Compromised (18 page)

“Don’t do me any favors, Reggie. Call someone else the next time a toilet gets clogged.”

Reggie held up his hands with his fingers spread wide. “Enough!” he shouted, then lowered his head and repeated with finality “Enough.”

Lido watched the exchange between Burns and Coffer from the comfort of his unmarked car while he munched on a breakfast burrito and drank strong coffee. He snapped a couple of pictures with his iPhone and noted with interest the large bandage on Burns’s arm. Though he was unable to hear the details of the conversation, he observed that the exchange had been heated.
Too bad I couldn’t hear them.
He waited until the two had separated and made a notation in his notebook that an envelope had been exchanged. “Something is rotten in Denmark,” he muttered, then put the car into gear and drove off.

“I’ve got to step out for a few.”

Ma’s eyes flashed with suspicion. “Without Gus?” she asked.

“Yes, without Gus. He’s sitting on Jack Burns this morning. Besides, I’m just going two blocks down to Tony’s.”

“Tony’s Pizza? Why? I’ve got a refrigerator full of leftovers. I’ve got ham, mortadella, and soppressata. How about I stuff a nice hero with cold cuts, roasted peppers, lettuce, and mozzarella?”

I grinned. “Ham, mortadella, and soppressata,really? Worry about cholesterol much? Why don’t you just cut to the chase and make the sandwich with pig’s feet and hog jowls?”

“It can’t hurt you if you only eat it once in a while.”

“Everything in moderation, huh?” I pretended to mull over her offer. “That’s okay. I’m not really hungry. Anyway, I finally got a call back from Harry. We’re going to meet at Tony’s for a quick debriefing—I figure that it’s better not to have him up here with the little one running amok.”

“Is that a good place to eat? Does he even eat pizza?”

I couldn’t help but grimace. “Why, because he’s Japanese?”

“Yeah?”

“He loves pizza. He just substitutes salmon roe for the cheese and wasabi for the tomato sauce.”

She gave me a smack on the arm. “Wiseass. Get the hell out of here, but remember, I’m watching the clock.”

“Anyway, it’s not about the food. It’s about the conversation.” I checked my bag to make sure I had everything I needed: my phone, a pad, and my fully loaded LDA, of course. “Everything’s here.” I tossed the heavy bag over my shoulder. “Be back soon.”

“You’re not a flight risk, are you?”

“I don’t know. Would you like me to surrender my passport? How about if I put something valuable up as collateral.”

She glared at me. “Your word. I want your word as collateral.”

I winked at her and placed my hand over my heart. “So help me,
Ma
.”

“How about so help me
God
?”

“I survived a bullet to the noggin. I think God has already gone way above and beyond, don’t you?”

“It’s Max’s lunchtime in an hour. I’ll expect you back in time to feed him.” The woman obviously couldn’t help herself. She hugged me with tears in her eyes. “Take care of this already. I need things to get back to normal around here.”

“Will do,” I said and got going while the getting was still good.

I had lied to my mother, not about the meeting with Harry, but about not being hungry.
I mean, I hadn’t been hungry, but once the aroma of tomato sauce and baking bread wafted up my nostrils . . . well, I’m only human. I wolfed down a Sicilian slice and a root beer before Harry arrived.

I saw him enter and motioned for him to join me in the back of the pizzeria. He nodded hello to Tony and made straight for the table. Tony and I have been tight since the days when I used to use his bathroom to put on makeup before school because Ma thought I was still too young and didn’t want the other kids calling me a
puttana
, which she frequently explained was Italian slang for whore.

From the way Tony looked at me with the flashy blonde hairdo, he might’ve been thinking that Ma had been right, that I’d lost my way and become a call girl.

“Hungry?” I asked.

“Yes.” He dropped his backpack on an empty chair and sat down.

“What would you like?”

He wrinkled his nose. “I’m not a big fan of cheese.”

“Lactose intolerant?”

“What is lactose?”

“It means that eating cheese gives you the shits. Anyway, why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve met somewhere else.”

“Food is not my first priority.” He leaned in closer. “We found Rodrigo.”

“We?”

“Tiru and I. Anyway. He’s not our man.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. He’s a terrible shot. He couldn’t hit Godzilla with a laser-targeted rocket launcher.”

