Chapter 18

I took a lot of care getting back to the coffee shop on Eighth. Our principal brought a whole crew. And by now they all knew roughly what I looked like. The Radio Shack guy had told me how pictures and video could be phoned through from one person to another. For my part I had no idea what the opposition looked like, but if their principal had been forced to hire guys in nice suits as local camouflage, then his own crew probably looked somewhat different themselves. Otherwise, no point. I saw lots of different-looking people. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. You always do, in New York City. But none of them showed any interest in me. None of them stayed with me. Not that I made it easy. I took the 4 train to Grand Central, walked two circuits through the crowds, took the shuttle to Times Square, walked a long and illogical loop from there to Ninth Avenue, and came on the diner from the west, straight past the 14th Precinct.

Jacob Mark was already inside.

He was in a back booth, cleaned up, hair brushed, wearing dark pants and a white shirt and a navy windbreaker. He could have had off-duty cop tattooed across his forehead. He looked unhappy but not frightened. I slid in opposite him and sat sideways, so I could watch the street through the windows.

“Did you talk to Peter?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“But?”

“I think he’s OK.”

“You think or you know?”

He didn’t answer, because the waitress came by. The same woman from the morning. I was too hungry to be sensitive about whether or not Jake was going to eat. I ordered a big platter, tuna salad with eggs and a bunch of other stuff. Plus coffee to drink. Jake followed my lead and got a grilled cheese sandwich and water.

I said, “Tell me what happened.”

He said, “The campus cops helped me out. They were happy to. Peter’s a football star. He wasn’t home. So they rousted his buddies and got the story. Turns out Peter is away somewhere with a woman.”

“Where?”

“We don’t know.”

“What woman?”

“A girl from a bar. Peter and the guys were out four nights ago. The girl was in the place. Peter left with her.”

I said nothing.

Jake said, “What?”

I asked, “Who picked up who?”

He nodded. “This is what makes me feel OK. He did all the work. His buddies said it was a four-hour project. He had to put everything into it. Like a championship game, the guys said. So it wasn’t Mata Hari or anything.”

“Description?”

“A total babe. And these are jocks talking, so they mean it. A little older, but not much. Maybe twenty-five or -six. You’re a college senior, that’s an irresistible challenge, right there.”

“Name?”

Jake shook his head. “The others kept their distance. It’s an etiquette thing.”

“Their regular place?”

“On their circuit.”

“Hooker? Decoy?”

“No way. These guys get around. They ain’t dumb. They can tell. And Peter did all the work, anyway. Four hours, everything he had ever learned.”

“It would have been over in four minutes if she had wanted it to be.”

Jake nodded again. “Believe me, I’ve been through it a hundred times. Any funny business, an hour would have been enough to make it look kosher. Two, tops. Nobody would stretch it to four. So it’s OK. More than OK, from Peter’s point of view. Four days with a total babe? What were you doing when you were twenty-two?”

“I hear you,” I said. When I was twenty-two I had the same kind of priorities. Although a four-day relationship would have seemed long to me. Practically like engagement, or marriage.

Jake said, “But?”

“Susan was delayed four hours on the Turnpike. I’m wondering what kind of a deadline could have passed, to make a mother feel like killing herself.”

“Peter’s OK. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be home soon, weak at the knees but happy.”

I said nothing more. The waitress came by with the food. It looked pretty good, and there was a lot of it. Jake asked, “Did the private guys find you?”

I nodded and told him the story between forkfuls of tuna.

He said, “They knew your name? That’s not good.”

“Not ideal, no. And they knew I talked to Susan on the train.”

“How?”

“They’re ex–cops. They’ve still got friends on the job. No other explanation.”

“Lee and Docherty?”

“Maybe. Or maybe some day guy who came in and read the file.”

“And they took your picture? That’s not good, either.”

“Not ideal,” I said again.

“Any sign of this other crew they were talking about?” he asked.

I checked the window and said, “So far, nothing.”

“What else?”

“John Sansom isn’t exaggerating about his career. He seems to have done nothing very special. And that kind of a claim isn’t really worth refuting.”

“Dead end, then.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “He was a major. That’s one automatic promotion plus two on merit. He must have done something they liked. I was a major too. I know how it works.”

“What did you do that they liked?”

“Something they regretted later, probably.”

“Length of service,” Jake said. “You stick around, you get promoted.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how it works. Plus this guy won three of the top four medals available to him, one of them twice. So he must have done something special. Four somethings, in fact.”

“Everybody gets medals.”

“Not those medals. I got a Silver Star myself, which is pocket change to this guy, and I know for a fact they don’t fall out of the box with the breakfast cereal. And I got a Purple Heart too, which Sansom apparently didn’t. He doesn’t mention one in his book. And no politician would forget about a wound in action. Not in a million years. But it’s relatively unusual to win a gallantry medal without a wound. Normally the two things go hand in hand.”

“So maybe he’s bullshitting about the medals.”

I shook my head again. “Can’t be done. Maybe with a combat pip on a Vietnam ribbon, something like that, but these are heavy-duty awards. This guy’s got everything except the Medal of Honor.”

“So?”

“So I think he is bullshitting about his career, but in reverse. He’s leaving stuff out, not putting stuff in.”

“Why would he?”

“Because he was on at least four secret missions, and he still can’t talk about them. Which makes them very secret indeed, because the guy is in the middle of an election campaign, and the urge to talk must be huge.”

“What kind of secret missions?”

