Chaz cleared his throat, more for effect than need. “I checked Google Earth and saw that there was an Exxon station two stores down in the direction the guy was driving. I made a few calls. The gas station surveillance video captures the street.”
Most people understand on some level that there are a lot of surveillance cameras out there, but very few people really get it. There are forty million surveillance cameras in the United States alone and the number keeps growing. You never go through a day without being recorded.
“Anyway,” Chaz said, “the request may take another hour or two, but when we get it, we should be able to spot the license plate.”
“Great.”
“I’ll call you when it comes. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Okay,” Kat said. Then: “Chaz?”
“Yeah?”
“I appreciate this. I mean, you know, uh, thanks.”
“Can I have your hot friend’s phone number?”
Kat hung up. Her phone rang again. The caller ID read Brandon Phelps.
“Hey, Brandon.”
But the voice on the other end wasn’t Brandon’s. “May I ask with whom I’m speaking?”
“You called me,” Kat reminded him. “Hey, who is this? What’s going on?”
“This is Officer John Glass,” the man on the phone said. “I’m calling about Brandon Phelps.”
? ? ?
Central Park’s 840 acres is policed by the 22nd Precinct, the city’s oldest, better known as the Central Park Precinct. Kat’s father had spent eight years there in the seventies. Back then, the officers of the “two-two” were housed in an old horse stable. They still were, in a way, though a sixty-one-million-dollar renovation had given the place maybe too much of a new shine. The precinct now looked more like a museum for modern art than anything to do with law enforcement. In a typically New York City move—that is, you didn’t know if it was for real or a joke—the rather impressive glass atrium had been built out of bulletproof glass. The original estimate called for the renovation to cost almost twenty million less, but in what one might also consider classically Manhattan style, the builders had unexpectedly run across old trolley tracks.
The old ghosts never quite leave this city.
Kat hurried to the front desk and asked for Officer Glass. The desk sergeant pointed at a slender black man behind her. Officer Glass was in uniform. She may have known him—Central Park Precinct was pretty close to her own 19th—but she couldn’t be sure.
Glass was talking to two elderly gentlemen who looked as though they’d just come from a gin tournament in Miami Beach. One wore a fedora and used a cane. The other wore a light blue jacket and trousers the orange of a mango. Glass was taking notes. As Kat approached, she heard him tell the two old men that they could go now.
“You have our numbers, right?” Fedora asked.
“I do, thank you.”
“You call us if you need us,” Mango Pants said.
“I’ll do that. And again, thanks for your help.”
When they started away, Glass spotted her and said, “Hey, Kat.”
“We know each other?”
“Not really, but my old man worked here with your old man. Your dad was a legend.”
You become a legend, Kat knew, by dying on the job. “So where’s Brandon?”
“He’s with the doctor in the back room. He wouldn’t let us take him to a hospital.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure, follow me.”
“How badly was he hurt?”
Glass shrugged. “Would have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for those two reliving their youth.” He gestured toward the two old men, Fedora and Mango Pants, slowly exiting the atrium.
“How’s that?”
“You know about the Ramble’s, uh, flamboyant past, right?”
She nodded. Even the official Central Park website referred to the Ramble as a “gay icon” and a “well-known site for private homosexual encounters throughout the twentieth century.” Back in the day, the dense vegetation and poor lighting made it perfect for so-called gay cruising. More recently, the Ramble had become not only the park’s premier woodland but something of a historical landmark for the LGBT community.
“Seems those two guys met in the Ramble fifty years ago,” Glass said. “So today they decided to celebrate their anniversary by going behind the old bushes and engaging in a little, uh, nostalgia.”
“In the daytime?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“They told me that, at their age, it’s hard to stay up late anymore. Or even up, I guess. So anyway, they were whatevering and they heard a commotion. They ran out—I don’t want to know in what stage of undress—and saw some ‘homeless guy’ attacking your boy.”
“How did they know he was homeless?”
“That was their description, not mine. It looks like the perp sneaked up on Brandon and punched him in the face. No warning, nothing. One of our witnesses said he saw a knife. The other said he didn’t, so I don’t know. Nothing was stolen—there was probably no time—but this was either a robbery or some guy off his meds. Maybe an old-fashioned gay basher, though I doubt that. Despite the actions of Romeo and, uh, Romeo, the Ramble isn’t known for that anymore, especially not in the daytime.”
Glass opened the door. Brandon was sitting on a table, talking to the doctor. There was tape across his nose. He looked pale and skinny, but then again, he always looked that way.
The doctor turned toward Kat. “Are you his mother?”
Brandon smiled at that. For a moment, Kat was insulted, but then she realized that, first off, she was indeed old enough to have a son his age—wow, that was depressing—and second, his actual mom probably looked younger than Kat. Double depressing.
“No. Just a friend.”
“I’d like him to go to the hospital,” the doctor said to Kat.
“I’m fine,” Brandon said.
“His nose is broken, for one thing. I also believe that he probably suffered some sort of concussion in the assault.”
Kat looked over at Brandon. Brandon just shook his head.
“I’ll look after him,” Kat said.
The doctor shrugged his surrender and headed out the door. Glass helped them with the rest of the paperwork. Brandon never saw his attacker. He didn’t seem to care much, either. He hurried through the paperwork. “I have something I need to tell you,” he whispered when Glass stepped away.
“Let’s concentrate first on what just happened, okay?”
“You heard Officer Glass. It was a random attack.”
Kat wasn’t buying that. Random? Now, when they were in the throes of . . .
Of what?
There was still no evidence to suggest any crimes were taking place. Besides, what other theories were there? Had the black-suited chauffeur disguised himself as a homeless man and followed Brandon into the Ramble? That made no sense either.
When Glass walked them back into the bulletproof atrium, Kat asked him to let her know the moment they learned anything.
“Will do,” Glass promised.
He shook both of their hands. Brandon thanked him, still in a rush to get outside. He sprinted away from the front door. Kat followed him up to the huge body of water—it took up an eighth of the park—called the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. Yes, for real.
Brandon checked his watch. “There’s still time.”
“For what?”
“To get down to Wall Street.”
“Why?”
“Someone is stealing my mother’s money.”