Love the regional metaphor.
My eyes widened. “And you know this how?”

He moved his head back and forth as if deciding whether or not to tell me. “We have our methods,” he said simply.

“Evidently. But you’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“How about a salad? Tony makes a nice Italian salad: lettuce, peppers, olives, anchovies . . . the works. We’ll tell him to hold the mozzarella.”

“It’s okay, Chalice. I passed a noodle shop on my way over. I’ll grab a bowl of udon when we’re finished. You left me several messages. What did you want to tell me?”

“Ah, the messages. You know that was more than twenty-four hours ago. You’re not so great at returning calls.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, but I was very busy.”

“What if I had been in danger?”

“Were you?”

“No.”

“Then don’t be such a drama queen. Why did you call?”

“A man was stabbed yesterday.”

“So? It’s Manhattan. I’m sure it’s an hourly occurrence in this city.”

He was wrong, very wrong. New York was incredibly safe for a cosmopolitan city of such great population and density, and daytime stabbings were far from commonplace. It wasn’t, however, germane to our conversation, so I didn’t bother to call him on it.

However, Tony must’ve overheard Harry’s comment. “New York is pretty goddamn safe. Right, Chalice?”

I gave him a thumbs-up. “Tell him, Tony.”

Tony dusted his flattened pizza dough with flour, pried it off the counter, and then spun it in the air, “A born-and-bred New Yorker has to stick up for the Big Apple,” he said. “Just saying.”

I watched Tony do his thing for a moment, then fished in my bag and pulled out some eight-by-ten photos. “The stabbing victim was a Japanese-American man. He was attacked as he was coming out of a Shinto temple.” I placed a picture of the victim lying on the sidewalk in front of him. “Recognize this guy?”

Harry picked up the photo and studied it intently. He shrugged. “It’s difficult to see his face.” The next photo took all the guesswork out of it for him. It was an enlargement of the victim’s driver’s license. “The man’s name was Aguri Maeda. He was a sushi chef at a restaurant called Kanpeki.”

I considered Harry’s expression and body language while he studied the second photo. His face remained impassive, but a slight tensing of the shoulders and neck muscles indicated a reaction. He shifted in his seat, further indicating an emotional response of some nature. “So, do you know him?” I asked.

“Honestly, Chalice, do you really expect me to recognize the victim just because he’s Japanese? I had no idea you were such a bigot.”

Me? Guilty of prejudice? Not a chance, slick.
I laid down the third picture, the artist’s sketch of the assailant with a separate enlargement of the neck tattoo, a red and black serpent’s head. “How about this beast? Ever seen this guy around?” The sketch depicted an Asian man with a broad nose, round face, and a truly intimidating countenance. It was no wonder the witness had described him so accurately. I know that frightening image would’ve definitely seared its way into
my
brain.

“What is it with you, Chalice? Do we all look alike to you?” He pushed the artist’s sketch back across the table.

I wasn’t buying it, and the fine pinpoints of sweat on his upper lip told me that he was full of crap.

“Where’s the—”

“The
keshooshitsu
?”

He nodded, and I pointed in the direction of the men’s room. His sudden need to duck out indicated to me that I was right. He didn’t have a terrible and unexpected urge. He was merely buying a few minutes to regroup so that he could come back and tell me some more bald-faced lies. That was okay because it gave me a moment to do something important. I fished in my bag, found what I was looking for, and took care of business before he returned.

Harry was a cool character. He had steadied himself while in the seclusion of the men’s room—he looked calm and collected when he returned from the shit zoo.

“So are you going to come clean, or do I have to get heavy-handed with you?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Harry, it’s completely obvious that you know these men, so if you continue to lie to me, I’m going to have to cut you off.”

His eyes widened. “You’re going to cut
me
off? I only agreed to come here as a courtesy to you. I’m more than capable of tracking down my brother’s killer on my own.”

“All right.” I reached across the table and grabbed the pictures. “These are obviously of no use to you.” I stuffed them back in my bag. “Have a good day, Harry. Go grab a hearty cup of noodles—you look a little worn-out.”

He seemed befuddled. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it. I know that you were expecting the third degree, but I’m not going to waste my time. As far as I’m concerned, you’re on your own.”

