thread. At some point, Jack would restore his damaged
reputation.
And at some point, Jack would need to know why
Henry Parker was lying to him.
23
Thursday
“So tell me about this Mr. Joshua.”
Curt Sheffield held a pad of paper in his hands and a
small pen. The pen hovered above the pad as he waited
for me to speak.
We were sitting on a bench next to each other in Madison Square Park. It was early morning, just after seven
o’clock. The day was crisp and cool, and the park was
crowded with couples walking their dogs and sipping
coffee. I wasn’t surprised to see a line already beginning
to form outside the world-famous Shake Shack. Possibly
the best burgers in the city, but the kind of meal your intestines could only handle once or twice a year.
Before Curt had taken out his writing utensils, there
had been a breakfast burrito that disappeared down his
throat in about 1.2 seconds. His breath smelled like fried
grease, but that’s not the kind of thing you tell someone
you’re approaching for help. Especially when they’re
armed.
“Mr. Joshua?” I said.
“Mr. Joshua? You know, from Lethal Weapon? Played
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by crazy-ass Gary Busey, who got his blond ass handed
to him by the man from down under at the end?”
“Oh right,” I said. “I kind of stopped watching Mel
Gibson movies after the whole sugartits thing.”
“You know it’s weird. Who would have thought that
between Gary Busey and Mel Gibson that Busey would
turn out to be the less crazy dude.”
“So what’s with the Joshua reference?”
“Well, you said this dude you’re looking for is blond,
Mr. Joshua was blond, thought I’d give him a nickname
since you don’t know who the hell he is.”
“That’s why I’m coming to you. So we can eventually
call him by his real name.”
“Gotcha. One more anonymous baddie, coming up.
Like we don’t have enough to worry about right now.”
Curt spoke these words with a little more bite than I was
used to. He wasn’t above bitching about his job, but there
was a current underneath this that caught my attention.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked.
“Yeah, just, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
Curt shifted, blew into his hands and rubbed them
together. “Department has been hit hard lately. The city’s
budget’s been slashed beyond belief so the mayor could
make his budget targets, and we’re taking it in the ass just
like everyone else.”
“In what way?”
“Well, frankly, the city has no money.”
“Yeah, I remember the governor’s press conference
where he made it seem like we were some sort of third
world country outpost.”
“You wouldn’t think it, you know? That a city where they
can charge fifteen bucks for a martini would go broke?”
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“Tourists,” I said. “The dollar is so weak that people
from pretty much all over the world can come here and
buy anything basically half off. They pay it because they
can, and we get stuck with the inflated prices because we
have no choice.”
“The rich get richer and…you know how the rest
goes,” Curt said. “But right now there are parts of the city
with less cops. And less cops means less supervision,
means the bad guys get emboldened.”
“But the NYPD?” I said, confused. “Isn’t that one area
they don’t have a choice but to keep fully loaded?”
“They’re trying,” Curt said. “Louis Carruthers, the
Chief of Department, said the brass is looking into more
funding, but it might take a little while. At the state and
city level right now, they have less money than Michael
Jackson. A lack of money means the city is cutting back
on pretty much everything that the government picks up
the tab on. Overtime, patrol routes, even new recruits.
Starting pay for a first-year police officer is just below
your average hot dog vendor.”
“Which is just above that of a journalist,” I said with
a smile.
“Yeah, at least you get those fancy suit jackets with
elbow pads.”
“I’ve never heard anybody claim to be jealous over
those.”
“You can never guess where fashion trends go. If
tomorrow Kanye shows up with one of those tweed
jackets, five million kids will show up at Diesel begging
for them. So what do you got for me on this guy besides
hair color?” Curt said.
“First off, you need to know that anything you do
could come back and bite you in the ass.”
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171
“Isn’t that why we’re friends?” Curt said. “I don’t have
enough problems at work or at home, so I come to you to
satisfy my daily craving for emotional and physical trauma.”
“Your breath is terrible,” I said.
“Point proven,” Curt said.
“Seriously. It smells like you ate a hot dog, then burped
up that hot dog, then fried the burped-up hot dog, ate it,
and burped it up again.”
Curt stared at me. “I think my stomach just threw up
inside of itself.”
“Then my job here is done.”
“You’re a laugh riot. Go on. Tell me what you know
about this dude.”
“I was outside of Brett Kaiser’s building right before
it turned into something out of Dante’s Inferno. The
doorman told me a guy with blond hair came and went
at freaky hours.”
