"Not now," Tommy Boy said. "And definitely not from here. You asked me what to do. I told you. Get the f.u.c.k out. Fast."
"How the h.e.l.l do you know her?" Jojo said. "Who is she?"
"I"ll tell you in the car. Trust me. Go." He took out a handkerchief and began backing out of the room, wiping down everything they had touched.
They were just about out the door when Tommy Boy saw it out of the corner of his eye. It was almost lost in the jumble of audio equipment on the table. "Hold on," he said.
"What now?" Jojo said.
"I"m not sure. Give me a second." There was a small wooden box on the table. He picked it up and opened it.
"What the h.e.l.l is that?" Jojo said, looking over Tommy Boy"s shoulder.
"I don"t know, but I"m going to find out." He took the choke pear out of the box with his handkerchief, set it on the table, and clicked off some more shots. Then he tucked it back in the box.
"Now let"s go," he said.
Tommy relocked the door, then wiped the lock, the k.n.o.b, and the jamb. Minutes later they were on the Long Island Expressway, headed back to Howard Beach.
"I figured it out," Jojo said. "The white overalls. One of those cops is the Hazmat guy."
"Both of them."
"That"s what I"m saying. But who"s the girl?"
Tommy Boy told him.
"You sure that"s her?"
"Her face was on TV every night."
"Not on ESPN."
"It was in the Daily News. Didn"t you see it in the paper?"
"Probably. I can"t remember everything I read. Was there anything about that weird corkscrew thing in the box?"
"No."
Jojo pulled out his cell phone. "I"m calling Pop."
"Make sure you call one of his burner phones. The Feds have ears on everything else," Tommy Boy said.
Jojo stopped dialing. It was as though he"d just remembered his father was a Mob boss and the FBI had had him under surveillance for years.
"Good idea. We don"t want the Federales picking up on this one," Jojo said. "Y"know, you big ox, sometimes you"re not as dumb as you look."
"Thanks, boss. I"m no genius, but I have my moments."
Chapter 70.
Of all the elite units in the department, Red is the toughest to get into. There are only seventy-five of us spread out across the city and at least a thousand more hoping to get in. But I"ve never met two cops more eager-or more qualified-to be part of Red than Casey and Bell, the two Anti-Crime detectives who saved my a.s.s at the carousel on Monday morning.
They"re skilled at undercover, fast on their feet, and, as Kylie pointed out, willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
When we asked them to tail Donovan and Boyle on the down low, they said yes. When we told them why, Bell asked only one question.
"Does IA know you"re recruiting cops to investigate other cops?"
"No," I said. "And if IA finds out, they"ll be investigating all of us."
"Don"t worry," he said. "They won"t find out."
He called me at 6:00 p.m. and said they couldn"t wait to tell us what they came up with on their first day. I suggested an off-campus rendezvous at Uskudar, a hole-in-the-wall Turkish restaurant on Second Avenue. Logistically and strategically, it was the perfect choice. It was walking distance from our office, but n.o.body who knew us was likely to show up. The fact that I really liked their musakka may have also influenced my decision.
They were waiting for us at a table in the rear, and from the grins on their faces, I couldn"t tell who was more excited-them or us.
We ordered drinks and a bunch of appetizers and got down to business.
"So, if we help you crack this case," Bell said, cutting to the chase, "do the two of us have a good chance of working for Red?"
"No promises," I said, "but I can tell you this-if we don"t crack the case, the two of us have a good chance of not working for Red."
"So please tell us you have pictures of Donovan and Boyle shopping at a Hazmat suit store," Kylie said.
Casey laughed. "Nothing that exciting. We have bad news, good news, and great news."
"Start with the bad and work your way up," I said, popping a hunk of warm pita bread in my mouth and washing it down with cold beer.
"Eight thirty this morning," he said, putting his iPhone on the table and bringing up a picture of Donovan walking out of a Starbucks carrying two cups wrapped with cardboard sleeves. "We put our keen detective minds together and concluded it was a coffee run."
"Two minutes later we ran into the snag," Bell said. "Our sergeant called us in. Some mope s.n.a.t.c.hed a purse from a woman in the park. A couple of uniforms could have handled it, but the victim was a British nanny who works for a diplomat"s family, so now it was all hands on deck, and we got pulled in to canva.s.s the area. We were caught up in it for four hours, and we didn"t get back to Donovan and Boyle again till one o"clock."
