“I know I can trust your discretion.”
“Always.”
Her eyes seemed to be focused on some middle distance. They kept moving down and to the right, which meant that she was internally debating something. I waited. If I pushed too hard, she’d close right up.
She turned to me. “You know I’d never divulge confidential details of an ongoing investigation, and I’m not going to start now. No leaks, no favors. I’ve never worked that way.”
“I know.”
“So the speculation seems to be that Marshall Marcus is laundering money for some very bad guys.”
“Laundering money? That’s ridiculous. The guy’s a billionaire. He doesn’t need to launder money. Maybe he’s managing money for some questionable clients. But that’s not the same thing as laundering it.”
She shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I hear. And I should also warn you: Gordon Snyder is not a guy you want for an enemy.”
“Some people say that about me.”
“That’s also true. But just… watch out for the guy. If he thinks you’re working against him, against his case, he’ll come gunning for you.”
“Oh?”
“He won’t break the law. But he’ll go right up to the edge. He’ll use every legal tool he has. Nothing gets in his way.”
“Consider me warned.”
“Okay. Now, do you have a picture of Alexa?”
“Sure,” I said, reaching into my breast pocket for one of the photos Marcus had given me. “But why?”
“I need to see her face.”
She came over and sat next to me on the couch, and I felt my heart speed up a little and I could feel the heat from her body. Another song was playing now: Judy Collins’s haunting ballad “My Father.” I handed her a picture of Alexa in her field hockey uniform, her blond hair pulled back in a headband, cheeks rosy and healthy, blue eyes sparkling.
“Pretty,” she said. “She looks like she’s got fight.”
“She does. She’s had a rough patch, last few years.”
“Not an easy age. I hated being seventeen.”
Diana never talked much about growing up, besides the fact that she was raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, where her father was with the U.S. Marshals Service and was killed in the line of duty when she was a teenager. After that her mother moved them to Sedona and opened a New Age jewelry and crystal shop.
I noticed her body shifting slightly toward me. “You know, I recognize that shirt,” she said. “Didn’t I give it to you?”
“You did. I haven’t taken it off since.”
“Good old Nico. You’re the one fixed point in a changing age.”
“Sherlock Holmes, right?”
She gave me one of her inscrutable smiles. “All right, I’ll put in a request to AT &T. I’ll find a way to push it through.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Look, it’s not about you. Or us. It’s about the girl. As far as I’m concerned, Alexa Marcus is legally a minor, and she may be in some kind of trouble, and that’s all I need to hear.”
“So does this make it officially an FBI matter?”
“Not necessarily. Not yet, anyway. But if I can help out on this, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks.” A long, awkward silence followed. Neither one of us was the type to mull over every slight, to pick at emotional scabs. Yet at the same time we were both blunt-spoken. And there we were, sitting in her apartment, just the two of us, and if ever there was a time to talk about the elephant in the room, this was it.
“So how come-” I began, but stopped. How come you never told me you were posted to Boston? I wanted to say. But I didn’t want it to sound like a reproach. Instead, I told her: “Well, same here. You ever need anything, I’ll be there. Right on your doorstep. Like a box from Zappos.”
She smiled and turned to look at me, but as soon as I met those green eyes and felt her breath on my face, my lips were on hers. They were warm and soft and her mouth tasted of lime, and I couldn’t resist exploring it.
A phone started ringing.
With my hands drifting to her hips, almost involuntarily, I was probably the first to notice her vibrating BlackBerry.
Diana pulled away. “Hold on, Nico,” she said, drawing her BlackBerry from the holster on her belt.
She listened. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right in.”
“What is it?”
“My predator,” she said. “He’s been texting me again. I think he’s getting a little suspicious. He wants to change our meeting time. They need me back at work. I’m-I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” I said.
She was on her feet, looking for her keycard and her house keys. “What the hell did we just do?” she said, not looking at me.
“What we just did-I don’t know, but-”
“I’ll let you know if I get anything back on that iPhone,” she said.
“Let me drive you back.”
Suddenly she was all business. She shook her head and said firmly, “My car’s right here.”
It felt like jumping out of a sauna into four feet of snow.
20.
Next, I drove over to the foot of Beacon Hill and pulled into the circular drive in front of the Graybar Hotel, the last place I knew Alexa had been.
You’d think most people would feel uneasy about spending the night in a hotel that used to be a prison. But the developers of the Graybar had done a remarkable job of converting the old Boston House of Corrections. It was once a grim, hulking, black monstrosity, filthy and overcrowded, the riots legendary. When Roger and I were kids and Mom drove us on Storrow Drive past the prison, we used to try to catch a glimpse of the inmates in their cell windows.
Personally, I don’t believe that buildings store negative energy, but the developers wanted to be safe, so they brought in a group of Buddhist monks to burn sage and chant prayers and cleanse the place of any bad karma.
The monks seemed to have missed a spot, though. The negative energy at the front desk was so thick I felt like pointing a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol at the supercilious front-desk clerk just to get his attention. He seemed to be caught up in a conversation about Jersey Shore with a female desk clerk. Plus the music in the lobby was ear-splittingly loud. Fortunately, my weapon was in my gun safe at the office.
I cleared my throat. “Can someone call Naji, please? Tell him it’s Nick Heller.” Naji was the hotel’s security director.
The guy sullenly picked up his phone and spoke softly into it. “He’ll be up soon,” he said. He had artfully messy hair with a lot of gel in it. His hair half covered his eyes. He had groovy day-old facial stubble. He wore a black suit that was too tight and too short in the arms, with high armholes and lapels about half an inch wide, like he’d borrowed it from Pee-wee Herman.
I stood at the desk, waiting. He went back to arguing about Snooki and The Situation. He noticed me out of the corner of his eye and turned around again, saying with annoyance, “Um, it might be a while?”
So I strolled through the lobby. I saw a sign for Slammer in a brass standing frame holder in front of an ancient-looking elevator. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and looked around. Flat-screen TVs mounted on the brick walls, all tuned to the same Fox News show. Celebrity mug shots on the walls, too-Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson, Janis Joplin, Eminem, even Bill Gates when he was a teenager. Everyone but my father, it seemed.
Leather couches and banquettes. A very long bar. Lights in the floors. A black iron railing around an atrium three stories high. At night this place was probably impressive, but in the unforgiving light of day it was drab and disappointing, like a magician’s stage props seen up close.
There were a fair number of security cameras, mostly the standard low-profile shiny black domes mounted on the ceiling. A few were camouflaged as spotlights-you could tell because the “bulbs,” actually camera lenses, were a different color. The ones behind the bar were there to discourage employees from pilfering cash or stealing bottles. The cameras in the lounge area were more discreetly concealed, probably because the bar patrons might have gotten uncomfortable if they knew their every embarrassing move was being recorded. Though it occurred to me that closed-circuit cameras worked perfectly with the prison décor.