Tick Tock (17 page)

“What’s wrong with Newark?” she said.

“Nothing, if you happen to like drug gangs and gun violence. You should have called me.”

“Please. I actually just got off the George Washington Bridge,” Emily said over the GPS blathering something about the right lane. “That’s somewhere near you, right? Are you too beat for a powwow?”

I perked up a little. The case was still mine until
tomorrow. Maybe I might pull this off after all. Suddenly, Mary Catherine’s comment about whom I’d be kissing good night crossed my mind.

“I’m wide awake, Emily,” I said. “Ask that damn thing if it knows where West End Avenue is.”

IN THE GLITTERING LIGHT of a cut-crystal chandelier, Berger lifted a warm mussel to his eyes like a jeweler with a rare gem. From the corner of the room, the piano played a cadenza from Mozart’s piano concerto no. 20. In D minor, if Berger wasn’t mistaken. And he wasn’t mistaken, since, like Wittgenstein, he had the gift of perfect pitch.

Berger expertly parted the warm shell with his thumbs and scraped free the slick, pale yellow meat. The loud, guttural sucking sound he made as he popped it into his mouth momentarily drowned out the Mozart.

Berger slowly chewed, maximizing the mouth feel. He loved fresh mussels. So tangy, so of the deep blue sea. The mussels tonight had been accented with a simple and perfect broth of lemon, white wine, and tarragon. The damask napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt was absolutely drenched in the heady broth. It actually heightened the experience.

Most nights, he liked a variety of food courses, but sometimes, like tonight, a fancy would take him, and he would fixate on one item sometimes for hours at a time.

It was like a contest of sorts, a culinary marathon.

He swallowed and burped and dropped the empty mussel shell into the brimming bowl beside him. So many mussels, so little time.

He was lifting up the next dark sea jewel when the music changed. Waiters came in from the kitchen pushing an immense white birthday cake on a rolling silver tray. The sparklers on top sizzled brightly in the dimness of the dining room.

“Nous te souhaitons un joyeux anniversaire,”
the staff sang.
“Nos voeux de bonheur profonds et sincères. Beaucoup d’amour et une santé de fer. Un joyeux anniversaire!”

It was “
Bon Anniversaire,
” the French version of the “Happy Birthday” song.

Berger waved his mussel along to the music like a conductor’s baton. It was their way of saying good-bye, he realized. This was his last meal.

After the song was over, and the staff was about to depart, Berger rang his seafood fork loudly against his wineglass.

“No, no. Please. Everyone wait,” Berger said. “Sommelier, please. Glasses for everyone, including yourself. Fetch the champagne.”

A moment later, carts piled with antique silver ice buckets were wheeled in from the kitchen. Inside the
buckets were bottles of ’97 Salon Le Mesnil Champagne, the best of the very best. Behind the champagne came the entire staff, all the servers, the table captain, sommelier, maître d’, the chef and prep cooks, even the dishwasher.

Berger nodded. Corks were popped. Glasses filled.

“Over the years, you have treated me with such service, such grace,” Berger said, raising his glass. “The happiest moments of my life were spent here in this room with you. You have provided me with a luxury, in fact, an entire life, I would never have had or even dreamed of without your impeccable assistance. For that, allow me to say, Skol, Salud, Sláinte, and L’Chaim to you all.”

The servers smiled and nodded. The sommelier and maître d’ and the chef clinked glasses and drank and set their glasses down. One by one, everyone filed past and gave Berger their happy regards before departing.

The maître d’ and chef were the last ones to leave.

“My brother, the caterer, will come tomorrow for the tables and chairs, sir,” said the maître d’. “It’s been a pleasure coming here, into your home, all these years to serve you in this unique way. I hope you were happy with our approximation of a fine dining experience.”

“You did a wonderful job. Truly excellent,” Berger said, impatient to get back to his last plate of mussels.

“Mr. Berger, please just allow me one more moment,” Michel Vasser, the tall, bearded chef said. He was a native of Lyon, had trained at le Cordon Bleu, and had actually won the Bocuse D’Or in the early eighties.

