased as we made our way to the Lightner Building, home to Harland and Sinton. David sat scrunched up in the back of Holly’s car, and I tried not to think about the con. Boo was probably the finest con artist I’d ever met, with the exception of my dad. When our paths had first crossed, Boo was plying her trade as a high-class hooker. She’d been looking for a way out that paid as much as the five hundred an hour she earned turning tricks, and I soon showed her how she could use her acting talent to devastating effect.
In any con, you needed a persuader. Most of the insurance cons I’d run needed a person to deal with the insurance investigators, who, for some bizarre reason, were all men. So for a car accident that I’d set up, with a fake plaintiff, fake injury, fake medical center, Boo usually manned the reception desk of the med center and flattered the investigators until they were convinced she was on the level. She was the ultimate persuader.
My thoughts drifted to the next morning’s preliminary hearing. I prayed that if tonight went well I wouldn’t have to go to court tomorrow, but part of me knew that I wouldn’t get a deal for David and that I had to plan for the worst. I’d never won a preliminary hearing, and I didn’t know anyone else who’d won one in the last ten years. They’re basically rubber stamps; if the prosecution can show even a shred of tangible evidence against the defendant, they win.
If I was going to win the prelim, I would have to show that David was innocent.
“I’m thinking about tomorrow’s hearing,” I said. “We need another suspect.”
“I don’t know anyone who could even think about harming Clara. She was…” I checked the mirror in my sun visor and saw tears streaking David’s face.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Forget about it for now. Let me worry about that. Just stay focused on what we’re doing here.”
He produced a pack of antibacterial handkerchiefs, wiped his face and blew his nose noisily. How did a beautiful woman like Clara end up with little David? Then I stopped being stupid—So, Clara, what first attracted you to billionaire David Child?
“She was older than you, right?”
“Yeah, but that didn’t matter. She was amazing-looking and smart, too. She had a good heart, Mr. Flynn. She, ah, she was the best thing that ever happened to me. Those six months we had together were the happiest of my life.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Holly tighten her hands on the steering wheel.
“How did you and Clara meet?” I said.
“Reeler. She was one of my followers and we met up on a Reeler hook.”
“I didn’t get any of that,” I said.
“Are you on Reeler?” said David.
“No, can’t say that I am, and my daughter is a little too young for social media. I know the basics, nothing more.”
“It’s like this—you set up an account and you post your photos, your blog, and all your updates to your Reel. Your Reel is like your own page—and the Reeler algos send your updates to people who it thinks would be interested in your post and hooks into your other social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, so you can post everything from your Reeler account. Then there’s the big selling point; Reeler is the only social media platform that encourages face-to-face interaction—we call them hooks. So if you’re in a bar and you post a pic, as long as you’re up for a Reeler hook, Reeler will tell all other Reeler users in the area where you are and what you’re doing and invite them to go talk to you. That’s why Reeler took off so quickly with college kids—you know how many spontaneous Reeler parties there were in the first month it was online? Try eight thousand. Reeler is the only true social media.”
“Okay, I get it. So how did you meet Clara?”
He rubbed his hands together and dipped his head for moment before coming up with the answer.
“I don’t go out much. Normally I sit at home or I go to parties at friends’ houses. Well, this one night there was a huge Reeler party kicking off in the Loft. You know the Loft—it’s a big cabaret bar in the city. Nearly everyone in the bar was posting on Reeler, and there was so much activity the network almost crashed. TV news cameras were headed there to cover the story, so me and a couple guys from the board went down to the party. Get our faces on prime-time news.”
He smiled fondly at the memory; then the new reality of her death spread over his features, strangling his smile.
“Her friend had stood her up for dinner, so she went to the party and she got interviewed by one of the news channels. She was so pretty, seemed the obvious choice for them, and she spoke so passionately about Reeler that I wanted to meet her in person and thank her. So we met, we talked, we left and got coffee. I don’t like crowds much. That was it.”
The car went over a drain cover, and it felt like we’d just gone through a crash barrier.
“So tell me about her,” I said.
“She was from Virginia, she studied languages, and she’d worked abroad for a while as a freelance translator. I can’t remember how many languages she spoke, maybe seven or eight. She worked all over the world, got tired of it and came back to the States. Her parents had moved out to Florida. There wasn’t much sense in going home, so she came to New York looking for work with the UN as a translator. She’d been back only a few weeks when I met her. It was like fate or something. Because she’d been away, she didn’t know anybody in New York, and I suppose, really, neither did I. We kind of found each other.”