“Could be anything. Black ops, covert actions, against anybody.”

“So maybe Susan was asked for details.”

“Impossible,” I said. “Delta’s orders and operational logs and after-action reports aren’t anywhere near HRC. They’re either destroyed or locked up for sixty years at Fort Bragg. No disrespect, but your sister couldn’t have gotten within a million miles of them.”

“So how does this help us?”

“It eliminates Sansom’s combat career, that’s how. If Sansom is involved at all, it’s in some other capacity.”

“Is he involved?”

“Why else would his name have been mentioned?”

“What capacity?”

I put my fork down and drained my cup and said, “I don’t want to stay in here. It’s ground zero for this other crew. It’s the first place they’ll check.”

I left a tip on the table and headed for the register. This time the waitress was pleased. We were in and out in record time.

Manhattan is both the best and the worst place in the world to be hunted. The best, because it is teeming with people, and every square yard of it has literally hundreds of witnesses all around. The worst, because it is teeming with people, and you have to check each and every one of them, just in case, which is tiring, and frustrating, and fatiguing, and which eventually drives you crazy, or makes you lazy. So for the sake of convenience we went back to West 35th and walked the shady side of the street, up and down opposite the row of parked cop cars, which seemed like the safest stretch of sidewalk in the city.

“What capacity?” Jake asked again.

“What did you tell me were the reasons behind the suicides you saw in Jersey?”

“Financial or sexual.”

“And Sansom didn’t make his money in the army.” “You think he was having an affair with Susan?” “Possible,” I said. “He could have met her at work. He’s the kind of guy who is always in and out of the place. Photo opportunities, stuff like that.”

“He’s married.”

“Exactly. And it’s election season.”

“I don’t see it. Susan wasn’t like that. So suppose he wasn’t having an affair with her.”

“Then maybe he was having one with another HRC staffer, and Susan was a witness.”

“I still don’t see it.”

“Me either,” I said. “Because I don’t see how information would be involved. Information is a big word. An affair is a yes-no answer.”

“Maybe Susan was working with Sansom. Not against him. Maybe Sansom wanted dirt on someone else.”

“Then why would Susan come to New York, instead of D.C. or North Carolina?”

Jake said, “I don’t know.”

“And why would Sansom ask Susan for anything, anyway? He’s got a hundred better sources than an HRC clerk he didn’t know.”

“So where’s the connection?”

“Maybe Sansom had an affair long ago, with someone else, when he was still in the army.”

“He wasn’t married then.”

“But there were rules. Maybe he was banging a subordinate. That resonates now, in politics.”

“Did that happen?”

“All the time,” I said.

“To you?”

“As often as possible. Both ways around. Sometimes I was the subordinate.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

“Not then. But there would be questions now, if I was running for office.”

“So you think there are rumors about Sansom, and Susan was asked to confirm them?”

“She couldn’t confirm the behavior. That kind of stuff is in a different set of files. But maybe she could confirm that person A and person B served in the same place at the same time. That’s exactly what HRC is good for.”

“So maybe Lila Hoth was in the army with him. Maybe someone is trying to link the two names, for a big scandal.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It all sounds pretty good. But I’ve got a local tough guy too scared to talk to the NYPD, and I’ve got all kinds of dire threats, and I’ve got a story about some barbarian crew ready to slip the leash. Politics is a dirty business, but is it that bad?”

Jake didn’t answer.

I said, “And we don’t know where Peter is.”

“Don’t worry about Peter. He’s a grown-up. He’s a defensive tackle. He’s going to the NFL. He’s three hundred pounds of muscle. He can take care of himself. Remember the name. Peter Molina. One day you’re going to read about him in the paper.”

“But not soon, I hope.”

“Relax.”

I said, “So what do you want to do now?”

Jake shrugged and stumped around, up and down on the sidewalk, an inarticulate man further stymied by the complexity of his emotions. He stopped, and leaned on a wall, directly across the street from the 14th Precinct’s door. He looked at all the parked vehicles, left to right, the Impalas and the Crown Vics, marked and unmarked, and the strange little traffic carts.

“She’s dead,” he said. “Nothing is going to bring her back.”

I didn’t speak.

“So I’m going to call the funeral director,” he said.

“And then?”

“Nothing. She shot herself. Knowing the reason won’t help. Most of the time you never really know the reason, anyway. Even when you think you do.”

I said, “I want to know the reason.”

“Why? She was my sister, not yours.”

“You didn’t see it happen.”

He said nothing. Just gazed at the parked cars opposite. I saw the vehicle that Theresa Lee had used. It was fourth from the left. One of the unmarked Crown Vics farther along the row was newer than the others. Shinier. It winked in the sun. It was black, with two short thin antennas on the trunk lid, like needles. Federal, I thought. Some big-budget agency with the pick of the litter when it came to transportation choices. And communications devices.

Jake said, “I’m going to tell her family, and we’re going to bury her, and we’re going to move on. Life’s a bitch and then you die. Maybe there’s a reason we don’t care how or where or why. Better not to know. No good can come of it. Just more pain. Just something bad about to hit the fan.”

“Your choice,” I said.

He nodded and said nothing more. Just shook my hand and moved away. I saw him walk into a garage on the block west of Ninth, and four minutes later I saw a small green Toyota SUV drive out. It went west with the traffic. I guessed he was heading for the Lincoln Tunnel, and home. I wondered when I would see him again. Between three days and a week, I thought.

I was wrong.