Tower of Babel Page 19

  “Can I see some ID?” the young cop asked.

  Ted stood slowly. “I’m reaching for my wallet,” he said before placing his hand behind his back and lifting the slim billfold from his right hip. “Is there a problem?”

  “I thought I smelled marijuana,” the cop said. “Did I smell marijuana?”

  Ted had seen this shakedown often enough on the streets, though he had always ignored it. It was an indignity inflicted mostly on young black or brown men—though to be fair he had also seen kids with white or yellow skin treated the same way. Race-based profiling was difficult to maintain in a borough that boasted citizens of almost every ethnic persuasion on the planet. The possible aroma of burning weed was enough of an excuse to demonstrate the power of the beat cop. But Ted wasn’t young or in any other way an obvious choice for rousting.

  “I don’t smell anything, Officer,” Ted said.

  “Would you turn out your pockets, sir?”

  He wasn’t armed or carrying drugs. He didn’t even have any loose change. But the pockets on his grey flannel slacks were tacked in place. They did not turn out.

  “I’m afraid they don’t work that way. I’ll empty my jacket pockets, but . . .” He shrugged.

  “Place all the items on the bench and then step away,” the cop said.

  “What’s this about?” Ted asked, though he quickly complied. “I’m simply waiting for a friend.” His wallet, his phone, a pen, a small tin of Altoid mints. Then his fingers found the envelope with the remaining $800 of Cheryl’s money. That much cash in this neighborhood was going to generate suspicion. He paused for a moment before placing it on the bench.

  Lester snorted in his sleep. The cop gave him a quick glance and then ignored him. Ted stepped back and the cop picked up the wallet.

  “Edward Molloy,” he read aloud. “What’s your address, Mr. Molloy?”

  Ted rattled it off. “That’s really my wallet and ID.” Keeping his voice level and free of any attitude, he continued. “I can tell you my Amex number if you want.”

  The cop ignored this. He reached for the tin of mints. “Is there anything in here?”

  “Yes,” Ted said. “Mints.”

  The cop shook the container before handing it to Ted. “Would you open it, sir?”

  Ted snapped it open and risked a look up and down the street. No sign of the Judge or a car that might be his.

  “Is your friend running late?” the cop asked with the barest hint of disbelief in the existence of this party.

  Ted ignored the innuendo. “Is there anything else, Officer?” Why had this cop chosen Ted? What unimaginable profile could he possibly fit?

  The cop glanced at the tin and then down at the items on the bench. “Would you open that envelope?”

  Ted froze for a split second.

  “Sir? Do we have a problem?”

  “No, Officer.” Ted felt as if he were falling down a steep precipice—in slow motion. He picked up the envelope and opened it.

  The cop looked inside. “Would you mind stepping over to the car? I want my partner to see this.”

  Lester snorted again. It sounded less like a snore. More like a strangled laugh. Ted found none of this funny.

  The older cop thumbed the bills in the envelope. He looked up. The squint had nothing to do with the bright sunlight. It was a sign to the world that after twenty-some years of seeing it all, hearing it all, and maybe even smelling it all, he had lost his sense of wonder. He wasn’t buying any of it.

  “You see, Mr. Molloy, while it is quite unusual for us to find a perfectly innocent man, well-dressed and carrying a large amount of cash in large denominations, sitting on a bench in this neighborhood, we do occasionally come across not-so-innocent men of a similar description who are here for the purpose of purchasing illegal drugs,” the older cop said. “Would you be one of those people, Mr. Molloy?”

  Ted heard Lester give a hacking cough.

  Ted knew enough to say nothing. They could roust him, maybe even take him to the precinct. But there were no grounds for an arrest. Why would they want to spend their afternoon doing the necessary paperwork only to have to release him the moment his lawyer arrived? And the bigger question was why they were giving him trouble at all. He could easily have a legitimate reason to be there.

  “I haven’t done anything. I’d like to go. May I have my possessions?” Out of the corner of his eye, Ted saw Lester pull himself erect and stagger away.

  The squint narrowed slightly. “Why don’t we do this at the precinct? Is that all right with you, Mr. Molloy?”

  “Am I under arrest?” Ted asked.

  “Not at this time.”

  “Then I’d rather not,” he said with a smile.

  “I’m going to insist, Mr. Molloy.” The smile hadn’t worked on the first cop either.

  “I have an appointment,” Ted said, though he was no longer sure that this was true.

  “I think it was canceled. Meanwhile, I don’t believe that you are safe in this neighborhood, especially carrying this much cash. Pick up your things, and we’ll give you a ride to the station.”

  And the realization struck. Lester must have figured it out long before, but he’d had the advantage of being an observer, not the mark. Ted had been played.

  “He sent you, didn’t he?” Ted said.

  The older cop slowly shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  They weren’t leaving without him.

  “Can you at least play the siren?” Ted asked. “I’ve always wanted to ride in a cop car with the siren wailing.”

  Ted let the young cop guide him into the back seat.

  -41-

  They left Ted on a metal folding chair inside the entrance. A policeman seated behind a thick Plexiglas window buzzed the two patrolmen through a door, and they disappeared into the inner sanctum of the precinct.