“It really has been a pleasure serving you over the past ten years,” the talented chef said. “You’ve been more than generous, especially in your compensation package, and I just wanted to say that—”

As the man prattled on, Berger could take it no longer. He lifted the bread plate beside him. It made a whistling sound as it whizzed past the chef’s ear and smashed against the wall.

“Au revoir, mon ami,”
Berger said, waving the asshole away.

He waited until he heard the front door open and close before he cracked open another shell.

“HEY, DID A TOY COME with this Happy Meal?” I asked as I stole a French fry from the Mickey Dee’s bag on the dash of Emily’s Fed car.

“I wouldn’t know. That bag was there when I signed the car out,” Emily teased as she flipped through my notes.

We were now parked down at the West 79th Street Boat Basin. On the dark mirror of the water we could see bobbing sailboats, the black mass of an anchored tanker, and the romantic chandelier-like lights of the George Washington Bridge off to the right. It was a nice secluded parking lot right smack on the Hudson. A notorious lovers’ lane, and I knew we’d have it all to ourselves, since we had yet to catch the still-on-the-loose Son of Sam copycat.

As usual, Emily looked amazing, buttoned up in her business-hottie-with-a-nine-millimeter style. She looked fresh as a daisy, even though she’d been busting her tail all
day. I could think of worse people to hang out with in a prime make-out spot.

I spat the cold fry into a napkin and looked over at my attractive FBI colleague with feigned hurt.

“Back to business now. Question one: You spoke to the Bronx stabbing victim, right?” Emily said.

“If I don’t answer, will you waterboard me?” I said.

“I’d watch my step if I were you.”

“Fine, Aida Morales. Yep, spoke to her. She had a complication with one of her stabbing wounds, so she was actually still at Jacobi Hospital.”

“Did you show her the sketch and Photo Pak of the suspect?”

I nodded.

“She actually spent a lot of time with him, so even though he was wearing a curly Son of Sam wig when he attacked her, she was pretty sure it was the same guy.”

Emily wrinkled her brow at the pages.

“What, if anything, about the victims’ families jumps out at you as a possible link?”

“Not much,” I said, looking out at the water. “Especially on the surface. I mean, we have eight victims, right? Aida Morales, the four people killed in the Grand Central bombing, the double murder of the professor and his lover in Queens, and poor little Angela Cavuto. Four females, four men, five of them blue-collar types, three a little more upscale. You couldn’t get a more disparate bunch.”

“But like we agreed,” Emily said, “only two of the
people who died at the newsstand—the owner and the girl who worked there—can be considered targets. The officer who was killed wasn’t on his regular post, and the homeless man wasn’t known to frequent the area.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Six victims, then, but there’s still no obvious connection. Maybe we’re digging a dry hole.”

“Family dynamics are one thing we haven’t fully looked into, Mike. We have to keep looking.”

Emily stared at me and then started flipping through my notes again. To make myself useful, I started looking through hers. The interview parameters were extensive: socioeconomic status, brothers, sisters, parents, birth order, status of parents, employment history, education.

When the words started to blur, I slapped the folder closed.

“I’m not feeling it. I can’t think here. Start the car. I know just the place.”

I DIRECTED EMILY and told her to stop under the beacon of a green neon harp. It was the Dublin House bar on 79th Street, where I’d celebrated my twenty-first birthday.

“You can think better here?” she said.

“What do you mean?” I said, leading her inside. “The library’s closed. Besides, haven’t you heard? People leave bombs there.”

The no-frills Irish pub hadn’t changed a bit. I went to the jukebox and put on “The Black Velvet Band,” which was the theme song of my childhood.

My NYPD detective father, Tom Bennett, used to bring me here on Saturdays sometimes when my mom went to visit her sisters back in Brooklyn. He’d ply me with Cokes and quarters for the pinball machine as he drank with his fellow Irish cop cronies. They used to call my dad Tony Bennett sometimes for his occasional habit of breaking into song when he was three sheets to the wind.

My mom and dad died in a car accident on the way down to their Florida condo the week after I graduated from college. They were buried together out in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, but it was here that I came when I wanted to visit.

