Slugfest

Fifty

Like Emma the night before, Jamal Harrington must have decided he needed to get out of Dodge, because the next morning he was gone. No note. Nothing was missing. He’d repositioned the stone planter that held J. C.’s Pieris and taken a stab at fixing the fallen latticework. The tent was down and he’d replaced all the parts in the correct color-coded stuff bags.

“Not easy to do in broad daylight, much less the early morning light of a gray day,” J. C. said. We stood in her apartment and she stretched to find something good to say about the boy’s unexplained disappearance. Even Lucy, who’d just met him, didn’t want to believe he’d been guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably his sympathetic reaction to the Harold story.

It was the last day of the flower show and I still had a job to do, despite whatever else was going on and a restless night on Lucy’s sofa. I hadn’t been able to shake the unsettling feeling there was another old dear who had a direct line of sight into Lucy’s living room and images of me tossing and turning were going to wind up on some geezer’s YouTube page.

I had five hours to sell the rest of Primo’s creations, or otherwise pack them up and get them ready for shipping. I hadn’t heard from Hank Mossdale, so I enlisted Lucy’s help. She promised to arrive just after the doors opened to the public. I found Emma’s fake badge on the coffee table and told Lucy to flash it with her customary aplomb if anyone gave her trouble.

“Please, I’ve gotten into A-list parties with attitude and a smile. I think I can handle the security guards at a flower show.” She pocketed the badge. Perversely I almost told her to look for one guard in particular when she showed up—Rolanda Knox. Lucy took a bag of popcorn from the fridge and shoved it in the microwave. So that explained the abundance of Orville Redenbacher’s.

“Popcorn for breakfast?” I said.

“Why not? It’s a grain.”

By the time I left Lucy’s, my head was filled with theories about Jamal and Emma. Where had they gone? Was Jamal meeting her? Even if he and Emma weren’t involved in the murder, they were brushing up against some ruthless people who probably were. I didn’t want to think either of them was involved in murder, especially Jamal. He seemed like a good kid, but was I prejudiced just because he was a gardener? If he’d been a basketball player or a rap artist, would I be more likely to think he was guilty?

I closed the lobby door behind me and tucked my chin into my jacket against the damp spring morning. As I did, I glimpsed a scene reminiscent of the old television show Let’s Make a Deal. Three doors, three choices. The only things missing were Monty Hall and a trio of women in gowns.

John Stancik was in a Crown Vic a few cars down on the left. He wore dark aviator glasses, and the newspaper he pretended to be reading was propped on his steering wheel. Even from a distance I could see a cardboard tray holding two large cups, the way a similar one had the night before.

On my right, waiting at the traffic light, was a taxi, its roof light indicating it was free. Having the turtlelike peripheral vision of the experienced New York cabbie, the driver glanced in my direction with the barest tilt of his head. At the slightest encouragement or eye contact from me, he’d wait and I could jump in and be spirited away.

And in between, parked illegally at a fire hydrant, happily munching a donut, was Guy Anzalone. The cab took off and I was down to two options. Or maybe not.

I turned left and started walking. Going in this direction would add two blocks to the trip but I didn’t think either man would drive backward down a one-way street simply to offer me a lift, whatever it was they wanted to discuss—business or personal. I kept my chin tucked into my collar as if I hadn’t noticed Guy, and he seemed genuinely surprised I didn’t run over to his car as if we were headed down to the shore or a weekend in Atlantic City. I wasn’t much of a lip-reader but he seemed to be repeating aw, schucks, or perhaps it was the Brooklyn version of that expression.

Stancik was quicker to react and automatically rolled down the passenger’s side window of the car just as I approached. He leaned across the empty seat to say something, knocking over two cups of steaming liquid onto the dashboard, his newspaper, a small notepad, and the front seat. He did not say aw, schucks.

I intended to keep walking, but the scene was comical and I took pity on the poor man. Besides, he had given me information the night before—perhaps he’d do it again. I backtracked.

“It’s cloudy. Are those glasses supposed to be a disguise?” I asked.

If they were, they did nothing to hide the scruffy brush cut and dimpled chin that I hadn’t paid much attention to before but found suddenly vulnerable and appealing as Stancik juggled the dripping items.

“Use the newspaper to sop it up, then I’ll throw it in the trash out here.” He did as he was told and I pitched the soggy mess in a Doe Fund trash can on the corner.

I strolled back to the car, feeling smug. I drew the line at occupying the still wet seat in the front and climbed into the back, despite the way it looked. “You must be pretty wired. Have you been out here drinking coffee all night?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Just the last hour or so, since we picked up Jamal Harrington. I came back to talk to you.” I stopped feeling smug.

According to Stancik, Jamal must have stayed on the terrace until about six A.M. when the neighborhood would be coming to life with the sounds of delivery trucks and people lining up for the soup kitchen at the church next door. He’d stopped at the Koreans and had the bad luck to bump into a couple of uniformed cops hassling a truck driver who was triple-parked while delivering cut flowers to the grocery store. “They recognized his description from a radio call. He slipped into a subway station, but one of the officers nabbed him while he was fumbling with his MetroCard,” Stancik said.

“If he was a bad kid, wouldn’t he have jumped over the turnstile to get away?”

“When was the last time you took the subway? It’s not that easy to do anymore. A lot of those old turnstiles have been replaced. So what did you and the kid you barely know talk about until the wee hours?”

“I had no idea he’d be there.”

“You’re lucky Labidou isn’t here. He’d be making cougar jokes. For someone who doesn’t know these boys, you do seem to be in the thick of it.”

“I am, now that I’m getting daily visits from the NYPD.”

Jamal told the cops about Garland’s jacket, so I didn’t have much to add except to repeat that he thought Otis Randolph had witnessed the exchange and would have been able to tell the cops it was a friendly one.

“You don’t really think Jamal is your man, do you?”

“I don’t think anything. I know he’s been in numerous altercations at his school. He was seen more than once with the victim, and he’s got the dead man’s jacket, passport, and a large amount of cash. More cash than a high school kid usually carries.”

Jamal had said nothing to us about money or a passport.

“Could Garland have forgotten those things were in his pockets when he gave the jacket to Jamal?”

Stancik looked over his sunglasses. “Would you forget your passport and money if you were blowing town?”

I did drive all the way to New Hampshire once without my wallet, but it wasn’t the same thing.

“And now,” he said, “we have a statement from someone who claims the two men were in business together.” He gently pulled apart the coffee-splashed pages of his notepad, but I put two and two together faster and knew who the informant was before he said the name.

“Emma Franklin,” I said.