“Yeah, what about it?” he wondered, shaking free of Simmons’s grasp to reach for his drink.
“You remember it?”
“Yeah, so … Why you wanna know?”
“Your ex sent me some of Moira’s things because I was interested in getting to know who she was,” I confessed, figuring the truth might be worth a try. “It’s not any more complicated than that.”
“I threw it out. It was just a bunch of old newspaper shit, nothing at all to do with my girl.”
“Can you remember where the clippings were from or what they were about?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to forgive me,” he mocked, swigging the remainder of his scotch, “but I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“Anything, do you remember anything?”
“Something about a bike, I think, a kid and a bike. That’s all. Something like that, a kid and a bike. I’m not sure. Now if you don’t fuckin’ mind …”
I left, nodding good-bye to Preacher Simmons.
If that drunk asshole was right, and the clippings were about some kid’s bicycle, I really was just chasing my own tail around for no good reason. On the other hand, Heaton was currently so liquored up, it was impossible to know if he had been telling me the truth in there or if he even knew what the truth was. Walking to the car, I found myself wishing John Heaton was correct. I was way too distracted by this, and even my industrial-strength curiosity couldn’t build much of a mystery out of old newspaper stories about a kid and his bike.
Chapter Thirteen
If the license plate theory wasn’t dead, it was probably a dead end. HNJ1956 was indeed a current tag number in six states, but five of the states were west of the Mississippi, three of the plates had been issued since Moira’s death, and two of the plates were assigned to cars owned by women over sixty years of age. Even if I had been inclined to look into it any further, I couldn’t see how a license plate issued to a sixty-year-old grandmother in Wyoming or Utah related to old newspaper clippings about a kid and a bicycle.
Klaus came back to the office to take his lunch break. As he was clearing off the desk, he noticed the pad on which I’d written down the information about the license plates.
“Utah, huh?” he kind of mumbled to himself.
“What about Utah?”
“If there was any
“I thought it might be a license plate number.”
“Well, 1956 was the year my brother Kirk was born. Maybe it’s somebody’s birthday. You know, Harold Nance Jacobson, born 1956. Or maybe it was the year someone died.”
Bells didn’t quite go off in my head, but Klaus had a point. It’s an amazing thing how the human mind works, how different minds process the same information to divergent ends. I’d been focused on HNJ1956 for over twenty- four hours, yet it had never occurred to me that HNJ could be somebody’s initials, nor had I seen 1956 as anything other than the individual numbers 1-9-5-6. Once Judith Resnick had suggested it was a tag number, my mind seemingly closed off other interpretations. I’d have to be careful to keep that lesson in mind.
There was more to recommend Klaus’s analysis beyond its simply being different from mine. It resonated. I didn’t have to perform mental gymnastics to see the potential connection between someone’s birthday and newspaper stories about a kid and a bike. But what kid? What bike? Whose birthday? Like everything else since I’d first flipped through Moira’s checkbook ledger, each possible answer gave rise to more questions.
As I walked the aisles of the store, distractedly dusting and straightening bottles, I tried imagining how I might be able to replicate the newspaper search Moira had paid for a few weeks before Ivan Alfonseca had strangled the life out of her. Even if Klaus was exactly right that HNJ1956 was a group of initials followed by a year, it wasn’t enough. Or as my old philosophy professor was fond of saying, it was necessary but not sufficient. I tried anyway.
Judith Resnick, though happy to hear from me, wasn’t very encouraging. Even if I could tie the initials HNJ to the year 1956 and could further tie those two elements to newspaper articles written about a kid and a bike, it probably wouldn’t do me any good, not as far as her company was concerned. Not only would it take an eternity to search through all the archives, but it would cost a fortune. “Certainly more than a hundred and fifteen bucks,” she said.
The bottom line was this: I needed to come up with a specific name or geographic region in order to replicate or approximate the search Moira had paid for. Until then, I was just spinning my wheels.
The other line started ringing before I hung up with Judith. I told her I had to go. She apologized for not being more helpful and let me know she’d already mailed out that brochure I’d asked for.
I picked up line
“Hey, you gimpy Jew fuck, how you doing these days?” It was Larry Mac.
“Don’t tell me you got promoted again. What is it now, chief of the Sioux Nation or grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan?”
“Shut up or I won’t take you and Katy to dinner this evening.”
“Call 911.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m suffering from auditory hallucinations. I could swear you just said you were inviting Katy and me to dinner.”
“Asshole, that’s what I said.”
“Then call 911 anyway, because now I’m gonna have a heart attack.”
The blind steer, located only a few blocks away from 10-9-8, was one of the oldest steak houses in New York City. I suppose, like 10-9-8, it had been trendy once, probably around the time Lincoln was giving the Gettysburg Address. Even if you didn’t know its exact address, you could spot the life-size red, white, and blue neon steer swinging above its front door from all the way down Ninth Avenue.
Larry Mac was waiting for us at the bar when we arrived. I was surprised to see him alone. I had just assumed his wife, Margaret, would be joining us. When Katy asked after Marge, Larry was kind of vague about the reasons for her absence. Now I was suspicious. Earlier, on the phone, Larry had said he had been meaning to take us to dinner since his promotion, that it was the least he could do for me. He explained how the promotion had come so swiftly and as such a shock to him that he hadn’t even had time to arrange for the time-honored tradition of a promotion party. That was true. Rob Gloria hadn’t thrown his yet either.
Larry signaled to the maitre d’ that his guests had arrived, and we were shown to a prime table in a private corner of the dining room. While Katy and Larry studied the menu, I studied Larry. As was the norm, he was impeccably dressed in a black linen suit over a gauzy white shirt. I always admired that about Larry-he had an abundance of substance and style. That he had taken us here to celebrate was another indication of that. Yet, there was an unfamiliar tension in his expression that I could not decipher. He seemed to be working too hard at his usual easy charm.
Without a sign, verbal or otherwise, a waiter in a long white apron came to the table carrying a bottle of Mumm Cordon Rouge. Larry offered toasts to me, to Katy. We toasted his successes, current and future. All the toasting out of our systems, we ordered dinner. The food was excellent, the aged beef melting like butter in our mouths. The meal was all so splendid, but there was also that tension Larry had brought with him as an escort. It held tight on to Larry’s arm, whispered in his ear even as he ate and made small talk. I wondered if Katy noticed it too. Tonight was about more than just saying thanks. There was definitely something besides steak on my old friend’s plate.
After dessert, Larry ordered cigars and three Grand Marniers in heated snifters. Katy excused herself as a darkly attractive young woman in a black satin cocktail dress came to the table toting a humidor. Though not her equal, her looks were reminiscent of Steven Brightman’s wife. She placed the humidor before Larry and opened the mahogany box in a very formal, almost ritualistic manner. I half expected her to recite some ancient incantation.