Something, maybe the dustup with the Flahertys, was reviving a lot of my melancholy Irish childhood. My current professional woes certainly weren’t cheering me up. I could handle having the press coming after me—that was their job. But getting the back of the commish’s hand was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Or, hey, maybe I was having a midlife crisis. One night all alone in the big city, and I was sinking quickly into dad-olescence. I decided to roll with it. I continued to the bar and ordered us two shots of Jameson and two pints of Guinness.

“Let me guess. This is St. Patrick’s Day in July,” Emily said.

I winked at her and dropped the shot glass into the pint glass and tipped it back until the only thing left was the foam on my lips.

“Just trying to wake up,” I said, wiping the back of my hand over my thirsty mouth. “What are you waiting for?”

She rolled her eyes before she dropped her depth charge as well and sucked it back with impressive speed.

“Hey, you got a little something on your lip,” I said right before I kissed her.

I don’t know which of us was more shocked at my forwardness. To top things off, she started kissing me back, but I suddenly broke it off.

“Okay, then,” she said, looking at me funny. “You feeling all right, Mike?”

I shrugged. It was a good question. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good answer. Like the rest of the city, I was having one weird summer.

“Maybe we should call it a day,” I said, dropping a couple of twenties on the bar and heading for the door.

Emily followed me back out, and we drove back to my building in silence. When I reached for the car door, it was Emily’s turn to lean in and kiss me. There was a pregnant, hot, wavering moment when I thought some clothing was going to get torn, and then she ripped her tongue out of my mouth and shoved me toward the door.

Wiping lipstick off my face, I looked over at my building, where Bert, the doorman, stood avidly watching the proceedings. Of course
now
the son of a bitch was at the door.

“Hot and cold, cold and hot,” she said. “I don’t know, but I guess this just doesn’t feel right for me right now, Mike. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like we’re not doing ourselves or each other justice. You should probably get out of here before I do something we’ll both regret,” she said.

I nodded. I knew what she meant. We were friends, not to mention intuitive work partners. If we went much further, we’d be putting that in jeopardy. Or something. Right?

I wasn’t sure how to reply, so I just said okay and opened the car door.

It was right then and there, standing in the street with Emily’s brake lights flashing off, that it occurred to me.
Justice
. Some synapse in my brain finally fired, and the connection we were looking for materialized in my mind like a constellation from a group of random stars.

“Emily, wait!” I yelled as she pulled away.

She didn’t stop. I actually had to run after her. If it hadn’t been for a red light, she would have gotten away.

“Are you crazy?” she said when I opened her door.

“Listen. I got it. You were right. It
is
the family dynamic,” I said as the light turned green.

“What?” she said as a cab honked behind us.

“What?” she said again after she’d pulled the FBI sedan to the curb.

“It’s the mothers,” I said, leaning across her and grabbing the interview sheets we’d been working on. I pulled out two of them, my finger racing down the rows.

“Look here. The mothers. Mrs. Morales and Angela Cavuto’s mother, Alicia, both went to the same school. They both went to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.”

“Holy shit,” Emily said. “Wait.”

She shuffled some more sheets.

“Here it is. Right here! Stephanie Brill, the girl who died in the bombing at the Grand Central newsstand went to John Jay as well. Her stepmother said she had taken classes there before dropping out. Is it a city school or something?”

“Yes. And think about it. Criminal justice—that would totally jell with where you might find someone obsessed with crime! This is it, Emily. I’ll call the squad and Miriam. We need to bring the mothers in tomorrow first thing.”

EMILY AND I WERE at my desk rereading homicide folders and sharing a Red Bull by eight-thirty a.m.

Every once in a while, I looked up from my case file and found myself glancing over at the back of Emily’s still shower-wet coppery brown hair. Things were definitely looking up. Now that I’d finally made a much-needed breakthrough, we were back on track.

When I glanced over at her again, I found myself wondering what the line of her bra strap beneath her white blouse would feel like under my finger.

My shenanigans were acting up again apparently. Bad shenanigans.

“What? What is it?” she said, slowly turning and completely busting me. Feds can be pretty crafty, too, apparently.