Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery (28 page)

Chapter Seventy-Six

I was walking up Irving Place toward Gramercy Park hand in hand with Liz. It was almost eleven at night and the streets were quiet.

“Kenny the Wonder Agent called,” I said as we crossed Eighteenth Street and passed Pete’s Tavern.

“Again?” Liz asked.

“Yes, that makes at least a dozen times since the McConnell press conference the other day.”

“Maybe he feels guilty for ignoring you for all those years and is making up for lost time,” she said.

“Or maybe he’s afraid I’m going to bolt for a real agent,” I said.

We walked along, enjoying the night.

“Speaking of feeling guilty,” I said.

Liz squeezed my hand.

“I told you, I’m fine with everything,” she said.

“Fine with your boyfriend of six months putting you in harm’s way?”

“Fine with my boyfriend’s plan working like a charm,” she said. “I did exactly as you suggested that day. I called your friend Pep at the first sign of trouble.”

“When the two thick necks followed you out of work,” I said.

“Yes. They looked like a matching set of thugs,” she said. “They weren’t too hard to spot.”

Rinaldi had assigned two cops to follow Liz, knowing sooner or later McConnell was going to go after her to get to me. I turned to her and looked at her cheek in the faint yellow of the streetlights.

“It’s okay, really,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt, and you can hardly notice it with makeup.”

It was a small bruise on her cheek.

“It could have been worse,” she said.

I knew she was right. It could have turned out far worse.

“How was Robbie Steele?” she asked.

“It was odd,” I said. “She was relieved that the person responsible for Jack’s death has been caught, and shocked that Daniels and Marty were involved. But with this solved now, it was like she had nothing left to do but grieve.”

“That probably got pushed aside. She was preoccupied with getting it all figured out,” she said.

“And now she’s alone in her big apartment, and their other houses, with a child on the way.”

“You believed her,” she said. “She probably saw you as one of her only allies.”

“At the end, as I was leaving, she hugged me,” I said.

“Doesn’t everyone want to?”

“But it was like she didn’t want to let go.”

“She’s not going to have it easy,” Liz said.

“I know.”

“So, now what?” she asked.

I looked at her and smiled. “Thought you’d never ask.”

“I mean professionally,” she said.

“Damn,” I said. “I guess I go back to work in the next day or two and see what Blake has in store for me. He’s been put in charge until a new president is named,” I said.

“Is that a good or a bad thing?” she asked.

“Hard to say. In a way it doesn’t matter. Kenny says he has three solid contract offers for money I thought I would never see,” I said. “Plus, he thinks whoever is named president of Liberty is going to offer me a new deal immediately. Says I should be able to name my price.”

We walked on, crossing Twentieth Street. A breeze floated through the trees of Gramercy Park up ahead and cooled us.

“Why’d you stay with Kenny all these years?” Liz asked.

I shrugged.

“Some odd sense of loyalty. He was there when no one else would take me on. And he needed clients at the time.”

“But now that he has plenty of clients, you get less attention,” she said.

“I’d describe it as zero attention.”

“Until this story,” she said.

“Yes, now I’m popular,” I said.

“Would it be a good time to consider new representation?” she asked.

“You mean, make a move while I’m hot, that sort of thing?”

“Yes.”

“It’s occurred to me,” I said.

“But?”

“But I’m okay staying with Kenny.”

She leaned in to me and wrapped her arm around mine.

“I knew you were going to say that,” she said.

I pulled her tight, and we walked home.

Acknowledgments

To Rani Clarkin, Regina Clarkin, and Tom Riley, a group of early readers any writer would envy. Your ability to let me know what worked and what didn’t work was invaluable. Thank you for your time in reading the early drafts, and your patience in pushing me through the writing process. To Nora Reichard, whose edits tightened and focused the manuscript more than I realized possible.

About the Author

In more than twenty years as a business journalist, Greg Clarkin has covered Wall Street, the economy, and the housing-market boom and bust, and squeezed in stories on sports, whenever possible. He has worked as a reporter for CNN and the
New York Post
and was a correspondent for the nationally syndicated business show,
BusinessWeek Weekend
. He has written for dozens of publications, including
The New York Times
and
Men’s Journal
. He lives in Fairfield, Connecticut, with his wife and three children.

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