“You told me this. That’s not a hell of a lot to go on.”
“I’m not done. You know Paulina Cole, right?”
“Of course. Hot piece of ass who works at that dirt rag
and has no love lost for you. Am I close?”
“Enough for a shave.”
“I don’t know her personally, but I’ve heard some of
the guys talking about her. She doesn’t have a lot of
friends in the department. Ever since she wrote that article
accusing NYPD recruits of being underqualified and unmotivated. Things like that tend to rub cops the wrong
way. Rumor has it they won’t give her scoops anymore
because of the crap she’s written, so she has her lackeys
covering the crime beat act as spies for her.”
“Yeah, well, that’s part of the problem. Turns out she
was kidnapped a few days ago, and I’m ninety-nine
percent sure the guy who did it is the same one who char-172
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broiled Brett Kaiser. Her description of him matched the
same one I was given by Kaiser’s doorman to a T. Blond,
late thirties or early forties, muscular.”
“Does she know the same guy is a suspect in the Kaiser
murder?” Curt said.
“No. You’re the only person I’ve told.”
“So I’m looking for a blond guy, about six-one or sixtwo, two hundred ten poun
ds or so if he’s well built.”
“Sounds like a ballpark to work in.”
“Right. That ballpark narrows it down to about ten
thousand men in New York.”
“There’s one more thing,” I said. “Paulina said he’s
involved in drugs.”
“Drugs.”
“Yeah.”
“Care to elaborate on that?”
“That’s all I know. Let’s just say she was a little secretive on that part.”
“So we have a blond guy. Somewhere between six
feet and six foot two, two hundred and ten pounds, who
for all we know has smoked weed sometime in his life.”
“Chester,” I said. “She said he introduced himself as
Chester. And she said he might have lost a family
member, and it didn’t sound as though it was as a result
of natural causes.”
“Sounds to me like Paulina could be cooking up a
stew of major league bullshit to me.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Paulina is a lot of things,
but she had to swallow some major pride to ask me to help
her. And she’s not a woman who’s too keen on losing
face. Especially to me. And this guy threatened her
daughter. Paulina’s low, but not low enough to make up
something like that. She wants this guy caught. All
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between the physical description and the alias, it should
give you enough to at least do some digging.”
“Plus if this is the same guy who turned Brett Kaiser
into burnt toast,” Curt said, “it wouldn’t surprise me if this
guy has some sort of explosives or military background.”
“That’s gotta narrow your ten thousand down a bit.”
“Maybe so.”
“Be careful,” I said. “Paulina’s pretty sure this Chester
has eyes in the NYPD. Can you do some digging without
anyone seeing your shovel?”
“That sounds sexy,” Curt said.
“Come on, Curt.”
“I’ll grow eyes in the back of my head,” Curt said.
“Digging, I can do. But if we find out who this guy is,
I’m going to need to bring Paulina in to ID him so we can
charge him.”
“I hear you. But wait until you know who he is for
certain before we make a move. And make sure you only
tell people you can trust.”
“Yeah, and if you need help typing or proofreading,
I’ll give you a hand. Come on, I know how to do my job,
Henry,” Curt said.
“Just looking out for you, buddy.”
“Appreciate it.”
“How are things, you know, with the job?”
“Strange times, Parker,” Curt said.
“Care to elaborate?” I said, smiling. Curt did not return
the pleasantry.
“This city, you know, just a different vibe right now.
People see cops now, they look at us differently. Like they
really need us. Not that they ever didn’t, but it’s like the
city is waiting for another shoe to drop. You know that
dude who lost fifty billion dollars in a Ponzi scheme?”
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“Madoff,” I said.
“You know the city spent more money protecting that
scumbag than it does Joe Six Pack? People just don’t trust
anymore. You know the saying, but it’s true. People
expect things are gonna get worse before they get better.”
“The city needs cops like you,” I said. “Protect and
serve, right?”
“Yeah, I appreciate that, man. Anyway,” Curt said,
standing up, “break time is over. Gotta get back to protecting the rest of this overcrowded island.” He breathed
into his hands, then held it up to his nose. “My breath
really that bad?”
“Makes my toes curl just talking to you,” I said.
“That’s the way I like it. This way I don’t ever have to
pull my gun.”
He held out his hand, and I shook it.
“Later, Henry.”
Curt walked off. I stretched my legs, felt the cup of
coffee I’d inhaled half an hour ago take hold. Amanda was
probably still in bed, still asleep thanks to her friend the
snooze button.
