“Legal?” I asked. “You really want to get into that discussion?”
This was already more than Mark and I had ever spoken about the unsavory details of my job.
“No,” he said quickly. “I do not.”
“You do understand this means that Doug Sinclair is a victim here?”
“Perhaps,” Mark allowed. “But it also doesn’t rule out that being blackmailed—even unjustly—distracted him from his oversight of Xytek.”
“It also doesn’t rule out that Darden is trying to use him as a distraction.” I wasn’t letting Mark play this dumb.
“I understand what you’re saying. We will have to cross that bridge when we come to it, depending on what you find. You and I both know we are not going to do anything unethical or inappropriate here. But if we can keep Darden happy, at least until we can get a foothold in managing a bigger segment of their billables—that would be ideal. I, for one, do like health insurance.”
Ruth. It was easy to think that Mark could afford to lose everything and still be fine. But his wife was dying of cancer and he had a daughter getting married, and he did seem more concerned lately about money than I would have expected.
“Oh, and one last thing. There was a car following me. A black sedan. Like the sedan that was spotted at Doug’s accident scene.”
“What?” Mark sounded alarmed. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. But I’ve seen the same car twice now, last night and today.”
“Do you want to … should we call someone?”
“The car is gone now—so, no, there’s no emergency,” I reassured him. “But you should confirm it’s not Darden. Because that would make me uncomfortable.”
“Of course it would. I certainly hope that’s not the case.” Mark still sounded rattled. “I will speak directly with Phil today and confirm. In the meantime, Kat, please be careful out there.”
I placed one last call after Mark and I said our good-byes.
“Ahmed, glad I caught you,” I said.
Ahmed was an SVP at Digitas Data, the cyber investigativefirm I relied upon for all back-channel information gathering for my clients. Ahmed was my go-to guy at Digitas. He was excellent—efficient and fast, and I trusted him. I’d helped see to it that he made vice president at Digitas in half the usual time. In return, Ahmed always made sure my projects got priority. He was also willing to cross some lines when I said it mattered.
He sighed, but good-naturedly. “Let me guess … You don’t have the phone and it’s an emergency because why can’t anything be easy?”
“Yes, please. All the texts at least and also the call log if possible? He’s deceased, if that matters.”
“Only matters if it meansIneed to be worried I’ll be next.” He laughed. I didn’t respond. “Wait, I don’t need to be worried, do I?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, which, at that moment, felt like the most I could promise anyone.
“Okay, but without the phone the best I’m ever going to do is messages from the past few days.”
“That’s all I need.”
It wasn’t easy to track down Jimmy Ahearn. Or to get him to agree to talk. It took me a good part of the day, the rest of which I spent trying to persuade Dalton not to kick a client’s son out for vandalizing the school locker room. I took the teacher who’d caught him out for an endless lunch at Le Bernardin, which was mostly spent making him feel like a good person for taking money instead of reporting the kid. “You don’t want to be responsible for derailing this kid’s life, do you? People make mistakes.” I couldn’t count how many times in my life I’d used that line. And, in point of fact, this was a decent kid whose parents refused to treat his anxiety properly. But today, the whole thing made me want to take a shower.
Jimmy and I finally met at 6:00 p.m. on the edge of Chelsea, inwhat was technically a cop bar—wood-paneled and Irish, with deep, worn booths lining the side of the room. The bar was Jimmy’s choice, which made no sense to me, but that didn’t matter. He was a sometime confidential informant with a specialty in breaking and entering. Skills he didn’t use anymore “except for good,” he claimed. Which essentially meant for an exorbitant price—something the police seemed willing to overlook, maybe because they, too, used his services on occasion. And Jimmy was worth the money. Within minutes, he could get in and out of any place undetected and with whatever you needed safely in hand—or left behind. He also had a real aversion to the idea of going to prison, which meant he never took a job unless he was absolutely sure he could pull it off successfully. I’d gotten Jimmy’s name years ago through a parole officer I knew. I’d used him a couple times: to retrieve keys in one instance, given—prematurely, it turned out—to a new mistress with a temper, the other time to get drugs out of a dorm room before a search.
As soon as Jimmy sat down, I slid a folded piece of paper with Kyle’s address across the table. Maybe I couldn’t control Cleo or her choices, but I could limit Kyle’s ability to do any more damage.
“I need his phone. His work one. He probably has more than one. He’s dealing.”
Jimmy frowned. “Getting a phone is like getting a ring off a finger. I don’t do close contact.”
I gave him a pointed look. “He’s got to go to sleep eventually.”
Jimmy unfolded the sheet of paper and scanned it quickly. “Who is it?”
