The 6:20 Man

Chapter 20

Devine got up a little late since it was Sunday. By 6 a.m. his workout was complete, and he went back to bed for more sleep. He listened to his body, and it was telling him to slow down and catch up on some rest. He woke at eleven, showered off the remnants of his sweaty workout, and then prepared breakfast: veggie omelet, toast, protein shake, coffee, and a chocolate chip cookie thrown in just for the hell of it.

After that, he went back to his room, fired up his laptop, and did some digging. The deeded owner of the Upper East Side property the WASP had gone into was listed as the Locust Group. He googled Locust Group and came up with a ton of results, including variations thereof. Some looked legit, with office addresses and websites and lots of info about what they did. But there were simply too many for him to run them all down.

As a little diversion he looked up the term locust online. They were defined as short-horned grasshoppers belonging to the Acrididae family. They were not known to be harmful to humans.

Devine rubbed his sore shoulder and injured face.

They may have to rethink that part.

But if the sole purpose of this Locust Group was to own the New York brownstone, it was reasonable to have no business address and no website. And he knew it was common practice for the ultrawealthy and/or famous to use shell companies to buy property for privacy reasons. Maybe that was all this was.

He next ran the license plate on the BMW. Valentine had earlier shown him a nifty and pretty straightforward way of accessing this information. When he’d asked him about it, the Russian had waved a slice of meatball pizza around and snorted, “The New York DMV? Please. They suck. My nephew can hack DMV and your FBI and your fuckin’ CIA and other letter people. And he is still little bay-bee.”

The guy really was a pill.

The car was registered to a Christian Fullerton Chilton, with the address being the brownstone. Devine looked Chilton up online. There was more than one, but he quickly narrowed it down by the middle name and the fact that he knew what the man looked like.

He had a Facebook page, but it was private, and thus restricted regarding what he had access to.

But there were ways around that. And he hadn’t needed the Russian to show him how.

He checked the HTML source code, got the Numeric ID off that, plugged it in, did a few more steps of “URL manipulation,” as it was known in the trade — because of Facebook’s nonstop battles with nosy jerks like him — like copying profile attributes of some of Chilton’s actual friends listed on the page and then injecting them into his own profile, and Christian Chilton’s page was fooled into thinking Devine was his best “friend.” And since Devine was using a fake online identity of his own to do this, it was highly doubtful that Chilton would be able to reverse engineer to the real Devine. At least he hoped he couldn’t.

He quickly looked through the photos and posts. He saw some very famous young people and some very famous old people. Chilton apparently got around. He was in a dream car, or on a mega-yacht in the Med, or striding confidently onto a Gulfstream 650. Devine wasn’t guessing; Chilton helpfully provided the type of plane in large cap letters. Devine had never ridden on a set of wings like that. For him, an ass-buster seat on a C-130 or C-17 transport plane was the way Army grunts traveled. You could tell your perch was first class if it actually had a seat and a harness to keep you there.

Chilton was also, he proudly claimed, a direct descendant of one Edward Chilton, who had sailed over on the Mayflower. As though that really meant something today. And yet it would for some, Devine knew.

Chilton listed his occupation as “entrepreneur and investor.” He had a company named, what else, Mayflower Enterprises. There was a link to that on the Facebook account. Devine went there and poked around. It looked legit. They had done a ton of investments in all sorts of different business spaces. Chilton was the head guy, and he had lots of smiling faces on the website who made up the rest of his team.

Devine changed into khaki slacks, a blue short-sleeved shirt, and light brown canvas shoes, and was leaving for the play when Helen Speers approached him, frowning.

“I don’t think I can provide you an alibi, Travis. I’ve wracked my brain, but I honestly can’t remember seeing you all of Thursday night. You’re sure you were here?”

“Yeah, but that’s okay. If you don’t remember, you don’t remember. I’d never ask you to do something you’re not comfortable with.”

She drew nearer and touched his arm. “I am sorry, Travis. And if you ever need to talk? I’m here for you.”

“Thanks.”

As she walked off he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and told himself to not go there. He had too much on his plate as it was.

He eyed Jill Tapshaw’s door, and knocked, but there was no answer. She might have gone into the office. For her, Sunday was just another day to build her empire of shared love.

He left and went outside. He wasn’t taking his bike this time. He’d opt for the train.

As he walked to the station, he wondered if there was something more to Speers’s words. But that might just be wishful thinking. Sure, he had a mild crush on the woman, and she might have one on him. But he didn’t think it was that. She seemed genuinely worried about him, and he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like they were close friends, and she probably had a dozen prospects a lot better suited for her than he was.

He broke out of these thoughts when a vehicle pulled up next to him.

“How about a ride to wherever you’re going in exchange for an interview?”

He looked into the face of the smiling but determined reporter from Channel Nosebleed who wanted to know every damn thing in the world.