The Pride Trilogy: Kyle Callahan 1-3 (28 page)

Chapter 21

Hotel Exeter, Hell’s Kitchen

K
ieran could see
the massive, collective light of the city reflected in the clouds as he lay on the mattress staring out the grimy hotel window. Sleep was beyond him, a memory of something that had once been pleasant but had turned on him the last few months. Sleep was now dreaded almost as much as the dreams that came with it.

He stared up into the dark haze that hovered permanently over Manhattan once the sun had fled. New York City produced so much whiteness in the night sky he doubted anyone here had seen a star in years. The billions of tiny fires in the heavens could not hope to compete with the overpowering glare of neon, streetlight and a million apartments rising floor upon floor, their combined incandescence smothering the shine of God Himself. He knew how God must feel, too, overshadowed and forgotten. They were two of a kind, he and God. The difference, he supposed, was that he had no intention of slinking away to hide his impotence behind mystery. Kieran would not content himself with unanswered prayers from the vain and selfish. He would instead exact revenge and leave his name engraved with the great ones. All of New York City, and soon all the nation, would know his name. What the whisperers would make of him then wouldn’t matter. They would be dead.

He listened as muffled sounds of violence echoed through the old hotel. In the month he had been living here he had witnessed little, but heard much. Groans of sex, shouts of rage, the occasional thud he assumed was a falling body. The police did not seem to care much what happened at the Exeter. They only showed up when someone was dead on arrival – or departure, as the case may be – otherwise leaving the denizens of the place to fend for, and devour, themselves. Junkies, drunkards, prostitutes and pimps, all roamed the halls here like living ghosts. They looked right through him, just as he considered them no more meaningful than the roaches he ignored crawling across his floor. The roaches would outlive them all and deserved more respect.

He would be glad to leave this place soon. Its decrepitude had begun to seep into his bones. He was used to the smells in his clothes, in the walls, in the people shuffling up and down the stairs when the elevator was broken, which was often, but there was another smell beneath them, the smell of failure, that he did not want clinging to him much longer. He had not failed; he had in fact succeeded most spectacularly. But if you stand in shit long enough, you will smell like it, and he wanted to be finished and gone before it could not be washed off.

Kieran watched in silence another hour as the sun began to come back, slowly pushing out the darkness. He liked the sun. Sometimes he believed he was the sun, so brightly did he shine. He and the sun together would chase the blackness from the sky and from his mind. Only his heart was out there beyond the edges of the void, broken and scattered and beyond healing. This suited him fine. He needed to be heartless now. Thinking on it, he rolled over, away from the window, and closed his eyes. The day had arrived and it was time to plan.

Chapter 22

Sunrise on 8
^th
Avenue

K
yle and Linda
met for breakfast at the Sunrise Café in Chelsea, tucked between one of the ubiquitous nail salons that peppered the city and a neighborhood pet shop called Animal Nation that had weathered the neighborhood’s changes for forty years. Chelsea had been known for half that time as a gay enclave, like San Francisco’s Castro or Chicago’s Boystown. It came about because the place had once been cheap, and bohemian types who could not afford Greenwich Village moved uptown just a few blocks to the once-industrialized Chelsea.

Chelsea took its name from the estate and house of retired British Major Thomas Clarke, who obtained the property in 1750. In time, factories arose in Chelsea, and the neighborhood still bears its working class roots; many of the buildings now housing million-dollar condos and impossibly high-end co-ops were once textile factories and 19
^th
century sweat shops. By the 1970s the area had fallen on hard times … and along came gay people to begin its gentrification. As is the case with changing tides, they were being overrun and priced out by young couples with children, and Chelsea was now a mix with a decidedly healthy dose of gay, but a mix nonetheless.

The Sunrise was one of Kyle’s favorite restaurants. It had only been in existence for nine months. Judging from the empty booths it may not make it another nine, but he loved the interior, with its exposed brick walls, the two old hutches they used to hold dishes, the slowly rotating ceiling fans. It had a rustic feel to it, as did the staff: older, with a whiff of country about them that made them seem out of place, yet very much at home, in the heart of one of Manhattan’s most trendy districts. One of the waitresses, a buxom woman in her sixties wearing a white apron around her waist, had just taken their breakfast order and left with the menus.

Kyle had brought the catalog from the New Visions show with him and was running his fingers over the cover. “It’s in here,” he said. “The answers.”

Linda had not complained about having her first visit to New York in thirty-five years turned into a hunt for a killer. She’d admitted to herself the first day that she didn’t know what she wanted to see here, and had done nothing to prepare – no maps, no itinerary, no places of interest. Kirsten had encouraged her to lay it all out, or at least make a short list of sights to see, but Linda had told her no, she wanted to explore, to see it all before her as if she’d stepped into a wonderland and would decide to go left or right once the road was in front of her. But here she was in a café with Kyle Callahan, the two of them puzzling over a series of murders. Kyle and Detective Linda, an unlikely pair. She knew this is what she would rather be doing. She was not a sightseer, a shopper, a
tourist
. Maybe that would change when she and Kirsten went places, as they surely would. Paris had always been on her mind, and she’d never been west of the Mississippi. So many places to see, all the more reason not to think she had to spend her few days here running from building to building, must-see to must-see. She lived only two hours from here; those places could wait.

