“Who are you?” he immediately asked me.
Livingston did the honors. “Hank, this is Dr. Reinhart, the professor who—”
“Yeah, the book. Lucky you,” he said, shaking my hand. “Hank Saxon.”
Shoot-’em-Up Hank quickly briefed the mayor and the rest of us on what was known. There were four dead, all members of the same gang and all shot multiple times while walking along 112th Street.
“Where’s the card?” asked the mayor.
The commissioner glanced knowingly outside our circle. We were set apart from the crowd, thanks to a few barricades, but you could feel the countless eyes upon us—or, more specifically, on the mayor.
“It’s in my pocket,” answered Saxon. The subtext being that he wanted to keep it there and not on display.
“Of course,” said Deacon, nodding. “Fuck if I need to see it anyway. A joker, huh?”
“Yeah, a joker…jammed into the mouth of one of the victims,” said Saxon. “I’ve already had someone check, too. It’s the joker from the same Bicycle deck he’s been using—linen stock with a black core layer.”
“Was the card bent at all?” I asked.
“Bent?” asked Saxon.
“Folded? Creased? Anything but pristine?” I asked.
“It looks brand new. No prints, either—just like with the other cards,” said Saxon. “Ah, screw it…here.”
The commissioner reached inside his suit jacket, removing a small evidence bag containing the card. It was exactly as advertised—brand new, from the same kind of deck.
The joker.
Chapter 60
IF YOU wander into a pots-and-pans convention somewhere, you’ll quickly think the whole world revolves around pots and pans. Point being, people always steer a conversation to the things they care about most.
“Do we have the names of the victims yet?” asked Livingston.
What Beau Livingston cared about most in this world was his boss’s reelection. Maybe even more than his boss did.
“Only two of them were carrying ID,” said Saxon. “The first was Tyrell Burke.”
“Is there a middle name?” asked Livingston.
The commissioner squinted at the question momentarily before glancing at the pad in his hand. “Melvin,” he said. “His middle name was Melvin.”
Livingston exchanged glances with the mayor. Their minds were easier to read than the first line of an eye chart. Tyrell Melvin Burke? That’s not even close to a Jack.
“What about the other one?” asked Livingston.
Saxon checked his pad again. “Lawrence Tack,” he said. “That came off a credit card he had on him. No middle name yet.”
“Tack?” I asked. By then I’d already stolen a peek at Saxon’s notepad. A doctor with the yips had better handwriting than he did. “Are you sure that’s a T?”
Saxon looked again. “My bad…that’s a J, not a T,” he said. “The kid’s name was Lawrence Jack.”
“Jack?” repeated Livingston.
“Yeah,” said Saxon. “Actually, he’s the one who had the card in his mouth.”
I looked over at Elizabeth. She knew what I was thinking. No wonder she looked away.
If the police commissioner, the highest official with the NYPD, had actually known that the Dealer had pinned the jack of spades to Colton Lange’s burned-to-a-crisp corpse, this would’ve been his “Aha!” moment. But Saxon said nothing. He hadn’t been told.
“Hank, you mentioned there were four victims total?” asked Livingston.
“Yes,” said Saxon. “We got them out of here to the morgue right before you arrived. Thought it best to be quick, given the crowd.”
“Four kids gunned down in broad daylight,” said the mayor. “How many witnesses were there?”
Saxon again glanced knowingly outside our circle. In what was already a busy intersection, there were now more than a hundred people gathered. “None so far,” he said.
Livingston’s head snapped back. “How could that—”
Elizabeth cut him off. For all his savvy, the mayor’s chief of staff could still manage to be a little too white and a little too Connecticut. “They were gang members,” she said. “No one’s coming forward.”
“They wouldn’t be ratting on anyone except a serial killer,” said Livingston.
“Would you like me to get you a bullhorn so you can tell them that?” asked Elizabeth.
Everybody and his uncle were here, yet no one was ever going to admit to seeing anything. These were the rules of the street. Keep your mouth shut.
C’mon, people. Can I get a witness?
Next thing I knew, he was standing right next to me.
Chapter 61
“DID YOU know that Bob Dylan won eleven Grammys and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988?” he asked.
I playfully rubbed my chin. “Gee, I didn’t know that,” I said.
“I googled him,” he told me. “Dylan’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, but Miles Davis is still the coolest,” I said. “Right?”
“That’s for sure,” he said.
“I take it you two know each other?” asked Elizabeth.
I turned back to see everyone—Elizabeth, the mayor, Livingston, and Saxon—all staring at me talking to a kid who was four foot nothing, including his Questlove afro.
Small world.
“Hey, you’re the mayor!” said Miles, pointing.
“That’s right; I am,” said Deacon. “Who might you be?”
Miles stuck out his hand as if remembering what he’d been taught. “I’m Miles Winston,” he announced. “It’s very nice to meet you, sir.”
I watched as Deacon shook Miles’s hand with a broad smile. Maybe the mayor was truly charmed by the boy, or maybe it was nothing more than his political instincts kicking in. There were, after all, news cameras and photographers scattered all around us. Not to mention the crowd itself.
Livingston, on the other hand, was neither charmed nor on the ballot in November. “Hey, kid,” he said, frowning. “You need to get back behind those barricades, okay?”
Livingston sounded like a complete tool, but it did make me wonder what Miles was doing all by himself. He shouldn’t have been alone. The next second, he knew he shouldn’t have been.
“Miles!” yelled his mother. “Miles Winston!”
I turned back to see Ms. Winston squeezing between two barricades, running toward us in a panic. With a quick hand wave, Saxon told one of the cops about to stop her that it was okay.
What followed was what surely happens at shopping malls and playgrounds every day when parents don’t see their kids wandering off. Sudden relief tempered by the anger of having been scared to death. Ms. Winston handled it better than I expected, though. There was far more relief than anger.
“Look, Mom,” said Miles, pointing again. “It’s the mayor!”
Deacon remained all smiles as he pressed the flesh with Ms. Winston. Naturally, he asked if she was a registered voter.
But Livingston was thinking bigger. His smile stretched wider than his boss’s. A minute earlier, he’d told Miles to scram. Now he wanted him and his mother to stay right where they were, especially after she mentioned that the two of them lived directly across the street.