When she hung up, Rook said, “That Croatian reprobate doesn’t know squat about Gene Huddleston, Jr., he just wants to have sex with you.” When she got out of the car, he said, “Hey, you forgot this.” He held out the new cell phone he got her and said, “Call me after?”
Heat leaned in the passenger door and took it from him. “Would it make you feel better if I had a chaperone? I could maybe ask Tam Svejda.”
Nikki was still grinning when she set out for the subway.
Ninety minutes later Rook was still on stakeout in Spanish Harlem when his cell phone buzzed. “Any movement?” she asked.
“Nothing. Even his driver shut off his engine. Say, that was a quick coffee.”
“I got what I needed and Petar had to get back to a production meeting.” Her old boyfriend was a segment producer for Later On, one of the numerous desk-and-couch shows that fought over insomniacs after Dave and Jay and Jimmy.
“That’s good,” he said.
“Rook, you are so transparent. You don’t even know what I learned from him, you’re just relieved he went straight back to work.”
“OK, fine. Tell me what you got from him.”
“Something that connects Huddleston, I think.”
“Tell me.”
“I need one more piece, and to get that I need to take a little trip out of town.”
“Now?” he said.
“If it weren’t critical, I wouldn’t go. This is why God invented homicide squads, so we could split up duties. You’re my squad now, Rook; can you cover that base until I get back later this afternoon? With train time I should be back by four, four-thirty.”
He paused. “Sure. But where are you going? And don’t say Disney World.”
“Ossining,” said Heat.
“What’s in Ossining, the prison?”
“Not what, Rook. Who.”
There was a small blue plastic litter bag in the glove compartment, and Rook was calculating how much urine it could hold. Images of him kneeling above it in the driver’s seat, trying to deal with the potential overflow made him chuckle, which only made his bladder press all the more. He thought, This must be what it’s like for those middle-aged dudes in that commercial, missing the big play at the ball park having to get up and run to the can. He was seriously thinking about a dash into the taqueria when he spotted motion in the rearview.
Martinez stepped out of the door to Justicia a Garda. He was followed by a man in a cammy jacket with a Che Guevara beard, who was carrying the Vuitton money bag. Rook remembered the face from Murder Board South as Pascual Guzman’s.
As before, Rook kept his tail loose, erring on the side of not being made, although their driver still didn’t seem concerned about anything but his own ride. After he looped a few turns and headed south on Second Avenue, the blinker came on after crossing East 106th, and Rook eased back to a stop at the corner and waited as the town car stopped mid-block. Guzman got out without the black bag and trotted into a mom-and-pop farmacia. While he waited, Rook dialed Heat, got immediate voice mail, and left her an update. By the time he was done with the call, Pascual Guzman was back outside fisting a small white prescription bag. He got into the rear of the Lincoln without looking back and the journey resumed.
They convoyed down Second until the lead car worked a right at Eighty-fifth that eventually fed them into a Central Park transverse much like the one in which Nikki got ambushed days before. Coming out the other side, Rook almost lost them at Columbus when the taxi he was following as a buffer stopped short to pick up a fare. He jacked the wheel and sped around the cab, managing to catch up with the Lincoln at a red light at Amsterdam. The light changed to green, but the car didn’t move. Instead Martinez and Guzman got out and entered a bar. Guzman had the black leather case with him. The town car left and Rook pulled into a loading zone around the corner from the pub.
He knew the Brass Harpoon for several reasons. First, it was one of those legendary writer’s bars of old Manhattan. Booze-infused geniuses from Hemingway to Cheever to O’Hara to Exley left their condensation rings on the bar and on tabletops at the Harpoon over the decades. It was also a mythical survivor of prohibition, with its secret doors and underground tunnels, long since condemned, where alcohol could be smuggled in and drunks smuggled out blocks away. Rook knew this spot for another reason. He could picture its name in Nikki’s neat block capitals on Murder Board South as the preferred hangout for Father Gerry Graf. He ruminated on the priest’s missing hour and a half between getting the video from Meuller and showing up drunk at the Justicia headquarters and the math wasn’t hard to do.