Right as I was about to head toward the subway, my
cell phone rang. It was Jack. I knew the man’s mind was
always working, but it was not normal for him to be
calling me before breakfast, especially when we had no
meetings planned.
I answered the phone. “Hey, Jack. Either you’re up
early or you’re up really late.”
“Why the hell aren’t you here yet?” Jack said.
“At the Gazette? It’s barely seven, and I was meeting
Curt Sheffield to give him more details about the Kaiser
investigation.”
“That’s old news,” Jack said. “Wallace and Harvey
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Hillerman are about to bite our nuts off, so get your ass
over here right away.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Have you seen the cover of today’s Dispatch? ” Jack
said.
“No, figured I could wait until getting in before reading
about which celebrities were caught in the Dominican
Republic sunbathing in the nude with their boy toys.”
“Laugh all you want, but Henry…we got scooped.”
“Yeah, right. By who? We have every inch of this town
By the way, who scooped us?”
“Paulina Cole,” Jack said. “She’s got an exclusive
that’ll make your eyes pop out.”
24
I hailed a cab, which slowed to a crawl once we hit
midtown. I got out at Fifty-first and Lexington, threw the
driver a good tip and sprinted the few blocks over to
Rockefeller Center. I was nearly disemboweled pushing
through the security turnstile when my ID failed to work,
and got off on the eleventh floor out of breath and with
possible internal bleeding.
I entered the newsroom, and as I walked through the
sea of desks my heart dropped when I saw Tony Valentine approaching.
“Henry,” he said, huffing as he jogged over. “Do you
have a minute?”
“Actually, I don’t. Not right now,” I said.
“Come on, Parker, you’ve been avoiding me since I got
here. At some point you’ll need to open that hard heart
of yours for a get-to-know-you session.”
“Listen, Tony, I appreciate that, and at some point we
will. But right now I have a situation to deal with.”
“A situation? That sounds juicy. Do tell.”
“Like I said, Tony, not right now.”
“Do you have a problem with me?” Tony asked, his
eyes narrowing, offset by a strangely playful smile.
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177
“I’m just trying to be a good sport. Fit in with my new
colleagues.”
“Listen, Tony, I’d be lying if I didn’t think our two
types of…reporting didn’t really overlap. But today there
actually is something going on. No joke.”
He looked me over, trying to determine if I was telling
the tru
th or lying just to get out of a conversation. I certainly wasn’t above doing that, at least not with Tony.
That I didn’t have much respect for the profession of
gossip columnist was no secret to anyone who’d ever had
a conversation with me about the job. I ranked its importance on the Journalism Scale of Importance somewhere
between the people who filled up tubes of Wite-Out and
telemarketers.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take a rain check for today. But
at some point I’m going to cash in all my checks and
you’re going to have lunch with me.”
I offered a noncommittal nod/shake, and Tony walked
away. In the meantime, I had one person who might
actually skin me alive if I didn’t answer to him soon.
I arrived at Jack’s desk only to find it vacant. It didn’t
take me long to figure out where he’d gone.
The shouting coming from Wallace Langston’s office
could be heard throughout the entire newsroom, and reporters who tended to make more noise than the average
airbus on takeoff sat dead silent listening to the barrage.
Wallace tended to be a fairly mellow guy. In fact, in
my few years at the Gazette, I’d rarely heard him chew a
reporter out, rarely saw him get pissed at the copy desk
(if he had, Evelyn Waterstone might have impaled him on
one of the flagpoles outside). What really burned Wallace
was losing a story to the competition. And since Jack was
the newsroom’s elder statesman, he surely took the brunt
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of it. And since I was partnering with Jack, he no doubt
wanted me there to take some of the small-arms fire.
I walked past Wallace’s secretary. She was usually
kind to me, always with a good word, but today she
looked at me like I was marching right into the sights of
a firing squad. I could have sworn she gave me one of
those “please, don’t go in there” looks usually reserved
for the girlfriend in horror movies who pleads with her
man not to go into the basement where the killer is waiting with a machete the size of a guitar.
Sadly, I could not heed her advice, and knocked on
Wallace’s door.
“Who is it?” he yelled from inside.
“It’s Henry,” I said.
“Get the hell in here.”
I gripped the doorknob, took a breath, and hoped
Wallace’s machete was dull.
I opened the door to see Jack seated in front of
Wallace’s desk. Wallace was not seated behind it, as per
usual. Instead he was pacing around the room while