He shrugged. “Third degree?”

“It means I’m not going to sweat the truth out of you. We both know you’re lying, so go find the shooter on your own, and I’ll do what I have to do on
my
own.”

“Okay. If that’s the way you want it.” He opened his backpack and attempted to hand me the phone.

“Keep it,” I said. “Unlike you, I’ll answer if you call me, and I’ll come to your aid if you need rescuing, even if you don’t deserve it.”

He shook his head. “I
don’t
need your help.”

“Just keep it,” I insisted.

He jammed the phone into his backpack. “Good-bye, Chalice.”

“Yup,” I said nonchalantly. “See you around.”

He shrugged, tossed the backpack over his shoulder, and turned away without seeing that I was smiling. The phone he’d attempted to give back was not the phone I’d originally given him. The phone now in his backpack was a new one. It contained a tracking chip, and since the silly backpack went everywhere that he did . . .

“Hey, babe,” Gus began.
“I staked out Burns’s apartment this morning and guess what I saw?”

It felt great to hear Gus briefing me without any hostility in his voice. “Don’t keep a girl guessing. Spill!”

“There must’ve been some fireworks in the Burnses’ hacienda this morning, because Sofia blew out the front door in a hurry, wiping tears from her eyes, and Jack hit the streets shortly afterward, dressed in his robe.”

“So they had a spat. That doesn’t mean he killed someone.”

“I’m not finished.”

“Of course you weren’t. What was I thinking?”

“So Burns is out by the front steps, presumably searching for his wife and looking like something the cat dragged in, when guess who comes along to pay him a visit?”

“I don’t know. Lady Gaga? The Prince of Wales? Who? I’m not a seer.”

“Not even a guess?”

“No.”

“I see. So you want to be spoon-fed all of this vital information, is that it?”

“Yes. That’s it. That’s exactly it. So who the hell was it?”

“Reggie Coffer.”

“So? They’re old friends. So what?”

“It didn’t look as if they were very close. They argued, and it got pretty heated.”

I shrugged.
“So?”
I asked, being intentionally obstinate.

“Reggie handed him an envelope.”

“Maybe his mail was delivered to the wrong address. Or haven’t you heard that the postal system can’t get its shit together? I shipped something to San Francisco, and they attempted delivery in Alaska.”

“At least they got it to the West Coast.”

I shook my head disbelievingly. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Anyway, Burns’s arm was heavily bandaged.”

I had to agree with him even though his news was circumstantial—something was going on. “Aha. All right, how do you want to work this?”

“We
could
just ask him,” Gus offered. “Burns seems to be a pretty straight-up kind of guy. Maybe he’ll just fess up if we ask him about Reggie.”

“Just like that?”

“Stranger things have happened. He doesn’t appear to be all that sophisticated. Maybe he’d be happy to unburden himself.”

“Burns, the guy who went bonkers when you interviewed him? Burns, the guy who’s obviously hiding something? So just ask?”

“Yup. Just ask.”

Max was having a mac and cheese party. The mess had gotten so bad that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I grabbed a wet washcloth and cleaned his precious little punum.

Ma always made mac and cheese from scratch with fresh cheddar, milk, and Romano, but the poor thing was running on vapors, so I ordered her to take a nap and quickly prepared a box of O Organics macaroni and cheese. It wasn’t homemade, but it had gotten a GoodGuide health score of 8.5 out of 10. To tell you the truth, Max wasn’t all that fussy, and the mac and cheese had nice adhesive properties, which facilitated his face-art effort—the child was clearly a Picasso in the making, an absolute prodigy.

I checked the time. “I want to bathe and change Max before Ma wakes up. The poor woman is exhausted. We can leave to see him right after.”

As if on cue Ma walked out of the bedroom, yawning. “Go. Get out of here and close the damn case while I still have life in this tired old body.”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“I catnapped.” She smiled at Max. “Someone ate hearty. I’m not going to find an empty mac and cheese box in the garbage, am I, Stephanie?”

“Run!” I shouted. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You rotten kid. How hard is it to boil some macaroni and melt some cheese.” She pretended to threaten me with an open hand. “Bah. I don’t know why I bother writing down all of my recipes for you.”