Rook was questioning what his next move should be. His bladder answered. On his way to the door he reasoned that neither Martinez nor Guzman had met him, so his chances of being recognized were slim. Unless he waited too long and walked in with wet khakis, he shouldn’t attract any notice. But then, this was the Brass Harpoon, so wet trousers were probably the norm. Safe either way then.
It was just after four and there were only six customers in the place. All six swung their heads to check him out when he stepped in. The two he had followed were not in sight. “What can I do you?” asked the barkeep.
“Jameson,” said Rook, eyeing the bottle of Cutty Sark on the top shelf under the small shrine that had been created in honor of Father Graf. His framed laughing photo was adorned in purple bunting, and a rocks tumbler with his name etched in the glass rested on a green velvet pillow underneath. Rook put some money down and said he’d be right back.
There were no feet under the stalls in the gents’. Rook hurried to his business, achieving blessed relief as he read the sampler hung above the urinal: “ ‘Write drunk; edit sober.’ —Ernest Hemingway.”
Then he heard the voice he had been listening to at brunch that morning. Alejandro Martinez was laughing and joking with someone. He zipped but didn’t flush, instead roamed the restroom to hear which wall the voices were coming through. But they weren’t coming through the wall.
They were coming through the floor.
Easing out the men’s room door, Rook scoped the bar and saw a Jameson at his place, but nobody seemed interested in his whereabouts. He backed his way into the hall, and past the manager’s office, coming to a brick wall. He had read the legends—what writer worth his or her hangover hadn’t? He squared himself to that wall, scanning it, his fingers fluttering before him like a safecracker’s. Sure enough, one of the bricks had a slight discoloration, a patina of finger grime on its edging.
He thought about calling Nikki, but someone was coming. Maybe to use the restroom, or perhaps the manager. Rook pinched the brick between his thumb and forefinger and pulled. The wall opened; its brickwork was just facing over a door. The air coming out was cool and smelled of must and stale beer. He slipped through the doorway and pushed the wall closed. In the murky light he could barely make out a flight of exposed wooden stairs. He tiptoed down, keeping his feet close to the side to minimize the chance of the steps creaking. At the bottom he paused to listen. Then his eyes were blinded by flashlights. He was grabbed by his jacket front and spun against a wall.
“You lost, buddy?” It was Martinez. And he could smell his mother’s Chloé on him.
“Totally.” Rook tried to laugh it off. “Were you looking for the men’s room, too?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” came the voice of someone beside Martinez who Rook figured to be Guzman.
Rook squinted. “Think you could cool the high beams? They’re killing me.”
“Turn them off,” said a third voice. The flashlights lowered from his eyes. He heard a switch thrown and the overheads came on. Rook was still blinking to adjust when the third man came into view like an apparition. Rook recognized him from the news and from his books.
There before him, standing in the middle of a makeshift apartment in the secret basement, among old kegs and cartons, was the exiled Colombian author Faustino Velez Arango.
“You know who I am; I c
an tell by the way you look at me,” said Velez Arango.
“Nope, sorry. I’m just getting my vision back after your friends gave me the eye exam.” Then he started backing toward the stairs. “I’m obviously the buzz killer at your little party, so don’t let me intrude.”
Guzman braced him by the shoulders against an old refrigerator and frisked him. “No weapons,” he said.
Alejandro Martinez asked, “Who are you and why did you come here?”
“The truth? OK, at brunch this morning my mother gave you ten thousand dollars of my money in that black case over there and I want it back.”
“Alejandro, he followed you?” Pascual Guzman’s agitation manifested in scanning the basement as if their intruder had arrived with a platoon of ninjas.
It could have been a grave tactical error, but Rook gauged the author as the most powerful in the group and keyed off him for cues. He took a chance and said, “Relax. There’s nobody else, I came alone.”
