the dark at the top of the stairs, a shadow moving in a dark corner, a squeaky floor in a room above.
“Don’t worry,” he told her as he helped her out of the car. He checked both doors on the first floor when they entered the brownstone, rattled Handley’s door, and then checked the rooms in her apartment, the closets, even looked under the beds.
“Clear,” he said, dropping her keys in her hand.
They were standing in the apartment doorway, a foot or so apart.
“Cop talk, huh?” she said, leaning forward an inch or so. “Brief and to the point.”
She leaned forward another inch but he didn’t take the bait. He stared down at her, started to say something. But changed his mind.
“Get your cordless phone and look out the front window,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, make sure you’re okay.”
And he left.
She got the mobile phone and went to the window. He was standing on the sidewalk, talking into his cell.
He had dialed the north RR car and Vinnie answered.
“It’s Cody. Where are you?”
“East side, near 65th.”
“Good. Come to Handley’s brownstone. I got a nervous witness here.”
“Five minutes.”
Cody looked up and she was staring down at him and he held up a forefinger and pointed to his phone. She waited. Five minutes crept by and a black sedan pulled up. A young Asian got out and Cody talked to him for a moment and he nodded. Then her phone rang.
“Hi.”
“Hi. Say hello to Vinnie, one of the crew. He’ll be parked in your driveway most of the night.”
“Cody?”
“Yeah?”
“I had a great time. Thank you.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe, uh…maybe next time dinner’s on me.”
He paused a moment, looked up at her and said, “Sleep well. Here’s Vin.”
She saw him hand the phone to the young Asian who looked about eighteen. “Hi, Miss Cluett,” he said. “I’m here if you get nervous. Please write down my number.” She fumbled around in her purse, found pencil and paper, and jotted it down.
“Thank you, Vinnie. Please call me Amelie.”
“Gotcha.”
He rang off and she watched Cody get in his car, pull out of the driveway, and leave.
It was 11:49 p.m.?
Cody drove back to the Loft and checked the car in then took the elevator up to the nerve center. Charley was sitting by the elevator door when it slid open. He sniffed Cody’s legs and then raised his nose to his waist and sniffed his jacket.
“He smells your wild friends,” Si said without looking away from his computer.
“He’s smelled them before.”
Si continued banging away on his computer. “He’s been sitting there for ten minutes,” he said. “He walked over there five minutes before I heard the garage doors open.”
Cody reached down and scratched Charley’s ears. “His ears are as good as his nose. I tooted the horn when I was coming down West Broadway.”
Si stopped working and looked over at Cody and Charley. “You know how many horns are tooting on West Broadway right now?”
“He knows my touch.”
Si shook his head and laughed as he turned back to his keyboard.
“What’re you chasing, Si? I know when you’re after something.”
“It’s bad medicine to talk about it until it shakes out.” He stole a glance at the clock. “We’ve had tough ones before, Micah. It’s only been twelve hours and fourteen minutes since this show started. Go home and get some sleep.”
“You’re gonna keep Charley up. He can hear your mind working all the way over at my apartment.”
“Good. He snores.”
“Tell me about it.”
Cody and Charley always walked the few blocks to his place on Lispenard Street, swinging over to a small arrowhead-shaped area of trees near the intersection of Sixth Avenue and West Broadway, where Charley often met up with Hoover, a black lab, owned by a young artist named Harrison. The two dogs liked to roughhouse together. But that was usually about ten p.m.
“We’re too late tonight,” Cody told the dog who seemed to understand, sniffed the trees, and peed on a couple before they walked the two blocks back to their apartment.
Cody walked into the bedroom, pulled off his jacket and laid at the foot of the bed. Charley approached it with nose twitching and smelled every inch of it, then sat down beside the bed and stared up at Cody.
“Don’t worry, pal, nobody can take your place. Anyway, I think you’ll like her.”
He stripped off his clothes and took a quick shower. When he came back, Charley had pulled the jacket down on his pad and was curled up sleeping on it. Cody got in bed, set the clock for six a.m. and clicked off the light.
Just another Friday night in the Garden of Eden, he thought as he began to doze off. Except tonight the clock was running. And he knew he was thinking something he would not say aloud:
Somebody else was going to die before they got another clue.
24
Saturday, October 27
As was their custom, Cody and Charley ate breakfast at Waldo’s at 6:30 then, it being Saturday, jogged up Mulberry St. toward Grand. Cody was wearing sweats with a bottle of water sticking out of his back pocket. Their destination was Sarah Roosevelt Park where they always found another dog or two to play with.
Cody knew the park well. His first partner was Harry Ellison, who had been on the force for twenty-three years and was not happy saddled with a rookie, particularly one who wore a ponytail and was laughed at behind the hand of just about everyone in the Fifth Precinct. But after a few months, Ellison, who was divorced, came to admire Cody’s quiet attitude, his intuition and quick response, and his eagerness to learn from a veteran cop. When Cody moved on, they remained close friends, eating dinner once a week and catching an occasional movie. When Ellison volunteered to join the Search and Rescue squad, Cody spent time watching Harry work with Charley, a cadaver dog and Harry’s new partner. Although he graced Cody with an occasional wag of his tail, Charley was a one-man dog and Harry was the man.
It was an accepted fact that Charley had the best nose in the business.
Then came the morning of September 11, 2001.?
Charley and Harry had been on the chaotic scene before the second tower fell, had spent exhausting hours combing the deadly ashes at Ground Zero, crawling through its surreal depths, seeking victims in the twisted remains of the Trade Center. On the fifth day nobody was surprised to hear Charley’s urgent bark. It was only after he continued for almost five minutes that a firefighter followed Charley’s cries and found Harry, crumpled in the wreckage, with Charley standing beside him, refusing to leave despite the smoking ashes that scorched his feet.
Ellison was DOA, felled by a massive coronary. His companion had to be carried out, his feet so badly burned he could not walk.
Cody found them both in an ambulance; Charley, his head lying on Ellison’s shrouded body, his sorrow a low