  Ted took out his cell phone, half expecting the desk cop to stop him, but the man ignored him.

  “Kenzie? Did you pick up Lester?”

  “He’s with me.”

  “Take him to the church, and let him get cleaned up.”

  “How are you? What are they doing to you?”

  “Nothing now. They left me sitting here. No one said a thing.”

  “What happened? Where’s the Judge?”

  Ted gave a sour laugh. “It is a demonstration in power—and a game. Judge Fitzmaurice never had any intention of meeting me there.”

  “Just for a laugh at your expense?”

  “No. He knows I haven’t rescinded that motion and he’s pissed. He told me what he wanted on Saturday. It’s Tuesday and I’m not falling in line.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I’ll give you a call when I know something. I have a feeling it’s going to be a while.”

  Ted entertained himself by checking the upcoming rotation for the Mets’ road trip. When he had wrung all the juice out of that distraction, he checked the time. He’d been waiting for all of five minutes. It felt like an hour.

  Thirty minutes later, no one had come in or gone out the door since he’d arrived. The desk cop had a pencil in his hand and was staring intently down at something in front of him. A crossword puzzle? Sudoku?

  Ted stood and walked over. The cop saw him coming and slid to the side whatever it was he had been doing.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. Ted saw the nameplate over his badge. menendez. He had a Clark Gable mustache, so perfectly groomed he must have trimmed it that morning.

  Ted swung his head to the side, trying to appear casual. He saw what the cop had been reading. Civil Procedure, 7th Edition. Law school. First year. “Well, Officer Menendez, I’d like to know what’s up.”

  “How’s that?” He seemed genuinely confused by the question.

  “Well, those two offi
cers left me sitting here.”

  “Who would that be?”

  Ted described the pair.

  “What’s your interest in them?”

  “They picked me up and drove me here. They told me to take a seat. I haven’t seen them since.”

  “I couldn’t say. But they’re out on patrol. If you would like to wait, they’ll be back by four. That’s end of their shift.”

  “Shit,” Ted said. It slipped out without thought. He’d been played again.

  “If it’s an emergency—”

  Ted cut him off. “No. Thank you. It’s fine. Really. Fine.” He spun around and headed for the exit.

  “Sir?” the cop called after him. “Your ID?” He held up a brown envelope.

  Ted walked back and took it from him. He checked inside. His driver’s license. The envelope with Cheryl’s money. He counted it. All there. He looked up at Officer Menendez, who was making no effort to hide his smirk. “Thank you again. I’ll be sure to let everyone know how hospitable you’ve all been.”

  “Have a good day.”

  But Ted was out the door, his fingers already punching in Kenzie’s number on his phone. “These sons of bitches left me sitting on a goddamn folding chair and went out the back door.”

  “So they’re not holding you?”

  “No. Damn it.”

  “You’ll have to explain why that’s a bad thing.”

  “Damn. How’s Lester?”

  “Sleeping it off. He did some self-medication with that bottle of vodka.”

  “Damn.”

  “He’ll be fine. He needs the rest. I left him wrapped in blankets.”

  “You have the car and driver?”

  “Mohammed? We’re headed your way now.”

  Ted was standing on the curb outside the entrance. The street was lined with automobiles parked half-on, half-off the sidewalk. Police cruisers, government issue, stripped down models, and personal vehicles took up all the space in front of the spiked iron fence. Pedestrians would have to worm their way through or walk in the street. Wheelchairs, baby strollers, and shopping carts had no chance of getting through. If the point was to prevent terrorists from being able to place a car bomb directly in front of the precinct, it was an effective barrier, at the expense of community inconvenience and disfavor. Ted thought the explanation was much simpler—the cops parked there because they could get away with it.

  “There’s a deli on the corner,” he said. “I’ll be waiting out front.”

  “Eight minutes,” she said.

  It took less.

  Mohammed looked a little wild-eyed. “Are we in the hood?” he asked as Ted hopped in the back.

  “Are you nervous?” Ted asked. Considering that the man’s home country was practically in a perpetual state of war, Ted was unprepared for this shyness.

  Mohammed muttered something that sounded like prayers.

  “I think all this cloak-and-dagger action has pushed Mohammed out of his comfort zone,” Kenzie said. “We may want to give him the night off.” She appeared to be calm and in control.

  Ted thought they could all use some down time, but it wasn’t in the cards. “We need to regroup and come up with another plan,” he said.

  “What do you really think happened with the Judge?” Kenzie asked.

  “He survived Albany politics for fifty years,” Ted said. “He’s developed an infallible threat-alert system. If he could patent it, he could make billions licensing it to the military.”

  “He set you up?”

  “Beautifully. I’m sure of it.”

  She laughed gently.

  “And that’s funny because . . . ?”

  “Lester played us the recording of you and those cops.”

  Ted grimaced. “I’m sure that in another decade or two, I will also find it amusing.”

  She laughed harder. It was a good sound. He found he was smiling.

  “That’s better,” she said. “They’re up on points, but I’m used to losing. The difference is that I don’t quit when they’re ahead.”

