Shakeup

51

Washington, D.C., police chief Deborah Myers sat at her desk, reading the file of one Edward Craft, who had become her obsession, and who continued to elude her. The telephone rang and she absently answered it. “Chief Myers.”

“Chief,” a male voice said.

Before he could say another word, she stopped him. “I know who you are. What do you know?”

“I know that the person is back in New York.”

“Where?”

“The Bureau located him by some sort of GPS thing, on his cell phone. Write this down.”

Debby grabbed a pencil. “Go.”

He gave her an address on East Sixty-sixth Street. “The Bureau got a search warrant and went through the whole building, but the only thing they turned up was a woman he used to know, named Shelley Moss. They found her alone in her apartment, cooking breakfast. She was cooperative but denied any current knowledge of him. The agent had a good look around and found nothing to indicate that he had been there.”

“I’ll be at the Lowell,” she said, then hung up and buzzed her secretary.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Get hold of Rocco Turko, and tell him to grab his ready bag and meet me downstairs. Order my car and the King Air to Teterboro, and have a car and driver meet me there, at Jet Aviation, and to stick with me for a week.”

“Is that how long you’ll be gone?”

“Depends. Refer any important calls to my cell phone, but you call me on my second cell phone, to keep things confidential. Got it?”

“Got it, ma’am.”

Debby grabbed her ready bag and makeup kit from her office closet and ran for the elevator. Rocco Turko was standing in the building’s garage when she got there. He was a tallish, handsome, squarely built man of forty who, in his double-breasted overcoat, resembled a refrigerator. “Morning, Deb,” he said. He was one of only a few colleagues who was allowed to address her informally.

“Have you still got that NYPD badge?” Rocco had done ten or so years with the NYPD and, when he left, had “forgotten” to turn in his badge.

“Yep.”

“Good, you may need it.” They got into the car.

“Why are we going to New York?” Rocco asked.

“Eddie Craft,” she replied.

Rocco didn’t have to ask why. He knew that Craft was the only witness who could testify that she had been in the police evidence locker on the date that some things disappeared from that place.

“Is he coming back with us?” Rocco asked.

Debby gave him a look that he interpreted as a firm “No.”

She reached into her ready bag and withdrew a black .22 semiautomatic pistol, with a silencer screwed into the barrel. “It has a loaded magazine. It’s all you’ll need.”

Rocco accepted the weapon, unscrewed the silencer, and put it and the pistol into separate pockets. If he had needed a further answer from his chief, he had it.

In the late afternoon, Maren came back to Stone’s house and found him in his study.

“Hi, there,” he said, rising and giving her a kiss.

“Hi. How’s your jet lag?”

“Okay, but I still have a sore neck.”

She reached to massage his neck, but he flinched. “I know a chiropractor who makes house calls,” she said.

Stone sat next to her on the sofa. “Call him for me, will you?”

Maren reached for her phone. “Her,” she said. She made the call and hung up. “She’ll be here in half an hour. She says it’s okay for you to have a drink before she gets here.”

“Is that her prescription or yours?” Stone asked, standing and going to the drinks cabinet and returning with a Knob Creek for him and a Laphroaig for her.

“Both,” Maren said.

They tapped glasses and drank. Stone resisted reaching for anything else: too little time.

Joan came into the study. “Your manipulator is here,” she said. Stone laughed.

“Are you ready to be manipulated?”

“I am ready.”

A small, pretty woman came in, pushing a folded table on wheels and introduced herself as Pru Hawkins. They shook hands. She asked him to remove his shirt and lie facedown, and he did so.

“I can see where it hurts,” she said. “Feel it, too.” She asked him to turn over, then lifted his head and turned it slowly back and forth. “Did the bourbon help?” she asked. “I can smell it on your breath.”

“It did,” Stone said.

She turned his head to one side. “Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.”

He did so, and she made a quick movement that caused a noise in his neck. She repeated the movement with his head turned the other way, and got the same sound. “Now, sit up,” she said.

Stone sat up and turned his head back and forth. “Much better,” he said. “You freed it up. It’s still a little sore, though.”

“I prescribe another bourbon for that,” she said. She folded up her table, set it on its wheels, named a number, Stone paid it. Then she was gone, leaving her card.

Eddie got out of a cab in front of the Colony Club, a womens’ association that occupied a chunk of Park Avenue, next door to his apartment building. It was raining steadily, and even though he was already wearing a trench coat and a fedora, put up a golf-sized umbrella, shielding him from the view of an unhappy-looking man on the street corner, who had a view of his apartment building’s front door.

Eddie walked through the Colony’s entrance, into an empty lobby, which sported much paneling and marble. His heels echoed as he walked quickly through a door next to the unocupied front desk, past the men’s room in a hallway. He walked farther down the hall and into a scullery, off the kitchen. A solitary man was scrubbing pots and paid him no heed. Eddie took a right turn, opened a larger door, and emerged into the alley between the club and his building, where deliveries were made. It was raining even harder than before, and he put up his umbrella again.

He walked a few yards to a corner and peeked around it, toward Sixty-third Street. The alley rose to a wrought-iron gate, and through its bars he saw another man, dressed much the same as the one on Park, and looking just as unhappy. His back was turned, so Eddie continued to watch him, until he turned and walked toward the entrance of the apartment building. Eddie took that opportunity to run to his building’s alley entrance, past the gymnasium and the laundry room, to the service elevator. He pressed the 14 button and the elevator rose to that floor and disgorged him at the kitchen entrance to his apartment.

He furled his umbrella, stepped to a dry spot nearer the door and took off his shoes, then he unlocked the door and let himself quietly into his kitchen.