She wondered if, at another time or in another place, something might have developed between her and Jordan. But it was a pointless question, and any answer would be equally pointless. She continued looking at him every now and again, enjoying the pleasant sense of relaxation his presence gave her.
Jordan’s calm voice surprised her as she was thinking this. ‘Have I passed the test?’
Maureen could have kicked herself. She should have known that her excessive attention would not escape Jordan.
She smiled apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. There is no test. If there were, you’d have passed it long ago.’
At that moment, fortunately for him, Jordan felt his cellphone vibrate in his pants pocket. He had put it on vibrate so as not to disturb the other customers, but in agreement with Maureen, he hadn’t switched it off. Since the arrest of Julius Wong, they had been kept out of things, for obvious reasons. It would have been difficult to explain Jordan’s role, let alone Maureen’s, now that the media were fully involved. They were forced to follow the story from a distance, unable to participate in the interrogations or keep up to date with new developments. They had to rely on whatever came from Burroni or Christopher.
Maybe it was one of them calling now.
Jordan saw there was no number on the display screen. He pressed the key, ignoring a few heads that had turned towards their table with an air of disapproval.
‘Hello?’
‘Jordan, it’s James.’
Jordan looked across at Maureen and nodded. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s him, Jordan. They did the DNA test – a perfect match. Plus, he hasn’t been able to provide a scrap of an alibi for any of the days when the murders were committed. And that includes yesterday. He says he was at home all evening. I don’t think there’s any doubt it’s him, though we can’t get a word out of him.’
Jordan mutely absorbed this information.
‘Jordan,’ Burroni continued, ‘I don’t know what you did to get us where we are now. And I haven’t a clue how the Italian woman fits in. There are a whole lot of things I just don’t understand.’
Jordan could hardly blame him. In agreement with Christopher, he had decided to keep Burroni in the dark about what Maureen had brought to the investigation. And especially about the way she had found out what she knew.
‘If it’s any consolation, I’m in the same position as you are.’
‘There’s something else I wanted to say, Jordan. I really liked working with you. And I’m not just saying that because of my personal thing and the way it got sorted out. I’m saying it because it’s true. You’re a great cop, and I think it’s a scandal what happened to you.’
‘It’s all right, James. Don’t worry. Keep me informed, and say hello to your son for me.’
Jordan hung up and turned to Maureen. ‘It’s him. The DNA test nailed him. The game’s over for Julius Wong.’
They were both silent for a moment. Then Jordan said what they were both thinking. ‘You know it isn’t over for us, though, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Maureen replied in a low voice.
‘You saw something that led us to Julius Wong. I haven’t the faintest idea how it’s even possible, but you and I both know it’s true. Which means the murder you say you saw when those people were wearing Peanuts masks must be true, too. Do you think Wong was the person you saw with a knife in his hand?’
‘I don’t know, Jordan. I only saw him for a moment, with his back to me. Now that I’ve seen him in person, I think it’s possible. The build is similar.’
Maureen made a sign to the waiter who was approaching to clear the table. He understood, turned around and walked back the way he had come, leaving them alone.
‘We need to find out what happened in that room,’ Jordan went on, ‘even though we don’t know where, when or why. It could provide the motive for the murders, but at the same time we can’t talk to anyone because they all, Burroni included, would laugh in our faces or call in the nearest psychiatric unit.’
Maureen felt a sense of panic. ‘I don’t know if I can do it again, Jordan.’
He reached out a hand and placed it on hers. Maureen found it incredible how such a small gesture could be so reassuring.
‘Yes, you can. You’re a strong woman and you’re not alone now. And above all, you’re not crazy. I know that, and I believe you. Sooner or later all this will be over.’
Maureen did not have time to reply, because at that moment a slim man in a beautifully tailored dark suit approached the table and addressed Jordan.
‘Sir, if this delightful creature you have in front of you is telling you you’re very handsome, don’t believe her. She says the same thing to every man she meets.’
Jordan was puzzled, but then he saw a smile appear on Maureen’s mouth. ‘Jordan, this is Professor Roscoe, the surgeon who operated on me. It’s thanks to him that I can see now. William, this is Jordan Marsalis, a very dear friend.’
Roscoe held out his hand to Jordan and shook it with a firm grip, the grip of a sincere, self-confident man.
‘Sorry if I disturbed you, but the fact is, we doctors are a bit like prima donnas. We like to savour our successes. It may not always be appropriate, but we’re only human.’
Roscoe turned his attention to Maureen. ‘How are your eyes, Miss Martini?’
‘They’re fine. I still don’t know how to thank you.’
The surgeon did not notice how false Maureen’s enthusiasm was, nor did he see the shadow that passed over her face as she uttered those words. Jordan wondered how Roscoe would have reacted, had he been told about the side-effects of the operation.
‘My dear, I think your operation was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. Apart from the professional satisfaction it gave me, it’s also flung wide for me the doors of this Holy of Holies of New York cuisine. I’ve discovered that your father has opened an almost unlimited line of credit for me here, which I’m not embarrassed to take advantage of . . .’ he gave a disarming smile ‘. . . though I’m limiting myself to alternate days.’
