TWENTY-TWO

“I’ll take you up on that drink,” I said, putting the baseball cap on the car seat between us and shaking out my hair. “But can’t I talk to Luc now? Can’t I phone him?”

“Has he called you?”

“Not the entire day.”

“Don’t look so glum. He’s trying to keep you at arm’s length from trouble.”

“I don’t want to be at arm’s length. I want to help him.”

We had driven only three minutes from the canal when Mike braked the car and parked it on Conover Street.

“Here?” I asked, looking at the faded paint on the facade of the bar, sporting a yellow-and-red neon sign that said SUNNY’S. “We’re drinking in Red Hook?”

“Don’t turn your nose up at this joint. It’s an institution. They’ve got a bar and I’ve got a crush on the barmaid, and they’ve got a TV and you’ve got a crush on Brian Williams. Even Steven. See what the world is saying about Baby Mo and drown your French-fried sorrows at the same time.”

“Is there a bar in this city that you don’t know?” I asked, opening the car door.

“Mostly the ones your yuppified friends hang out in. I first came here with my old man, back when this hood was all longshoremen and wannabe wiseguys. Now that there’s a fringe group of so-called artists who are threatening to make Red Hook chic, Sunny probably doesn’t know what hit him.”

Sunny himself greeted Mike inside the door and led us past the pack of thirtysomethings at the bar to a small table in the corner. Mike was out of luck-the bartender was a long, lean guy with spiky hair-and nobody was paying attention to the television screen. It looked like we had walked into a 1950s movie set, down to the Pabst Blue Ribbon stained glass lamps that decorated the small tabletops.

Mike walked to the bar, asked Sunny to flip the channel to NBC, and came back with our drinks.

“Cheers!” he said. “Here’s to Gowanus Canal oysters. Maybe Luc just knows about them ’cause they were such powerful aphrodisiacs.”

“Talk about something else, will you?” I lifted the glass so that I could get the stench of the canal out of my brain.

“Food, sex, history. I’ve exhausted my repertoire. I’m done.”

The local news ended and the commercials were a lead-in to Brian Williams. His first story was about a car bomb in Afghanistan, and the second was a long piece on a kidnapping off the coast of Somalia.

“This is good for Battaglia,” I said. “We’re not the top story tonight. He’ll be criticized for whatever decision he makes in the morning-grand jury this week or not. Every reporter thinks he or she’s got the inside track on how a case like this ought to be handled; only none of them has ever been in the hot seat with a witness who’s under a magnifying glass.”

“Yeah, well I’m the guy who took Mo off the plane, so try and make me look good at the end of the road.”

“You absolutely had to do that, Mike.”

“But that started the clock running for Battaglia. You could have vetted everything she said before we cuffed him, if he wasn’t sitting on the runway, headed for home. That’s what you usually do.”

“Blanca is so good at storytelling I don’t know what to think. One minute, she’s got you all balled up when she talks about the massacres in Guatemala, and in the next breath she’s so facile at lying you just want to tear your hair out.”

“And when we return,” Williams said, “we’ll have the latest on the MGD scandal that has garnered worldwide attention for the powerful World Economic Bureau leader.”

I stood up to walk to the bar, to better hear the television. “For once, Brian may be wrong. I think I’ve got the latest.”

“What’s that?” Mike asked as he followed me.

“Blanca’s last shot of the day was to tell us she doesn’t ‘do’ black men. Can you imagine me summing up on that point? That she couldn’t possibly have consented to Baby Mo’s advances because she’s a racist?”

Mike gave me his best grin. “I can see the defense case coming. Forget the jism all over the floor and wall and on her uniform. Lem Howell just shows up with ten of his blackest brothers to swear they’ve been done by Blanca. No contest.”

When Brian Williams returned, he introduced the local reporter who covered the courthouse, and the visual was Byron Peaser standing at a microphone on the steps of 100 Centre Street, with Blanca Robles at his side.

“For the first time today, Brian,” the reporter said, “the world gets to see the woman who has accused Gil-Darsin of this violent sexual attack.”