"They were having lunch at the Big Wong King on Mott Street," Casey said. "After that, they answered a robbery call at an optical store on Franklin, and then they got called to the Pu Chao Buddhist Temple on Eldridge."
"We didn"t pick up on the radio what they were called in for, but they only stayed twenty minutes, so we figured it was no major crime," Bell said. "Maybe just somebody disturbing the enlightenment."
Kylie and I laughed. These guys were light-years more fun to work with than Donovan and Boyle.
Casey flipped through pictures of the restaurant, the optical store, and the Buddhist temple in a hurry.
"All those places are in the Five," Kylie said. "So basically they stayed close to their own precinct."
"Until around three this afternoon," Casey said. "Then they drove uptown to a storefront on East Fifty-Fifth Street."
He flipped to the next picture.
"Holy s.h.i.t," Kylie said. "That"s Muriel Sykes"s campaign headquarters."
"Do you know if Sykes was there at the same time?" I asked.
Casey scrolled to the next shot. It was the three of them-Donovan, Boyle, and Sykes-walking out of the campaign office together.
"We have no idea what they talked about because we couldn"t get close enough to hear anything, but whatever it was, they were in there with her for over an hour."
"If that"s the good news," I said, "I can"t wait to hear the great news."
Casey grinned and flipped to another picture on his iPhone. It was a pretty young woman with curly red hair. "She"s the nanny whose purse got s.n.a.t.c.hed. She gave me her phone number. Wants me to call on her day off."
I took the phone out of his hand and flipped back to the shot of Donovan, Boyle, and Sykes. "As impressed as Kylie and I are at your ability to hit on crime victims, we"re even happier about this."
"It"s a big help," Kylie said.
"We were hoping you"d say that," Bell said, "but we don"t know enough about the case to understand why."
"Because the two cops who could be the Hazmat Killer are in cahoots with the politician who will most benefit if the murders aren"t solved," I said.
"And I bet the reason Donovan and Boyle showed up to pick our brain last night is because they"re reporting everything we know to Sykes," Kylie said.
"So they"re like double agents," Bell said.
"You"re being generous," Kylie said. "They"re more like dirty cops. Zach is right. You guys did some great work in a big hurry. Thank you."
"You"re welcome," Casey said, "but it goes both ways. We appreciate getting a shot to work with Red, so thank you, Detective Jordan. And thank you, Detective MacDonald."
"Hey-we"re having beers and breaking bread here," Kylie said. "You don"t have to be so formal. Call me Kylie. And he"s Zach."
"Kylie and Zach it is," Casey said. "I"m Dave."
Bell raised his beer and toasted us. "And I"m Gideon."
Part Three
La famiglia fornir giustizia
Chapter 71.
Friday started way too early. My cell phone rang at 3:02 a.m. I fumbled for it and focused on the name of the caller, glowing at me in the dark.
Delia Cates.
In my stupor, I could come up with only one reason my boss would call in the middle of the night. She"d found out that Kylie and I were playing fast and loose with the chain of command, and she couldn"t wait till morning to get me started on my new a.s.signment writing tickets to unlicensed street vendors in Jackson Heights.
I pressed the green b.u.t.ton on my phone and mumbled something that sounded like "This is Jordan."
"The Rachael O"Keefe case just blew through the roof," Cates said. "I need you and MacDonald at Gracie Mansion in twenty minutes."
And just like that, I was wide awake. "What"s going on with O"Keefe?" I said.
"I"ll tell you when you get here. Call your partner. Repeat-Gracie Mansion. Twenty minutes. You got it?"
"Yeah, I got-"
She hung up.
I reached for the reading light on the headboard and flipped it on. Cheryl rolled over on her back, jet-black hair cascading over the pale blue pillowcase, caramel skin glowing in the lamplight.
I swung my legs onto the floor and sat on the side of the bed.
"Mmmm, don"t go," she said softly, sitting up and letting the sheets slip below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.
I couldn"t believe that I was living in a universe where someone as beautiful and desirable as Cheryl would be lying naked beside me and I would leap out of bed and put on my pants. But that"s exactly what I did.
"I have to," I said.
"Who called?"
"The police commissioner. He heard we"ve been sleeping together."
She gave me a drowsy smile. "And he"s going to fire you?"
"h.e.l.l, no. He"s giving me a medal. Go back to sleep."
I leaned over and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around me, worked her tongue against mine, slowly let one hand slide down my back, under my belt, and grabbed hold of my gluteus maximus.