Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (34 page)

No more surveillance on Samuel Tucker was necessary. The mayor’s errand boy would not be reaching out to any other bilked investors. His fear worked better than handcuffs and leg irons.

So Mayor Polk was working off her same pool of suspects, and the shortlist had not been supplied by Zelda Oxly. If the mayor was using the aide to do reconnaissance on Dwayne Brox, this could only mean that Zelda was no longer a player.

And it was time to go home.

While reaching for the ignition key, Mallory felt the cell phone vibrate in her pocket, and now its earpiece connected her to the small voice of a schoolgirl.

“You said I could call you.”

“Anytime, Lucinda. Did you remember something?”

“I’m afraid to go back to sleep. I had this awful dream. . . . Jonah’s
alive.
You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” Mallory turned the ignition key.

“You wouldn’t lie?”

“No, never,” said the consummate liar. The engine idled. Garbage bags quivered as rats scrabbled in and out of chewed holes. And she listened to Lucinda’s long recital of a nightmare—until all the detective could hear was the breathing rhythm of a child who had fallen asleep with a phone on her pillow.

As the car glided into the street, Mallory had questions of her own. When would proof of death turn up at Gracie Mansion? Was that dead boy’s heart in transit tonight?

—

JONAH SAT ON THE GRASS
just beyond the door and tied up the laces of his sneakers. This plot of land in front of the house was an
unknown country of crickets. Now an owl. He waited for his compass point—and there it was—a distant car engine traveling down a seldom used road. Where was the driveway that would lead him to it? Earlier, when the man had taken him into the garage, they had passed through a kitchen door, but where—

Dead opposite the door for the basement.

He had his bearings now.

On their way to the driving lesson, there had been a spit of pebbles from a rough surface beneath the wheels before they reached paved road. So that dirt driveway was a ninety-degree turn to his right. He picked up the mop handle and rose to a stand on the soft cushion of sneakers on grass. The makeshift cane moved back and forth over the lawn.
Side to side. Side to side.
It picked out an obstacle that was soft, no vibrations, but some yield to it. A bush? Yes. He touched the leaves as he circled round it.
Thunk.
The mop handle tapped an object. A hard vibration, harder than wood. Before he touched it, he knew it would be stone like the sides of buildings on sidewalks, a different sound than the metal feet of city mailboxes and lampposts. Was this a wall?

No. His free hand reached out to touch a bearded face. Arms. Legs. A little stone man.

Jonah walked around it and ran out of grass loam. He knelt down to sample the harder ground of packed dirt. The driveway. The way out.

He walked as fast as he dared, the mop handle moving across the dirt, knocking pebbles.
Side to side. Side to side.
He knew the long driveway would curve twice before he tapped pavement. Up ahead, no more cars were heard. But when he found that road, another driver would come along.

He was going home.

—

THE ALARM CLOCK
had not yet sounded, but Iggy Conroy awakened—terrified. Eyes kept closed, he feigned sleep. Bright lamplight was a red stain on his eyelids.

There was someone or some
thing
in his bed.

He had felt the movement on the other side of the mattress, Angie’s side. This was no dream, but he did not reach out for the gun on the nightstand. Paralyzed by fear, he could not lift a hand, and he would not open his eyes.

It might only be the dog, risking a kick to come up from the basement, looking for love. Iggy felt another movement on the mattress, the roll of a body beside him. Closer now. He waited for it to touch him. Inside his head, he was screaming, but he scrunched his eyes shut—because it
might
be the dog.
God in heaven, please, it might be only that.

The air was warm. The man shivered. The alarm clock shrieked, and Iggy stiffened like a corpse.

The dog barked.

—

IT WAS NOT MUFFLED ANYMORE
. The dog’s barking was outside the house, and coming closer, coming on fast. And the man’s feet pounded the dirt behind him.

Jonah dropped the mop handle, no time to stop and find it. He ran with hands outstretched. He ran with a prayer that his feet would find no rock or root to trip him. He plunged into an unmapped world. All sense of place was lost, yet he flung himself forward, legs churning. One hand touched foliage as it reached out to scratch him with long fingers of branch and twig. The dog was close. Closer. Jonah could hear the animal’s labored breathing between the barks.

