Pretend You Don't See Her

  They had coffee together in the library. “How can I help you, Lacey?” Tim asked.

  “Obviously, you already have,” she replied with an appreciative smile. “Is Parker and Parker still handling the sale of the apartment?”

  “As far as I know. You’ve heard that Junior is missing?”

  “I read that. Has anyone else from their office brought somebody in to look at the place?”

  “No, and Jimmy Landi phoned the other day and asked about that. He’s getting pretty disgusted with Parker. Wants the apartment sold, and soon. I told him straight that I thought it would have a better chance if we cleared everything out.”

  “Do you have his personal number, Tim?”

  “His personal office number, I guess. I was out when he called and had to call him back. He picked up the phone himself.”

  “Tim, give me that number, please.”

  “Sure. You know this phone is still on. They never bothered to disconnect it. I spoke to Parker a couple of times when I saw the bill come in, but I think he liked having it in case he wanted to make a call. He came in and out of here on his own sometimes.”

  “Which means he might still do it,” she said. She knew it would cost Tim his job if she were discovered using this place, so she couldn’t risk staying much longer. Still, there was one other thing she had to ask him to do. “Tim, I’ve got to get word to my mother that I’m all right. I’m sure her phone is tapped so they can trace any call I might make to her. Would you go to a public phone and call her? Don’t identify yourself, and don’t stay on for more than a few seconds, or they’ll be able to trace the call, although even if they do, at least it won’t be coming from here. Just tell her I’m fine and safe and will call her as soon as I can.”

  “Sure,” Tim Powers said as he stood. He glanced at the pages on the desk, then looked startled. “Is that a copy of Heather Landi’s journal?”

  Lacey stared at him. “Yes it is. How do you know that, Tim?”

  “The day before Mrs. Waring died, I was up here changing the filters in the radiators. You know how we change them around October 1st, when we go from air-conditioning to heat. She was reading the journal. I guess she’d just found it that day, because she was very emotional and clearly upset, especially when she read the last couple of pages.”

  Lacey had the feeling that she might be on the brink of learning something important. “Did she talk to you about it, Tim?” she asked.

  “Not really. She got right on the phone, but whoever she tried to call has an unlisted number.”

  “You don’t know who it was?”

  “No, but I think I saw her circle the name with her pen when she came across it. I remember it was right near the end. Lacey, I’ve gotta get going. Give me your mother’s phone number. I’ll call on the intercom and give you Landi’s.”

  When Tim left, Lacey went back to the desk, picked up the first of the unlined pages, and brought it to the window. Blotched as the page was, she could detect a faint line around the name Hufner.

  Who was he? How could she find out?

  Talk to Jimmy Landi, she decided. That was the only way.

  On the intercom from the lobby, Tim Powers gave Landi’s phone number to Lacey, then went out for a walk, looking for a public phone. He had a supply of quarters with him.

  Five blocks away, on Madison Avenue, he found a phone that worked.

  Twenty-seven miles away in Wyckoff, New Jersey, Mona Farrell jumped at the sound of the telephone. Let it be Lacey, she prayed.

  A hearty, reassuring man’s voice said, “Mrs. Farrell, I’m calling for Lacey. She can’t talk to you but she wants you to know that she’s okay and will get in touch with you herself as soon as she can.”

  “Where is she?” Mona demanded. “Why can’t she talk to me herself?”

  Tim knew that he should break the connection, but Lacey’s mother sounded so distraught he couldn’t just hang up on her. Helplessly, he let her pour out her anxiety as he kept interjecting, “She’s okay, Mrs. Farrell, trust me, she’s okay.”

  Lacey had warned him not to stay on the phone too long. Regretfully, he replaced the receiver, Mona Farrell’s voice still pleading for him to tell her more. He started home, deciding to walk back on Fifth Avenue. That decision made him unaware of the unmarked police car that raced to the phone booth he had just used. Nor did he know that the phone was immediately dusted for his fingerprints.