“Did she get a job at the UN?”
“No, she’d applied. She’d been waiting tables.”
“And there were no ex-boyfriends on the scene, nobody with a grudge?”
“No. I can’t think of a single person who even disliked her. She didn’t know that many people.”
Holly chimed in. “I’ve known David since the eighth grade. He won’t mind me saying this, but he didn’t date a lot in school or college. When Reeler went massive, David had a good time, but there was nobody serious. Am I right?”
David nodded and smiled.
“I’ve always looked out for him. We’re friends and he took care of me when I got laid off. He also got me through a few breakups. I’ve gotta say that Clara was different from most girls that David met after the Reeler thing. Most of them wanted David for his status and his money and he didn’t get serious with any of those girls. Clara was different. She was, I don’t know … genuine. In both her affection for David and her lack of interest in his money. You remember you bought her that necklace from Tiffany?”
I could see from David’s expression, a smile and then a narrowing of eyes, that the memory was at first warm and then painful. A reminder of the person that had been—and the robbery of the life unfulfilled. I thought of Dell, and for a moment I understood him more. He was convinced by the evidence that David was the killer, and he wanted him to pay. The loss of life, so violent, so sudden, had to be rebalanced.
David couldn’t speak, and Holly picked up the story, but she spoke softly, as if her words could wound.
“They’d been dating for a month, and David surprised Clara with a Tiffany necklace that came in at a hundred thou. She told him not to be ridiculous. That Saturday they returned the necklace and went shopping in secondhand stores in Brooklyn. She picked out a little necklace that she liked and David bought it. It cost forty dollars.”
We zipped over another manhole cover and my spine was beginning to protest at Holly’s choice of car. I thought about Langhiemer again.
“You think Langhiemer could have set you up on his own? He may be ruthless when he’s safely behind a keyboard, but could he pull the trigger?”
“I don’t know,” said David.
I thought of the hall footage. No one had left the apartment after David, and the cops had found it empty. Everything pointed to him. If Langhiemer had killed Clara, or even if he’d paid someone else to do the shooting, did they just jump out of the window afterward? I thought about this as we approached the Lightner Building and I was reminded about something my pal Judge Ford once told me—sometimes you reach so far for an explanation that you ignore the solution sitting in your pocket. Even with the GSR testimony I’d wrung out of Porter, David could’ve shot Clara wearing a pair of gloves and then tossed the gloves out of the broken window, leaving only the GSR from the air bag explosion on his hands. Porter hadn’t thought of that, but I bet that Zader eventually would.
I was tempted to call my mentor, but Judge Harry would’ve told me that I was crazy—and that no matter what I thought, or what I believed, the evidence only pointed one way.
I didn’t want that conversation. Maybe I was afraid Harry would convince me he was right.
Holly pulled up outside the Lightner Building and my phone began to ring. An anonymous number.
“Eddie Flynn,” I said.
“Why is it you want to meet me, Mr. Flynn?” It was Bernard Langhiemer. I recognized his voice, traces of a rural accent being fought down by that Harvard graduate tone. I got out and stepped to the sidewalk.
“I want to talk. Funny, I was just thinking about you. I was beginning to wonder if you were going to call me back.”
“That’s strange. I would’ve thought you’ve got enough on your mind, what with David’s legal difficulties. But you seem to be handling them quite well. I saw David’s Reels on the news. That was your idea?”
“Why don’t we meet and we can talk about Reeler all you want.”
“But we are talking. Why do you want to meet me?”
I wanted to look the son of a bitch in the eyes when I asked him if he’d framed David. It’s much too hard to discern the truth on the phone.
“It won’t take long,” I said.
“Will it help David?”
Only if I figure you’re lying, I thought.
“I doubt it, but you never know.”
“In that case, I’ll meet you. Tonight?”
“Great. Ted’s Diner on Chambers Street. Ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be there. Just be careful tonight. There are a lot of sharks swimming in the Lightner Building.”
The call went dead. I stared at my phone. Langhiemer was tracking my cell. He clearly liked to intimidate, play little power games. I still had the cell phone Dell had given me. It would have to do for now. I turned off my own cell phone, dropped it on the sidewalk, and raised my heel, ready to turn it into parts. I stopped. Picked it up and put it in my pocket. If the cell was switched off, he couldn’t track the signal. There were better uses for it.