He walked slowly and didn’t try to hide himself. A tall thin man with a shaved head, dressed in a long black leather coat, a black shirt beneath opened to the chest. His strides were so long and smooth that he seemed to be floating when observed from the waist up, as Lydia saw him out the window. He came to a stop and looked in the store. Lydia moved out of sight instinctively, letting the glass case close. But it was too late. Obviously, he’d seen her come in there. He’d seen her move into the aisle. She felt her heart start to dance in her chest as a wide smile spread across his face. He lifted a hand and then wagged a finger at her, in a gesture of reprimand. There was a terrible menace in his smile, a strange vacancy in his eyes. Where have I seen him before? she thought. And then she remembered, the abandoned building in the Bronx. Was it the same man? She couldn’t be sure. The man she’d seen in Riverdale had seemed stockier, not as tall. But it was the same leather coat. She was sure of that.
She reached into her bag and felt the cool metal of the Beretta she carried. She saw the skinny Arab guy at the counter look at the man on the street and then look at her uneasily. He quickly got down on the floor and she heard a cell phone dialing, then some rapid-fire Arabic or some other language she didn’t understand at all.
By now she’d wrapped her fingers around the grip of her gun, her breathing came faster, her lungs felt like they couldn’t get enough air. He started to move. She drew her gun from the bag and heard the clerk issue a little scream. He must have been watching her on a surveillance camera somewhere. She took cover, her body pressed against the metal end cap of the shelves, and watched the door from the mirror mounted near the ceiling at the far corner of the small shop. She saw his large form darken the doorway. She waited for the jingle of the bell announcing that he was coming in but there was silence. And more silence. Then a little whimper, a sniffle. The clerk behind the counter was crying. Then she heard sirens off in the distance. She saw the man in the door turn his head and then run off.
She moved out after him. On the street, she watched him run up Ninety-Fifth toward Broadway and then disappear around the corner. She turned and ran in the opposite direction toward her car.
Eleven
You’re looking a little frayed, Lydia,” said Dax over the speaker at the end of his drive. “And you’re late. And your phone is off.”
She gave the finger to the camera near the speaker box.
“That’s a vulgar gesture, quite unladylike,” Dax said.
“Dax, will you just open the gate?” she heard Jeffrey say in the background.
The tall wrought-iron gate hanging between two huge stone ballasts opened slowly and Lydia drove up the circular drive. She was glad to hear the heavy metal clang behind her, not looking over her shoulder for the first time since she left the city. She was still shaky with the residual effects of adrenaline; she felt exhausted.
Jeffrey walked out the front door and approached, opened the door of her car for her.
“What’s up?” he said, as she sank into his arms.
“I’ve had a really bad night,” she said.
Was it the same guy?” Dax wanted to know, when they were all gathered in his kitchen after she told them what had happened. She ate a peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwich Dax provided, an offer that represented the pinnacle of his culinary skills. But Lydia was starving and it tasted fantastic.
“I’m not sure,” she said between gooey bites. “It could have been.”
“Sounds like it,” said Jeff.
“Yeah,” she said. “But it could have been any bald-headed guy wearing a black leather coat. I mean this is New York after all.”
“But how many of them would be following you around?”
She shrugged. “No shortage of freaks in this city.”
“But it wasn’t random,” said Jeffrey, looking at her seriously. She could see that his shoulders were tense. “That wasn’t your vibe.”
“No, that wasn’t my vibe,” she said, shaking her head. “He shook his finger at me, like a warning.” She shuddered a little, remembering his smile, the empty, flat look in his eyes.
“Anybody who knows anything about you knows that a warning has the same effect as a dare,” said Dax. The only indication that he was worried or concerned at all was the slight thickening of his accent. He drew out dare to about three syllables: de-a-ear. Lydia had noticed that excitement, anger, and alcohol often caused him to become nearly unintelligible.
“Okay, so what were they warning you about?” asked Jeffrey.
“Maybe someone doesn’t want you looking into Lily’s disappearance,” offered Dax.
“Or Mickey’s suicide,” said Lydia.
“Or The New Day,” said Jeffrey, eating the crust of the sandwich Lydia had left on her plate.
“Well, you know my philosophy,” said Lydia. “The more people don’t want you looking into something, the more reason there generally is to look.”
“That philosophy has not worked well for us in the past,” said Jeffrey.
“True,” said Lydia, nodding and meeting his eyes. “Let’s go home then.”
They were all quiet for a second. Dax was the first to laugh.
“So how do we get in there?” asked Lydia after a minute.
“Well, there’s good news and bad news,” said Dax. “The bad news is that there is no way into The New Day once it has been locked down. Not without setting off alarms. If I had six weeks for recon to gain passwords and a trained team, maybe. But since all I had was six hours and the two of you, we’ll need to get in while the place is still open.”
“What’s the good news?”
“There’s a door in the kitchen that supposedly opens only from the inside and is not attached to any alarm system before the place locks down at night. The plan is for one of you to get to that door and let the other one in. You use the same door to exit. It’s the only door in the building that doesn’t have a security shutter coming down over it at night. You should be able to push it open from the inside, no problem. Just remember, if you’re in there after the place locks down an alarm will sound. I’ll be on the street waiting in the Rover. But you’ll have to run. Fast.”
Lydia sighed, rubbed her head that was starting to ache. “So what? We’re just going to walk in the front door?”
“There’s a meeting tonight,” said Jeffrey, looking at his watch. “In forty-five minutes.”
“Okay,” said Lydia, standing. “I’ll go in and meet you at the door, Jeffrey.”
He shook his head. “No way. I go in and meet you at the door.”
“I want to see Trevor Rhames,” she said, pulling her coat back on.
He looked at her. “You’ve been followed. They know who you are.”
“Not necessarily,” she said weakly, regretting having said anything. “It could have been a coincidence. Some random freak.”
“Give me a break,” he said. She could tell he was getting mad because she saw the small vein on his temple pop out.
“Look. If they know who I am, then they know who you are and we both have an equal chance of being made. I’ll wear a hat and some glasses. I’ll be inconspicuous.”
“We’ll talk about it in the car,” said Dax, moving toward the door.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” said Jeffrey, following him.
“You’re right about that,” said Lydia, closing the door behind them.
Matt thought, not for the first time, that Missing Persons might not be the right place for him. He pulled into the driveway of his house and looked over at his parents’ bedroom window. It was dark, but he knew his mother had heard his car pull up, seen the lights in the drive. He took the extra-large pizza, six-pack of Coronas and Lily Samuels’ file off the passenger seat and went into his house.