Jordan pointed to the empty chair next to his. ‘We’ve nearly finished, but if you’d like to join us . . .’
William Roscoe indicated with a glance a table behind him where two elegant, slightly stiff-looking men were sitting. ‘Those two barons of medical research at the table over there would never forgive me. It’s incredible how lacking in a sense of humour some scientists are.’
He moved away from the table with a conspiratorial air. Maybe he had misconstrued the meaning of their presence here together, but neither Jordan nor Maureen saw fit to enlighten him.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he called pleasantly. ‘Have a good evening.’
He turned, and walked with an elegant gait back to the table where his colleagues were waiting for him, their faces buried in big leather-bound menus.
Jordan and Maureen did not have time to talk about Professor Roscoe, because the cellphone Jordan had put down on the table started vibrating again.
This time the number appeared on the display and Jordan recognized it immediately. It was the landline in his apartment, and he knew who was at the other end. For a moment, he was tempted to reject the call. He looked around, ill at ease.
Maureen understood his embarrassment and pointed to the phone. ‘Answer it, it might be important.’
You don’t know how important. And you don’t know how afraid I am that it might be.
He took the call and immediately heard the voice he desired and feared.
‘Jordan, it’s Lysa.’
He had not forgotten the look on her face when she had seen him embracing Maureen the previous night. He couldn’t forget it, because he hadn’t forgotten what he himself had felt on seeing her. He kept his reply curt, not because he didn’t have the words, but because he was afraid to utter them.
‘Go on.’
‘I need to talk to you. About something important.’
‘OK. I??
?ll call you tomorrow morn—’
‘No, Jordan. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. It’s very important and very urgent. I need to talk to you now. I won’t have the courage tomorrow.’
Jordan looked at Maureen. She understood and nodded her head.
He glanced at his watch, mentally calculating the time it would take him to get to 16th Street on his bike.
‘OK. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘Problem?’ Maureen asked.
‘Not at all. A personal matter, nothing to do with the case.’
‘Then go. Don’t worry about me. I’m at home here. I’ll take advantage of my father being away to boss everyone around.’
Jordan stood up. He was tall and strong, but right now Maureen thought he looked like a lost little boy.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow. Maybe we can meet and work out a strategy.’
‘All right. Now go – three of your twenty minutes have already gone.’
As she watched him walking to the cloakroom to pick up his leather jacket and helmet, Maureen told herself that when a man has that expression on his face, it’s almost always because of an affair of the heart. So it wasn’t hard to believe that it was a matter that had nothing to do with the case.
Neither she nor Jordan knew just how wrong this last supposition was.
CHAPTER 38
Jordan stopped the Ducati in front of the building, switched off the engine and propped the bike on the kickstand. He removed his helmet and waited there for a moment, looking at the glass in the main door, as if he could somehow read his future by magic on the shiny surface. He did not have his key with him and besides, even if he had had it, he wouldn’t have wanted to go straight up and open the door as if nothing between him and Lysa had changed.
He got off the bike and approached the door, with his helmet hanging from his hand.
It was here, not so long ago, and pretty much at this hour, that he had used it as a weapon to defend himself from the attack of Lord and his friends. After which, he had gone up to the apartment with a black eye and blood dripping from his shirt. And found Lysa, half naked in the bathroom, and her ironic reaction to his surprise at finding her there.
Do you always have a nose bleed when you’re embarrassed?
He remembered her words, her face, her eyes, and what was beneath the robe when she had opened it, and he would have preferred none of this to have happened.
But it had.
Jordan was a man who had seen death, who had killed. And yet now, he felt defenceless in the face of all the things he had not understood about Lysa, and especially all the things he had not understood or accepted about himself.
He made up his mind and pressed the button. Maybe she had seen him from the window, because the answer came almost instantaneously.
‘I’m on my way down.’
In spite of himself, Jordan felt relieved. He heard the click of the lock and soon afterwards Lysa appeared, the way he had always seen her.
Beautiful and sensual.
‘Hi,’ she said simply.
‘Hi,’ he replied.
Jordan saw that Lysa was avoiding meeting his eyes. She looked tired, as if she had been thinking too much and sleeping too little.
‘Have you already eaten?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I was having dinner when you called.’
Having dinner with her? Lysa would have liked to ask, but she held back.
‘Sorry I disturbed you,’ was all she said.
‘It’s OK. We’d already finished.’
Lysa nodded towards the lighted windows of the diner across the street. ‘How about a coffee?’
Jordan was pleased with the suggestion. In the apartment they would have felt alone – among people they could have the illusion that they were together. ‘A coffee would be great.’
They crossed side by side, in the semi-darkness, Jordan with the weight of the helmet in his hand and Lysa with the weight of what she was carrying inside, whatever it was.
Then everything happened quickly.
There was the roar of a motorbike and a blue and white Honda raced around the corner of the building, carrying two people wearing full-face helmets.