“I can’t believe she actually did that,” I said. “When I left, Pat McKinney was giving her a pretty stern admonition about going public before she testified. And now she’s defied him.”

“So much for all the safeguards of her privacy and security that everyone was concerned about.”

“Ms. Robles,” the reporter went on, “was introduced by the lawyer who filed a civil suit on her behalf today, seeking fifty million dollars from Gil-Darsin, whose political ambitions now seem to be derailed. She spoke only seven words from the podium, Brian, telling us emphatically: ‘I am the victim. I was raped.’”

“Thank you for that update,” Williams went on. “It certainly sounds like her lawyer is taking a stab at getting the court of public opinion on her side. Gil-Darsin, of course, is still on Rikers Island and still hasn’t issued any statement, anticipating his next appearance before a judge later this week.”

“Okay if I shut Brian down?” Mike asked.

I nodded, grabbing a bowl of peanuts from the bar counter and returning to our table.

“Are you hanging out with me until you start your tour tonight?” I asked. “Afraid I’m going to burn up the phone lines to France?”

“I’m hanging out with you because I think you’re in overdrive and need a little adult supervision. And besides, the next show after this is Jeopardy!

I was cracking the peanut shells with my teeth.

“Don’t break any bicuspids,” Mike said. “I get lucky and win tonight, I may buy you a real meal.”

“I’ll settle for a second round, as long as you’re buying.”

My elbow was on the table, my head in my hand, as I gave Mike all the details of today’s interview. He kept one eye on the TV screen, and when Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy! category, he walked over to turn up the volume and then came back to me.

“Famous Misnomers,” Trebek read the large letters on the single blue square to the three contestants. “Famous Misnomers is tonight’s category.”

Mike opened his wallet and took out a twenty, our usual wager. “This could be tricky.”

Two contestants were neck and neck with about eight thousand dollars each. The third one had less than one thousand.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m in. My money’s in the car.”

Trebek read the answer as it was revealed on the screen. “The Rembrandt painting actually named The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch is mistakenly called this.”

The two women contestants both looked as stumped as Mike, but the guy tied for the lead put his head down and started to write a question.

“Total fraud,” Mike said. “They should have said the category was art. This one has your Wellesley art history bullshit all over it.”

I laughed for the first time in hours. “Double or nothing?”

“Hardly.”

I sipped on the second Scotch. “What is The Night Watch?”

Night Watch? Like my duty assignment?”

As Trebek was congratulating the man with the correct answer, an image of the colossal painting flashed on the screen.

“These are the citizens who defended the ramparts of Amsterdam-but the painting actually depicts them in daytime, off duty. It was just so dark a canvas that it was given the wrong name for centuries. It wasn’t night, and they weren’t on their watch.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying the peanuts because that may be all you get tonight,” Mike said as I picked up his twenty-dollar bill and pocketed it.

We were almost done with our drinks when Mike’s phone rang. He put a finger in his left ear to block out the noise and held the phone to his right one.

“Chapman here.”

He listened to the caller for more than a minute. Then he responded. “Yeah, I can do you that favor. I know the place. I can head over there before I sign in. Call you back.”

“What?” I asked.

“I always hate it when my vic turns out to have a better name than the one I gave him.”

“You mean Adonis of the Gowanus isn’t Adonis anymore? They’ve ID’d him?”

“Luigi Calamari,” Mike said. “Louie the Squid. No wonder he winds up dead in the most toxic waterway in the world.”

“How did they make him?”

“Three distinctive tats on his back. He’s in the NYPD computer system. Got locked up once for gun possession. They found his brother this afternoon, who just ID’d him.”

“Thank God he’s not French,” I said, leaning back in my chair, relieved that there wasn’t an obvious connection to Luc.

“That’s the good news.”

“Is there something bad?”

“He’s a waiter, Coop.”

“There’s a million waiters in this town.”

“He was just fired from one of the most exclusive restaurants in the city ’cause he has a problem sniffing white powder.”

“So?”

“His brother says he didn’t care about losing his job. He’d already lined up another one at a swanky new place called Lutèce.”

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