Guzman took Rook’s wallet and opened it to his license. “Jameson A. Rook.”
“The A is for Alexander,” he said, eyeing Alejandro Martinez, hoping that would lend credibility to his story about following the money. “Nice name.” But Rook’s attention was drawn to Faustino Velez Arango, whose thick brow had lowered over a glare fixed on him. As he approached, working his jaw, Rook braced for a blow.
The exile stopped inches from him and said, “You are Jameson Rook, the writer?” Rook nodded tentatively. Faustino Velez Arango’s hands came up at him, both suddenly clutching his right hand and shaking it with delight. “I have read everything you ever wrote.” He turned to his companions and said, “This is one of the best living nonfiction writers in print today.” Then back to Rook, he said, “An honor.”
“Thanks. Coming from you, that’s—well, I especially like the part about ‘living’ because, I plan to do a bit more of it.”
There was an immediate sea change. Velez Arango gestured for Rook to sit in the easy chair, and he pulled up a wicker seat beside him. The other two were not yet aboard but seemed to relax a bit as they stood by. “I must say, Mr. Rook, that it takes courage not only to gain the access to a story as you do from all sides but then to overcome dangerous obstacles to get the hard truth into mainstream media.”
“You’re talking about my piece on Mick Jagger’s birthday, right?”
Velez Arango laughed and said, “I was thinking more of the ones on Chechnya and also the Appalachian coal miners, but yes, Mick in Portofino was brilliant. Excuse me one moment.” From the end table the novelist took a vial beside the white bag from the farmacia and shook out a pill. While he washed it back with some water, Rook noted the prescription label. Adefovir dipivoxil, the same drug unaccountably found in Father Graf’s medicine chest. So now it was accountable. Graf was bearding for Velez Arango’s meds. “Another bonus of being a guest of the government in prison,” he said as he screwed the cap back on the bottle. “An inmate cut me with a blade and I contracted hepatitis-B.”
“It must be hell to live the life of Salman Rushdie.”
“I hope to write as well and live so long,” he replied.
“How did you end up here?”
Pascual Guzman cleared his throat in an obvious manner. “Faustino, if he’s a reporter . . .”
“Mr. Rook is more than that. A journalist. Which means he can be trusted. May I trust you not to reveal my secrets if I tell you about them, how is it said, off the record?”
Rook thought it over. “Sure, not for publication.”
“Pascual and his heroic group at Justicia a Garda saved me from certain death. I was the target of a contract killer in prison—that was the man with the blade—and more were being recruited. As you know a rescue like mine was logistically complicated and quite expensive. Señor Martinez, who is a man of sincere reform, raised funds here in New York to mount human rights legal efforts in Colombia, as well as to gain safe passage for me here to my glorious exile.” He chuckled and gestured to the basement he was living in.
“When did you get here?”
“Three weeks ago. I arrived in New Jersey after departing in a wooden cargo crate on a ship from Buenaventura, you know the place?” Rook nodded and thought of his tip from T-Rex in Colombia about the secret shipment sent to Guzman from there. But the secret shipment wasn’t C4, after all—it was Faustino Velez Arango! “As confining and dismal as my basement life appears, it is a paradise compared to what I left. And I have been much helped by openhearted New Yorkers, especially the pastor and parishioners of one of your churches.”
He reached into his shirt collar and pulled out a large religious medal on a thin metal chain. “This is St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. Just last Monday a wonderful man, a priest who championed our cause, came here just to give this to me.” The author became drawn, creases appeared on his forehead. “I understand the poor man has since died, but what a kind gesture, don’t you think?”
“Father Graf gave that to you Monday?” Rook knew it had to be soon after the priest met Horst Meuller at his agent’s.
“Sí. The padre, he said to me, ‘It is the perfect medal for hiding.’ ”
Rook didn’t speak. He just repeated those words in his head as he watched the medal swing on its chain. His cell phone buzzed, startling him. It was Heat. “May I take this? It’s my girlfriend and I know it’s important. . . . Look, I won’t say where I am.”