Right behind him.

Almost here.

TEETH!

The dog’s jaws clamped down on Jonah’s leg, teeth sinking into flesh, biting down to bone, and the boy hit the ground, his head smashing into an object hard as stone. He felt the warmth of blood coming down his face. He could smell its coppery scent, and now the taste of it streaming into his mouth. Jonah’s fingers found more of his wet blood on the rough feet of a statue. Tiny feet. Another little stone man had been hiding in the brush, waiting there to get him.

The dog was on Jonah’s back.

Hot breath on his neck.

The last thing he heard was the man yelling, “Get
off
him!”

The whole world went quiet. One thing by another, every sense of it ebbed away. No more pain. No fear. He was weightless as a balloon, letting go of the earth itself and—

—

IGGY CONROY
walked up the driveway, carrying the torn and bloodied boy in his arms. The dog lagged behind, keeping its distance, not wanting to be kicked again.

And then it barked.

Iggy turned on the pit bull. “What now, you crazy mutt?” He had no more patience for the stupid dog. It should have died years ago.

Its snout was raised. It barked at the moon.

“Shut up!”

The dog fell silent for a moment of shame told by the hang of its head. Now it sat down on the dirt and regarded Iggy with deep apology.

“What the hell are you—”

Bells?

Iggy raised his eyes to the sky, the source of the jingling.

It stopped.

So now he was
hearing
things. All those pills, those uppers downed like candy.

No!
That was
not
it. The dog had heard the jingle bells, too.

Any other night, he would have chased down that sound. Everything
must
have an explanation, and he would have turned the whole world inside out to find it.

He dropped to his knees, holding Jonah tighter. Iggy’s eyes were still fixed on the sky—only stars and a cockeyed moon. No flights of angels. No ghosts to ring bells for him. Yet he spoke to the sky, childhood’s old idea of Heaven’s address, that place where Angie might be hiding,
still
hiding from him. “It wasn’t never supposed to be this way.” His breath was stuttered, and he was slow to rise. The boy’s body weighed more now.

 
21

The two detectives sat in the dark of a parked car on Fifth Avenue. For this shadow detail in Money Country, they had selected a drug dealer’s Lexus from the impound lot, so as to blend in with other upscale models. Though the average New Yorker might have recognized it as a stake-out vehicle by the backseat accumulation of coffee cups and take-out cartons. “I don’t get it,” said Gonzales. “A serial killer who hires out the kills?”

Lonahan shrugged. “Rich people.”

His partner nodded. That actually would explain a lot. Gonzales pointed toward the doorman building. “There’s our boy. Check out that getup.” Their suspect had spiked his hair in stick-out strands, and he had changed his very nice suit for a ratty pair of jeans and a retro T-shirt of psychedelic colors. “Looks like he rolled an old hippy for those clothes.”

“That’s one butt-ugly T-shirt.” Lonahan started up the car. “So whadda ya say? He’s slumming tonight, or that’s his idea of a disguise?”

“No,” said Gonzales. “He’s gonna make the downtown club scene.” This theory worked well with the outfit and a waiting limousine.
Customers who arrived in limos always made the cut with doorkeepers for the hottest nightspots in town.

A chauffeur opened the car’s rear door for their suspect. And a minute later, they were all on the roll as the detectives followed the black Lincoln toward the river, onto the parkway and then down to the dingy commercial district near the docks. And there they watched the passenger bid the chauffeur good night. Dwayne Brox stood on the sidewalk, looking around, but paying no attention to his shadow cops. The detectives’ stakeout car worked even better in this crummier patch of the city. Who looked for cops in a Lexus?

Their man walked half a block to enter the office door of Bargain Rides, and, after a short wait, he emerged from the wide mouth of the garage, sitting behind the wheel of a rented piece of crap that Gonzales would not be caught dead in, not even on a stakeout detail in an auto graveyard. The detective shook his head, saying, “Rich people.”

