Avery looked up from the note. Her gaze moved around the sidewalk and street. No one, it seemed, was paying her any attention. Despite this observation, she still felt terribly exposed, as if unseen eyes were watching her. With her heart rate spiking and the perspiration rolling down to the small of her back, she stood from the bench and headed east on Fulton Street. When she reached Broadway, she turned left and started the two-mile trek north to Old St. Pat’s Cathedral. It took thirty minutes.
The noon mass was comfortably crowded and well in progress when Avery found a spot in the back pew. She sang with the parishioners. For thirty minutes she sat and stood and sat again, scanning the crowd for André. She stayed seated during communion. After the final blessing was offered, the church slowly emptied. She failed to recognize a suspicious face. If she were being followed, those who were on the prowl were invisible.
She sat in the back pew of the cathedral, the long center aisle to her left. Ten minutes after the service ended, a few patrons still occupied the church. Some knelt in the front pews, deep in prayer. Others walked the center aisle with necks craned heavenward, admiring the ornate cathedral ceiling and the splendid beauty of the church. A few people snapped photos.
Avery spotted him walking up the side aisle. André moved slowly and acted like the other tourists in the church, looking up at the ceiling and around the cavernous interior. He wore jeans and a sport coat. His midsection threatened to pop the single button holding the coat together. His beady eyes darted around behind the tiny wireless glasses, and Avery noticed a large manila envelope in his right hand. He entered the pew from the side aisle and walked the entire length of it until he sat next to her.
“What’s going on?” Avery whispered.
“You’re being followed.”
“What? How do you know this?”
“You’re blown in the worst way. Probably our mutual friend, as well, I’m sorry to say.” The German-Brooklyn accent made his rapid speech difficult to follow. André placed the manila envelope on the pew between them.
“Everything’s inside.”
“The passport?”
André nodded and stood to leave.
“Who’s following me?”
He pointed to the envelope. “Everything you need to know is there. Good luck.”
“I still owe you money,” Avery said.
André shook his head. “I owed him a favor. Let him know we’re now even. And whatever it is you have planned, I’d do it quickly. I doubt you have much time.”
André skirted past her and into the middle aisle. Avery twisted in the pew to watch him exit the church, walk down the steps, and disappear into the crowd. She sat unmoving for another minute until finally she lifted the manila envelope, resisted the urge to look inside, and quickly hurried out of the church.
*
It was a straight shot up Broadway near Old St. Pat’s, then east to the Lowell. Twelve blocks that she power-walked in ten minutes. Through the lobby and into the elevator, all the while she clutched the envelope to her chest. It wasn’t until she bolted and chained her hotel room door that she finally opened the manila envelope. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she fumbled with the envelope’s button-and-string clasp. When she finally had the flap open, she poured the contents onto the bed. A blue passport tumbled onto the comforter. She examined it—it looked exactly like a US passport—blue exterior with gold embossed letters. She opened the front cover and saw the picture she had given André last week. She read the name aloud.
“Aaron Holland.”
It had a delightful ring to it.
As much joy came from seeing the passport, something else sat in the pit of her stomach. She felt no relief having made it this far. She felt terror and dread, and couldn’t stop the sensation that the manila envelope held her worst fears. She dropped the passport back on the bed and looked into the envelope. She caught the reflection of glossy photos and reached in to retrieve them. Several eight-by-ten photos emerged from the envelope. Avery saw that each was a still photo of Walt Jenkins.
CHAPTER 56
Manhattan, NY Wednesday, July 7, 2021
AVERY SAT AT THE SMALL DESK IN HER HOTEL ROOM. THE PHOTOS OF Walt lay before her, scattered across the surface. Avery had carefully scrutinized each picture. As André indicated, they told Avery everything she needed to know. The first photo was of Walt in jeans, windbreaker, and ball cap. In the background were the headstones of Green-Wood Cemetery. He had followed her the day after their first meeting when she’d gone to visit her mother’s grave. A second photo was of Walt crouching next to Christopher’s headstone while he held a cell phone to his ear. The next was an image of Walt standing in the shadows between two brownstones in Brooklyn. Finally, there were photos of Walt sitting behind the wheel of his SUV, sunglasses covering his eyes, and Ma Bell’s cabin in the background.
He’d followed her to André’s brownstone. He’d followed her to the cemetery. He’d followed her out to Lake Placid. Some combination of disbelief, anger, and embarrassment befell her as she paged through the photos. Had she been so naive to believe that the United States government would stop searching for her father? Had she believed that her amateurish attempts to fly under the radar on this trip to New York would really deceive the Federal Bureau of Investigation? The feds had tracked her down in LA a couple of years earlier and asked a slew of questions about her father. She hadn’t lied when she told them that she had no idea where her father was. At the time, she didn’t. Only after the postcard arrived had Avery figured it out.
Bile bubbled up her esophagus and deposited a bitter taste in the back of her throat at the notion that Walt had slept with her in order to gain information about her father’s whereabouts. More acid followed when she admitted that she had allowed herself to feel something for him. Was she such a poor judge of character to miss all the red flags? Was she so desperate for companionship that she allowed his story of betrayal to resonate with her own? Was that part of Walt’s past even true? Couldn’t she see how convenient it all was? That the detective in the Cameron Young case, now a retired agent of the FBI, was so eager to help when she called? Had her ego as a respected television journalist clouded her reason?