25

Lansing had her little hatchback parked on the street half a block away. I hurried to it, over the tree-lined sidewalk. I huddled behind my collar as I walked, but only a young couple passed, and they took no notice of me.

I slipped into the car—a red Honda Accord. It felt good—it felt safe—to close the door, to start it up, to start moving. To get away.

I headed for West Street, nice and easy, obeying the traffic laws like a saint. Soon, I was on the highway. Speeding up, the soft wind at the window. Heading north beside the Hudson, the Jersey lights beaming over the water to my left. When I crossed the Harlem River, the relief burst over me. To be traveling on the dark, swift roads. To be off the island of Manhattan. It felt very, very good.

I didn’t remember Baumgarten’s address, the home address Ray had given me. But I remembered the street name in the town of Bedford. I thought that would be enough. I headed there.

It was about 11:30 when I cruised into the quaint town square. Main Street was dead. The restored white clapboard shops on it stared with black windows across the sward of grass that was once the common. On a little hill rising from the common’s other side, antique graves slanted this way and that, pale white beneath the black and swaying trees.

I rolled past this, around a bend in the road. Under the shadow of a high rock. A few dozen more yards and a small intersection appeared to my left. It was almost hidden by shrubbery. Mountain Road. That was the name of it. A gravel path rising steeply, up toward the top of the rock. I turned the Honda onto it. I bounded over the gravel, straining at the climb.

I was almost at the summit when I saw Baumgarten’s name on a mailbox at the side of the road. I turned into a rocky dirt driveway flanked by hedges. I came through them into a wide, open yard. It was big, more than an acre, the big sky with its half-moon bright above it. There were shadows of trees—oaks and willows—against the sky. And the shadow of a house, a big hulking house with two fresh wings and several dormers in the peaked roof. There was a light on in one of the dormer windows. The house lights—the outside lights—were off.

I killed my own headlights. Rolled up the driveway slowly. There was a Lincoln parked outside the garage. I pulled in behind it. When I stopped the engine, I could hear the quiet all around me. Then, in the quiet, I could hear crickets and cicadas, birds and frogs chattering in the trees and the grass.

I stepped out of the car. The nervousness—the fear—worked in my stomach like a slow, steady machine. That moment of peace—that moment of Lansing: even the last of it had drifted away.

I walked up the front path to the door, a door with a curtained window. I rang the bell. Heard the old-fashioned ding-dong. I stood and waited, rubbing my hands together.

I rang again. There was a second’s pause, then a light flashed on behind the door’s window. After another second, a porch light on the wall above my head flashed on too. The window curtains parted. Howard Baumgarten’s eagle face peered out at me and frowned.

The knob turned hard. He yanked the door open. His bald head rippled down over his deep eyes. His big body blocked the entrance.

“What do you want?”

“It’s a money laundry, isn’t it? Cooper House. You pass your kickbacks through it as donations. That’s why the feds couldn’t get you. They couldn’t find the cash.”

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but he seemed to go pale. He didn’t move, though. He stood his ground, solid.

“I’m going to call the cops now, Wells,” he said. “If I were you, I’d run for my life.”

He started to shut the door. I stuck my foot in the opening. He closed the door on it hard.

“Agh! Shit,” I said.

He leaned on the door. I hit it with my shoulder, caught him off balance. He fell back a few steps into the house. I pushed in after him.

I came into a small foyer. A stairway led up from it into darkness. Under the stairway there was a small table with a phone on it. Baumgarten went for it, picked up the receiver.

“The books before the Board of Estimate vote are practically empty. After it, they’re full up, too full. Those are your people, aren’t they?” I said. “Kicking back their salaries for jobs. You agreed to win over the board if Cooper would give you a place to hide the cash.”

Baumgarten snorted. Looked over his shoulder at me. “You haven’t got that. You haven’t got a thing.” He started to dial.

I wiped the sweat from my face with the back of my hand.

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I know where to look.”

“Hello, Sergeant,” Baumgarten said into the phone. “This is Howard Baumgarten on Mountain Road. John Wells, the reporter being hunted by the New York City police, has just forced his way into my house.”

I lit a cigarette, dropped the match on the rug.

“He’s standing right here, making threats at me,” Baumgarten said. Then he said: “Thank you. I’ll be waiting.”

