I didn’t say or do anything but ponder for the next couple of hours. I hadn’t had much sleep because my mind could not shut down completely. The lack of sleep and deep disposition of mind caused a descent into a fugue-like state. There was no me but just the details of future blue and pink pages. There was an eggshell with a mustache and a ranger with a pistol in his hand. There was a dark hole that seemed to hold intelligence, and a girl-child all grown up.
The phone pulled me out of the temporary retreat.
“Hello,” I answered, maybe a little dreamily.
“Joe?”
I was still in that faraway place. The voice was familiar but nameless.
I groaned and the vibration brought knowledge.
“Hey, Henri. Yeah, it’s me. I must’a dozed off. What time is it?”
“Three thirty. What kinda shit you into, man?”
“How’s your father?” I asked while trying to remember the e-mail I sent that morning.
“Adamo Cortez,” my caller insisted.
“What?” I said, and then, “Oh…yeah.”
“Yeah. I called in and said that there was a guy saying that he was a CI for a Detective Adamo Cortez. They said they never heard that name; it wasn’t in their files. But a few hours later on, two suits from One Police Plaza came down to the street to see me. The street, Joe.”
“What they want?” I asked, the void receding behind me.
“They wanted to know everything. Everything. Where I met him. What he said. Was it near a video camera?”
“What you say?” I asked, almost fully back to normal.
“I just made shit up. Said I was doin’ a foot patrol in Central Park, which I was, and this guy comes up and tells me that I should tell my superior that Bato Hernandez has to make a drop. He said to say that he needed to speak to Adamo Cortez, that Cortez knew how to make contact.”
“What they say?”
“They wanted a complete description. What the guy wore, how old he was, and everything else. They even asked if anybody saw us.”
“They wanted an eyewitness alibi?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you ready?”
“You’re the one told me that I always had to be ready with a lie, Joe. That I should have one all worked out in my head because you never know.”
“I must have told a hundred cops that, Henri, but you’re one of only two that took me up on it. I’m sorry, kid, I didn’t think you’d actually call in like that.”
“I tried the database,” the Haitian cop replied. “He just wasn’t there. Not as a cop, a CI, or even some suspect. Nowhere. But I thought that if somebody called it in, then they might look in some secret database that the uniforms don’t know about.”
“With a question on your lips and a lie in your pocket,” I said in admiration. “You know, there was something I never taught you, kid.”
“What was that, Joe?”
“That sometimes you can be too smart.”
“So what are you into, man?”
“Is this a safe line?” I asked, way too late.
“Pay phone in the lower level of Grand Central. I’m surprised these suckers still work.”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doin’, Henri. It won’t do either of us any good. But tell me the names of the suits.”
“Inspector Dennis Natches and Captain Omar Laurel.”
“An inspector,” I said. “Damn. Did they give anything up?”
“Not really. They threatened me with a review. Said that I should have detained the suspect. But I said that he wasn’t a suspect, that all he did was to say to ask a question, and anyway, I thought he was crazy.” He spoke as if he were arguing with the brass, showing that he was a good cop, a good liar.
“Nothing else?”
“That’s what Laurel asked,” Henri replied. “When he did I asked, ‘Like what?’ And he asked did the guy give any other names? I told him that French was my first language but that I had excellent English except for all the foreign names. ‘At one point,’ I said, ‘he asked me to try “Guys-which” or “toucan”—something like that.’ ”
I grinned at my desk, thinking that the kid would be a great detective one day.
“And did he come up with a fit?” I asked.
“He said, ‘Cumberland’?”
“Too smart by half,” I said. “Listen, man, forget you talked to me. Drop the whole thing.”
“You not gonna tell me what it’s about?”
“Your father once told me that the day after you were born he bought a pistol. He said that he’d never needed one before, but when he saw you he knew that he had to be ready to die for his son.”
“That’s my dad. Good luck, Joe. Call if you need me.”
One e-mail answered and four to go.
My second e-mail was sent through a remote router that stripped off any electronic connections to me. I identified myself as Tom Boll, an investigator working for parties interested in the disappearance of Johanna Mudd. I knew that Braun had set a meeting with Mudd and that when he didn’t show up she disappeared. My sources (whatever those might have been) had informed me that he, Braun, was investigating the conviction of the cop killer A Free Man. I went on to say that I needed information about his case in order to see if his enemies were also against Ms. Mudd.
That was a long shot, but I thought I might at least have electronic communication with the lawyer-celeb, gathering a few crumbs in the process.
At 4:14 p.m. Aja-Denise walked in. I was sitting at the reception desk considering the tips of my left hand’s fingers. My teenage daughter wore a red dress that was barely acquainted with her upper thighs and white vinyl platform shoes that elevated her to near my height. The green straps of a backpack dug into her bare shoulders.
“What?” she asked me.
“Are you wearing anything under that slip?”
“Daddy!”
I held up a lecturing finger and said, “Just think if you walked in here and all I had on was a T-shirt and a pair of those skin-tight satin trunks that those men were wearing at Sunset Beach. Because, girl, that would be overdressed compared to what you got on right now.”
The thing about me and A.D. is that we know what to say to each other. She shifted a little uncomfortably and placed her arms in such a way as to cover some of her flesh.
“Everybody dresses like this.”
“Answer my question.”
“I guess I wouldn’t want that,” she agreed. “But if I go all the way home I won’t be able to work for you today.”
“What you got in the backpack?”
“A trench coat.”
“Put it on.”
She opened her mouth to protest but I opened my eyes wide and she took off the incongruous drab green backpack instead.
The trench coat was light tan and short hemmed. She put it on, fastening all the buttons and tying the sash around her waist. The coat wasn’t much longer than the red slip and it fit her like a dress suit. But at least there was something left to the imagination.
“You know we’re gonna have that talk someday soon,” I said.
“I know.” She gave me that wry expression inherited from her mother.
I love that child. During my most difficult years it was only her and Gladstone who never let me down.
The buzzer to the door sounded and A.D. went to answer.
It was the in-person reply to the third e-mail I dispatched.
“Hey,” Aja said with real welcome in her voice. She backed away from the entrance, exposing Willa Portman wearing a simple and mostly shapeless black-and-orange dress and a pink sweater, and carrying that same briefcase.
“Hi-i,” she said to all and sundry.
“Miss Portman.”
“Mr. Oliver. I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“No. Aja and I were just discussing the office dress code. She told me that I cannot wear a wifebeater to work.”
Willa smiled and I gestured for her to enter my office.
“Want me to come take notes?” A.D. asked.
“No,” I said before closing the door.
“I see you got it,” I said to my unlikely client when we were seated.
“Nineteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars and a pretty nifty briefcase too.”
“Pretty nifty,” I parroted. “Where you from?”
“A small town in Ohio called Martins Ferry.”
“The poet James Wright is from there.”