The Garden of Betrayal (13 page)

“Maybe I can help,” I suggested, hearing my voice quaver. “I’m meeting with a guy from OPEC tomorrow morning. He knows a lot of Venezuelan diplomats. He can probably make a connection for me.”

“That’d be great,” Reggie said encouragingly. “Keep me posted.
Sláinte.”

We raised our whiskey glasses and shot the second Jamesons. My stomach turned over and I thought I might retch. Lifting the e-mail again, I scrutinized each word.
Kyle Wallace was left in the trunk of a red BMW …
The word “left” might mean anything.

“You have any thoughts about what might have happened?” I said, afraid to ask the direct question.

Reggie took a minute to scan the room. He looked tired, the way his ex-partner Joe Belko had always looked tired.

“Nothing good,” he answered finally. “I’m sorry.”

My vision blurred as tears welled. Silence built between us and rapidly became unendurable.

“So, tell me about the fourth type of person who tips the police,” I said blindly.

“The fourth type are the people who actually know something. If it’s not about a reward, and it’s not about taunting the cops or the family, then it’s usually about guilt.”

“You think this is from the guy who took Kyle?” I asked, my voice breaking.

“No,” he said, laying a hand on my arm. “I don’t. Guys who commit a crime and feel guilty enough to own up to it almost always apologize. There’s no apology here. So, assuming this isn’t bullshit from some particularly clever sick bastard, my guess is that it’s from someone who found out about the crime secondhand and feels bad about not coming forward.”

“But not bad enough to identify him- or herself, or to tell us who did it.”

He shrugged.

“Yeah. But this isn’t necessarily the end of it—whoever wrote might get in touch again. It happens. The first contact is the hardest.”

I studied the Internet gibberish at the top of the e-mail, my fear of the truth receding. Anything was better than more waiting.

“The FBI or somebody must be able to track this back to wherever it was sent from, right?”

“I wish.” He flicked more ash onto the floor. “I already talked to our tech guys. The e-mail was sent through an anonymous remailer, which is a fancy name for a daisy chain of computers in parts of the world where they haven’t got much in the way of disclosure laws. The particular remailer that sent this message is located on the Isle of Man, but the tech guys tell me that the message might have hopped from the sender to India to Africa to God knows where before it hit the last stop. They’re going to take a stab at running it down, but they warned me not to expect much.”

“So, what’s next?” I asked, refusing to believe that we were at a dead end.

“Next I go looking for a red BMW M5.” He took a final hit from his cigarette, dropped the butt to the floor, and ground it out with his shoe. “Seven years is a long time, but I broke in on auto crime, and I know a few tricks when it comes to finding cars. Farther south, we’d have to worry that it went deadhead on a banana boat to South America. Up north, though, most cars get chopped or reregistered under a fake vehicle identification number. If we find the car, we might be able to track it back to whoever stole it.” He swept the change on the bar toward him, leaving a five-dollar bill. “Come on. I got my wheels out front. I’ll give you a ride home.”

I shook my head, feeling a little dizzy.

“I’d rather walk awhile. I could use the fresh air.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. But call me if you got any questions. Don’t worry what time it is. I never sleep much.” He hesitated. “You going to tell Claire and Kate about this?”

I thought about it for a second. If Kate was right, and Claire really did want to put the past behind her, a false lead would be the worst possible thing for her, potentially destroying whatever emotional barriers she’d managed to erect. It might even be the final straw persuading her to flee—from New York, and from me.

“Not until we know more.”

“Your call. But don’t wait too long. You don’t want to be carrying this around by yourself, and they’re going to be upset if they discover you were holding out on them.”

The heat of the whiskey dissipated rapidly in the cold night air as I walked south on Second Avenue and then west on Fifty-seventh Street. Long crosstown blocks carried me through the shuttered heart of Midtown, the brightly illuminated shop windows forlorn in the absence of daytime crowds.
Kyle Wallace was left in the trunk of a red BMW.…
By whom? And in what condition? Head down and collar turned up, I quickened my pace.

