It was a little after ten-thirty when my cab arrived at the Bistro.
Usually at that time of night, the lights would be burning brightly inside and out. Diners would be exiting. The valet guys would be on the run, retrieving vehicles. It would be a happy, welcome sight—a busy restaurant at nearly the end of another successful night. Ching ching!
Instead the building was in darkness except for a security light under the awning. It shone down on a couple of paparazzi with nothing better to do on a no-news night than to keep vigil at the lair of a suspected murderer.
I instructed the Middle Eastern cabbie to keep going to the corner and turn left. He did that. But when I asked him to pull over near the building’s rear door, he refused, saying he would not “perform an act of illegality.” Instead he continued on for about two car lengths along the deserted street, then made an equally illegal U-turn to deposit me by the door.
I increased his tip by an extra couple of dollars as a reward for his eccentric observance of the rules of the road. Then as he zoomed away leaving me in a cloud of carcinogenic exhaust, I approached the building with weariness and no small amount of depression.
I unlocked the door and went in just as the alarm system began to beep its one-minute warning. I turned on the light in the alcove and tapped the access code on the keypad beside the door. The beeping stopped.
I hesitated, wondering if I wanted to go directly to bed or stop off at the kitchen to see if the cops had found the slice of peach pie I’d hidden at the back of the reach-in fridge.
A third possibility came to mind when something cold and hard was pressed against the back of my neck and a gruff voice said, “Turn around and you die.”
I got a whiff of clove breath. Could have been worse.
“You’re the man,” I said.
“Up to the office.”
He may have been following me close enough that I could have pushed backward and knocked him down the stairs. But that sort of heroic/foolish move works only in the movies.
“Turn on the lights,” he said.
I did that.
The office looked messier than usual, but I wasn’t sure if Clove Boy was responsible or if it was the police who’d been poking around all day.
“Open the goddamned safe,” he said, with enough anger that I assumed he’d already tried to do that and failed.
The safe was an eighteen-inch-high Sentry resting on the carpet under a two-drawer filing cabinet. I saw that the tubular key that I kept in my desk drawer was already in the lock.
“You need the combination, too,” I said.
“No shit,” he said. “Open it up.”
I hunkered down, punched in the five numbers of my zip code, not the most secure combination but one I could remember, and heard the confirming click. I turned the key, opened the heavy metal door, and started to rise.
“Get on your hands and knees and keep facing the wall,” Clove Boy said.
I took some comfort in the fact that he did not want me to see him. I hoped that meant he didn’t plan on killing me. Or maybe he didn’t want to look his murder victims in the eye.
Or maybe it meant nothing.
Using my peripheral vision, I saw him rooting around in the safe. He was wearing a short-sleeve dark-blue shirt and dark-blue trousers. A uniform. And judging by the slightly rounded triangle patch on his sleeve, it was a policeman’s uniform. Not good.
I wondered what would happen if I suddenly flopped on my back and kicked the heavy safe door into him. Then, while he was trying to recover, I could throw myself onto him, grab his weapon, and … Enough with the James Bond nonsense.
Clove Boy cursed and threw a metal box at the wall. It was the one in which I kept petty cash. Not much. A couple hundred dollars. Judging by the tens and twenties on the floor, it wasn’t chicken feed he was after.
“Where the hell is it?” he demanded, standing up.
“There’s no big stash,” I said. “We don’t usually keep much cash, and we weren’t even open today.”
“I don’t give a shit about money.” He grabbed the back of my coat collar and yanked me to my feet. I felt his gun prod my back as he said, close to my ear, “Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The thing you took from Gallagher’s.”
“Gallagher’s? Rudy Gallagher’s? I’ve never been there.” I was trying, unsuccessfully, not to whine.
“Bullshit,” he said. “You tell me where it is or, so fucking help me, I’ll put one right through your spine.”
“What is it you want?” I yelled. “Tell me, and if I’ve got it, it’s yours.”
“What did you take from Gallagher’s?”
“Nothing. I’ve never been there. I swear to God.”
Something in the way I said that, or maybe the way my body was shaking in fear, must have made him a believer. He released my collar. “Another stupid fucking waste of time,” he mumbled to himself. I felt the gun leave my back. Then it crashed against the back of my head.
I fell to the carpet, woozy but still semiconscious.
Looking across the carpet, I saw him running away, a big man with dark hair showing beneath a policeman’s cap. From that angle, I was also able to see that his shoes were dark brown, not black. Maybe not a cop after all. Maybe just a thug who’d used the uniform to wander freely around a building filled with real cops, imitating them as they pawed through my belongings. They’d been looking for evidence. He’d been looking for something that he hadn’t found in Rudy’s apartment.
What made him think I might have it?
I got to my feet, shuffled into my living quarters and, specifically, to the bathroom, where I plucked a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet and shot a couple with a tumbler of water. The man in the mirror didn’t look all that battered. There’d probably be a welt on the top-right quadrant of my skull, but since there was still some hair growth up there, it wouldn’t be that noticeable on camera.
The things that worry us.
I turned a light on in the bedroom.
Clove Boy had been in there, pulling the bed apart, yanking my suits and pants from the closet, opening the dresser drawers, the better to fondle my underwear and socks. Well, the hell with it all. I’d get the cleanup service to take care of it.
I was suddenly struck by the understandably paranoid thought that the thug cop might come back for another go-round. As he’d said, he’d already wasted a lot of time. Why wouldn’t he come back to make sure I didn’t have whatever precious item he sought? A Maltese falcon, a Spanish doubloon, a rare manuscript. Since it was my story, it might be a gold pork chop.
Work tomorrow. At five-thirty a.m. Barely six hours away if I went to bed immediately.
I trudged down the stairs, wondering where the thug cop had hidden while Cassandra and my kitchen chief made their final walkthrough before closing up. I supposed he could have been stretched out on my bed. They usually just checked the upstairs dining room and the office.
Yawning, I reset the alarm.
Then I decided I’d sleep much better if I had a little something in my stomach. But as soon as I stepped into the kitchen I smelled stale clove cigarette smoke. With anger rising, I turned on the overhead light and saw the empty tin plate on the tile floor, surrounded by crumbs and cigarette butts. While waiting for me, Clove Boy, that son of a bitch, had eaten my peach pie. Perfect.