He hung up. He turned to me. He smiled thinly. “You want a cup of coffee? Or would you rather have a head start?”

“I’ll stay,” I said. “I’d rather have the Westchester guys take me than the NYPD anyway.”

“Good. Then everyone’s happy.”

“And when they do take me, and when the papers interview me, and when they put me on trial, I’m gonna tell them what I think. I’m gonna tell them that the money is on Cooper’s books. It leaves a trail, Howard. It always does. And once the feds and the press and the city start looking in the right places, they’ll run it down and track it right back to you.”

I could see him clearly now in the foyer. He was pale, all right. Still, his mouth was set, his eyes hard. “You can’t prove any of it,” he said roughly.

“I don’t have to. I just have to start it off. How much will it take? A story about the money laundry. A piece on Mikki Snow. And then a little investigative work into her death.”

His hard eyes softened. He swallowed, licked his lips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know damn well what it means. You’re hooked in everywhere.”

He was breathing hard now. “So if I talk to you, you’ll burn me anyway.”

“Probably.”

“So what’s the difference?”

“About fifteen years, if you go down for Snow. And you could. Why not? She came to you first.”

He wiped his mouth with his palm. “Listen, Wells, you know that’s bullshit …”

“And you know I didn’t murder Thad Reich.”

“I have a wife, Wells. I have children. I have a grandchild. I bought her a doll, for Christ’s sake!”

“Why did Snow come to you? She want a piece of the action?”

He turned away. In the distance, down below the mountainside: that old siren song, just audible, growing louder.

Baumgarten glanced at the door. “They’re coming. There’s no time.”

“Talk fast, then. Start now.”

He glanced at the door again. Stalling maybe. Maybe trying to think. “Snow thought … She thought I … She wanted me to stop … To stop passing the money through. She was … She thought I’d forced it on her.”

“On Cooper.”

“Yeah, yeah. She wanted me to take the pressure off Cooper, she said, or she’d … tell the feds.”

The siren grew louder. It was still on the road below us, though. I fought to keep my breathing steady.

A woman’s voice drifted down to us from the shadows at the top of the stairs.

“Howard? Is everything all right down there?”

“Yes, everything’s fine, dear. I’m just—”

“Come on, damn it,” I whispered.

“Everything’s fine. It’s just a friend.”

“All right,” the woman said. “Come up soon, though. It’s getting late.”

“All right, I will.”

The volume of the siren went up a notch.

“Come on,” I said again. “So she was trying to save Cooper. Trying to keep her out of trouble.”

Baumgarten scratched his bald head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what she wanted. I kept telling her, I told her: it was Cooper’s idea. She came to me, made the offer to me. She didn’t have the money to go up against Sturgeon, so she asked me. I mean, she’s a savvy broad. I was doing her a favor, for Christ’s sake.” He lifted one hand. “Snow didn’t believe me. I told her, I said, ‘Go ask her. You don’t believe me? Ask her,’ I said. I said—”

All at once, the siren seemed to break up and out into the night around us. The cop car had turned the corner onto Mountain Road. It was climbing toward Baumgarten’s house, coming steadily over the rough terrain. I started panting to the quick rhythm of my heart.

Baumgarten’s eyes went back to the door. His mouth trembled. The sweat around it glistened. “I called Celia. I told her what’d happened. She said she’d take care of it. Mikki loved her, she said. I figured there was no … Wells, for the love of God, you’ll ruin my whole fucking family.”

The words burst from him just as the red flashers appeared. As they passed over the dark and lit the trees outside. The siren blooped off. The cruiser was coming up the last stretch of Mountain Road. Its lights passed over the hedges.

“Why did you call Mark Herd?” I hissed at him. My teeth started knocking together. “When you came to see me, why did you call Mark Herd?”

Outside, I could hear the cop car slow. I looked over my shoulder. Saw the top of its flasher above the hedge that flanked the driveway.

Baumgarten stared at me crazily. “Run!” he whispered. “Run!”

“It’s too late for that.”

“Please.”

“Why’d you call him?”

“Not Herd. Cooper. You can still get out of here. You can go. Go.”

He pointed at the door behind me. I heard the first rustle of gravel as the cop car began its turn into the drive. For another instant, I fought the urge to break for it. Then I heard the gravel crunch as the cruiser started toward the house.

“Run!” said Baumgarten again.

And I did.