“What are you thinking?” she said, sipping the especially rich coffee the Sunrise served up.

“I’m thinking it’s someone we won’t find in this book.”

She looked at him, puzzled.

“Someone who wanted to be,” he explained, “but who was left out. Someone who missed the train to fame they think this is.”

“And it’s not?”

“For some, yes, but for just as many, no. To tell you the truth, Detective Linda, I don’t aspire to be more than an amateur photographer. The show Friday is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not going to make me famous, and I don’t want it to. But a lot of these artists” – and he tapped the catalog again – “this is how they measure their success, their value. It’s who they are, and being left out, being rejected, is probably as life-changing as being in the show.”

The waitress returned with their breakfast, each of them having three-egg omelets, toast and potatoes, set it in front of them and quickly left, realizing they were mid-conversation.

“I have to go to a luncheon with Imogene,” Kyle said, as he slid his plate away and opened the catalog. “I need you to do two things. You’re in on this with me, yes?”

Linda nodded, trying to look reluctant but knowing from the first words Kyle mentioned of a killer she’d be hooked.

“Good. I emailed Kate already and she’s expecting you at the gallery. Two things: one, what became of the other artists in the show. Their names are here.” Kyle quickly pointed out the names of the graffiti duo, the woman Suzanne DePris, and Javier Velasco. “And two …”

“Whose names are
not
there.”

“Exactly.”

“Notice the plural, Kyle. ‘Names.’ What if we’re looking at several people here? What if Kate Pride turned down a dozen?”

“We’ll worry about that if it’s true,” Kyle said, closing the catalog.

Kyle looked at his watch and began to eat. He was running late again, but he knew Imogene wouldn’t notice today. She was being honored at a luncheon at the Carlton Suites Hotel, a big deal for someone whose career had been on the wane just six months ago. She’d be consumed with how she looked and what she would say, should she find herself at a podium.

“Have you thought about women?” Linda asked, setting her toast aside.

“Not since … ever, really,” Kyle replied.

“Not like that, silly! I mean for the killer. Isn’t it a little misogynistic to assume a man is doing this?”

“I don’t think Richard Morninglight would make a sex date with a woman.”

“What if he didn’t know?”

Kyle was intrigued, but not convinced. The murders were too brutal, too personal. They had all the hallmarks of a very angry man. “One step at time. Let’s narrow down the possibilities and see what’s left.”

Linda nodded. Her visit to New York City was turning out to be more than she’d imagined. It also reminded her of the things she loved most. Did she really want to walk away from the police force? Or could she do both? Could she run a store named after her father,
and
be Detective Linda? And what would Kirsten make of all this when she told her? So many thoughts turning around in her mind. She would have to shut them off and focus. Twenty minutes from now she’d be at the Katherine Pride Gallery, looking for answers and needing to think clearly.

“When do we get the police involved?” she said at last.

“They already are,” Kyle said. “They bark up their tree, we bark up ours.”

He winked at her then, not something that came naturally. His father had been a winker, and Kyle had no idea why he’d done it. Maybe his mother, and whatever she had to tell him – mercifully forgotten in the chase – had made him think of his father.

Kyle waved at the waitress for the check. “You finish,” he said, seeing that Linda was barely halfway through her breakfast. “I’ll get breakfast, you get yourself to the Katherine Pride Gallery. We’ll meet after the luncheon. I’ll text you the address.”

Before she could say anything, Kyle took the check and hurried out. It wasn’t being late he dreaded, but the list of things he knew Imogene would already be asking for. Timing was everything, and the timing right now could not be worse.

Chapter 23

Claude Petrie, Esq.

C
laude Petrie’s office
was at the very top of the stairs in a fifth floor walkup on 41st Street a half block from the Port Authority bus terminal. The entire building smelled like exhaust from buses rolling in from the Lincoln Tunnel, endless lines of them that never seemed to stop. And if you stood on the fire escape, craned your neck out and looked south, you could see the Hotel Exeter. You could also fall to your death, as one burglar did two years ago when she slipped on the ice that had built up on the landing. Her body had gone unnoticed for two weeks; that’s how long it took for the smell of decomposition to be stronger than the small of bus fumes.

To the right of Petrie’s door, which had
Claude Petrie, Esq
. stenciled on it in chipped black letters, was a dentist who catered to Guatemalans and, to the left, an escort service whose escorts were sometimes seen but rarely heard. Young men for whom wages had remained flat over the last decade and whose appearance reflected the decreasing standards of the service that employed them. Claude had been careful, when under the tutelage of Evan Evans, never to meet here, lest they encounter one of the “models” or overhear an argument about compensation. His relationship with the old gentleman had begun as a favor to Claude’s late father, who, like Margaret Bowmen, had retained Evans for many years. Noah Petrie had no idea his son moved in such seedy circles, and Claude had made sure it stayed that way until Noah’s death, and Evans’s three years later. It wasn’t that Claude would not prefer an office on Central Park South or somewhere in TriBeCa, but this is what he could afford, and most of his clients were quite at home in this environment.

