“No, I won’t back off,” Donatti snapped back. “But since it’s your family, I’ll give you a twenty-four-hour head start. Then it’s everyone for himself.”
“Even I can’t work that fast. Seventy-two hours, Chris. At the end of three days-solve or no solve-I’m out of here.”
“Right.”
“Donatti, I’m not jerking my chain over this. No one has a one-hundred-percent solve rate.”
“What’s yours?”
“High enough. But it’s not one hundred percent.”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“Sixty hours, starting now. You broke my nose, you bastard. You owe it to me.”
Chris leaned over the desk and examined Decker’s features. “No, I didn’t break your nose. I just clipped it. I got you on the cheek-bone’s swollen, but not too bad. It wasn’t full force, Decker. If I had meant business, your face would have been a Cubist study.”
“If you’re asking me to thank you, forget it. Sixty hours.”
“This is stupid! You want me to back off until you leave town, I’ll do it. But I’m not paying for your funeral.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I’m serious, Lieutenant. You may be a good cop in L.A., but out here you don’t know horseshit.”
“So fill me in.”
“That’s impossible. Could you fill me in on what makes a good Homicide cop in Los Angeles? These kinds of things are intuitive. I’ve lived on these streets and with these people all my life. It’s just this… feel-this sixth sense. Here I can do in a day what you couldn’t do in a year. I’d actually be an asset to you.”
“I don’t think a partnership would enhance either one of us in the reputation department.”
“I’ve worked with cops before.”
“Not honest ones.”
“No such animal.”
Decker didn’t argue. What was the point?
“I could turn you into a homicidal maniac in a minute because I know your weakness. But why bother? Cleaning your family isn’t gonna solve my problems.”
“That is very true. Give me sixty hours solo, Donatti. I need to know I won’t be stepping on your toes.”
“All right.” Donatti threw up his hands. “I’ll give you till Friday, if you last that long. If you land on your ass, I finish up my business my way. Deal?”
Decker said, “You stay out of my hair-”
“I said, ‘Deal.’ ” Abruptly, Donatti jumped over the desk and planted his mouth on Decker’s bloody lip. “There. Signed, sealed, and delivered with a kiss.”
Decker grimaced as he wiped his mouth. “What the hell was that for?”
“I dunno.” Donatti was amused by Decker’s repugnance. “I’m used to kissing authority figures. I used to kiss my uncle on the lips all the time.”
“I’m not your friggin’ uncle, Chris.”
“You said you were my father figure. In therapy, they call that transference.”
“Then I take it all back.”
“You’re squirming, Decker.” Donatti licked his lips and wiggled a pierced tongue. “Could that be… panic raising its ugly head?”
“Christopher, for heaven’s sake, grow up! I don’t give a damn where you park it, as long as you keep your hands off my family and me. Why the hell should I care who you fornicate with?”
“You cared about Shayndie. You asked me not to bust her, and I didn’t.” Donatti was wistful. “Now I’m sorry I didn’t. She wanted me to do it, and I said no. I was wrong. I should have fucked her. No one should die a virgin.”
22
Not a whit.
That was how much Decker believed Donatti.
Walking back to the car via Riverside Drive, Decker kept his hands in his pockets as he stared over the parkway. The sun had burned several holes in the cloud cover, casting an intermittent glare over the sluggish Hudson. The streets were a traction nightmare, a mixture of motor oil and ice-chunked water. Cars were splashing sludge and mud curbside, causing Decker to do a two-step to avoid the mess. He touched his swollen face, biting back the pain with stoicism and Advil. He concentrated on his choices, the two very different paths he could take.
The first was to follow the bastard: to find out what was on Chris’s dance card. Five seconds later, Decker nixed the idea. The man was savvy and would pick up a shadow as easy as a firearm. Plus, Donatti knew the city streets, and Decker did not. A tail would not only be useless, but would also alert Donatti to the already known-but as yet unstated-fact that Decker didn’t trust him.
Give the man a round of applause. Donatti had put on a good exhibition. But the shock and outrage meant nothing. Chris was a pathological liar, having stalemated several lie-detector tests given by veterans in the field. He hadn’t been perfect, but good enough to make the experts wonder. The most convincing piece of evidence that Chris had going for him was the “Why bother?” What would he have gained by having Shayndie murdered? No real money in it, and now he had Decker bird-dogging his ass.
C.D. don’t do nothing unless there’s something in it for him.
For right now, it was handy to put Donatti on hold, not to discount him, but to direct the efforts elsewhere. Decker’s second and slightly more viable option was to go back to square one and try to figure out what the hell went wrong. That required another look inside the Lieber family. Help from Chaim and Minda was a lost cause. They hated him with an irrational passion, having converted him into a convenient scapegoat-azazel in Hebrew, the symbolic sheep thrown off the cliff on Yom Kippur that atoned for the community’s past sins. Tackling Minda and Chaim, in such horrendous times, was absolutely out.
But Jonathan was another matter.
Decker thought about Jonathan’s reaction to the news of Shayndie’s death. The surprise and shock were real enough, no debate there, but something about Jonathan’s incredulous response was off, as if he hadn’t even considered Shaynda’s death a possibility. It had been out of character because Jon had been so skeptical during the five days prior to her death. He should have anticipated murder as a possibility, readying himself to help out his in-laws should things go bad. Jon was a clergyman; that was his job. Yet when the news hit, it seemed as if Jon were knocked down even harder than Chaim.
And then there was that irksome suspicion, the tweak in the gut that Decker had had during his shiva call just before his literal run-in with Minda.
Chaim and Jonathan are sitting on something.
Combining their secretive stance with the knowledge that Shaynda had either bolted from Donatti or disappeared, Decker concluded that the girl must have contacted Jon or Chaim somewhere between six in the morning-when Donatti last saw her-and her death roughly four hours later.
So it really wasn’t a matter of going back to square one. What he needed to do was retrace those crucial four hours. Of course, what had occurred during those four hours were probably by-products of the murder five days ago.
He decided to start with the easiest chore: to change the plane tickets.
Decker had to remain in the city, but there was no earthly reason for Rina and Hannah to stay with him. That meant he’d have to convince his wife to go on to Florida with his daughter, and without him. Dealing with Donatti was a cakewalk compared to dealing with Rina. She seemed in constant denial of danger. But while she didn’t have much regard for her own safety, she did care about Hannah. He’d use that angle-that too many deaths were traumatizing, and it was abusive to keep Hannah in such a morbid atmosphere.
He arrived at his car, but before getting in, he placed a call to the Lazaruses on his cell. As expected, no one answered. Rina wasn’t carrying a cell phone, and he had no idea where she was. Presumably, she hadn’t heard the news, because if she had, she would have called him. He had no choice but to wait to hear from her.