“What channel is that?” Carella asked.
“Five,” Byrnes said.
“Four’s gonna sue the city.”
“…Barney Loomis, who says Bison has not yet received a ransom demand. In Riverhead this morning…”
“That’s it,” Byrnes said, and lowered the volume. “Sue the city? Why?”
“Cause I confiscated a tape of the kidnapping.”
“Ooops.”
“It was evidence. So what do we do here, Pete? Pursue this or phone the FBI?”
“Let me talk to the Commish. I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know. What Idon’t want is for the Feds to use us as errand boys. That’s the last thing I want. Nobody called from them yet, huh?”
“Not yet.”
“Let me see what the Commish advises. I know he won’t want heat later on, anybody saying we dropped the ball prematurely. You’re about out of there, anyway, aren’t you?”
Carella looked up at the clock.
“Half an hour,” he said.
“Get some sleep, you may have to come back in. I don’t know how this is gonna fall, Steve, we’ll have to play it as it lays. Call me later, okay?”
“You coming in today?”
“No, it’s supposed to be my day off. Call me at home.”
“There’s the other line,” Carella said.
“I’ll wait. Maybe it’s the Feds.”
Carella put Byrnes on HOLD, stabbed at a button on the base of his phone.
“Carella,” he said.
“Carella, this is Sandy McIntosh, HPU. You got a minute?”
“Yeah, hang on.” He switched over to Byrnes again. “It’s the Harbor Patrol. Am I on the job, or what?”
“Stay with it for now,” Byrnes said. “Call me later.”
Carella switched to the other line again.
“Okay, Sandy, I’m back,” he said.
“This may be nothing at all,” McIntosh said, “or maybe you can use it. Around nine-fifteen, nine-thirty last night…”
IT WAS NOToften that this precinct caught something as big as a celebrity kidnapping—if, in fact, Tamar Valparaisowas a celebrity and not some figment of a record label’s imagination.
Neither Bert Kling nor Meyer Meyer had ever heard of her. Perhaps this was not too surprising in Meyer’s case. His kids listened to rock, but he was tone deaf when it came to anything more recent than the Beatles. Kling, on the other hand, was familiar with all the new groups, and even listened to rap on occasion. He had never heard of Tamar Valparaiso, even though her face and her story were splashed all over that morning’s tabloids.
The two men signed in at seven-forty-five, were briefed by Carella and Hawes—who were exhausted after a long night on the water—and then headed out at eight-thirty, to pick up where the departing team had left off.
Sandy McIntosh had reported stopping a twenty-seven-foot Rinker at around nine-fifteen, nine-thirty last night, heading inbound toward Capshaw Boats, its home marina, at Fairfield and the river, just off Pier Seven. Three passengers aboard. Two men and a woman. Name on the boat’s transom wasHurley Girl. Serial number stenciled on each of her sides was XL721G. Capshaw Boats was where Meyer and Kling were headed on this misty Sunday morning.
Today was the fourth of May.
Meyer had celebrated his wife’s birthday the night before, ordering champagne for everyone in the small French restaurant where they’d dined—not an enormously big deal in that there’d been only half a dozen other patrons. He’d sure as hell impressed Sarah, though. Sarah Lipkin when he met her all those years ago. “Nobody’s lips kin like Sarah’s lips kin” was what the fraternity banter maintained, a premise Meyer was eager to test. Married all these years now, never tired of her lips. Married all these years now, he could still impress her with six bottles of champagne. Veuve Cliquot, though, don’t forget.
Clear-eyed this morning, despite the full bottle of bubbly he and Sarah had shared last night, he was at the wheel of the police sedan, wondering out loud if the Feds would be coming in on this one.
“Thing I don’t like about working with them,” he said, “is they have this superior…”
“Way I understand it, it’s a dead cinch they’ll come in,” Kling said.
“Then why arewe shlepping all the way downtown?”
“Way the Loot wants it. Guess he’d like a heads up, case there’s static later on.”
“What’sher name again?” Meyer asked.
“Tamar Valparaiso.”
“Never heard of her.”
This was the third time he’d said this.
“Me, neither,” Kling said.
Third time for him, too.
The two made a good pair.
Both men were some six feet tall, but Meyer presented a burlier look, perhaps because he was entirely bald, perhaps because he was possessed of a steady, patient demeanor that made him seem somewhat plodding in contrast to Kling’s more open, enthusiastic country-boy style. Born and bred in this city, Kling nonetheless looked like he’d been found in a basket in a corn field. He was the perfect Good Cop to Meyer’s Bad Cop, although often they switched roles for the fun of it, blond, hazel-eyed, fuzzy-cheeked Kling suddenly snarling like a pit bull, steely blue-eyed big bald Meyer purring like a pussy cat.
The man who owned Capshaw Boats and its adjoining marina was a one-eyed former Navy SEAL who called himself Popeye, not to anyone’s great surprise. He had opened the marina at a little before six this morning…
“Lots of skippers like to get out on the water before all the river traffic begins. That’s a nice calm time of day, you know,” he said, “that time just before sunrise. It’s called morngloam, not many people know that.”
Meyer certainly didn’t know it.
Neither did Kling.
“I think it’s a Scottish word,” Popeye said. “Morngloam. The opposite of it is evengloam. That’s the time just before sunset. Evengloam. I think it comes from the word ‘gloaming.’ I think that’s a Scottish word. The derivation, I mean. I think it’s Scottish.”
“Tell you what we’re looking for,” Kling said. “Harbor Patrol stopped a boat from your marina last night…”
“Oh?” Popeye said, his one good eye widening in surprise.
“Name’sHurley Girl, serial number’s…”
“Oh, sure, the Rinker. She was already back in this morning, when I got here.”
“Whose boat is she?” Meyer asked.
“Mine. Well, Capshaw’s. I rent her out.”
“Then she doesn’t belong to one of your customers, is that it?”
“No, she’s mine. I just told you. She’s a rental boat. I sell boats, and I store boats, and I service boats, but I also rent them.”
“Who’d you rent this one to? Would you remember?”
“Oh, sure. Nice young feller. I’ve got his name inside.”
“Can you let us know who he was?” Kling asked.
“Oh, sure. Just let me finish here a minute, okay?”
He was washing down one of the boats. Soaping it, hosing it. Meyer watched him with interest. Kling looked upriver where early morning traffic was already moving steadily across the bridge to the next state.
“When you say she came back in…” Meyer said.
“She was tied up at the dock when I got in this morning.”
“When did she go out?”
“Evengloam last night. Nice time of day.”
“You rented her out last night at sundown…”
“Just before sundown. Twilight. Evengloam.”
“When was she due back in?”
“Well, she was a twenty-four-hour rental. Actually, she wasn’t due back till this evening sometime. I was surprised to find her here this morning.”