I figured out where I was headed only when I arrived. Carnegie Hall is at the intersection of Fifty-seventh and Seventh, a tan brick building that looks like an outsized college library. A uniformed usher told me the concert was due to end in half an hour. I crossed the street and sheltered in a doorway, knowing Claire and Kate would pass by on their way to Eighth Avenue, where they could catch a taxi uptown. Covering my face with my hands, I prayed Kyle hadn’t suffered.

A rush of early departees signaled the end of the performance. I spotted Kate ten minutes later. She was wearing the navy peacoat she’d had on earlier, but she’d switched from jeans and sneakers to dark slacks and fancy leather boots with a low heel. She had hold of Claire’s arm with one hand and was gesticulating emphatically with the other as she made some point. Claire was wearing a long black dress coat, and she was nodding. Heads together, they looked almost like sisters. Attractive as Kate was, Claire had been wrong to worry all those years ago that her daughter might outshine her. She was still the most beautiful woman in the world to me.

I stepped back into the doorway, hiding in the shadow as they
passed. I knew Reggie was right about telling them, but it wasn’t time yet. I’d needed to see them, though, if only to remind myself that I hadn’t lost everything. I watched until they disappeared into the crowd before turning and heading east, back to my office. It would be hours before I was physically exhausted enough to sleep. In the interim, I thought I might as well get some work done.

The alarm on my cell phone woke me at seven-thirty. I was sleeping on the couch in my den, where I’d bedded down a few hours before so as not to wake Claire. My head ached, and my stomach felt bloated—whiskey, beer, and cold pizza are a miserable combination. Scrabbling blindly on the floor by my head, I found the phone and pressed the central button, knowing it would give me another five minutes to snooze. A cricketlike chirping replied, announcing a low battery. I rolled onto my back, swearing. The phone had been in the charging cradle for hours before I left the office to meet Reggie, and the battery was practically new. I typed a semiliterate e-mail to Amy, asking her to pick up a replacement on her way to work. My phone was too important to me to risk having it give up unexpectedly.

I groaned as I sat upright. It had taken me until four to finish loading numbers into the depletion model. A dialogue box had popped up when I pressed the go button, estimating the run time at ten hours. I was impatient for it to get done quicker. A number of things in the raw data were disconcerting, and I was anxious to see the results.

There was a note on the coffee table in front of me. It was in Kate’s handwriting:
You snore. Phil coming to dinner tonight. Can you make it? Please?
I smiled, glad she seemed excited and that she wanted Claire and I to get to know him better. I picked up the note, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it toward the garbage can ten feet away, scoring an improbable basket. I hoped it was an omen—it had been a confusing couple of days, and I desperately needed some things to start falling into place.

•  •  •

The lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in New York is done up like a memorial chapel, with soaring stone columns, a backlit onyx ceiling, and an altarlike dais at the far end. I climbed a flight of steps to the reception desk and told a clerk I was there to see Rashid al-Shaabi. He checked my identification against his computer and summoned a liveried security guard to escort me to the fifty-first floor. A Middle Eastern–looking man I didn’t recognize was waiting when the elevator doors opened. He escorted me down a short hall, tapped on the only visible door, and then swiped a key card to unlock it. His jacket swung open as he extended his arm, and I caught a flash of a gun in a holster.

“Mr. al-Shaabi is supposed to be taking it easy,” he said to me in a Brooklyn-accented whisper. “Don’t let him overexert himself.”

The door swung open to a suite that was all blond wood and earth-tone carpets, with sweeping views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline. Rashid was sitting behind a desk in an alcove, talking on the phone in Arabic. He gestured for me to come in and then pointed to a silver butler’s tray laden with coffee and Middle Eastern pastries. The coffee and pastries were for me—I knew he was allowed only tiny quantities of diuretics or sweets. I draped my coat over a chair, poured coffee for myself, and settled in front of his desk to wait.

Rashid was wearing a crisp white shirt with rolled-up cuffs, blue suit pants, and worn green house slippers. He looked terrible. Barely five feet tall and maybe a hundred and ten pounds on his heaviest day, he hadn’t had any weight to lose when he’d taken his recent turn for the worse, but the wiry definition he’d had in his neck and forearms was gone, degenerated into a slack-toned frailty. When I’d last seen him, three or four weeks back, I’d been shocked by how aged he seemed.

