“Home is to the north,” I said. “That’s the logical direction.”
“She wasn’t going home, Mike. Get that through your brain,” Mercer said. His phone rang as he was talking to me. “Wallace here.”
Coop hates teeming rain in the dark of night, I thought while Mercer fielded the call. I couldn’t think of where she might be and how she would feel if the weather continued to grow more foul.
Mercer listened to the caller and then spoke, leaning against a lamppost to write something down. “I understand. Give me his name and phone number, please.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“That was the night manager from Uber. Everything’s computerized and since it’s charged to the customer’s account immediately, the information is easy to retrieve.”
“Shoot.”
“Alexandra Cooper ordered the car. Pickup in front of 240 East 65th Street.” Mercer pointed across the avenue, into the block that ran between Second and Third. The destination she punched in was 160 East 46th Street.”
We both knew that was Ken Aretsky’s Patroon. We both knew she’d intended to keep her date with Jake.
“The job got entered into the system as incomplete,” Mercer said.
“Meaning what?”
“Alex got charged for the ride she never took. She didn’t cancel the car, and the driver waited ten minutes at the site before the base cleared him to leave. Incomplete.”
“Call the guy,” I said.
Mercer glanced at his pad and dialed. His message went to voice mail.
“Sixty-Fifth Street doesn’t have NYPD surveillance cameras,” I said. “Let’s cross to the north and see if we get lucky.”
We walked past a bagel joint, a dry cleaner, and the old-fashioned diner on the corner. I jogged across the street.
“Bingo!” I turned to wave Mercer on. “Just what we needed. Sunshine Deli.”
Korean delis were consistently the site of more armed robberies than any other kind of business in the city. Almost every one of them had installed security cameras over the register and outside the entrance to the store. I looked above the door, at a corner of the awning, and saw the small black device.
“Police,” I said to the young woman behind the counter. She looked terrified, even after she saw the gold shield. “The video camera-how much tape is on it?”
“What?”
“The camera? How many hours at a time does it record?”
Her English was lousy. I understood it, though, when she said, “Twenty-four.”
“We need to look at it,” I said. “Right now.”
A customer came in for juice and a quart of ice cream. The woman made his change and then looked back at me.
“My boss not here. Come back tomorrow.”
“No way, lady,” I said, hoisting myself up onto the counter and reaching for the camera, which was mounted on the wall. If I didn’t look now, there would be little chance of getting what I needed tomorrow morning. “You know how this works, Mercer?”
“Is it digital or is there tape in there?”
I was pulling at the camera and its small black case. “Looks like tape.”
The woman had picked up the landline and was jabbering into the phone in Korean.
“Then it will just loop over itself,” Mercer said. “It will rerecord every twenty-four hours, replacing the old images.”
I pulled the entire unit out of the wall while the woman let out a yelp. I handed it to Mercer, who took the case apart.
“An empty spool,” he said. “Just meant so that if anyone thinks about doing a stickup in here, there appears to be a video.”
“Nothing there,” the woman said. She had started to cry.
“Cheaper this way,” I said, telling her to stay calm. “How about the one on the outside of the building? Any film in that?”
“No, sir. We never been robbed. Very safe neighborhood,” she said. “Not like last place in Queens. Many robberies.”
I threw the useless camera on the counter after I jumped down, handing her a twenty-dollar bill. “Sorry for the trouble, ma’am.”
We walked out and I followed Mercer up and down the block on both sides of the avenue. We didn’t see any cameras and most of the businesses were shut down for the night.
Mercer’s phone rang again. “Wallace here.”
He turned his back to me.
“Southwest corner of 65th and Second,” he said. “There’s two of us. I’m a really tall black guy, and my partner is about six foot one, dark hair. Seven minutes? Thanks very much.”
I put my face up into the falling rain, then lowered my head and shook it off. “Who’s coming?”
“That was my Uber friend. The driver who was supposed to pick Alex up is working again tonight. He just dropped a passenger off at New York University Medical Center. He’ll come up First and be here as fast as he can.”
We ducked into the diner to get out of the rain while we waited. I called the cop at the Midtown Security Initiative.
“I know you’ve got a lot of images to go through. We can narrow it down for you,” I said. I gave him the time of the incomplete Uber pickup. “Fast-forward to the top of that hour. The woman will be coming out of a restaurant midblock on the east side of Second, walking north. She should cross at the first light. Get as much of 65th Street as you can capture. There’s a black sedan-an Uber, if you can make out the sign in the driver’s side window-that pulls into the block either shortly before or after the woman does. I’ll have more for you in fifteen minutes.”
Five minutes later, a black Mercedes E500 came across 65th Street from First Avenue and stopped in front of the fire hydrant near the entrance to 230 East 65th.
“C’mon,” Mercer said, pushing open the door and crossing the avenue. I was just a few steps behind him.
We introduced ourselves to the nervous man who had stepped out of his car.
“I’m Sadiq,” he said. “My boss says there’s a problem.”
“No problem,” Mercer said, holding his arm out to keep me back. “We need your help, okay? It’s about last night.”
“I didn’t do nothing. Nothing at all,” he said, talking with his hands, which were trembling as he made circles in the air. “The lady didn’t wait for me.”
“What lady?”
“Miss Alexandra. That was the name on the order.”
Since Uber drivers didn’t know their fares personally-as many car service regular accounts do-it was common for them to ask for the passenger by first name when they pulled up to a location.
“Were you late?” Mercer asked.
“The request came in,” Sadiq said. “I was only about twenty blocks away. I gave a response time of six minutes.”
“Did you make your estimate?”
“I ran into a Con Edison crew, which slowed me down,” he said, rain dripping off the folds of his turban and streaking his face like tears. “Maybe one minute late. Maybe two.”
“Did you actually see the lady when you reached here?” Mercer asked.
“Well, how do I know? How do I know her?” Sadiq asked. “Very impatient lady.”
“What do you mean impatient?” I asked. “How do you know that?”
“He’s mine, Mike, okay?” Mercer didn’t want me flipping out on Sadiq.
How would this driver have known about Coop’s quick temper unless he’d had her in his car and she snapped at him?
“Slow it down,” Mercer said. “No need for you to be shaking, my friend. Just tell us what you saw when you pulled up last night.”
Sadiq shook his head up and down. “Well, I knew I was running a bit late. I was at the light on the far corner. It turned red just when I reached it.”
The driver pointed across the avenue.
“It wasn’t very cold. There were people-many people-crossing the street in front of my car. I couldn’t really see into the block ahead, where I was supposed to make the pickup,” he said. “But I was trying to look for Miss Alexandra.”
I hated that he called her by name. It sounded more like they had actually met.