Nightbird (29 page)

Danny thanked Jake Bugel and asked to borrow a copy of the circus program with the picture of Victor Nuñez. Val checked his
watch and looked at Danny.

“We’ve got time to make a couple of matinee races before your plane,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you to the airport on
time.”

“I’ll get my lucky hat,” Jake Bugel said.

“Let me make a call to New York,” Danny said.

“Make it quick,” Honest Val said. “I’ve got a new system. Can’t lose.”

“Hey, Carlson,” Jake Bugel yelled from the bedroom. “You might have to lend me a couple of quid. I’m a little short.”

J
esus, you scared the shit out of me,” Danny Eumont said. He kicked his apartment door closed, then dropped his flight bag
on the floor.

“Is that any way to greet your favorite detective?” Joe Gregory said. “No ‘Hi, honey, I’m home’? No cute souvenirs from your
trip?”

“Who let you in, the super?”

“I don’t need no stinkin’ super.”

Gregory filled Danny’s La-Z-Boy. He was stretched out watching a Bogart movie, drinking a cup of tea, the string and tag hanging
over the side.

“You picked the lock.”

“That’s against the law,” Gregory said.

Danny knew he’d never get a straight answer. He hung his blazer over a chair and emptied his pockets on the telephone table.
The apartment was frigid, the AC blowing on max. A blue nylon jacket and a pair of dirty chinos lay in a heap on the floor.
Other clothes he recognized as his own were strewn across the couch. Pants, shirts, and jackets.

“Don’t blame me for this mess,” Gregory said. “Your beloved uncle needed to borrow some clothes. Where do you shop, anyway,
Preppy City? Nothing but Dockers and blazers. Your poor uncle’s gonna look like Biff the Yuppie Cop.”

“Where is he?”

Gregory pointed to the bedroom. “In there, asleep. Don’t wake him up, he’s had a rough day.”

“What happened to him?”

“It’s a long, sad story, but it has a happy ending. He’ll tell you himself when he wakes up. Right now, you’d better call
your magazine—your machine is full of messages.”

“Is it okay if I use my own bathroom? Or is the chief of detectives in the shower?”

“The chief is a bubble-bath man,” Gregory said, waving his hand toward the bathroom.

On the way in Danny saw his uncle, the covers pulled up to his neck, his head wrapped in bandages. Danny turned around quickly.

“Tell me what the hell happened to him. Right now.”

“Use the bathroom, kid. Before you start dancing around. Then I’ll tell you.”

“Tell me now, goddamn it.”

“Relax, for chrissakes, will ya? You’ll wake him up, screaming like a banshee. Just be quiet. Your uncle will be all right.
He was involved in a minor tussle, that’s all.”

“I’d hate to see a major tussle.”

“He has eight stitches in his scalp, and his right hand is in a cast. Some little bone is fractured. But you should see the
other guy.”

“Who is the other guy?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. We’re gonna snap him up tonight.”

“Does Aunt Leigh know about this?”

“She knows we’re here, and he’s okay. But don’t you dare call her. I’ll personally kick your ass if you talk to her.”

Danny hated the way cops like Gregory thought they had to spoon-feed bad news. As if their knowledge required a warning label:
Weaker doses recommended for civilians. In the bathroom he found a blood-streaked towel tossed across the shower rod. The
sink looked like a butcher’s tub. A black sweatshirt balled up in the trash can. When Danny came out of the bathroom Gregory
was looking through the items he’d dropped on the telephone table.

“You went to the track today,” Gregory said.

“How do you know that?”

“Two-dollar bills,” he said. “Anyone with a roll of two-dollar bills is coming from the track.”

“Must be great to know everything.”

“It’s a heavy burden, my boy. Now sit down and we’ll talk.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Fine,” Gregory said, and he handed Danny a glass of chill-able red he’d poured from the box in the refrigerator. “Your uncle
got jumped in Faye Boudreau’s place, by some guy whose name I can’t tell you right now.”

“Because you don’t know.”

“Oh, we know,” Gregory said. “Guy named Victor. Complete ID is forthcoming. We’ll know it all by sunup, podner.”

“Muscular guy, dark hair,” Danny said. “Born in Mexico. Lives in Florida, but currently residing in the Bronx. Spends summers
here working as a street performer in midtown, most likely a juggler.”

Gregory looked at him, appraising, then said, “It appears that Victor is involved with Faye Boudreau in a scheme to extort
money from Trey Winters.”