Martinez and Guzman shook no, but Velez Arango overruled them. “All right, but use the speakerphone.”
Rook answered just before she dropped to voice mail. “Hi, you,” he said.
Nikki said, “Took you long enough. Where are you?”
Martinez moved a step closer. “You first,” said Rook, and Martinez backed off a hair.
“Back at Grand Central trying to get a cab. Ossining was big, Rook. Huge.” He was afraid to say the wrong thing in such a pressure situation, and as he thought, she said, “Rook, are you OK?”
“Yeah, just eager to talk to you. But let’s do it in person.”
“Truly, this is going to blow you away. Shall I come to you? Are you still following your money?” There was a rustling sound and she groaned. “Hey, what are you—?” Nikki started to scream.
And then her phone went dead.
EIGHTEEN
Rook bolted to his feet and finger stabbed the face of his phone, desperate to launch a callback. Heat’s cell rang and rang as he took a step toward the stairs. Guzman blocked him. “Don’t,” said Rook, “I have to go.” By then he was getting voice mail, “Nikki, it’s me, call back, OK? Let me know what’s happening. Soon as you can.”
“Nikki . . .” Pascual Guzman sampled the name aloud and turned to Martinez. “I thought I knew her voice. That was the police detective who called me in.”
“Me, too,” Martinez said as he shouldered up to Guzman. Rook tried to slide around the pair, but Martinez pressed the palm of his wide, manicured hand flat on his chest and stopped him.
“Guys, I need to go help her, come on.”
“And what’s this about Ossining?” asked Martinez, who had done time there.
From moments before, when he discovered that his money trail surprisingly led to the exiled human rights novelist, Rook had been watching his narcotics bribe laundering theory come unstitched before his eyes. Combining that with the fact that nobody in that basement had drawn a weapon on him—not even Martinez—he took a chance out of urgency. “OK, here it is,” he said, directing himself mainly to Faustino Velez Arango, who watched quietly from his chair. “My girlfriend is a cop who’s working a murder case that I don’t believe has anything to do with any of you.”
“This is still the murder of Father Graf?” asked Guzman.
Rook thought it over and nodded. Guzman pulled at his thick beard and spoke to Velez Arango in Spanish. Rook couldn’t understand all the words, but the tone was emotional. The exiled author nodded solemnly a few times. When they were done, Rook pleaded. “A life
may be in danger. I can’t believe you, of all people, Señor Velez Arango, would hold a writer captive against his will.”
The man stood and crossed over to Rook. “I know that Father Graf did more than give me this holy medal. Pascual tells me that whoever killed the padre took away a saint on earth, devoted to our cause.” Then a trace of a smile eased some of his gravity. “And, of course, I have read your profile of this Nikki Heat.” He gestured to the steps. “Go. Do what you can to save her.”
Rook started off, but Martinez blocked him again. “Faustino, he will give you up.”
The novelist took his measure of the journalist and said, “No, he won’t.”
Rook dashed to the stairs and then, as an afterthought, said to Velez Arango, “One more favor?”
“Qué?”
“I’ll need all the help I can get. Any chance I could carry that St. Christopher?”
Velez Arango folded his hand around the medal. “It is valuable to me.”
Rook said, “Tell you what. Keep my ten grand, we’ll call it even.”
Nikki Heat ran up Vanderbilt Avenue, threading herself upstream be tween the tight flow of pedestrians making their way to Grand Central. She glanced over her shoulder and could see him coming, his black ski mask astonishing the late afternoon business commuters who stopped and turned to look at the man who rushed through them. Those who weren’t stunned looked around, either for cops or to see if somebody was making a movie.
It had happened so quickly. Eager for a cab, Nikki had deployed her secret weapon in that neighborhood, which was to skip the organized taxi cue on Forty-second Street, a great place to make friends because the line is slow. Instead, she waited on Vanderbilt near the Yale Club, a favored drop-off spot and, therefore, an equally favored spot to snag a ride on the fly.