Page 11

I got about three and a half hours of video before the alcohol- and drug-induced mini-orgy was over. I waited until everyone from room thirty-nine had showered, dressed, and departed; then I went to bed with the most important item in my detective’s bag of tricks—a small silver flask filled with twenty-year-old hundred-proof bourbon.

My dreams were of solitary confinement and the iron rod I dropped while being dragged from that cell. In the nightmare I was beating Mink’s face in with the most powerful, the most satisfying blows I had ever delivered.

5.

I woke up at 11:07 by the digital clock next to the bed. The hangover was mild considering what it might have been. The room wasn’t spinning; it merely shook. And my head ached only if I moved it too quickly or looked directly into the light.

It was at least ten minutes before I even remembered Beatrice/Nathali’s letter. But there was no time to think about that. I got up so late I had to hurry if I wanted to get to the Gucci Diner in time.

My cell phone sounded halfway through the Holland Tunnel. I put it on speaker and said, “Yes?”

“Daddy?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school, A.D.?”

“It’s passing period and I wanted to tell you that I made an appointment for you and a woman named Willa Portman for four o’clock today. I sent you a text, but sometimes you don’t read them.”

“What’s the meeting about?”

“She wants to hire you to do some investigative work.”

“What kind?”

“She didn’t say, but she seemed nice.”

“On the phone?”

“Uh-uh. She walked in.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

“See you then. I love you, Daddy.”

Between the headache, midday Manhattan traffic, and trying to compose the speech I had to deliver, there wasn’t much time to consider Beatrice Summers and the danger her confession might pose.

The Gucci Diner was pretty far over on the east side of Fifty-Ninth Street. It was a family-owned restaurant that had been there for decades. I knew the place because my father liked going there when he and my mother were still a couple. The patriarch, Lamberto Orelli, had the foresight to buy the three-story building, and so far no big-time real estate offer could buy them out. I parked my car in a lot and went to a bus-stop bench across the street—there to sit and wait. I wondered if I could somehow forget the letter, Beatrice, and Adamo Cortez (whoever he was). Maybe if I waited long enough, the rage and fear would subside again, leaving me to help raise my daughter and follow upstanding perverts back and forth across state lines.

There was aspirin in the go bag, bottled water too, but I preferred to feel the discomfort. It seemed an appropriate response to who and what I was.

Bob Acres showed up at exactly a quarter past one. He went to his usual table and sat down with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Daily News.

I allowed him to order and be served before jaywalking to the front door of Gucci’s and through to the politician’s table. I sat without invitation and looked into my quarry’s eyes.

“Yes?” he said.

“Who told you that you were being followed?”

Acres opened his mouth but did not speak.

“I mean,” I said, “that’s the only reason you’d put your lights on a timer just this week.”

I liked Bob. He was a deviant and a Republican to boot, but we all had our dark sides. I would have been a murderer if I hadn’t fumbled that iron rod.

“Who hired you?” Bob asked.

Instead of answering I took out the iPad, played around a bit, and handed him a screen showing a full page of thumbnail stills that I’d sorted out while he got fucked.

He worked his way through the photographs, studying each one. There was no expression I could read. This made me think that he’d probably won at that poker game he attended.