“Her name is Faith,” Danny said. “Her real name is Faith.”

Danny knew Joe Gregory wouldn’t tell him anything he could avoid saying. To Joe Gregory information was a one-way street.
It went against his nature to tell a civilian anything at all.

“We have a team watching Two Ten Echo Place,” Gregory said. “If we had the right information, we could execute a search warrant
within the hour. You got something specific you want to tell me?”

“You don’t need me. You’ll know it all by sunup, podner.”

“I hope you’re not holding back information.”

“That’s against the law,” Danny said.

Gregory smiled. “I can only tell you so much,” he said.

According to Gregory, Winters told them that last Tuesday night he was going to meet Abigail Klass when this dark, bodybuilder-type
man handed him an envelope. Inside the envelope was a note outlining money demands and threatening exposure of a sexual relationship
between Winters and Gillian Stone. Pictures were involved. Yesterday the same man delivered a second envelope with instructions
on how the money was to be delivered.

“Who took the pictures?”

“Winters doesn’t know,” Gregory said. “He denies he slept with her. He claims he’s being set up all around.”

“If there wasn’t some basis in truth, he would have called the cops last week. Why is he even paying if it’s not true?”

“Because he’s full of shit all around,” Gregory said.

“This muscular guy is Victor,” Danny said. “The same guy who jumped my uncle.”

“That’s the story as we see it.”

“His name is Victor Nuñez. A few years ago he was considered one of the world’s best trapeze artists. He lives at Two Ten
Echo with a guy named Pinto Timoshenko. The lease is probably in Timoshenko’s name.”

Gregory wrote on the back of a magazine, around the edges of a Gap ad. “Whatever you got, kid, you better give it all up.
We haven’t got time to play games. This exchange is going down in a couple of hours.”

“Then talk faster,” Danny said. “Was Gillian involved?”

“Not directly,” Gregory said. “At first Winters thought she was involved, trying to get even with him somehow. That’s why
he brought the costume that night. Figured he could change her mind. But he realized she didn’t know shit, the way she was
acting. And she wasn’t a good enough actress to fool him.”

“What a bastard,” Danny said.

“We figure Gillian told Faye about the affair. And Faye and this guy Victor set up the scheme. We don’t know how they’re connected
yet.”

“They grew up together,” Danny said. “In a circus family outside Sarasota.” He handed Gregory a circus program and pointed
out the picture of Victor Nuñez.

“I’m going to wake your uncle up, see if he can identify this mutt. Then I’m going to Mid-Town North and get this picture
out. Get a warrant going. They’re probably long gone from Echo, but we’ll give it a shot.”

“What was Scorza’s role?”

“The bank. Winters says he couldn’t ask his wife for the quarter of a mil. He was protecting her.”

“What happens now?”

“At one
A.M.
Winters is supposed to get a phone call telling him where to meet. The exchange is the money for the pictures. We’re going
to grab him then.”

“Where did you get so much money on such short notice? Are you risking Scorza’s money?”

“What money?” Gregory said. “No reason to risk real money. It’s not like someone’s life is hanging in the balance. We got
about five hundred bucks on the outside of the stacks, the rest is fake. Just cut-up paper.”

“So who killed Gillian?”

Gregory shrugged. “Right now we don’t know any different than we did last week, and we may never know.”

“That’s bullshit,” Danny said. “That’s not right.”

“I hate to be the bearer of all this bad news. But you can’t write about this affair, either. Your uncle says he doesn’t want
to hurt Darcy Winters any more than he has to.”

“That’s the meat of the story. That’s everything.”

“I know,” Gregory said, smiling. “Sometimes your uncle is a little too much of a bleeding heart, isn’t he. And don’t bother
asking… you can’t go with us tonight.”

“You fucking bastard.”

“Hey, it wasn’t my decision,” Gregory said. “Call the chief of detectives, you want to bitch at somebody. You got anything
further you want to tell me? How does this Victor get around? He own a car, or anything?”

“No,” Danny said. “Victor Nuñez does not own a car.”

Gregory went into the bedroom. Danny rubbed his arms in the icy cold room. He walked over to the telephone table and put on
his seersucker jacket. He picked up his wallet, the roll of two-dollar bills, and his car keys. He yelled that he was going
out to grab something to eat. Gregory said something from the bedroom, but Danny was already out the door.

