‘What is it?’
‘Come out,’ said Bloch.
Harry turned one hundred and eighty degrees and took two steps forward. He reached for the handle. Grabbed it, turned it slowly. The metal catch groaned as it was turned.
‘Stop,’ said Bloch.
‘What?’
‘Are you turning the handle?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry about that noise. The mechanism squeaks. It’s just me.’
As much as Harry liked Kate, he wasn’t warming to Bloch so much. She hardly spoke, and had as much personality as the john behind him. Still, he knew she was smart and spoke when she had something to say, irrespective of how she said it. If Harry was on a case, he’d want Bloch with him, but he knew that he wouldn’t want to share a beer with her after hours. At his age he didn’t think he could survive too many of Bloch’s conversations.
He turned the handle, slowly. The handle stopped once it had fully turned, and Harry flicked off the light and opened the door. He came out to see Bloch staring at him, a strange look on her face.
‘I know why Harper was killed,’ she said.
Harry’s lips moved, and a sound even came out, but it wasn’t a word. He just mumbled until he’d recovered enough to get control of his tongue.
‘Y-Y-You what?’
Bloch’s lips parted, she breathed in, about to tell him what she’d discovered while Harry was in the john, but she never got started. Instead, her eyes flared wide. Both of them stood still.
There was a noise.
A door closing.
The front door. A metallic slam and jangle as keys were dumped on the marble kitchen top. Someone was downstairs.
Bloch put her index finger to her lips. Harry stood very still. He took shallow breaths, and held Bloch’s gaze. If the cops were downstairs, they were in serious trouble. If it was Sofia, they had a lot of explaining to do.
‘Under the bed. Now. Quietly,’ whispered Bloch.
Harry got down on his hands and knees, then lay flat on the floor. The bed was tall enough for his purposes, and he shuffled his body beneath it. Bloch came in from the other side. They could see the open door to the bedroom. No lights on in the hallway. Not yet. They were trapped up there. Bloch took out her phone and began typing.
FIFTY-TWO
EDDIE
In a private room in Mount Sinai Hospital, a man I’d never met lay asleep in his bed. He looked peaceful. There were bandages still on his head and at the side of his face. His right leg in a cast, elevated on a hoist, didn’t seem to bother him too much. It was hard to tell. His right arm was also in a cast, and draped over his large belly.
I opened the door to his private room and waited at the threshold until he saw me. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I’d been staring at him for a few minutes, and I was sure I hadn’t seen him before.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
His skin looked deathly pale, to match his death-rattle voice. His lips were angry red, and cracked.
I didn’t answer him. Instead I came into the room for a better look.
‘Are you a doctor?’ he asked.
Another man came into the room. Jimmy the Hat took up a seat at the side of the bed.
‘How you feelin’?’ asked Jimmy.
‘Good. Better,’ said the man.
‘Tony, this is Eddie Flynn. He’s a good friend of mine. Eddie, this is Little Tony P. This is the guy I told you about. He got run over crossing the street.’
‘Good to meet you,’ I said. ‘I have a couple of questions about your accident.’
‘You the lawyer? I-I-I don’t want to sue nobody. I didn’t get the license plate. I don’t know who ran me over.’
Sweat broke out on his face. A light tremor in his good hand. He was nervous when he had no reason to be.
‘As I understand it, you parked your car close to Jimmy’s restaurant. It was early in the morning, before you started your shift there. And when you got out of the car a motorcycle rammed straight into you, crushing you between the bike and the car door. That’s what you told Jimmy. That right?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, yeah. I probably didn’t look in my mirror before I got out of the car. It’s probably my own damn fault.’
Jimmy looked at me. I nodded.
‘The way some witnesses described it, the motorcyclist almost took the door clean off, then walked the bike back, and slammed the front wheel down on your head? Doesn’t sound like an accident to me?’
‘I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember. Last thing I remember was getting out of the car,’ said Tony.
‘This was your new car?’
He swallowed, said, ‘Yeah, yeah. Brand new. A bet came in for me. One hundred Gs. Just when I thought my luck had changed, this happens.’
He raised his good arm, as if to remind us that he was badly hurt.
‘Broke my goddamn skull. I don’t know. I guess I should’ve looked before I got out of the car.’
‘I asked Jimmy to speak to his bookies, and anyone else who runs a book in Manhattan who paid out a hundred grand in the last six months. Guess what they said?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, I mean I …’
‘The bookies who knew you said you were betting more, but you weren’t winning. And they didn’t pay out six figures to anybody in the last year.’
‘Look—’ he began.
‘Tell him the truth,’ said Jimmy. ‘If you lie, I’ll know it. And then I’ll get angry.’
‘I’m not lying,’ said Tony.
No one in their right mind would lie to Jimmy the Hat. Especially if you worked for Jimmy – that was a one-way ticket to the bottom of the Hudson. I needed this guy to open up.
‘Tony, you got one way out of this,’ I said, ‘and that’s to tell me the truth. Here’s what I think, and if I’m right, then you say so. If I get it wrong, you say so. Okay? Telling me the truth is the only thing that can save you right now.’
‘I—’
‘Shut up and listen. You’re a short order cook. You’ve worked at Jimmy’s restaurant for two years now. A friend of Jimmy’s, Frank Avellino, used to come to the restaurant every morning for breakfast. He had a few meetings there over coffee and then went about his day. Am I right so far?’
He was shaking now. He blinked sweat out of his eyes and nodded.
‘Good. Now, Frank Avellino was being poisoned – drugged. For months. Turns out the cops can’t find any trace of the poison in his house. Not a single drop. I’m thinking maybe the poison was never in the house. I’m thinking maybe somebody paid you to put it in Frank’s eggs every morning. I think they paid you a hundred grand. I think you did what you were told and then I think the person who paid you got scared. Scared that maybe a hundred grand wasn’t enough to keep your mouth shut. So they tried to shut you up permanently. How am I doing so far?’
‘It wasn’t poison. I swear to God. She told me it was medicine. Medicine. Said he wouldn’t take it at home and I should slip it into his eggs and sausage …’
Jimmy wiped his face, lowered his head and breathed out in a long, exasperated sigh.
‘A hundred grand is a real generous tip for putting medicine in someone’s food,’ I said.