I considered the file Tiana had just sent. What had seemed like yet another task in my overworked life now felt like a final ray of hope.
“Thanks, Lee,” I said. “I’ll, uh, let him know.”
“Sorry, Zola. Say hi to your family for me.”
“Sure,” I said. “Tell Greg what’s up.”
With that, we hung up, and I pulled up the file to read on my way to the subway.
A few minutes later, it was obvious why Ramirez had sent it. The NYPD had been running surveillance on a trafficking suspect with ties in Downtown Manhattan, Hunt’s Point, Jamaica Queens, and, yes, Brooklyn, at an address located right smack in the middle of “The Hole”—one of the last crime-ridden no-man’s lands on the boundary between Queens and Brooklyn where even law enforcement barely dared to go. Some called it the second Wild West, both for its apparent lawlessness and because it was home to the New York Federation of Black Cowboys. Rumor had it, there were actually fuckin’ horses out there. In New York City.
I scanned the names that had been attached to the trafficking. No one new. Small-time crooks, people we’d tried to pressure time and time again on a variety of investigations over the years. New York was a big city, but the organized crime scene was relatively small. This felt like old news.
Until I came to a name at the bottom of the list.
Someone new.
Someone important.
Jude Letour was the heir to a DC-based import-export empire. His family had deep pockets in Washington, but they hadn’t yet handed the reins over to their son, who was a bit of a black sheep.
Looked like he was doing his own import-export work of the human persuasion. Letour had been spotted coming in and out of the trafficking address in Brooklyn at approximately two in the morning, and the detective on the case had gotten at least three of the lower-level henchmen to name him specifically as the head of the trafficking project.
But I was more interested in another element. Eric had mentioned him more than once because he was part of Janus, a secret Ivy League society that originally connected the de Vrieses to the mess they were in. As it happened, Jude Letour happened to be the right-hand man to John fucking Carson. If he was doing underground business here in the city, there was a good chance his boss was too.
“I see you, motherfucker,” I muttered as I paged through the notes. It was too late now to call the detective assigned to the case, but first thing Monday morning, I’d get Derek on it.
I turned back toward Central Park. Instead of going home, I’d be making another stop on the other side of the island. This was the kind of thing I needed to tell Jane and Eric in person.
Chapter Three
It was nearly dark and starting to rain when I emerged onto Central Park West. I pulled my favorite fedora low as I wove through the heady mix of buskers, shoppers, tourists, and businesspeople, crowded by the ring of pedicabs and horse-drawn carriages looking for the last few fares.
The Upper West Side was one of those places that was just plain nice. It still had hints of the grit that coated New York—you could never completely escape that anywhere—but it lacked the marks of poverty and neglect that tore at other parts of the city, like mine.
Here, the bases of the buildings were washed and white instead of tagged with graffiti and filth. The sidewalks were clean and mostly uncracked. Across the street, the greening trees of early spring waved in the breeze like friends instead of people who wanted to mug you. Above, rain clouds threatened, but right now, it was just a nice place to walk around.
You fuckin’ liar.
I shook away my subconscious, cloaked in the voice of my best friend, Jamie Quinn. Over the last few months, I’d developed an alarming recurrence of internal monologue, usually taking the form of someone close if it wasn’t her. A friend. A sister. Someone who knew me well enough to call out my bullshit.
Go the fuck away, Jay, I told him mentally.
Not until you admit what you’re really lookin’ for.
Or who, I thought with him. Fine, fine. Fuck the pretty brick buildings. I was walking an extra twenty blocks under the threat of a downpour for the same reason I often got off halfway between Brooklyn and Belmont every Sunday just to meander Central Park. The reason why I’d suddenly started visiting every museum on Fifth Avenue more than I went to Mass.
“Can you walk a bit, doll?” I asked Nina as she hurried on a gray cashmere coat. “Might warm us up. I need a bite to eat after all that wine.”
“I—yes, I could eat. Somewhere close, though?” She looked at her feet. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid these shoes weren’t made for long treks.”
“Don’t ever apologize for those shoes.”
I was rewarded with another mild blush and a murmur of something like, “I’m glad you like them.” I took Nina’s hand, and for a split second, the cold disappeared as a shock of heat passed through my fingertips. Jesus, Mary, this was some kind of electricity.
Nina started as if she’d felt it too. Her bright eyes found mine, then drifted to my lips. For a moment, I considered kissing her. I’d wanted to for hours at that point, and I was pretty sure she wanted it as well. But she had a skittish quality that reminded me of the stray cats by my house, like if I took a step too soon, she’d bolt.
Instead, I raised her hand to examine it. Her skin was so fair, almost translucent. I could practically see her pulse moving. Slowly, I pressed a kiss over the lace of veins that crisscrossed just below her knuckles.
When I dropped our hands, she had her other one pressed to her shirt, as if to hold her heart in place. I couldn’t blame her. One brief touch, and mine was practically jumping out of my chest.
“You all right there, beautiful?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, I—I just thought…”
I cocked my head. “You thought what?”
She blinked, looking a bit embarrassed. “I thought you were going to kiss me.”
I knew it.
I shrugged. “I thought about it. But I figured I’d be a gentleman and wait until you asked.”
At that, amusement danced over her glossy features. “A gentleman from the Bronx,” she murmured.
Her. It was always her.
But Nina Astor was a damn mirage, to the point where I wondered if she had been real at all.
Two months after the night that changed my life, I was searching for a ghost.
It was time to accept it.
Nina Astor didn’t exist.
The rain was really starting to rap on the brim of my hat by the time I reached Jane and Eric’s brownstone on West Seventy-Sixth Street. I pressed the buzzer and faced the security camera. It took a few minutes—Eric and Jane had a team set up downstairs to vet any visitors. A few minutes later, the door buzzed open.
“Hey, Tony.”
The security head nodded at me as I jogged up to the fourth floor. The whole place was a giant construction mess. Eric had recently bought out the building and was having it restored to a regular house for the two of them. I sniffed. Some house. It made my little brick place in Red Hook look like a fuckin’ storage shed.
Two minutes later, Eric opened the door, clearly just off work himself in the remains of another impeccably tailored suit. Takes one to know one, I suppose. Just because I was a civil servant didn’t mean I had to look like one. But there was a big difference. I bought my Armani threads from my sister’s secondhand shop uptown. Eric probably had his made custom, brand fuckin’ new.