  Every hour that I’m here doing nothing means that I’m an hour closer to being tracked down by Caldwell or taken into custody by Baldwin, Lacey thought. It was like being caught in a spider’s web.

  If only she could talk to Kit. Kit had a good head on her shoulders. Lacey walked over to the window and pulled the curtains back just enough to peer into the street.

  Central Park was crowded with joggers, in-line skaters, people strolling, or pushing carriages.

  Of course, she thought. It was Sunday. Almost ten o’clock on Sunday morning. Kit and Jay would be in church now. They always went to the ten-o’clock Mass.

  They always went to the ten-o’clock Mass.

  “I can talk to her!” Lacey said aloud. Kit and Jay had been parishioners at St. Elizabeth’s for years. Everyone knew them. Her spirits suddenly buoyed, she dialed New Jersey Information and received the number of the rectory.

  Somebody be there, she prayed, but then she heard an answering machine click on. The only thing she could do was to leave a message and hope that Kit would get it before they left the church. Leaving her phone number, even at a rectory, would be too great a risk.

  She spoke clearly and slowly. “It is urgent that I speak with Kit Taylor. I believe she is at the ten-o’clock Mass. I’ll call this number again at eleven-fifteen. Please try to locate her.”

  Lacey hung up, feeling helpless and trapped. There was another hour to kill.

  She dialed the number for Jimmy Landi she’d gotten from Tim. There was no answer, and when the machine picked up, she decided not to leave a message.

  What Lacey did not know was that she already had left a message. Jimmy Landi’s Caller ID showed the phone number from which a call to him had been placed, as well as the name and address of the person to whom the phone was registered.

  The message on the ID indicated that his caller had dialed from 555-8093, a number registered to Heather Landi, at 3 East Seventieth Street.

  56

  DETECTIVE SLOANE HAD NOT PLANNED TO GO TO WORK ON Sunday. He was off duty, and his wife, Betty, wanted the garage cleaned. But when the desk sergeant at the precinct phoned to say that a friend of Lacey Farrell’s had called her mother from a pay phone on Seventy-fourth and Madison, nothing could have kept him home.

  When he reached the precinct, the sergeant nodded toward the captain’s office. “The boss wants to talk to you,” he said.

  Captain Frank Deleo’s cheeks were flushed, usually a warning sign that something or someone had incurred his wrath. Today, however, Sloane saw immediately that Deleo’s eyes were troubled and sad.

  He knew what that combination meant. The sting had worked. They had pinned down the identity of the rogue cop.

  “The guys in the lab sent over the tape late last night,” Deleo told him. “You’re not going to like it.”

  Who? Ed wondered, as faces of longtime fellow officers became a picture gallery in his mind. Tony... Leo... Adam... Jack... Jim W… Jim M…

  He looked at the TV screen. Deleo pressed the POWER button, then PLAY.

  Ed Sloane leaned forward. He was looking at his own desk with its scarred and cluttered surface. His jacket was on the back of the chair where he had left it, the keys deliberately left dangling from the pocket, in an effort to tempt the thief who was removing evidence from his cubby.

  On the upper left section of the screen he could see the back of his own head as he sat in the interrogation room. “This was filmed last night!” he exclaimed.

  “I know it was. Watch what happens now.”

  Sloane stared inten
tly at the screen as Nick Mars scurried out of the interrogation room and looked around. There were only two other detectives in the squad room. One was on the phone with his back to Nick, the other was dozing.

  As they watched, Mars reached into Sloane’s coat pocket and slid out his key ring, cupping it in his palm to conceal it. He turned toward the cabinet containing the locked private cubbies, then spun swiftly around, quickly replacing the keys. He then pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the breast pocket of Sloane’s jacket.

  “This is where I made my untimely entrance,” Deleo said dryly. “He went back to interrogation.”

  Ed Sloane was numb. “His father’s a cop; his grandfather was a cop; he’s been given every break. Why?”

