An alarm sounded as I depressed the fire door bar and stumbled into the frigid December night. When the heavy door slammed behind me, I knew I was locked outside—and that was fine with me, because the only way I was going back into that crazy holiday bash was with an armed SWAT team!
Twenty-Eight
“Hey, little elf! I like your outfit!”
“Are you coming from a Christmas party?”
“Maybe she’s from the North Pole.”
“You want a ride, sweet thing?”
“I’ll give her a ride. A real
The four men laughed. They were sitting in an SUV, keeping pace beside me on a dim, deserted stretch of Fortieth Street. At least three of them were sloppy drunk from some office party. Shivering in my flimsy red costume, I tightly folded my red velvet arms and quickened the pace of my black go-go boots.
With Bryant Park Grill dark, and no other open restaurants or stores on this block, I’d struck out for the police station in Times Square. If I was lucky, I figured I’d encounter a cop or squad car on my way.
So far, I wasn’t lucky.
My cell phone, wallet, and even my spare change were presently locked inside the public library’s basement. There were no pedestrians on this sleepy street paralleling the snow-covered rectangle of Bryant Park, and the only car coming down Fortieth in the last three minutes was this big, black sport-utility vehicle filled with four office workers in their late twenties, most of whom were hammered, all of whom were making assumptions about my line of work—
“Ask her how much,” one of them complained to the other.
“What’s the matter, little elf? Don’t you like us?”
Eyes forward, I shook my head. “Not interested!”
“Come on!”
They began talking lower, among themselves. “You have cash on you, right?”
“What’s she going to charge?”
I quickened my steps on the sidewalk, hurrying to reach the much brighter lights of Sixth Avenue, but the SUV continued keeping pace with me.
“We’ll treat you right,” one of them shouted. “Just get in!”
When I finally hit the corner, I figured I’d lose them. But the SUV turned sharply, cutting me off at the curb. The inebriated guy in the front passenger seat swung open his door and leaped at me—
“Hands off, asshole!” I shouted, rearing back.
The earsplitting burst of a police siren cut the night. A dark blue sedan peeled through the traffic light and spun with NASCAR-level rotational drift. In seconds, the sedan’s driver screeched his vehicle to a halt, expertly boxing in the front of the SUV.
I noticed the revolving red bubble light on the sedan’s dashboard and sagged with relief. Sergeant Emmanuel Franco climbed out of his unmarked car, swaggered over to the men in the SUV, and flashed his gold shield. I was never so happy to see a red, white, and blue do-rag in all my life.
“Now I ask you, gentlemen: Is that any way to treat Santa’s Little Helper?” His dark eyes speared the four. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. I ought to throw the book at you. Or maybe give your so-called designated driver a Breathalyzer.”
The wolves turned suddenly sheepish.
“We didn’t mean anything, officer.”
“You’re misunderstanding.”
“We all just thought she might want a lift.”
“Yeah, that’s all—”
“Listen, Jersey Boys,” Franco replied. “Put it back in your pants and go home—unless you’d rather spend the night in a holding cell instead of Lincoln Tunnel traffic.”
While Franco stood and watched, the SUV backed up, laboriously maneuvered around his unmarked car, and sped away. Then the police sergeant turned to face me, gave my outfit a long, slow, frustratingly expressionless once-over, folded his arms, and said, “So, Coffee Lady, you want a ride or what?”
“Yes!”
Freezing, I ducked into the passenger side of his sedan. He got behind the wheel, shut the door, and glanced at me. Without a word, he turned up the heat.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Listen, Sergeant, inside the library, there was a man after me—”
Franco put a palm in the air. “Give me a second.” He grabbed his police radio handset. “Dispatch, I have a possible DWI currently traveling north on Sixth Avenue. Issue a BOLO for a late-model black Ford Explorer, four occupants, with the following New Jersey license plate...”
Franco finished his radio call and turned to me. “You were saying?”
“Where’s Hong? I called Detective Hong.”
“I know you did. He played me your phone message—
“Dressing like this was the only way I could get inside the
“I know, Coffee Lady. So...” Giving me another once-over, he arched an eyebrow. “You want to go to my place?”
“No.”
“I’m kidding. Where to?”
“Take me to the East Village. I’ll fill you in as we go...”
To Franco’s credit, he let me get out the whole story—from finding Karl Kovic’s corpse, to hearing an elf confess to possible accessory to murder, to braining one of Dickie Celebratorio’s Known Associates with a bag of gourmet chocolate-dipped candy canes. Dudley Do-Rag actually listened to the whole thing without once cracking wise. A Christmas miracle in itself.
When we reached Mike Quinn’s apartment building, I still hadn’t finished the tale, so he pulled to the curb and kept the engine running to keep the car warm.
“. . . and that’s when you found me,” I concluded.
“I see,” Franco said. “And that’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
He smiled. Not a smirk this time, but a real smile. “You’ve got a lot of guts, Coffee Lady, I’ll say that for you.”
“I’m just trying to find out who really killed my friend.”
“I know. And I have some good news. We recovered the murder weapon.”
I sat up straighter. “The gun that shot Alf?”
Franco nodded. “It was found in a Goodwill bin. Someone tossed it in there—by our calculation, the same night as the murder. We ran the serial numbers. The weapon was bought in North Carolina by a man who died two years ago.” At my look, Franco added, “That’s an MO for a weapon bought and sold illegally up here on the street.”
“Fingerprints?”
Franco shook his head. “Wiped clean.”
I slumped in the car seat. “I guess you’re happy about that.”
