The protesters on Fifth Avenue had been reduced by weather to the hardy few, all of them soaked and pretty hoarse by now. Marshall stopped at the Strand Books kiosk for shelter from the weather and called Nevins on his cell. It went to voicemail.
Marshall said, ‘I just met your friend Loretta Flynn. Call me back. I’m eager to discuss.’
He assumed his theory was correct: that Nevins had made a query on D’Anton, and Flynn had then warned him off. She hadn’t denied it. She hadn’t even claimed she couldn’t comment. And Nevins had been evasive on the D’Anton topic earlier.
He waited for another break in the rain, and then walked down to Forty-second Street and went into the public library. His library card was a recent and valuable acquisition, and he regarded himself as some kind of model patron. He always used bookmarks. Never had he dog-eared a page. He was fastidious in his treatment of paperbacks, and never creased the spine. And he never kept a book past its due date. He didn’t want some paltry surcharge being logged against his membership, awkward sums growing progressively inelegant with compound interest. He reserved thirty minutes on one of the public computers, and ran a search on D’Anton Lewis.
Google Images had a cached headshot, ten years old or thereabouts, from when he was on the staff of some Wall Street trading company Marshall had never heard of. Since then, he didn’t seem to have done much, at least as far as the internet was concerned. No Twitter or Instagram or anything convenient like that. The News tab on Google came up with the story Jordan Mora had mentioned – D’Anton buying the town house from that billionaire sex trafficker, Jerry Erskine. Price undisclosed, but thought to be in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars.
He searched Loretta Flynn. The first hit on Google was the NYPD website. She was second in charge of the seventeenth precinct, just as she’d told him. There was a smiling headshot of her in dress blues, alongside an italicized blurb about her passion for helping the community. The text with its humble-service theme was rather somewhat counterposed to Marshall’s own impression of her. He guessed ruthlessly pragmatic wouldn’t have much value as a PR term.
He thought about calling Jordan Mora, but he didn’t want to give an impression of coming on too heavy. Although she might know whether D’Anton had always been the kind of guy to carry a ten-inch dagger in his coat, or if it was a recent lifestyle choice. He could hear himself saying that to her, seeing her smile.
The call history on his phone still had the number for the bagel place. He typed it into Google, and the search results showed him a street-view image of the premises. He opened the Maps window and had a look around. The bagel shop was on a corner site. There was a florist’s next door and a twenty-four-hour Minimart directly opposite.
Marshall called the number again.
‘Bagel shop.’
‘Is Frank there?’
‘Who are you, pal?’
‘I’m coming to see him. He can pick a time, or I can.’
The guy hung up.
Marshall googled Ray Vialoux. A few news items had appeared in the last few hours, describing in brief the shooting at the restaurant. Nothing yet about poor Lydia in the house across the street. He scrolled through search results and found Vialoux’s website. APEX INVESTIGATIONS. The homepage had a mission statement about achieving best results, and some detective-related imagery. A digital camera the size of a cinderblock, and a floppy disk sitting on some splayed documents. The CONTACT US page had Vialoux’s name and cell number, and his company address over in Park Slope. Beneath the text was a photograph of the office frontage, pre-arson. Marshall closed the browser and walked out of the building, threading through tourists looking everywhere except where they were going.
Harry Rush’s office was in an old red-brick building in Washington Heights, way up on 155th Street. It looked like some kind of cultural intersection point. There was a Mobil station next door on the corner with Broadway, and the Church of the Intercession was directly opposite. The sidewall of Harry’s building had a five-story-high painting of an eagle that looked to be swooping down on the Mobil.
Rush Law was on level five. Marshall took the stairs up and went into Harry’s reception area. Harry’s administrator, Marlene Delacroix, was behind the desk, and Harry’s bodyguard and driver, Chiat Money, was sitting on one of the client chairs, reading a magazine. In the corner, a shirtless man wearing torn fatigue pants was filling up a hot-water bottle from the watercooler.
Chiat saw Marshall enter and lifted his chin.
‘Hey, Chiat. How you doing?’
Chiat shrugged. ‘Usual. Groovin’ smooth as a motherfucker.’
‘That’s good.’
Marlene was reading a book by Lena Dunham. Without looking up she said, ‘You can go in. He knows you’re coming.’
