back. Her hand stopped and she stared at the phone for a moment.
The edge of her mouth cracked with a small grin and she hit two on her speed dial. Reilly’s number.
“Everything okay?” he asked, picking up promptly, as he always did.
“Yeah. I’m at Alex’s school. I just had a chat with the principal. It’s a great little place. Nice people.” She didn’t really want to mention the drawing again. “Tell me something. You guys have Michelle’s phone, right?”
“We do.”
“Could you check and see if there’s a Dean in her contacts list or in her calendar?”
“Why?”
“Alex mentioned something about Michelle taking him to see someone by that name. I don’t know who he is, but . . . might be good to have a chat with him, don’t you think?”
Reilly went silent for a second, then said, “This is about the drawing, isn’t it?”
She cursed inwardly. He knew her way too well. “Yes. I asked him about it, okay? He was scared, Sean. He was definitely scared and he didn’t want to talk about it. All I could get out of him was that Michelle was also curious about it and took him to see this Dean to discuss it. That’s worth checking out, isn’t it? I mean, what if someone was threatening him? What if it’s related to what happened to Michelle?”
Reilly went quiet again. “Dean.”
“That’s it.”
“Okay,” he relented, clearly not convinced. “I’ve got to go.”
“Love ya, big guy.”
“Right back at ya.”
She put her phone away, stared out the window, and exhaled heavily, trying to ignore the prickles of impatience that were stabbing away at every pore of her body.
35
Sitting at the solitary booth in the back of the Black Iron Burger Shop on East Fifth Street, Perrini wiped the last traces of the burger and the side of onion rings from his mouth and stretched his arms out lazily. As freelance jobs went, this one was almost embarrassingly easy. He knew this was a rarity, especially after one of the previous year’s jobs for Guerra had turned from strictly an information-gathering exercise into shutting down the local operation of a particularly aggressive Mexican cartel that was trying to muscle its way into the city.
Initially he had balked at turning off one of his newest suppliers of cash-stuffed envelopes, but the rival cartel that had hired Guerra in the first place were so pleased with how things had turned out that they had given Perrini a rather sizeable bonus, albeit one from which Guerra had creamed off a hefty twenty-percent commission. Nevertheless, it would be enough to put Nate, Perrini’s eldest son, through college, and a good one, too.
Perrini had taken no chances with the fallout. Within a week of the entire upper echelon of the incoming cartel’s New York City contingent being sent to Rikers, Perrini had ensured that his sometime contact had been fatally stuck with a rather nasty shank by an up-and-coming lieutenant of the incumbent African-American gang in the South Bronx, a favor arranged by an old friend at the Forty-first. The killing had been marked down to a racial slur and had therefore been logged as having nothing to do with a turf war between competing Mexican gangs.
It was a win-win for Perrini, as the freshly triumphant outfit was from then on more than generous with both their cash and their product. In fact, he had a twenty-gram bag of their finest uncut cocaine sitting in his left trouser pocket at this very moment.
He waved over the waitress to ask for another vanilla malt and saw Lina Dawetta walk into the restaurant. He watched her glance around edgily, clearly making sure there was no one she knew in there. She then walked over to the booth and sat on one of the vacant stools facing the detective.
Seeing as the restaurant was just a couple of blocks from the precinct house, bumping into somebody one of them knew was an occupational hazard, though the only time it had happened to date, Perrini had calmly fielded a sly smile from a homicide detective with whom he was on no more than corridor-greeting terms. Let them think he was screwing a lowly PAA. Though the powder was gradually taking its toll, Lina was strikingly attractive in an olive-skinned, auburn-haired Sicilian way, and Perrini knew that the unspoken code between male cops would keep his wife from ever hearing about it.
“You want something to eat?” said Perrini, smiling at the young police administrative assistant as though she were his favorite niece or beloved sister, rather than a civilian who earned a third of his detective’s basic salary.
“No. Just a Diet Sprite.”
She set down her open purse on the vacant stool beside her.
Perrini relayed the order to the waitress, then without taking his eyes off Lina or changing the smile on his face, nonchalantly removed the bag of cocaine from his pocket, stretched his hand underneath the bar-height table, and dropped the bag into Lina’s purse.
It was a point of principle with Perrini always to go first in any exchange. It promoted trust and reduced his risk should the meeting be compromised before the end. He never understood why so many people insisted on the kind of ridiculous ballet you saw in movies. He was happy to trust the other party to make good, just as the other party should trust that he would not be amused if they tried to fuck him over.
Lina took out her lipstick and compact from the purse in a practiced movement that included moving the cocaine bag to a side pocket where it couldn’t be viewed by a passing customer.
The waitress delivered their drinks as Lina ran the lipstick across her pale lips, returned both objects back to where they’d come from, then took out a folded sheet of yellow legal paper and opened it on the table in front of her.
“Hazel Lustig. Born July 18, 1947. Sister of Eileen Chaykin, nee Lustig. Never married. No children. No federal warrants. No local traffic violations. Taxes all in order. Qualified as an equine veterinarian in 1971. By 1985 had her own practice in New Jersey specializing in race horses. Sold it in 1998 and retired to Cochise County, Arizona, where she owns three hundred acres and cares for about forty retired racehorses. The ranch isn’t open to the public. Two bank accounts, both in the black. One significantly so.”
Lina slid the sheet across the table.
“Phone number?” asked Perrini after draining half his malt in one long slug.
“Home number is right there. She doesn’t have a cell phone. I also checked the cell reception in that area like you asked. It’s spotty at best. Locals and the press out there have been making noise about that, but the mobile carriers don’t give a crap.” She took a sip of her Diet Sprite as Perrini scanned the sheet. “Anything else?”
Perrini folded the sheet and pocketed it. “Not that I can think of right now, but that could change. I’ll be in touch. As always.”
“Thought you should know. They’re purging all the unused NCIC accounts. I’ll have to create a spoof login if they delete them all.”
“As long as you keep me out of it I don’t care what you do.” Perrini flashed Lina an arctic glare. A split second later, the smile with which he’d welcomed her was back.
“I’d better get back to my desk. Got a mountain of cases to key in.” She lifted her purse off the stool and turned to leave.
“Enjoy your little present,” said Perrini, gesturing to her purse. “You know there’s plenty more where that came from.”
He shot her a wink, then dropped his eyes to his malt and drained it down to the foam.
When he looked up, she was already out the door.
Twenty minutes later, Perrini was back in his car, across from Tompkins Square. He had toyed with a few different approaches, but decided to go with an angle that usually worked wonders: appealing to a person’s natural vanity, even if it was at one step removed.
He pulled out his throwaway and dialed Hazel Lustig. She answered after five rings.
“Hello?”
