Slugfest

Thirty-five

I leaned in so neither the bartender nor any of the other patrons could hear. “Jamal Harrington was wearing a jacket like that this afternoon.”

Rolanda leaned in. “Who’s Jamal Harrington?”

“One of Lauryn Peete’s students. Sticks and Stones? The high school display?”

My gut and nothing else told me Jamal wasn’t responsible for Bleimeister’s death. Or Otis’s. But what was he doing with the dead guy’s jacket? Did he know Garland Bleimeister?

“I wonder who Garland was looking for,” I said. “The person he was so anxious to see before the show opened. He asked me to deliver a note, but then Connie screamed and we all took off.”

“Doesn’t that mean someone at the show should be missing him?” Rolanda said.

“Only if they were going to be happy to see him. Otherwise, they might be relieved. He gave me a note. He handed it to me while he leafed through the directory to find the name of his friend’s company.”

“Where is it?”

“Jeez, it’s anyone’s guess where a slip of paper someone handed me two days ago is now.”

“Maybe you stuck it in the directory?” Rolanda asked.

It was possible. I hadn’t looked at the book since the show started. Why? I was selling, not buying. Was the note in the jeans I’d been wearing or my card case? A pocket? A bag? The garbage? It could be anywhere in a twenty-block radius, and in New York that might just as well be twenty miles.

“Well, I don’t know about that other stuff,” she said, “but where’s the directory?”

“At the booth, I think. Under the table where the kid’s bag was.”

Rolanda didn’t have a key to the convention center, but what she had was almost as good—a nearly full bottle of Rémy that she’d wheedled out of Brian, the bartender. That tariff got us past Vincent, the night man at the employees’ entrance, and Rolanda’s knowledge of the Wagner got us upstairs.

“Most of the doors are locked from the outside,” she said.

Only one door in each hall was open, so the overnight security guard could go in and out, punching his code into the alarm system to report to an off-site company that everything was copasetic.

“Alarm Central’s not even in New York. Probably in Indiana somewhere. But they’re wired into the local precinct.”

I was surprised the center had such a sophisticated system for the flower show, but maybe it had been installed pre-Javits, when the building had been used for shows with more valuable merchandise.

After three beers and nothing in my stomach but a mini-pierogi from four hours earlier I was light-headed. After three tall rum and Cokes, light on the ice, Rolanda was unchanged. “Anthony is on tonight. I’ll text him so he knows we’re here and doesn’t shoot us.”

“There’s an armed guard at the flower show?”

“Only for the orchids. Chill out, I’m kidding. Of course he’s not armed, but why scare the man?” Rolanda’s fingers flew over her keypad and two passages of electronic Caribbean music told me first that her message had been sent and then that a reply had been received. She smiled. “He says we owe him a bottle of Rémy and he’s looking forward to meeting the woman in red.”

I pulled my jacket closed and folded my arms over my chest.

The open doors weren’t difficult to find, as an eerie whitish-blue light emanated from one rectangle every thirty feet or so. The glow came from the exit signs and the off-hours lighting on the beams, which backlit some of the pigeons still perched in the rafters.

Without the people, the lights, and the buzz, the deserted flower show was like a fairy-tale jungle, albeit a cold one. We didn’t need to worry about snakes or tarantulas, just the occasional fluttering of a bird we’d disturbed. And all the vegetation was perfect. No slugs, no deer, no bunnies.

We reached my booth quickly and found the show directory in one of the nearly empty boxes where I’d stashed the box cutters, markers, and double-stick tape I’d used to set up.

“This was where I put the bag.”

I fanned through the book. No note.

“Try again. Maybe the pages are stuck together. It’s humid in here.”

Still nothing, but this time I noticed a dog-eared page. I have a congenital inability to dog-ear pages. I’m a bookmark gal, even if I use a magazine renewal card or a dollar bill.

“I didn’t do this. It must have been Bleimeister.”

There wasn’t enough light to read by, so we took the book and headed for the nearest exit. Two halls down from where we emerged, shadows waved and we heard a sound as if someone had bumped into a trash can. The person uttered a curse I hadn’t heard since I was a little girl back in Brooklyn and for which I had never gotten an accurate translation except that it had something to do with going to Naples. Rolanda texted Anthony to see if it was him. It wasn’t, but he’d seen the movement, too.

“He says the cleaning staff should all be gone by now,” she whispered. I pulled on her arm and dragged her underneath a nearby staircase. Two slim figures made their way to the fire exit, and the heavy door closed behind them with a sucking sound. We exhaled.

“I think I know who they were. Fat Frank and Cookie.”

“First it was drinking straight from the bottle. Now you know two guys named Fat Frank and Cookie? Girl, I owe you an apology,” she said, “I have got the wrong idea about women from Connecticut.”

“They’re two men who work for Guy Anzalone, Connie’s husband,” I whispered.

The Caribbean music started up again and Rolanda fumbled in her pocket for the phone to silence it in case Fat Frank had heard and decided to come back to investigate. “Shoot, I’ve got to lose that music if I’m really going into this line of work.”

It was Anthony again. His text message read:

Someone is in Hall A. Stay away until I know it’s safe.

She closed her phone. “He’s a tough old bird,” she said.

“Older than Otis?”

There was no discussion. I kicked off Lucy’s stilettos and we ran to Hall A.