“Beau Livingston, Mayor Deacon’s chief of staff, went to Harvard,” I said. “Did you know that?”
Kingsman’s previous hesitation now seemed like a blip. This was a full-on freeze-up. The judge was hiding something.
“Yes, I did know that,” said Kingsman finally. “Beau’s the one who arranged my staying at the club.”
“That was nice of Beau,” I said.
“It was.” Kingsman’s tone shifted on a dime. It was as if he were reminding himself that this was his house and I was a guest, an uninvited one at that. “Is that what you’ve come to talk to me about?” he asked.
The subtext was clear as could be. If it is, you won’t be staying long, Dr. Death.
“No. It’s something else,” I said, taking out my phone. One click brought up the picture. “I wanted to show you something.”
Kingsman looked at the tattoo. I didn’t even get the chance to tell him the arm belonged to Timitz.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
He rolled up the right sleeve of his red robe, showing me the same tattoo.
“He wants you dead after all,” I said.
“No,” said Kingsman. “It’s not me.”
He told me why. Then he told me who. There was another ace of spades.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
Chapter 105
THE BASIS for any murder: motive and means.
Kingsman had said enough for me to figure out the motive; now it was all about the means.
How does Timitz kill the mayor of New York City?
“Tell him it’s urgent!” I yelled into my cell phone while breaking around half a dozen traffic laws at the same time. I was going ninety on a motorcycle without my helmet so I could talk on the phone while weaving in and out of traffic on the West Side Highway.
“I’m sorry. He’s not available,” said Deacon’s assistant. I could barely hear her with the wind whipping past my ears.
“What about Livingston? Is he in his office?”
“What did you say your name was again?” she asked. “Reingold?”
For Christ’s sake. “Dylan Reinhart!”
“Oh, of course…Dr. Reinhart,” she said. Nice to know she was up on current events. It’s not like she worked at City Hall or anything.
Her knowledge of who I was at least got me what I needed—the mayor’s whereabouts. Livingston was with him. Only I could still barely hear her.
“Say that again—where are they headed?” I asked.
In my mind, all I could see was the pain on Kingsman’s face when I pressed him about his relationship with the mayor. He didn’t want to tell me anything, but he had to. He always had his friend’s back.
The two were among a handful of air force pilots who called themselves the Black Aces based on the black-ops missions they flew in Lebanon during the mid-1980s. Kingsman was one. Edward “Edso” Deacon was another. All of them had the same tattoo, and their bond was thicker than blood. After all, they had secrets they couldn’t even share with their closest family members.
Decades later, long after their flying days were done, Kingsman and Deacon apparently racked up a few new secrets. Timitz had discovered what they were.
“That’s all I can tell you,” said Kingsman. He wasn’t about to incriminate himself.
It was enough, though.
I shot between a Prius and a Range Rover, the southbound traffic on the highway slowing to a crawl near midtown. Pressing my phone even harder against my ear, I was just able to make out what the mayor’s assistant was saying. She, too, was practically yelling.
“…to Queens…throwing out the first pitch…Citi Field.”
“How long has it been on his schedule?” I asked.
“I’m not exactly…at least a couple of…”
“Did you say days?”
“No,” she said. “Weeks.”
She was saying something more, but I’d stopped listening. I couldn’t help it. The only thing in my head now was Timitz. He was dying on the couch in Grimes’s apartment, dying and singing.
Take me out to the ball game…
I cranked my right wrist, maxing the throttle, the wheels on my bike jerking forward as I swung out to the narrow shoulder, blowing through the red light at the 42nd Street exit before darting in front of the oncoming traffic to cut across midtown, heading east for Flushing, Queens. Were there any more laws I could possibly break?
Hell, yeah.
I was just getting started.
Chapter 106
“JESUS CHRIST, mate, you sound like you’re in a wind tunnel,” said Julian.
It was actually the Midtown Tunnel. I was halfway through it, weaving in and out of both eastbound lanes like a guy with a death wish. Between my phone and the throttle, I didn’t have a free hand to flip my middle finger to all the cars honking at me. “I need you to check something,” I said.
“Check?” Julian said, laughing. He knew I meant “hack.”
“Administrative payroll for the New York Mets,” I said. “Elijah Timitz.”
“You got it,” he said. “One minute.”
Julian’s special talents aside—or maybe because of them—his next greatest asset was the ability to ignore human impulses. For example, anyone else would’ve asked, “What’s going on?” or “Why do you need to know if the Dealer ever worked at Citi Field?”
If I was the one asking—that’s all he needed to know. The details could come later over a bottle of very expensive whiskey, my treat.
Julian had asked for a minute. All he needed was half that.
“No,” he said, coming back on. “No Timitz with the Mets.”
“The entire payroll?”
“Unless he was an intern.”
“No; that wouldn’t make sense.”
“Wait. There’s something else I could try,” he said.
“What?” I asked. But that was my human impulse. Stupid question.
“Got it,” said Julian, another half minute later. “They farm out some of their overnight security, a company in Queens called Guardian. Timitz started there six months ago. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said. “One more thing.”
In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer with the FSB, Russia’s version of the CIA, died in London from acute radiation poisoning after being exposed to polonium-210. It didn’t happen by accident. Whoever did it never wanted to be caught, and to this day he still hasn’t been. Rest assured that the culprit wasn’t a serial killer.
“If you wanted to kill someone from the grave—one man and one man only—and he’s about to throw out the first pitch at Citi Field in ten minutes, how do you do it?” I asked Julian.
“Are we talking about Elijah Timitz, the son of a demolitions expert? If we are, you do it the same way I know that at this very moment you’re on Northern Boulevard, exactly four-tenths of a mile from the stadium,” said Julian. “Make that three-tenths now.”
Then, with one more sentence, he explained exactly what he meant.
I hung up with Julian, shoving my phone away to get the maximum rpm from my bike, the first glimpse of Citi Field up ahead.
Forget that bottle of expensive whiskey, Julian. You, my friend, are getting a case and then some…
Chapter 107