He caught his own reflection in the mirror over the sink and paused for a moment, studying himself. He stared hard into his own eyes, looking for observable changes. It was a habit of his, staring at himself in the mirror. His sister used to chide him, calling him the Looking Glass Man. But while he admitted a fascination with faces, especially his own, it was with detached interest and not any real admiration that he studied his reflection.
Who was that, looking back at him from that silver surface?
The Looking Glass Man.
He switched off the bathroom light.
He gathered the bag and the briefcase, stepped out onto the landing, and locked the apartment door. Over the next few days, the apartment would be painted, the carpets cleaned. The new tenants would move in by the tenth.
He should not allow such trifles to disturb him, he decided. He had greater problems to consider. Crime and punishment. He thought of the photograph in his wallet, but he did not take it out. Thinking of the photograph always made him think of the judge — Judge Lewis Kerr. Kerr must be watched.
He allowed himself a small, soft sigh, then walked downstairs to the large metal trash bin. At last able to remove the annoying gloves, he added them and the roll of paper towels to the white bag, which he placed in the bin. The bin was quite full.
Trash day, he thought. Just another trash day.
3
Monday, June 4, 2:15 A.M.
Las Piernas Marina South
“Maybe your snitch was wrong,” Elena Rosario said.
Philip Lefebvre did not reply. He continued to watch a yacht moored to a dock near a bait shop.
“Lefebvre?”
He turned, then followed her gaze toward her partner, Bob Hitchcock, who was walking toward them. The narcotics detective’s hands were in his pockets as he approached them, his head down. Hitch was a big man who was beginning to go soft around the belly and beneath his chin — and Lefebvre thought he was going soft on the job as well, coasting whenever he could. Any extra effort would have put Hitch in a shitty mood, and the fact that this surveillance call hadn’t panned out had ticked him off.
Rosario, Hitch’s partner, was easier to work with but harder to read, more reserved. And unlike Hitch, she wasn’t a burnout case. When Hitch had argued against coming down here, she had said, “You want to tell the captain why we didn’t follow up on a lead concerning Whitey Dane?”
Hitch had caved — they all knew this was exactly why he was being forced to work with Lefebvre in the first place. As much as Hitch resented having someone from Homicide assigned to the task force on Dane, there was nothing he could do about it.
Whitey Dane, long suspected of being behind a number of local criminal activities, including drug dealing, had proven slippery — although the police department had occasionally crippled his operations in the city, their efforts to bring charges against him were futile.
Every attempt to make progress in investigating his activities had met with a reversal. Informants were murdered or disappeared, undercover officers were unable to get anywhere near Dane himself. Rosario had told Lefebvre that most of her two years as a narcotics detective had been spent on a team that had tried to gather enough evidence against Dane to put him out of business. Instead, over that time, he had branched out from drug dealing and vice into other types of crime — and increased his influence on local politics and businesses.
Following a recent outbreak of violence in an area controlled by Dane, the task force was expanded — Lefebvre, a veteran homicide detective, had been assigned to work with it.
“So they’ve given us the golden boy,” Hitch had said. “You sure you can stop giving interviews long enough to work with us?”
“He’s already more aware of Dane’s little oddball habits than you are,” Rosario had said. “And you’re just jealous because you think he’s getting into that reporter’s pants.”
“Irene Kelly is a good-looking broad. So tell me, Lefebvre, what’s she like in bed?”
Lefebvre had regarded him coldly but said nothing, and after a moment of uncomfortable silence, Rosario had said, “You were asking who makes the silk vests Dane likes to wear…” and had gone on to discuss Dane’s affected way of dressing.
As she watched Hitch coming toward them now, she sighed. “Tonight had seemed so promising.”
Lefebvre thought of the call that had brought them here. Just before midnight he had received a tip from an informant, an electronically disguised voice saying that Whitey Dane would be paying for a hit tonight aboard his fishing boat, the
Lefebvre had paged Rosario and Hitch, who already knew exactly where Whitey kept his boat, and the three of them hurried to that section of the marina. Sure enough, the slip was empty. And so, for the past two hours, they had awaited the
The slip had stayed empty.
“We’re at the wrong marina,” Hitch said now, addressing Rosario and avoiding eye contact with Lefebvre. “The whole time, the damned boat’s been in the other marina.”
“The Downtown Marina?” Lefebvre asked.
“Yep.”
“But this is where he usually keeps the boat?”
“Yes. We’ve been watching this guy for three years, and I’ve never seen him do so much as gas the thing up at the Downtown Marina.”