And his partner nodded.

—

THE CLIENT
had favored a toilet this time. What an idiot. But Iggy had withdrawn his objection. He had his own change of plan for this night.

The restroom would ensure privacy and anonymity in this busy truck stop. Lots of foot traffic passed through that door to the toilet. Not bad—providing the drop sight was not also used by local drug dealers. That would pose a complication. Luck was with him when he lifted the heavy ceramic cover of the toilet’s water tank and found it to be virgin territory. The scum around the interior had not been disturbed in years. After leaving a red plastic box afloat in the tank water, he replaced the lid and opened the restroom door to hear the encore of a country music song on the jukebox. Some brokenhearted trucker had fallen in love with lyrics for faithless bitches.

The diner was a double-wide, lots of space filled with Formica tables, plastic chairs and aromas of coffee, chilli dogs and smelly men. The span of window glass gave Iggy a view of the customers’ rides. They had ridden in on every damn thing. Cars and motorcyles were parked in the narrow slots up front, and the big rigs were at the back of the lot near the highway.

Heading for a stool at the counter, Iggy checked out the crowd for newcomers. He saw none of the people featured in a TV news clip of well-dressed civilians entering a SoHo station house with police escorts—the rich bastards branded as persons of interest to the Special Crimes Unit. So the client was not here yet. Gail Rawly must have impressed the fool with the importance of not showing up early, possibly running into the hit man, pissing him off—and, of course, getting killed. Tonight, Iggy was the one to break the rules, chief among them: Never get within a mile of the clients. Never give them a face to remember, should they get caught and feel the need to cut a deal with the cops.

For this occasion, Iggy wore eyeglasses, and his shirt bore the logo of a moving company to help him pass as a long-haul trucker for one of the big rigs in the lot—though his van sat in the tall weeds behind the diner, keeping company with two abandoned wrecks—good as invisible. When he sat down at the counter, he was positioned in line of sight with the restroom and every taker of pisses and dumps. He also had a view of the parking spaces near the door, those sized to fit cars.

He ordered a burger and fries. The waitresses were hustling stacked trays of food, deaf to shouted complaints from some of the tables. So many customers. Too many. He could count on slow service. Timing was everything.

Forty minutes passed before he pushed his empty plate away. A junker with rental plates pulled up to a slot near the entrance. The driver emerged in jeans and a bright-colored T-shirt. Sunglasses at
night? He might be the client. The age was right for the youngest one on the news clip, though the guy’s hair was spiked and he had a stubble of beard. Crappy jeans. Low-rent sneakers. This one definitely lacked the polish of the crowd hauled into the station house. But the new arrival’s first stop
was
the restroom.

Iggy turned his eyes back to the parking lot, where another car had just pulled in. A Lexus, a
very
nice ride. But the driver and the passenger did not get out. The two men just sat there watching the long span of window glass.

Well, this was promising.

When the customer with the spiked hair left the restroom, he had a brown-paper bag in one hand.

Oh, you moron.

That bag must have been folded up in a pocket when the guy went in there, but now it certainly contained the red box from the toilet tank. There were dark brown wet spots on the brown paper.

The two men parked outside must have noticed that, too. They stepped out of their car as the fool with the paper bag left the diner, his identity confirmed—by
cops.
The idiot client was being bent over the hood of his rental as they handcuffed him.

Iggy raised one hand to signal the harried waitress for his check. So far, everything was going well.

—

THE RED PLASTIC BOX
had been dusted for fingerprints and then opened. The suspense was over long before the lawyer’s arrival.

And the lawyer’s laughter.

Dwayne Brox was not so cheerful. Judging by the pouty mouth, his arrest and detention had inconvenienced him, and worse—the surrounding detectives annoyed him. He resented every question that pulled his attention away from Mallory. Despite the fact that she had yet to even glance at the suspect, he was fixated on her.

Lonahan followed Gonzales out of the interrogation room. The partners were in a grim mood for good reason, though their stakeout had not been a complete waste of time. They had singled out the right suspect, and now the squad could end surveillance for the other investors on the shortlist.