“As-Salāmu ‘Alaykum,”
he said, hanging up the phone and struggling to his feet.

We went through the whole ritual, kissing each other on both cheeks. He shook me by the shoulders as he inquired about my health, barely jostling me. In the old days he’d made my teeth rattle.

“And Claire and Katherine?” he inquired.

“Both fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Bring them to see me,” he ordered. “There’s a Lebanese in the kitchen downstairs who makes proper
qatayef
. You know
qatayef
?”

I nodded. Crepes filled with cheese or nuts, ubiquitous at Ramadan.

“So, bring them,” he said, giving me another feeble shake. “They’ll eat. It would make me happy.”

Rashid had met Claire and Kate exactly once, when he’d turned up at my apartment unannounced ten days after Kyle had vanished, bearing a tin tray filled with grilled lamb kebabs and rice. We hadn’t had many visitors, save for family and police. Nobody knew what to do or say. He stayed an hour, weeping when I wept, and leaving only after I promised to call him if there was ever any help he could provide.

“I will,” I said, realizing I’d been remiss.

“That’s settled, then.” He let go of my shoulders and glanced at his watch. “Excuse me for a moment. I have to go and take some medicine.”

He didn’t look strong enough to go anywhere. The effort of standing had raised a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his breathing was rapid and shallow.

“Can I get it for you?”

He straightened slightly, looking offended.

“It would make me happy,” I said, playing my trump card as a guest.

“In the bathroom,” he acquiesced grudgingly, pointing with a finger. “Off the bedroom. There’s a cup with the time written on it.”

I followed a rust-colored carpet around a corner and down a narrow corridor. Both the bedroom and bathroom doors were open. Twelve paper cups were arranged neatly on a plastic tray to the left of the sink, each containing four or more pills and marked with a time in black felt-tip pen. It seemed incredible that someone of Rashid’s size could even swallow that much medicine on a daily basis, let alone metabolize it. I searched for the cup labeled nine a.m., thinking ruefully that I’d best bring Claire and Kate soon.

Exiting with the medicine in hand, I noticed a mezuzah fastened to the frame of the bedroom door. It was a Jewish religious thing, an ornate, flattish metal container about the size of a pack of gum, with a verse from the Torah tucked inside. Every third doorway in my apartment building had one. I smiled, assuming a previous guest had left it behind and wondering if Rashid knew what it was.

“Tap water okay?” I called.

“Please. Not too cold.”

I poured a large glass of lukewarm water in the kitchenette and carried everything back to the alcove, where Rashid had reseated himself
behind his desk. There were six pills in the cup I handed him. He put the first in his mouth, closed his eyes, took a sip of water, and then swallowed with effort, repeating the procedure mechanically until they were all gone. It took him a good two minutes, and he looked even more exhausted when he was done.

“You okay?”

He nodded silently, eyes still shut.

“I noticed the mezuzah on the bedroom doorway,” I said, hoping to cheer him up with a little banter. “Don’t tell me you’ve converted?”

He sighed heavily.

“When you’re as sick as I am, you’ll try anything.”

I felt uncomfortable until he opened his eyes and grinned, and I realized he was joking.

“Actually,” he said, “it was my grandmother’s. An old family secret. Don’t tell anyone.”

I smiled back, wondering if he was telling the truth. I knew his grandparents had migrated from Yemen to Saudi Arabia. Maybe a mixed marriage had been the reason. He took another sip of water, carefully set down his glass, and then looked up at me expectantly. Time for business.

“I have something fairly delicate to discuss with you, but before I do, I was wondering if I could ask you for a small favor,” I said.

“Of course.”

“Do you know a man named Mariano Gallegos? He was a member of the Venezuelan delegation to the United Nations a few years back, and he might or might not still be here in New York.”

He frowned slightly and rubbed his wispy beard.

“I don’t think so.”

“I need to speak with him. No big deal, I just want to ask him a couple of questions. Is there any chance you could arrange an introduction?”

He pulled a pad toward him and scribbled on it.