The World Beneath

Chapter 17

Stomach seething, Vivian jogged up Fifth Avenue. She maneuvered through commuters carrying coffee and brown paper sacks full of breakfast. Frost rimed the sidewalk, and she watched her footing. Each breath puffed out in front of her, and cold air stung her cheeks. A good winter day for a run. Running was what she did best when angry. And today she was miles’ worth of angry.

She’d texted Dirk to meet her by Pulitzer Fountain on the south end of Central Park. A good mile from Grand Central. Had Tesla really stumbled across the body, or had he put it there? Her instincts told her that he wasn’t a killer, but she knew better than to trust that assessment. She’d seen enough seemingly mild-mannered men in Afghanistan who’d turned into brutal killers.

She passed the skaters in front of Rockefeller Center, then the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Her footsteps pounding against concrete pushed her on. Not ready yet to slow down or catch her breath.

An email had arrived in her account early that morning that looked like it had come from her mother. Her mother had emailed her only once a year or so, preferring to talk on the phone, so Vivian had opened it immediately. The first paragraph chatted about a family dinner that had never happened. Just when she’d started to worry that her mother was losing it, she got to the second paragraph.

Remember our friend from the tunnel? I just found out that his name is Ronald Raines and he was in the Navy. Maybe he’d be a good match for you?

Tesla. Either he’d hacked her mother’s account or spoofed it, and she didn’t give a damn which. He had damn well better stay away from her mother.

She was enough of a good citizen to call Raines’s name into the tip line from a phone kiosk not far from her apartment. The surveillance camera pointed at it had been vandalized months ago, so no one would be able to trace her. Damn Tesla for putting her in this position to begin with.

So, where did that leave her? Halfway to her daily run with Dirk and with no idea what she was going to tell him. She kept going, hoping that she would run right into the answer. She didn’t.

“Yo!” Dirk waved from the empty fountain. The water had been turned off for winter. He wore gray sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt that matched his eyes. A black watch cap was pulled low over his ears, and his nose was red.

She headed over to him, glancing inside the fountain at the black leaves mounded up in the corners. “Nice day for a walk.”

Dirk looked at the gray sky and quirked his mouth. “Might snow.”

She started a fast jog around Grand Army Plaza, and Dirk fell in next to her, not yet breathing hard. He gave her a long look, like he expected her to talk, then pressed his lips together. He’d wait her out. He always did.

They passed a woman in a long gray woolen coat pushing a stroller so mounded with pink blankets that Vivian couldn’t see the baby, but it had to be a girl. Not even old enough to go to school and already suffocating in pink. Vivian had been a tomboy, fighting pink all her life.

Dirk gave her a sidelong smile. He knew how she felt about pink.

“Any progress on the tunnel murder?” she asked.

Dirk slowed his rhythm and put on his cop face. “Why are you asking?”

“I might have an ID on the victim,” she said, running faster. “An anonymous tip.”

Dirk caught back up before saying anything. “We have a tip line. Call it in there.”

“I did. I want to make sure that it gets treated seriously, so I thought I’d tell you, too.”

“Then tell me the ID,” he said. “I’ll make sure.”

She hesitated a long time before answering. He knew that she sometimes worked for Rossi and Rossi, and that they represented Joe Tesla. He even knew that she’d been assigned to Tesla once. She couldn’t give him details without implicating a potential client. “I can’t.”

He’d check today’s tips now, and he’d be able to say that he hadn’t gotten the information from her.

“I see,” he said. Frozen leaves crackled under their feet as they ran deeper into the park.

“Any news you can share?”

“We only recovered two sets of prints at the scene,” he said. “One from the victim. And one from that guy you worked with — Joe Tesla. That’s not been released to the press, but his lawyer knows, so I imagine that you already do, too.”

She lengthened her stride, as if she could run away from that truth. Dirk kept pace easily. “Is that so?”

Dirk ran on without saying anything else.

“What’s the CIA doing?” she asked.

“Why would they be doing anything?”

“I met two of them yesterday at Tesla’s house, and I thought I saw a couple of them up in the concourse, too.”

Dirk slipped on an icy patch, and she caught his arm. “Dirk?”

“I don’t know what the CIA wants with him. We want him for questioning about the murder of the homeless man in the tunnels.”

Ronald Raines, she wanted to say, but didn’t.

“They seem to think he’s got classified information,” Dirk said.

“Doesn’t his company work with them all the time? I imagine he has a security clearance. A pretty high one.”

Dirk nodded. “That’s been bugging me, too. You’d think he’d be in the CIA’s pocket already, and I can’t figure out what contact he’d have with some random homeless guy that would interest them. But they are very interested. Do you know why?”

“I don’t,” she said. “You know I’d tell you if I could.”

“When would that be?” he asked. “We both know he’s a client of yours.”

“If he weren’t, then,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t know. Why don’t you guys ask him?”

“He’s lawyered up. They say he can’t be reached. He can’t even be found.”

That part was probably true.

“Why’d he do something like that?” Dirk asked.

“Go to ground?” She dodged a slow jogger lost in the music of his MP3 player. “He’s terrified that he’d have to go outside, that you guys will make him leave the hotel for questioning. Remember that article I showed you?”

“Jail’s inside,” Dirk said.

She thought of her mother’s name on Joe’s email.

“If he did it,” she said, “then you ought to put him there.”