They walked to the coffee place Marshall had found on Sixth and sat amidst the Apple-and-Lululemon crowd at a table by the window: Marshall with his second cappuccino of the day, Jordan with a chai latte or something. She was quarter-profile to him, shoulder to the window, patient and reflective as she sipped, maybe a little amused as she watched Marshall arrange his cash: bills tamped square and with a single, crisp fold at the midpoint – transverse, obviously – denominations in ascending order, outside to in. He leaned sideways to slip the cash in his pocket – the motion flashing him back two nights to his meeting with Vialoux, that same action affording a second’s prior warning of the looming and mortal threat – and Jordan said, ‘Are you going to tell me now what you think, or do you need some more quiet brooding?’
Marshall said, ‘They broke in because they were looking for something. Obviously. And they must’ve found it. I talked to the women in the laundromat. They said the police took a file cabinet with them yesterday. They wouldn’t bother doing that if it was full of ash. Which means whoever hit Vialoux’s office took the time to open one file cabinet, and not the other. And why would they do that, unless they’d found what they were looking for?’
Jordan said, ‘They.’
‘Same guys who got him at the restaurant. Timeline seems pretty clear. Fire occurred at ten or eleven o’clock, Thursday night. They obviously shot him and then came up here to his office.’
‘Could’ve been theatrics. The arson, I mean.’
Marshall shook his head. ‘Hired guys wouldn’t do that. They don’t pull the trigger and then hang around for extras. They were at his house before they killed him. The guy could’ve thrown a Molotov through the window, instead of just standing there, waving. And they could’ve done that here, too. Molotov, I mean. But they didn’t. They went inside. They were looking for something specific, they knew he had it, and they found it.’
‘So then why the fire at all? If they’d found what they needed, the arson was pointless. Other than as some kind of final insult that he was never going to experience anyway because he was already dead.’
Marshall said, ‘What do people keep in file cabinets?’
‘Well. Files, obviously. Paper.’
‘Right. So they were looking for a physical document. And it’s impossible to tell now what he had, and what he didn’t have, and what might’ve been taken.’
Jordan had some chai latte. ‘You said the timeline’s clear.’
‘Pretty clear.’
She said, ‘But it’s not logical, is it? If, like you say, they were hired to do a job. I mean, they were sophisticated enough to track his car, know his movements, but then when it came down to it, the best they could do was shoot him through the window of a restaurant, and then come up here and light a fire. Two birds, one stone would’ve been easier. Wait until he was in his office, kill him, take whatever they needed. Seems pretty obvious.’
‘So what’s your theory then?’
‘I don’t think these guys are hired. I think they’re part of it. I think they’re vicious enough, they thought they could fix the problem themselves, but they’re too involved to do it properly. They’ve got something at stake, and it’s making them reactive and impulsive rather than dispassionate.’
That made sense. He thought of D’Anton on the street in the rain yesterday, showing him the dagger he carried.
Reactive and impulsive rather than dispassionate.
He thought the man’s behavior might fit that assessment.
She said, ‘Do you agree?’
‘Yeah. I think so …’ Then he said, ‘Full disclosure, I’m probably not the safest guy to hang around with.’
He told her about yesterday, meeting D’Anton and being warned off by Loretta Flynn from NYPD. The guys in the bagel shop down in Brighton Beach, and his game of Russian Roulette with Frank Cifaretti.
She absorbed it all in with the same patient and unperturbed expression she’d worn yesterday, when he told her about Vialoux. She sipped her chai latte and waited for him to finish, and then she said, ‘I don’t imagine he’ll forget about that any time soon, will he?’
Marshall said, ‘Depends when he sees a dentist. As long as he can stick his tongue in a gap, he’ll want to get even.’
‘D’Anton Lewis obviously knows something. Else why go straight to death threats when you asked him about it.’
‘Yeah. And people of spotless innocence don’t tend to be under active surveillance by NYPD. They think he killed a woman he was having affair with, in 2017.’
‘Really?’
He told her about the woman recovered from the Hudson, the photo of the hand Loretta Flynn had showed him. The imagery brought a silence for a long moment.
Then Jordan said, ‘It doesn’t exactly surprise me. Maybe Vialoux did a job for him, and it pissed off the mob enough that this Langello guy had him killed – gambling debt or no.’
Marshall said, ‘I liked that theory, too.’
‘Liked.’
‘Except I saw Vialoux the night he died. He seemed to think his only existential risk was a gambling debt.’
He watched her think about it.
She said, ‘Maybe he thought he could get away with not telling you. Or maybe he thought he couldn’t afford to.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shrugged. ‘If he respected you enough to ask for help, maybe he didn’t want to own up to whatever he was doing.’
‘I think my potential impression of him was the least of his worries.’
Jordan shook her head. ‘You don’t know that. You don’t know what he was into. He might have thought that if he could just live another day, he could fix his problems and keep his reputation intact, too.’
Marshall didn’t know where to take things after that. He sat drinking his coffee, imagination doing dark work, giving him that line from D’Anton:
Open you up, cock to throat …
He said, ‘Did we cover the fact there’re some mob guys after me?’
‘Yeah. Anyone tries to shoot you, I reserve the right to reassess my proximity.’
‘I was being serious.’
She shrugged. ‘You don’t have to walk me through it. If you want some gallantry points, you can go and lock yourself up at home, rule out collateral. But I’m happy to take the risk, if it means finding out what happened to Ray. But don’t think I’m going to dive in front of a bullet for you.’
Marshall said, ‘I’m pleased we cleared that up.’
Jordan didn’t answer.
He said, ‘What were you going to do if she asked for the key?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Our friend from the jewelry store. You told her you had a key to Vialoux’s office.’
She said, ‘I do have a key.’
Maybe his surprise was somehow evident: she said, ‘I worked with him.’
He almost said, Briefly. But he didn’t. He let the topic die, verbally at least, mutual agreement in their shared look. Something there that maybe he’d come back to, but for now he just said, ‘I’m going to talk to a witness who saw the smiley man, and then I’m going to see D’Anton again.’
‘Is that a statement, or an invitation?’
Marshall said, ‘The invitation was implicit in the statement.’
She smiled. ‘Who’s the witness?’
He told her about the Boynes, Vialoux looking into their daughter’s suicide. ‘Apparently Ray was around there one night, they saw a nice little man with a smile, sitting in a car, watching.’
They were by the window, and the image was too suggestive for her not to look: he watched her scan the street, checking faces, checking vehicles. He almost told her he was happy to do all this alone, but he figured there was probably an injunction against that kind of reminder, covered when she told him not to walk her through it. In any case, she’d been a cop. She knew the risk of this kind of thing, these kinds of people. Also, Marshall thought, he really liked her company.
He said, ‘And I need a car, too. Something big.’