better idea?”
Fiona watched the delivery bay for a few moments before responding. “You might consider sending a pretty girl over with a problem. See if she can maybe lock someone in a closet.”
“Too risky,” I said. “We can’t have you leaving prints all over the place or appearing on camera. But it’s too risky having these knuckleheads out here when something might go wrong. We need a third force.”
We spent another few minutes watching the building, until Barry walked back up and Fi let him back into the car. “I’ve got a guy who is happy to take on this complex project,” Barry said.
“Good,” I said. “This is a Barry project, right? I’ll never see these guys?”
“They’re New York Russians,” Barry said. “They’ll be selling smoking patches on Coney Island before the police have even begun investigating this.”
The police.
Sometimes it’s the obvious things that make the most sense. I pulled out my phone and called Sam. “Any luck tracking down that plate?” I asked.
“My special powers know no bounds,” Sam said. “Or will have no bounds as soon as I meet a friend of mine in a bit.”
“So you don’t have it?”
“Not yet, no,” Sam said. “But it’s like all things, Mikey. In due time. Due time.”
“It’s due time,” I said. “If we’re going to make this all work out, I need to get that plate confirmed.”
“No fear, Mikey. It’s going to be like that time we took down that evil criminal mastermind.”
“When was that?”
“You know, Mikey, any of the times. I’ll call you when it’s in hand.”
I hung up with Sam and looked back out the window. “You see any police cars roll by since we parked?” I asked Fiona.
“No,” she said. “Why would they?”
“Exactly. So it will be a good thing when one pulls up here and tells the night crew there’s a problem.”
Barry leaned into the front seat. “You got police on your payroll, too?”
“I do now,” I said. I put my phone on speaker, dialed another number and waited for someone to pick up.
“Good afternoon, Harding Pharmaceutical. How may I direct your call?”
“Shipping, please,” I said.
“One moment,” the operator said. “I’ll transfer you to Marty Delabate.”
Fiona and Barry were quiet, but were clearly puzzled.
The call picked up. “This is Marty.”
“Marty,” I said, “this is Dan from Newark. How you doing?”
“Good, good,” Marty said. If you’re going to pretend to be someone else on the telephone, it’s usually a good idea to assume an identity that is so common, it’s likely the person you’re trying to fool will think they’re the one with a problem for not knowing precisely who you are.
“How’s the season treating you?” I said.
“Fine, fine,” Marty said.
“Looking forward to getting down there in the fall,” I said. “You know how it is up here.”
“Don’t I ever,” Marty said.
“Listen,” I said. “I’ve got a note here on my desk about a shipment of patches leaving there on Saturday. That still right?”
“Let me check the system,” Marty said.
“Running slow today,” I said, “or else I would have gotten on myself.”
“It’s crawling today,” Marty said. “Okay. Let’s see. Yeah, we’ve got a three P.M. headed up north, and then we’ve got a six P.M. going to shops between Naples and Tarpon Springs.”
“That’s the one I didn’t have,” I said. “Okay, great. Thanks a bunch, Marty.”
“No problem, Dan,” Marty said.
I turned off the phone. “Got any plans for Saturday night, Fi?”
16
Sam hated cop bars. It wasn’t personal. He just preferred a bar where you could get something more than a domestic beer and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. And then there was the issue of the kind of women who frequented cop bars. Not that Sam kept up on all the latest hairstyles for the fairer sex, but he was pretty sure that teased and crimped hair bleached to the point of translucence was not being shown anywhere near the runways these days. And yet sitting along the bar at Cuffs were three women whose hair looked to be conducting electricity. They weren’t bad to look at otherwise, but Sam just didn’t care for women who smelled of Budweiser and Jack Daniel’s and whose hair had a separate area code.
Sam could have lived without hearing “Magic Carpet Ride” for the rest of his natural-born days, too, but it seemed to be on heavy rotation on Cuffs’ jukebox, having already played three times in the past hour while he waited for his friend Ross Angel to show up. Ross wasn’t exactly a cop; he was a meter maid. Or, as his business card said, PARKING ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, which meant he had a badge and access to the systems Sam periodically needed access for, as well. Sam didn’t know Ross well-he’d been introduced to him by another friend, this one at the DMV, after Ross had a small problem with a loan shark over some gambling debts. It wasn’t a huge debt-$500-but the shark was starting to make threats, and Ross couldn’t very well call the cops. So Sam did what he could to help the poor bastard-which, in this case, just meant that Sam dug deep and paid off the shark. Now Ross owed him a periodic favor, one low enough on the totem pole that Ross could be of any use at all, which meant Sam mostly used him to help parking tickets disappear. Still, he felt pretty confident Ross could come through on something a bit larger, like the identity of the cop who drove the cruiser Fi spotted. But now Sam was worried, since Ross had chosen to meet at Cuffs, which meant his judgment had to be impaired.
The jukebox spit out the opening strains of “Back in Black”-easily the fifth AC/DC song played in the past hour, too-just as Ross finally entered the bar. Sam waved his bottle of Bud Light at him, and Ross sidled over the long way, making sure to pause by the bar for quick conversation with the ladies before sitting down.
“You a regular here?” Sam asked.
“No, no,” Ross said. “They got trivia here every Tuesday, so I come in for that periodically. And on Wednesdays and Fridays they got half-priced wings, so I tend to drop by then, if I’m around. And Mondays they got a pretty chill DJ. Saturday and Sunday, if they got a game on, I might drop by. But that’s it.”
Meter maids, Sam thought, spent so much of their lives accounting for time that, apparently, they just didn’t have a good sense of it in their personal lives. Either that or Ross was just a strange, strange man.
“Any luck with my errand?” Sam asked.
Ross put a finger over his lips and then looked over both of his shoulders. Because nothing conveys secrecy better than shushing someone and then looking over your shoulder. “You know where we are?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sam said, “you picked the place.”
“I thought if we were here, no one would think it was suspicious that we were together.”
Oddly, Ross’ explanation actually made a bit of sense, but was also entirely senseless. “Listen,” Sam said, “top secret mission here, Ross. Lives are at stake. Communists could be landing on our shores at any moment. So, do you have a name for that plate or not?”
Ross reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to Sam. “You didn’t get this from me.” It was as if everything Ross said was cribbed from a bad crime novel. It didn’t surprise Sam. He suspected Ross had a lot of free time to read. “Unless there’s a commendation coming. If there’s some hero shit going down, it would be fine if you mentioned me. Just trying to get a leg up in the force, you know?”
“I know,” Sam said. “If we get before the Hall of Justice with this, I’ll recommend you immediately be made an honorary Superfriend.”
Sam unfolded the paper and saw the cop’s name: Pedro “Peter” Prieto. A pretty common Cuban name. He had to hope that Ross’ own latent desire to be a detective got the better of him and caused him to do some
