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 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 of 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 circles 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. 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.