Night Fall (22 page)

“Who was the FBI guy in charge?”

“Liam Griffith. I’m sure you already know that from your Staten Island connection.”

“That’s right, but why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Because, I told you up front-no names. That’s why I didn’t tell you about Ted.”

“So, what did you do with this information from Mr. Rosenthal?”

“Nothing. What was I going to do with it? I did think about it, but before I thought too much about it, I got called into the OPR office, as I told you.” She finished her drink and said, “I’m sure that Ted knew that I had been nosing around and that I got a reprimand for it, but does he say, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I mentioned this to you?’ No, he just starts acting cool to me.”

“Oh, poor baby.”

“John, fuck off. I have nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. Just drop it.”

“You lied to me.”

“Right. I lied to you to avoid a fucking scene like this. What difference does it make how I got the information I got? Ninety-nine percent of what I told you is true, and what I didn’t tell you didn’t affect anything you did or knew. So, be happy now that you know Ted Nash is just as stupid when he’s drunk as you and everyone else. Okay?”

I didn’t reply and just stood there, still pretty hot under the collar.

She put her hand on my arm, forced a smile, and said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

If I’d had two more I would have probably calmed down, but I only had a half drink in me, and I couldn’t get past the fact that my wife had lied to me. Also, I wasn’t absolutely sure she was telling me the whole truth about where and how and why Ted Nash confided in her-knowing how tightly wrapped Ted Nash was, I couldn’t picture him blabbing in a barroom, but I
could
picture him blabbing in a bedroom.

She said, “Come on, John. Let’s have a drink.”

I turned and walked out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I woke up on my couch with a slightly massive hangover.

I recalled taking a taxi from Delmonico’s to Dresner’s, one of my neighborhood hangouts, where I was over-served by Aidan the bartender. The next thing I remember, I tried to brush something off my face and it was the floor.

I sat up and noticed I was in my underwear, and I wondered if I’d gone home like that. Then, I saw my clothes on the floor, which was good.

I stood slowly. The morning sun was streaming through my balcony door, right through my eyeballs and into my brain.

I walked toward the kitchen, where I smelled coffee. There was a note near the coffeemaker.
John, I went to work. Kate.
The digital clock on the coffeemaker said 9:17. Then, 9:18. Fascinating.

The
Times
and the
Post
were lying on the kitchen table, unread.

I poured a mug of hot, black coffee and absently scanned the
Post
, which is the best way to read this newspaper. I was trying to put the Delmonico’s incident on hold until my brain could take the stand and show just cause for my little tantrum.

But as it started to come back to me, I thought I might have overreacted. I was starting to feel remorseful, and I knew I needed to smooth things over with Kate, though an apology was out of the question.

I finished my coffee, went into the bathroom, took two aspirins, then shaved and showered.

Feeling a bit better, I decided to call in sick, which I did.

I got dressed in a casual outfit of tan slacks, sport shirt, blue blazer, docksiders, and ankle holster.

I called the garage for my car, found a bag of potato chips for the road, then went downstairs.

My doorman greeted me cheerily, which pissed me off. I got in my Jeep and headed down Second Avenue into the Midtown Tunnel, which took me right onto the Long Island Expressway, heading east.

It was partly cloudy today, humid, and, according to my car thermometer, already 78 degrees Fahrenheit. I switched the computer to metric and the temperature dropped to 26 degrees Celsius, which was cool for this time of year.

Traffic was light to moderate on this Thursday in July. Friday would be heavy with Manhattan traffic heading out to the East End of Long Island. This was a good day to visit the Bayview Hotel.

I tuned in to a country-western station, which is good hangover music. Tim McGraw was belting out “Please Remember Me.” I ate some potato chips.

So, Kate told me a little white lie in order to avoid mentioning the name of Ted Nash because she thought that name might upset me. I think she used the word “psychotic.” In any case, I could appreciate and understand why she lied. On the other hand, as every cop knows, lies are like cockroaches-if you see one, there are others.

That aside, maybe this little tiff was a positive thing; it put some distance between Kate and me, which was good for this case. I might explain that to her later.

I thought she would have called by now when she didn’t see me at work, but my cell phone remained silent.

Some law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, work with cell phone carriers to track the location of a cell phone or beeper if they know the number, even if you’re not using the phone. The cell phone only has to be turned on and sending out a signal to the closest towers, which can then triangulate the location of the cell phone.

I’m not paranoid-there really are people trying to get me-so I turned off my cell phone and my beeper on the 50/50 chance that the truant officers at 26 Fed wanted to see where I was going on my sick day off. Having both your cell phone and beeper turned off at the same time is totally against regulations, but that might be the least of my problems.

I left the borough of Queens and entered suburban Nassau County. The singer on the radio was crying his eyes out about an unfaithful wife, his best friend, her cheatin’ heart, and lonely nights. I’d recommend counseling, but Scotch worked, too. I switched stations.

A talk show guy was ranting about something while another guy, probably a phoner, was trying to get a word in edgewise.

It took me a while to get what the problem was; it had something to do with Aden, and at first I thought they were talking about Aidan Conway, my bartender at Dresner’s, but that didn’t make any sense. Then one of the guys said, “Yemen,” and I put it together.