Harry was at his desk, on the phone. Marshall closed the office door and sat down in the visitor chair, opposite. Harry had his eyes shut, brow gently furrowed. He said to the phone, ‘Yeah. Yeah. Of course.’ Trying to wedge his way into something tedious. ‘I think the fact … I think the fact you threatened to do that to him with the knife, and then the body was found essentially in that configuration … yeah. That’s the immediate obstacle. OK, you call me back then.’
He put down the phone, let his breath out through pursed lips. He was a black man closing in on fifty, very tall, very fit, very well-tailored. He had on a tan suit with a tan tie, gray shirt matching the gray in his hair – buzzcut turning salty at the margins.
Marshall said, ‘You heard what happened?’
‘Yeah. The cops ran through it. Unbelievable. But you’re OK?’
Marshall spread his hands, like the fact of his presence was sufficient response. ‘Do you know what he was into?’
‘Vialoux? Shit, no.’
‘But you put him onto me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ray said he went to you first, and you told him to talk to me.’
Harry shook his head. ‘No, all he did was ask for your details. All he said was he needed to talk to you. I never knew what his problem was.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
‘Look, don’t sit there like you got a bone to pick. Have a coffee, chill out.’
‘I already had coffee.’
‘All right, well. I’m not your problem.’
Marshall said, ‘They’d set up surveillance across the street from his house.’
‘What? Who did?’
‘Whoever nailed him.’
He told him about Lydia in the house across the street.
Harry ran his hands through his hair. Veins stood out on his forehead.
Marshall said, ‘He told me he had debts he couldn’t service. He was part of a gambling ring someone called D’Anton Lewis got him into.’
Harry shrugged. ‘All right.’
Marshall said, ‘And I wondered if you know Vialoux, maybe you know D’Anton, too.’
‘I know of him. He’s not cut from nice cloth, put it that way.’
‘Yeah. I got that impression.’
He told Harry what had happened.
Harry said, ‘Shit, he threatened you?’
‘Cock to throat, were his exact words.’
Harry opened a drawer and removed a letter-size envelope, tossed it toward him. It spun midair and then hit the desk, slid and then stopped with one corner cantilevered. Marshall sat there for a moment, not moving. Then the urge to make corrections ran in a prickle across his shoulders and down his spine. He slid the envelope fully onto the table. Strict, parallel orientation and a generous two-inch offset, edge with respect to edge.
Harry said, ‘That’s your fee for last month.’
‘What do you know about D’Anton?’
The door opened, and the shirtless guy stuck his head in from the waiting area. Harry said, ‘Charlie, just give us a minute. I won’t be long.’
The door closed.
Harry said, ‘Look. I don’t know anything. All I know is other people’s speculation that he’s into heavy shit.’ He shrugged. ‘Story you just told me, that’ll mix into the pot with everything else I heard, frankly make me even more certain he’s a guy best avoided.’
Marshall didn’t answer.
Harry said, ‘And shit, mob guys? Frank Cifaretti?’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, no way.’
‘Vialoux’s dead. I mentioned that, right?’
‘Yeah, and I don’t want to join him. And I don’t want photos of my family showing up in the mail, because I did the wrong thing, or knocked on the wrong door.’
‘He told you about the photos, huh? What else did he say?’
Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not worth it to me, I’m sorry. I don’t want to be mixed up in something’s gonna cost me.’
They sat looking at each other for a few seconds. Marshall had a line forming, something about how being a family man demanded a different kind of selfishness – generosity in a personal sphere closing you down to the broader world – but he knew he couldn’t say it. Harry had a different kind of calculus to make, one that Marshall knew he’d probably never understand.
He went and sat outside the church for a while, watching the traffic go by on 155th Street, and then he started walking. Three blocks down Broadway, his phone rang. It was Hannah Vialoux.
‘Hey. Everything all right?’
‘They said it was you who found Lydia. Why didn’t you tell me? You just left?’
He had the answer right there in his mind, but he couldn’t say it, couldn’t tell her he felt a tension being back in the house, being around her. Like everything was set on edge by history. He said, ‘I’m trying to find who did it. That’s all.’
‘Esther Lopez says she saw one of them. She said she spoke to you, too.’
‘That’s right.’
‘They’ve been following him for weeks. I remember now. They’ve been following him probably for six weeks. The boys saw him being watched.’
‘What? What boys?’
‘No, Boynes. Boynes. Their daughter committed suicide. Ray looked into it, I think I told you earlier. He was at their house, and they saw that man watching, sitting in his car. I remembered, because of the description. Shiny hair, and that smile on his face. They said he just sat there, smiling.’