  “Why any bad cop?” Deleo asked. “Ed, this has to remain between you and me for now. That piece of film alone isn’t enough to convict him. He’s your partner. He could argue convincingly that he was just checking your pocket because you were getting careless and he was worried that you’d be blamed if anything else disappeared. With those baby-blue eyes of his, he’d probably be believed.”

  “We have to do something. I don’t want to have to sit across the table from him and work a case together,” Sloane said flatly.

  “Oh yes you do. Baldwin’s on his way here again. He thinks Lacey Farrell is in the neighborhood. There’s nothing I’d like better than for us to be able to crack this case and rub Baldwin’s face in it. Your job, as you well know, is to be damn sure Nick doesn’t get the chance to lift or destroy any more evidence.”

  “If you promise me ten minutes alone with the jerk once we nail him.”

  The captain stood up. “Come on, Ed. Baldwin will be here any minute.”

  It’s a day for show-and-tell, Ed Sloane thought bitterly as an assistant U.S. Attorney prepared to replay the conversation they had taped between Lacey Farrell’s mother and her unknown caller.

  When the recording began to play, Sloane’s raised eyebrows were the only sign of the shock he was experiencing. He knew that voice from the countless times he had been in and out of 3 East Seventieth. It was Tim Powers, the superintendent there. He was the caller.

  And he’s hiding Farrell in that building! Sloane thought.

  The others sat silently, listening intently to the conversation. Baldwin had a cat-who-ate-the-canary expression. He thinks he’s showing us what good police work is all about, Sloane thought angrily. Nick Mars was sitting with his hands folded in his lap, frowning—Dick Tracy incarnate, Sloane said to himself. Who would that rat tip off if he got wind that Powers was Lacey Farrell’s guardian angel? he wondered.

  Ed Sloane decided that for now, at least, only one person beside Tim Powers was going to know where Lacey Farrell was staying.

  Himself.

  57

  TIM POWERS TAPPED ON THE APARTMENT DOOR AT TEN-thirty, then let himself in with his master key. “Mission accomplished,” he told Lacey, with a smile, but she could see that something was wrong.

  “What is it, Tim?”

  “I just got a call from a real estate agent with Douglaston and Minor. Jimmy’s listed the apartment with them, and the agent told me he wants her to dispose of all the furniture and personal items in it as soon as possible. She’s coming at eleven-thirty with someone to look the place over.”

  “That’s only an hour from now!”

  “Lacey, I hate to—”

  “You can’t keep me here. We both know that. Get a box and clean out the refrigerator. I’ll put the towels I used in a pillowcase, and you take them to your place. Should the draperies be open or closed?”

  “Open.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Tim, how did my mother sound?”

  “Pretty shook up. I tried to tell her you’re okay.”

  Lacey experienced the same sinking feeling she had had when she revealed to her mother that she was living in Minneapolis. “You didn’t stay on the phone too long?” she asked.

  Despite his reassurances, she was sure that by now the police were scouring this neighborhood, searching for her.

  After Tim left, carrying the telltale evidence that the apartment had been used, Lacey stacked the pages of Heather’s journal together and put them in her tote bag. She would make one more attempt to reach Kit at St. Elizabeth’s rectory, but then she had to get out of there. She looked at her watch. She had just enough time to try Jimmy Landi’s number once more.

  This time he answered on the fourth ring. Lacey knew she could not waste time. “Mr. Landi, this is Lacey Farrell. I’m so glad I reached you. I tried a little while ago.”

  “I was downstairs,” Jimmy said.

  “I know there’s a lot to explain, Mr. Landi, but I don’t have time, so just let me talk. I know why you wanted to talk to me. The answer is yes, there were three unlined pages at the end of Heather’s journal. Those pages were filled with her worries about hurting you. Heather referred repeatedly to being trapped ‘between a rock and a hard place.’ The only happy reference was right at the beginning, where she wrote about having lunch with some man who sounds like he must have been an old friend. Heather wrote that he said something to her about her growing up and his growing old.”

  “What’s his name?” Jimmy demanded.

  “It looks like Mac or Max Hufner.”