It seemed that the ambassador to Yemen, a lady named Barbara Bodine, had barred John O’Neill from returning to Yemen. The colorful and flamboyant John O’Neill, whom I’d met a few times, was the highly respected chief of the FBI investigation into the bombing of the USS
Cole
in Aden harbor, which is in Yemen. Got it.

From what I could make out from the talk show guy, and from his hapless guest-and from what I recalled from the
New York Post
and from ATTF chatter-Ambassador Bodine, being a diplomat, did not approve of O’Neill’s highly aggressive investigation into the
Cole
bombing while Mr. O’Neill was in Yemen. So, when O’Neill returned to Washington for a briefing-which may have been a setup-Ambassador Bodine would not let him back in Yemen.

Anyway, this talk show guy was practically frothing at the mouth, calling the State Department a bunch of sissies, cowards, and even using the word “traitors.”

The other guy, it seemed, was a State Department spokesman, and he was trying to make some point, but he had this mealymouthed NPR voice, which I find annoying, and the talk show guy, a basso-profundo, was reaming this guy a new asshole.

The talk show guy said, “We have seventeen dead sailors from the Cole and you people are hindering the investigation by caving in to this nothing country, and this yellow-bellied ambassador-Which side is she on? What side are
you
on?”

The State Department guy replied, “The secretary of state has determined that Ambassador Bodine has made a reasoned and well-considered judgment in barring Mr. O’Neill’s return to Yemen. This decision is based on larger issues of maintaining good relations with the Yemeni government, who are cooperating with the-”

Talk show guy yells,
“Cooperating?
Are you kidding or insane? Those guys were
behind
the attack on the Cole!”

And so on. I switched back to country-western where at least they
sang
about their problems.

The bottom line on international terrorism was, as I said, that no one wanted to give it the status of a war. Compared to the Cold War and nuclear Armageddon, terrorism was a gnat on an elephant’s ass. Or so they thought in Washington. And if Washington thought that, then 26 Federal Plaza also thought that-though they knew better.

I had figured that this new administration would ratchet it up a bit, but it didn’t seem like they were getting it. Which was scary if you believed that the talk show guys were getting it.

I left Nassau County and crossed into Suffolk County, at the end of which was the Hamptons.

I continued east and passed the exit for the William Floyd Parkway that Kate and I had taken two nights before when we went to the memorial service.
William Floyd is a rock star. Right?
I smiled.

I entered an area aptly named the Pine Barrens and began looking for an exit to Westhampton. There were exits for Brookhaven National Laboratory and Calverton, which reminded me why I was playing hooky today, why I’d had a fight with my wife, and why I was headed for trouble.

I got off the Expressway at an exit sign that promised this was the way to Westhampton.

I was traveling south now, toward the bay and the ocean, and within twenty minutes I entered the quaint village of Westhampton Beach. It was a little after 1P.M.

I drove around awhile, checking out the town, trying to imagine Don Juan doing the same thing five years ago. Did he have his lady with him? Probably not, if she was married. I mean, picking her up at her house for a date was not a good idea. So they drove out separately and rendezvoused somewhere around here.

They hadn’t wound up in one of the numerous hot-sheet motels along the Expressway, sometimes known as an Expressway Stop and Pop, so quite possibly they intended to stay overnight, and thus the expensive hotel. And if that were true, and assuming they were both married, then they had good cover stories, or stupid spouses.

I could almost picture these two having lunch in one of the restaurants that I was seeing as I drove along the main street, which was actually named Main Street. They either knew the Bayview Hotel, or they’d picked it out while they were driving around. The ice chest told me they had probably planned to go to the beach, and the video camera wasn’t brought along to make home movies for the kids.

I didn’t know where the Bayview Hotel was, but I had a feeling it was near the bay, so I headed south on a road called Beach Lane. You can’t learn these things at the police academy.

Real men don’t ask for directions, which is why a guy invented global positioning, but I didn’t have a GPS, and I was running low on gas, so I pulled up to a young couple on bicycles and asked how to get to the Bayview Hotel. They were helpful and within five minutes I was driving into the entrance of the hotel, which had a VACANCY sign.

I pulled into a small parking area for guest registration and got out.

Wearing basically what Marie Gubitosi told me that Don Juan had been wearing on July 17, 1996, I walked toward the front door of the Bayview Hotel.

This place was either going to be a brick wall, or it was going to be a magic window through which I could see back five years.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Bayview Hotel was as Marie described it: a big old house, in the Victorian style, that may have once been a private residence.

Beyond the house was a modern, two-story structure, looking like a motel, set among some old trees, and beyond that I could see a few small guest cottages. The land sloped down to the bay, and across the bay I could see the barrier island where Dune Road ran along the ocean. It was a very nice setting, and I could understand why a middle-aged, upscale couple might pick this place for an affair. On the other hand, it was the kind of place where Mr. and Mrs. Upper Middle Class might run into someone they knew. One, or both of them, I thought, was a little reckless. I wondered if they were still married to their spouses. In fact, I wondered if the lady was still alive. But maybe that was my homicide detective persona coming out.