H
ats and bats, they call it when the NYPD goes all out. The phrase had its origin in the riotous sixties, when cops were hurriedly
summoned from precincts all over the city and ordered to bring helmets and nightsticks. In the last hour of Wednesday twenty
cops jammed into two chaotic rooms at the Hotel Edison. Another three dozen waited in cars spread out around the Times Square
area. The chief of detectives spared no expense, determined that the life of a high-profile citizen like Trey Winters would
not end on his watch. Hats and bats was the order.

“Know what, pally?” Joe Gregory said from the queen-size hotel bed. “From the back you look like the Invisible Man.”

“Then pretend you can’t see me,” Ryan said.

Ryan wore his Yankee hat over the white hospital turban. His borrowed wardrobe consisted of Danny’s blue woolen blazer, tan
chinos, and a blue oxford button-down. His head was mummy wrapped, his arm in a sling, and his gun hand encased in blue molded
plastic. He looked more as though he should be marching with a fife than working a case. But he was thinking about Trey Winters.
Wondering if he was getting away with murder.

“Or that old Bogart movie,” Gregory said. “The one where he gets all the plastic surgery. What the hell was that movie? Lauren
Bacall. Bogie’s whole head is wrapped in bandages, and he’s walking around in a suit.”

Gregory reclined like a man of leisure, tie loosened, pillows stacked behind him, a copy of the
Post
in his hands. He kept glancing at Ryan, talking him up. Mother hen watching. On TV Letterman waved the top ten list.

“Dark Passage,”
Ryan said.

“What’s that?”

“The movie where Bogie wears the bandages.”

Both Ryan and Trey Winters recognized Victor Nuñez from the picture in the circus program. In his last message Nuñez had instructed
Winters to be in his office at one
A.M.
with all the money in one soft bag. He was told to have a cell phone and a car ready nearby.

“Couple more cops in here and we could open a gin mill,” Gregory said. “All we needed were two experienced detectives. Me
and you, pally. We coulda pulled off this caper with half a load on.”

The Major Case Squad was running the show. With their youthful crew running around the overcrowded hotel room, they made Ryan
and Gregory look like chaperons on a high school field trip.

More than fifty cops were linked into the hotel room base by radio. The husky voice of Sergeant Rosalie Minardi, born in New
Jersey, directed all movements from the adjacent room, via the airwaves. They called her “Totowa Rose.”

Ryan asked, “They execute the warrant in the Bronx?”

“Place was cleaned out,” Gregory said. “Except for some weight equipment and three banged-up bowling balls. Perfect tenants,
the landlady said. Quiet, paid their bills. She ID’d Nuñez from the circus picture. Ringling Brothers is supposed to be faxing
up a picture of the Russian.”

“The landlady say if they had a car?” Ryan said.

“The Russian had a beat-up old Chevy, but she hadn’t seen the car or them in a coupla days. And Faye is still among the missing.”

With slightly more than an hour to go, Trey Winters was in his office, learning his lines with remarkable composure. The star
awaited his cue with wires running across his upper body and a battery pack taped to the small of his back.

Winters had been briefed on exactly what was expected of him when Nuñez called: Make sure you make a strong plea for the pictures.
If you cooperate too easily without doing the natural thing, the extortionist will suspect a setup. But say the minimum, then
drive normally to wherever directed, drop the money, and leave. That’s it. Don’t improvise. Don’t linger.

“We’ll only be in here for one phone call,” Ryan said. “This is going to be a road rally.”

Tech Services equipped Winters’s car with a new tracking device based on the technology used in the map locator systems in
expensive cars. The car had also been chemically marked on top, so it could be seen from the NYPD helicopter. But the helicopter
was grounded because of the weather. Letterman ran a canned ham out into the audience.

“No way this amateur gets away,” Gregory said. “We’ll be in Brady’s by last call, guaranteed. I definitely want to be there
when you walk in. We should get some more bandages, cover your whole face like Bogie. For laughs.”

Funny money had been provided to Winters. A backpack containing stacks of paper had been topped with a veneer of U.S. currency.
It was wrapped to mimic the exact specs of a quarter of a million dollars in old fifties. The weight was the trick. The fake
boodle was broken down into five bundles, each six and a half inches tall. Weight had to be added because plain paper, like
new money, was feather light. Grit, grime, and body oils added surprising heft to greenbacks. The total actual weight of a
quarter mil in old fifties was twelve and a half pounds.