The driver braked sharply, and the passenger lifted an arm in their direction.
As the first shot rang out, Jordan grabbed Lysa and pushed her to the ground, then lay down on top of her to cover her with his body.
There were two more shots in rapid succession.
Jordan felt something whistling over his head, and brick dust falling on them from where the bullets had hit a wall.
The Honda accelerated violently, its tyres screeching on the asphalt as the bike slithered round in a U-turn that caused a couple of cars coming in the other direction to slam on their brakes.
Jordan lifted his head. There was an eerie silence after the noise of the gunshots. His shirt felt damp and sticky on the right side of his chest. He rolled onto his side to let Lysa breathe.
‘Are you all right?’
Lysa raised her head off the ground as best she could, trying to see a particular point on her body. Jordan followed the direction of her gaze and saw a red stain spreading on the left side of her chest.
‘Jordan, I . . .’
In a moment he was kneeling beside her, trying to reassure her as best he could. ‘Be quiet, don’t speak. Everything’s all right.’
Jordan opened her blouse and saw that the bullet had struck the lower part of her shoulder, just above the heart. He moved his face closer to hers.
‘Lysa, can you hear me? It’s not serious, you can make it. Hold on. An ambulance will be here soon.’
Lysa couldn’t speak but blinked to show that she had understood.
Just then, Annette came running out of the diner with a table napkin in her hand. He grabbed the napkin from her, rolled it into a ball and pressed it to Lysa’s wound. Lysa grimaced with pain.
‘Annette, come here, just keep doing what I’m doing. We have to stop the bleeding.’
Jordan stood up, took the cellphone from his pocket and put it in the pocket of her green apron. ‘Call 911 and tell them what happened. I’ll call you as soon as I can.’
Jordan picked up his helmet, put it on without fastening it, and ran to the Ducati. He kick-started the engine, put it in gear, and set off at top speed, the rear wheel skidding. He shot across the intersection like a missile, narrowly avoiding a green minibus with the logo of a catering company, whose driver was forced to swerve sharply towards the sidewalk.
Jordan then joined the flow of traffic, trying to think as he continued to accelerate.
It was fairly unlikely that the two men on the Honda had taken any of the crosstown streets heading east, which would have meant endless intersections and traffic-lights. Going through a red light or riding down those streets at high speed would bring a police car on your trail before long.
It was more likely that they had continued southwards along Eleventh Avenue, where the traffic flow was easier and the speed-limit a lot more lenient. The two men had a significant head start on him, but Jordan could not let that deter him.
He hit the avenue from 14th Street, where only the previous evening he had put an end to a series of deaths with the arrest of Julius Wong.
The Ducati was running at 95 mph, weaving between the cars with the agility of a bullfighter’s cape. Jordan was filled with anxiety and anger. The sight of the red stain spreading over Lysa’s blouse had shaken him. He didn’t know who the attackers were, but it was quite clear that they’d been gunning for him and had hit Lysa by mistake.
There were works in progress near Pier 40, signalled by warning signs and a row of yellow plastic road humps, causing a bottleneck to form. As Jordan approached, he saw the tail-light of a motorbike moving in and out of the lines of cars.
In all probability, the driver of the bike, after keeping in the left lane, had been forced by cars to join the right-hand lane. If Jordan had taken the same route, he would have been s
lowed down in the same way.
In an instant he took a decision.
He braked with no warning, earning curses from the motorists behind him, then swerved resolutely to the right and suddenly accelerated until he got the bike up onto the sidewalk, moving his body in such a way as to avoid too much skidding.
The anger of the engine echoing Jordan’s own rage, he launched himself at top speed along the walkway beside the river, praying that the rear tyre would not be damaged from the impact as it had hit the sidewalk.
Thanks to his greater speed, he soon caught up with the bike, which had now moved clear of the bottleneck. He hadn’t been 100 per cent sure it was them, but when he saw the blue and white of the Honda in the yellowish light of the streetlamps, he could not help letting out a cry of elation.
‘Got you, you bastards!’
He accelerated even more.
An evening jogger running towards him jumped up on the parapet to avoid him, his eyes wide in fright.
Jordan wasn’t afraid. The adrenaline of the chase was working on him like a drug. All he wanted was to make those two men pay for Lysa’s bloodstained blouse.
The driver of the Honda became aware out of the corner of his eye of the scarlet flash of the Ducati racing along the sidewalk to his right, turned and saw Jordan, and put on a burst of speed.
Now the two bikes were racing each other.
Jordan saw the passenger raise his right arm in his direction and this time he clearly made out the gun. With perfect timing, he swerved to the left at the exact moment the man squeezed the trigger. He saw the flash but the sound of the shot was covered by the engine noise.
Taking advantage of a driveway, Jordan managed to get back down on the asphalt and follow the Honda, keeping to the left, making it hard for the man sitting on the passenger seat, who had the gun in his right hand, to take aim.
Despite this, Jordan was forced again to swerve violently when the man moved the gun over to his left hand and fired two shots towards him almost blindly.