“That’s plenty.”
“John, be careful. Wayne’s an angry man and he could get violent.”
“He’s not the only one,” I said.
I caught the 1 to Times Square and got on the 7 just as the doors were closing. An announcement came over the speakers as the train began its long, slow trek out to Flushing. I couldn’t understand what it said, but I wasn’t really trying.
After almost an hour, the train let out at Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue. This intersection was as cosmopolitan as Flushing got: a jumble of Asian restaurants and grocery stores, drug stores selling vials of ginseng alongside the out-of-season Coppertone displays, newsstands carrying foreign papers and international calling cards. A video store was promoting the latest Chow Yun- Fat import, a film whose two-character Chinese title was translated as A Sound of Distant Drums. The signs over the doors at McDonald’s and Citibank were covered with Asian lettering. Scattered here and there were remnants of the old Flushing: a Macy’s outlet store advertising a sale on men’s suits and bedding, a bakery with a small sign in one corner of the window certifying it as kosher. The sidewalk was packed, and everyone on it was dressed more warmly than I was. I pushed through, hands in my pockets.
I’d had an hour in which to calm down and change my mind about confronting Lenz, but the trip had had the opposite effect on me.
Once I was off Roosevelt, the neighborhood quickly reverted to Queens normal: six-story red brick buildings interspersed with occasional stretches of one- and twostory homes, tiny patches of lawn squeezed in between the sidewalks and the facades. I passed Union and turned in on Bowne.
The telephone operator had found two listings for “W. Lenz” in the 718 area code, but only one was located on the 7 line. That W. Lenz lived here, in a building whose chipped cornerstone said it had been built in MCMXLI.
The front door wasn’t locked, and the one just past the vestibule, which normally would have been, was held open with a rubber doorstop. Someone was moving out, maybe, or bringing a package in from his car. It would just be a minute, and in the meantime why not leave the door propped open? Being able to leave your door open was why you lived in Flushing instead of Manhattan.
Lenz’s name was listed on the intercom board next to a button marked 3-B. I didn’t push it.
I started up the stairs. Normally, when you have a sense of deja vu you can’t explain the feeling, but it wasn’t hard to understand it now. I climbed carefully, slowly, hugging the wall and placing each foot gently to make as little noise as possible. No one passed me on the stairs, but I kept the gun in my pocket just in case.
The second floor smelled of someone’s late lunch or early dinner. The third floor didn’t smell of anything. There were four apartments on the floor, with B facing A at one end of the hall. I took the gun out before I got to the door and listened at the door before I knocked. Nothing.
Was he not home? Had he already left for work? I knocked, and when I didn’t get an answer, I knocked again, louder.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
It was his voice. I felt my blood rising. “Officer Michael Stern from Midtown South. I have some questions for you, Mr. Lenz.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I heard a chain slide back. “You people never stop.” The top lock turned, then the bottom lock. The door opened a crack. “What is-”
I didn’t wait for the rest of the sentence. I set the heel of one foot against the door and shoved inward hard, bringing my gun up as I stepped inside. Lenz stumbled backwards, against the arm of a recliner. The door banged against the inside wall, swung back and slammed shut. I advanced on him. I saw it in his eyes when he recognized me. “Keep your hands where they are,” I said. “Don’t reach for your pockets or you’re a dead man. Turn around. Turn around!” I gestured for him to put his hands on the back of the chair, then spread his legs with one foot and patted him down one-handed the way Leo had taught me. I stepped back and he turned to face me again.
“What the fuck is this?” he said.
“Shut up.” I risked a quick look to the left and right. The apartment was apparently a one bedroom, since there were only three doors leading out of the living room. The one in the far wall was open and led to a small kitchen. One of the others would lead to a bathroom, the other to the bedroom. There was a Pat Nagel print on one wall of a woman in the act of peeling off a leotard, one breast exposed, and a Leroy Neiman poster of two boxers going at it in multicolored fury. “Sit down and put your hands in your lap.”
He looked like he was going to argue, but I took a step forward with the gun aimed at his head. He sat down. “I should’ve taken care of you that night in the club,” he said.
“Maybe you should have. But you didn’t, and now I’m here. And you’re going to answer my goddamn questions or I’m going to put a hole in your head bigger than the ones you gave Miranda. That’s right, Lenz. I know what you did.”
“Fuck you,” he said in a voice of utter contempt. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”
I could understand, suddenly, how Murco could have sat by while his son pulled those burglars’ teeth one by one.
“I don’t know anything?” I said. “Try me. I know about Miranda dancing at the Wildman. I know how you tipped her off about the buy and had her recruit the men who actually carried out the burglary. I know what Murco did to those men and I know that you were scared to death he’d do the same to you if she gave you up. I know you went to Miranda’s apartment and stole five hundred thousand dollars, took it out of her apartment in a phony cable company equipment case. And I know that later that night you took Miranda up to the roof of the Sin Factory and put two bullets through the back of her head.”
“You’re so wrong it’s not even funny,” he said. “I never stole any money from her and I never killed anyone in my life. Get that?”
I shook my head. “Don’t even try it, Lenz. I may not have enough hard evidence to put you in jail, but frankly that’s not what I’d be worried about if I were you. I have enough to convince Murco.” His face went pale. “That’s right. Now we’re speaking the same language. He wants to know where his money is, and all I have to do is tell him you have it and you’ll wish I’d shot you instead.”
His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “I don’t have the money, I swear to God,” he said. “But what if I could get my hands on it? What if I agreed to split it with you?”
“I don’t want the money, you stupid son of a bitch.
What I want you can’t give me. I want Miranda back. I want her to be alive again, and unless you can give me that, don’t try to offer me anything.”
His eyes looked desperate. His head was twitching sharply from side to side, like it had in the club.
“Now, you’re going to answer some simple questions,” I said. “I want to know how you talked Miranda into going along with your plan, I want to know what you did with the gun after you shot her, and I want to know where the money is. You answer those questions and I’ll ask some more. Maybe if you tell the truth I’ll be better to you than you deserve and turn you over to the police rather than to Murco. Give me enough facts to get a conviction and maybe it’ll save your life.”
He was sweating fiercely and his eyes were darting around the room. I was watching them and his hands. That was my mistake.
How could the bedroom door have opened without my noticing? How could someone have come up behind me so silently? Maybe it was the combination of a light step and a carpeted floor working against me, or maybe I was just so focused on Lenz that I would have missed the footfalls of an elephant. More likely both.
I pieced this all together later. At the time, I only knew that there was someone behind me when Lenz smiled, a look of relief blossomed on his face, and something heavy smashed into the back of my head.
Chapter 20
I came out of it slowly, feeling the throbbing of my pulse behind my ear and the rough weave of the carpet under my cheek. At first, when I opened my eyes I couldn’t see anything, then objects began to swim darkly into view: the base of the recliner, the legs of a table. The darkness wasn’t a problem with my eyes, or at least not
