Slugfest

Fifty-one

Stancik was lousy at hiding his reaction. “How did you guess?”

“The Great Holliday never guesses. She knows.” I tapped my forehead with two fingers. I was tempted to call Emma a pathological liar but forced myself to exercise restraint.

“I’d be very suspicious of anything that girl tells you. She may have a sweet and disarming exterior, but she is one of the most facile liars I’ve ever encountered.”

“She’s a kid from Pennsylvania,” he said. “Never been in trouble. Her mother’s a doctor, stepdad’s in the import business. Are you basing this on something real or some women’s intuition thing?”

“You’ve been hanging out with Labidou too long. He’s rubbing off on you. What does Emma say her role is in all this?” I asked.

“An innocent duped by a new and unscrupulous boyfriend who wasn’t what he seemed to be.”

“How did you find her?” I asked.

“Painstaking detective work. She walked right into the precinct last night around midnight.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Fear? Remorse? She had no place to go?”

“Did you hold her?”

“We’re not in the habit of incarcerating people who come in of their own free will to make statements.”

By the time we’d pulled up at the Wagner, I told the cop everything I knew, up to and including my firm belief that any incriminating evidence found in Jamal’s possession had been planted there by Emma—or whatever her real name was—most likely when he and J. C. had gone into the basement to get the sleeping gear and I’d briefly followed them.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“Anywhere from here to Timbuktu. How should I know?”

“That girl is literally unbelievable,” I said, amping up a notch. “She may be Emma Franklin or that may be another identity she’s temporarily borrowing. She’s like Scheherazade, spinning a different tale every time she opens her mouth.”

“Maybe she’s doing it to stay alive, too. But it gets worse.”

“How much worse could it get? She’s pregnant with Garland’s child?”

“Not for her. She’s suggested that you and some older woman are also involved. That you’re in cahoots with this Jamal and maybe even with the people Garland was supposed to get money from. We’re gonna assume that the money wasn’t a belated Christmas or Hanukkah present. It was most likely a drug deal or extortion.”

“Well, now you know she’s nuts, right? Right?”

Wrong. I could almost hear him. All he knew was that I, too, had been seen with the dead man. That, according to Emma, and maybe even Rolanda, I’d tried to smuggle Garland into the convention center, that I was the last person to have possession of his missing bag. I’d also been seen at a local diner having breakfast with Jamal and the wife of a man who may or may not be a mobster.

Emma didn’t know, but if the cops had asked around further, they’d find that I’d had drinks with the Anzalones the night Garland was killed and telephone records would show he’d repeatedly called me earlier that same evening. I began to see how easy it was to put together a circumstantial case against someone if that’s what you wanted to do. And it scared the pants off me. If that was the way a straight-arrow woman from the suburbs felt, I could imagine how a kid like Jamal Harrington felt. Now I knew why he’d run.

Stancik hadn’t said another word. He didn’t have to.

Losing my temper would be unproductive. “So now I’m Fagin, orchestrating a team of youthful offenders, like the guy in Oliver Twist? You’ve got to be joking,” I said, my voice even.

He wasn’t. “While I was waiting for you, I ran the plates on that tank idling by the fire hydrant. I hate when people do that,” he said, looking up from his notes. Over the top of his glasses, I could see his eyes were chocolate brown. I hadn’t noticed before. “What if there’s a fire? Anyway, the vehicle belongs to one Concetta Anzalone, wife of Guy Anzalone, who the police in Brooklyn are investigating on usury charges. You’ve been seen with them on numerous occasions, including one incident at the St. George Hotel, where you allegedly struck Mr. Anzalone with a suitcase. Doorman called it in.”

“This is preposterous. I’m getting out now. If you don’t have an actual question for me or a warrant for my arrest, thanks for the lift but I have to go to work. I suggest you do the same.”

“Honey, I am at work. I just don’t want you to get hurt. You’re not in the burbs anymore. Some of these people are rougher than you may be used to. From what we’ve pieced together, it’s not impossible Jamal’s crew has been staging these Javits Curse mishaps at the convention center to deflect attention from their real crimes.”

“Has anyone questioned these protestors out here about the disturbances at the show?” I asked. Tight security had kept the antichemical, antifertilizer group under control except for one minor incident at the reception on Friday. The cops felt they were in the clear as far as the vandalism went. Management thought it was an inside job—a disgruntled employee or even one of the exhibitors. And the first incident happened before the sales vendors were admitted, so it could even have been one of the display gardeners.

“Right. Maybe it’s Mrs. Moffitt.”

“No. We checked her out. She’s been exhibiting at the Big Apple for a long time. We don’t think she’d sabotage the show. We think the first incident might have been staged to destroy some piece of evidence, but now the perpetrator is getting a kick out of being referred to as the Javits Curse. That says kids, not professionals.”

I wondered where he’d gotten his detailed show information, then it hit me. “I was unaware of Kristi Reynolds’s stint at the police academy.”

“Maybe she got there after you graduated. She’s a little younger.”

Someone once told me the worst wounds were self-inflicted. I hadn’t pulled the trigger on that one, but I’d certainly given Stancik the ammo.

“That came out wrong,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Forget it,” I said, hauling myself out of the car.

Just then two fire engines screeched to a halt in front of the Wagner Center. Stancik and I looked at each other.

“Now what?”

We hurried past the thin crowd of protesters, who parted for the emergency vehicles and workers and us as soon as Stancik flashed his badge. Inside the building, the sight of the abandoned security desk had us sprinting up the escalator to the second floor, which was the scene of much chaos and shrieking.