Danny stood outside the door wondering how long ago Petrie’s name had been painted on it and if he would ever have it refreshed. He’d seen a short man who looked to be of Central American stock leaving the dentist’s office with an ice pack held to his face, listening while an older woman hectored him as they walked down the stairs. Danny checked the business card Margaret had given him. While he was obviously in the right place, it just didn’t seem like somewhere old Evan Evans would have spent time. Danny assumed Claude Petrie did the visiting.

After pressing the door buzzer and waiting several seconds, Danny was greeted by Claude himself. There was no receptionist, no receptionist’s desk, and no one else in the office, which proved to be one room. A desk was in one corner by a window that hadn’t been washed in thirty years. Behind it, a swivel chair that looked to be among the first manufactured. On the desk were stacks of manila folders, pieces of paper, two staplers, a phone, and a coffee cup being used to hold pens and pencils. Two guest chairs were in front of the desk; Claude motioned to them as he welcomed Danny in.

“Mr. Durban,” Claude said, shaking Danny’s hand. “I would have been happy to meet you at the restaurant.”

“I enjoyed the walk,” Danny said, in way of an indirect reply. “Gramercy Park to here, it’s a good half hour in foot traffic.”

“Indeed, indeed. Please, have a seat.”

Danny sat in front of the desk and waited for Claude to take his place behind it. A long, awkward moment ensued as Claude leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, his hands clasped together, waiting for Danny to speak.

“I’m going to buy Margaret’s Passion,” Danny said finally and in a tone that did not make it a suggestion.

Claude looked at him a moment, then smiled. “I’m sorry, Mr. Durban, but that’s already been arranged with Mrs. Bowman. I just have to take her the papers.”

“She won’t be signing them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not complicated.” Danny leaned forward, close enough to make Claude uncomfortable. He pulled back from Danny, nearly sliding backward in his chair.

“I know who your investors are,” Danny continued. “At least the one who matters, the one I’m sure is calling the shots. The one you’re going to arrange a meeting with, for me, as a surprise. Linus Hern doesn’t like surprises, this should be fun.”

Claude had gone pale. He slumped in his chair, and even though the office was cool from the spring air coming in its one window, he had begun to perspire.

“I don’t know where you’re getting your information,” he said, “but my investors’ names are – “

“It doesn’t matter who they are,” Danny interrupted. “It matters who they’re working for. We both know it’s Hern, so we can stop this little game of cat and mouse, Claude. May I call you Claude? I’m the cat here, make no mistake about it. Margaret doesn’t yet know what you’ve done or who you’ve done it with. I’d rather not tell her, it could do serious damage to your career, such as it is.”

Claude had slipped into full panic mode. Margaret Bowman was very well known in this town, and very well liked. She could most certainly make his life more difficult than it already was. He flashed on himself being smeared in the daily papers.

“What is it you want?” he asked Danny.

“I want you to arrange a meeting with Linus, without telling him he’ll be meeting me. This afternoon is fine, say … one o’clock? I can get Chloe to cover while I take my leave from the restaurant early. You know Chloe. She certainly knows you. Just tell Linus you have very important news about the deal with Margaret’s Passion and you’ll meet him at the Stopwatch for lunch.”

Claude’s eyes widened. How could this man know about the Stopwatch?

“He doesn’t like it there,” Claude stammered.

Danny smiled. “I’m sure he doesn’t. So one o’clock it is. And the second thing, Claude, is that you’ll be telling Margaret Bowman in a letter you won’t be able to continue as her attorney. Very sorry and all that, but your workload has gotten just too much. An abundance of riches.”

Claude almost laughed at the barb. He wasn’t about to tell Danny Durban about his gambling debts or the shambles he’d made of his life. He knew that Linus Hern, too, could make things worse for him. He suddenly started thinking of places to go, destinations on a train route where he could stop anywhere and simply vanish. It was coming to that.

Danny stood up. “Don’t worry about the contract with Margaret. My partner Kyle, his mother and I will be seeing another solicitor about that, but we appreciate the offer.”

They hadn’t yet spoken to Sally Callahan about investing in the restaurant, but Claude didn’t know that, and Danny hoped by saying it he could make it so. He stood from the guest chair, declining to shake hands a second time.

“Good day now, Claude. I’ll expect to see Linus at one o’clock this afternoon. I know he’s very punctual. Not from experience, just from his character. Evil is always on time.”

Danny knew he would never see Claude Petrie again and was glad of it. He showed himself out of the office, leaving Claude to wipe at the sweat running down his forehead. Much in both their lives had just changed.