  “I don’t know the guy. Maybe he’s someone her mother knew. Isabelle’s second husband was quite a bit older.” He paused. “You’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t you, Miss Farrell?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “And you are certain that there were unlined pages at the end of the journal? I was pretty sure I’d seen them in the copy you gave me, but I couldn’t be absolutely positive.”

  “Yes, they were in that copy, I’m sure. I made a copy for myself as well, and those pages are in it. Mr. Landi, I’m convinced Isabelle was onto something and that’s why she was killed. I’m sorry; I’ve got to go.”

  Jimmy Landi heard the click as Lacey hung up. He laid down the receiver as Steve Abbott came into his office. “What’s up? Did they close down Atlantic City? You got back early.”

  “Just got back,” Abbott said. “It was quiet down there. Who was that?”

  “Lacey Farrell. I guess her mother got my message to her.”

  “Lacey Farrell! I thought she was in the witness protection plan.”

  “She was, but not anymore, I guess.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Jimmy looked at his Caller ID. “She didn’t say, and I guess I didn’t have this on. Steve, did we ever have a guy with a name like Hufner work for us?”

  Abbott considered for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so, Jimmy, unless it was a kitchen helper. You know how they come and go.”

  “Yeah, I know how they come and go.” He glanced toward the open door that led to the small waiting room. Someone was pacing outside. “Who’s that guy out there?” he asked.

  “Carlos. He wants to come back. He says working for Alex is too quiet for him.”

  “Get that bum out of here. I don’t like sneaks around me.”

  Jimmy stood up and walked to the window, his eyes focused on the distance, as if Abbott weren’t there. “A rock and a hard place, huh? And you couldn’t turn to your baba, could you?”

  Abbott knew Jimmy was talking to himself.

  58

  AT TEN PAST ELEVEN, LACEY PHONED THE RECTORY OF ST. Elizabeth’s in Wyckoff, New Jersey. This time the phone was answered on the first ring. “Father Edwards,” a voice said.

  “Good morning, Father,” Lacey said. “I called earlier and left a message asking that Kit Taylor be—”

  She was interrupted. “She’s right here. Just a moment.”

  It had been two weeks since Lacey had spoken to Kit, going on five months since she had seen her. “Kit,” she said, then stopped, her throat tight
with emotion.

  “Lacey, we miss you. We’re so scared for you. Where are you?”

  Lacey managed a tremulous laugh. “Trust me. It’s better you don’t know. But I can tell you that I have to be out of here in five minutes. Kit, is Jay with you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Put him on, please.”

  Jay’s greeting was a firm pronouncement. “Lacey, this can’t go on. I’ll hire an around-the-clock bodyguard for you, but you’ve got to stop running and let us help you.”

  Another time she probably would have thought Jay sounded testy, but this morning she could hear clearly the concern in his voice. It was the way Tom Lynch had spoken to her in the parking lot. Was that only yesterday? Lacey thought fleetingly. It seemed so long ago.

  “Jay, I have to get out of here, and I can’t call you at home. I’m sure your line is tapped. I just can’t go on living like I have been. I won’t stay in the witness protection program, and I know the U.S. Attorney wants to take me into custody and hold me as a material witness. I’m sure now that the key to this whole terrible mess is to find out who was responsible for Heather Landi’s death. Like her mother, I’m convinced she was murdered, and the clues to who did it have got to be in her journal. Thank God I kept a copy, and I’ve been studying it. I’ve got to find out exactly what caused Heather Landi to be so troubled during the last few days of her life. The clues are there in the pages of the journal, if I can just figure them out. I think Isabelle Waring tried to find out what happened, and that’s why she died.”

  “Lacey—”

  “Let me finish, Jay. There’s one name I think is important. About a week before she died, Heather had lunch with an older man whom she’d apparently known for a long time. My hope is that he was somehow connected to the restaurant business and that you may know him, or could ask around about him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “It’s so blurred that it’s hard to make it out. It looks like Mr. or Mac or Max Hufner.”