  Ted had to laugh. “So what’s next?”

  “Steaks. It’s Tuesday night. Let’s see who shows up at Reisner’s table this week.”

  -42-

  Ted tried—and failed—to imagine in which decade the facade of the restaurant would have been fashionable. There was a wagon wheel over the entrance and a vehicle on the roof that could have been a badly aged simulacrum of a buckboard. But the western motif didn’t hold up, as the front walls were covered with a faux stone patina, reminiscent of a poor man’s castle.

  “I’ve never been here before,” Ted said. “Is it this cheesy inside, too?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kenzie said. “It’s my first time, too.”

  The Uber had dropped them on the far side of the broad boulevard, a short ways past the city line. A mild misting rain had set in, and Kenzie ran to the covered doorway of a used auto dealer showroom. Ted joined her and struggled to open an umbrella.

  She was wearing a long-sleeved black dress with a scoop deep enough to reveal that there was no bra underneath. Her distinctive red hair was hidden under a straight black wig that hung to the middle of her back. She had ladled on the eyeliner. The shadows on her pale skin gave her an eerie, but intriguing, look.

  “I’m on a date with Morticia Addams,” he said. “I wish I looked half as dashing as Raul Julia.” Ted had not bothered with a disguise, as he did not expect to run into anyone who might recognize him.

  “You need a fedora,” Kenzie said. “You could pass for one of those private eyes in the old movies.”

  “Philip Marlowe,” he said, doing his best Bogart impersonation. “I’m the shamus.”

  She raised both eyebrows and shook her head, indicating incomprehension. Ted was crushed. First she didn’t like baseball, and now this. “Bogart,” he said. “The Big Sleep.”

  “That’s a movie? It must be before my time.”

  He pulled his battered ego upright. “Who’s supposed to show at this meeting? Will Reisner come?”

  “The father? No. The head of the LBC empire can’t be bothered with small fry. We may see the son. He’ll bring a bagman. A lawyer or one of the midlevel managers.”

  “And whomever they’re paying off,” he said.

  “This is where it happens. City councilmen, county executives from all over the tristate, planning and zoning board members. Maybe a judge or two. We’ll just have to see what gets thrown up on the beach tonight.”

  Traffic was light on the boulevard that long after rush hour, but the few cars made up for the light volume with excessive speed. The rain hissed under their tires as they passed. Ted silently cursed the Uber driver for not making the U-turn and depositing them in front of the door.

  “Ready to make a dash?” he said. “The light’s about to change.”

  “I can’t get these shoes wet.”

  “Shall I carry you?”

  “No. I’ll fly across on my broomstick.”

  The light was a block away. It turned red. They waited until a delivery truck rumbled by, brakes squealing as it approached the intersection, and then they ran.

  “I specifically asked for that table over there,” Kenzie said, exhibiting a pout that would have melted the heart of any man.

  The maître d’ shrugged. He had no heart.

  “There’s no one sitting there,” she said. “It’s an obvious mistake.”

  “Reserved,” he said.

  “By me,” she said.

  He shrugged again. The action perfectly communicated the thought: he didn’t give a rat’s ass what they wanted, or what they had requested, or even if they walked out in high dudgeon. On a tired Tuesday night, he still had a line of people waiting for a canceled reservation. Ted considered tipping him a dollar for the pure pleasure
of pissing him off but decided he would rather remain forgettable.

  “Just send a waiter over.” He held Kenzie’s chair for her.

  “We’re not going to be able to hear a thing,” she said.

  Kenzie’s sources had told her that the LBC people had a long-standing Tuesday night reservation for the large round table in the corner of the middle dining room. The fireplace and a wainscoted wall provided privacy on two sides. An aisle cut off the big table from all but one deuce. She had asked for that two-top, claiming it was where her husband had proposed, and been assured by the woman on the phone that she could have it. If the request had made it into the reservation book—which Ted doubted—the maître d’ had ignored it.

  “It’s so noisy in here we wouldn’t have heard much anyway,” Ted said. “At least from here we can stare without being obvious.”

  The table they’d been given was across the room, tucked behind two four-tops that were already occupied. They wouldn’t be invisible, but they were partially shielded.

  Ted looked around the room. The chairs were all oversized, as were most of the clientele. Neither the Wild West nor the Camelot decorating scheme of the exterior had made it to this dining room, which seemed to be modeled on Adirondack Arts and Crafts meets Prague Art Deco. A lot of money had been spent to produce this effect, and Ted couldn’t help but feel that the expense had been unwise. But something else was bothering him, and it took a minute for him to identify the problem.

  “In Queens you don’t usually get this white a crowd,” he said.

  “We’re outside the city line,” she said. “This is the burbs.”

  Ted glanced around again as the maître d’ escorted a woman toward the big table in the corner. “Ah, no.” He scooched his chair around so that his back was to the room.

  “What?” Kenzie asked. She grasped the table to keep it from rocking.

  “Big hair? Lemon yellow? Just came in?”

  Kenzie laughed. “An old flame?”

  “No. That’s Cheryl.”

  “That’s Cheryl?”

  “Yes. Why?”