Once he was in the neighborhood, Reese remembered that fast food joint where William Robinson had worked the first time he’d seen him. It had been the very first Number John had ever worked. Diane Hanson. It seemed like a very long time ago.
The woman at the counter told him that Robinson wasn’t scheduled until four.
John knew where the man lived; he’d broken into his apartment once. But he decided to try the soup kitchen first. As he’d hoped, Robinson was clearing tables. Reese stood near the door and waited. He wasn’t sure that the man would remember him.
The man turned to greet him, and his brown eyes got very wide.
Evidently he remembered.
“Mr. Robinson?” Reese said quietly. “My name’s John. We’ve met before.” He put his hand out.
“Course we have,” Robinson answered. He took John’s hand in both of his own. They were rough, but warm. He squeezed just a little, the way a strong man does when he doesn’t want to hurt anyone by accident. “You saved my life. Never knew your name, but I give thanks for you every night, pray for your safety.”
His words twisted in the center of Reese’s chest. “I appreciate that,” he said sincerely. “It’s probably done me some good.”
William released his hand and glanced around. “You don’t look like you’re hungry.”
“No. I was hoping you could help me find someone.” He drew the pictures out of his pocket. “His name’s Edward Clay.”
Robinson looked at the pictures carefully. He tucked the actual high school picture behind the altered one. “Cash, he calls himself. Cash Clay. Course he’s too young to know why that’s funny.” He shook his head. “This picture isn’t quite right, but it’s close.”
“Do you know where he stays?”
“Sometimes at the Savoy. Or the Rex.” They were nicknames for very low-end hotels; John had stayed in them both. ”Sometimes at the camp up the hill from St. Herman’s ” where it used to be.”
Reese nodded. “I know the place. Does he ever come in here?”
“Once in a while. Not a regular, though.” Robinson looked out over the tables and sighed. “Funny sort of boy. Always polite. Most of them aren’t.” He shook his head. “He’s awful young, John. I tried to talk to him, get him back on the path, but he’s not ready to hear yet.”
“Is he using?”
“I don’t think so. Never seen it, anyhow. Doesn’t seem to drink, either. Just, uh …”
“A little petty theft?” Reese prompted gently.
Robinson nodded sadly. “Wallets, purses, maybe shoplifting. Probably. I don’t think he’s violent. Seems to have a good heart, really. Only hits the high end. And he seems to look after that little gal of his.”
“He’s got a child with him?” John asked sharply.
Heads turned. Robinson took his arm, showed the others that there was no danger. “No, no. She’s young, younger than him probably, but she’s a teenager. Skinny little thing, though. I tried to get her to eat, but she only took a few bites. She seemed scared.”
“Scared of Clay?”
“No. She was good with him. Like I said, looked like he was looking after her. But she was new to the street. Too clean, you know? Too much stuff in her pack. Like that.”
John knew exactly what the man meant. “When was the last time you saw them?”
Robinson considered. “Tuesday, week ago yesterday. I work mornings on Tuesday, come here in the afternoon. They were here at dinner time.”
“Had you ever seen the girl before?”
“Just once. The week before, Thursday.”
Reese took out a card and gave it to him. “If you see them again, or just Clay, could you give me a call?”
“He’s in danger, is he?”
“I’m pretty sure he is, yes.”
Robinson tucked the card away carefully. “There might be another place you could look for him,” he said slowly. He looked around again. “There’s a butcher shop, Clancy’s.” He pointed out the door and east. “Ten blocks that way. Word is he’ll pay a little cash for credit cards, ID’s, things like that.”
John nodded thoughtfully. It made sense that Clay would take any cash out of the wallets he stole, then try to sell the other items to someone who knew what to do with them. “Thank you, Mr. Robinson.”
“William, please.”
“William.”
“’I’ll ask around, see if anyone else knows anything about the boy.”
“Thank you.” Reese took the pictures back out and gave them to him. “These might help.”
“Call you if I hear anything. Sure you don’t want some soup? It’s good.”
John smiled gently. “I know. I remember.” He left the soup kitchen and headed up the street.
***
Dion and Little Jo-Jo leaned against the back of a ticket kiosk and smoked little skinny cigars. Neither of them liked the taste much, but they were what Al smoked, so they were what they smoked.
“This is a waste of time,” Dion complained. “What the hell are we doing here?”
“Puttin’ time in,” Jo-Jo answered. “Aldo asks if we looked for the kid, we say yeah, we asked around up on Broadway, where he hangs, but nobody seen him.”
“Oh. Damn. You’re smart, Little Jo-Jo.”
“Quit callin’ me that.”
“Your mama calls you that.”
“You ain’t my mama, are you?”
“No, but I been with her. And she was goooooood!” He laughed and dodged as Jo-Jo swung at him.
“You asshole,” Jo-Jo said. “You never been with any woman, and you never will be with that little thing you’re packin’.”
“Yeah? How do you know what I’m packin’?”
Jo-Jo grinned. “Your mama told me!”
Dion took a swing at him, but Jo-Jo ducked it easily.
They did a little more pushing before they settled back against the well.
“We could look,” Dion said.
“Huh?”
“We could, you know, actually look. Talk to some people, see if we can turn up the kid.”
Jo-Jo looked at him. “You crazy, man?”
“I’m just sayin’. Aldo seemed to really want this kid.”
“Yeah, I don’t give a shit what Aldo wants. He’s just keepin’ the seat warm. I ain’t bustin’ my ass for him.”
Dion squinted at him. “You think Torres is going to make a move?”
“Yeah, soon as he finds his balls.” Jo-Jo shook his head. “We all know the only reason Al’s there is because his uncle backed him for it. And Teeny’s been out of the game a long time. He’s not payin’ attention, and he don’t care of Aldo gets bumped.”
“I don’t know,” Dion said. “You ever seen that guy? Teeny? He’s a freakin’ monster.”
“He’s an old man.”
“He’s an old man the size of a Mack truck. I ain’t messin’ with him.”
“You don’t have to,” Jo-Jo promised. “You just gotta wait until Torres mans up and takes over.”
“I guess.”
“Guess nothin’. You want to go look for this kid, knock yourself out. Me, I think I’ll so find me some honey to spend some time with.”
Dion snorted. “You’re gonna need a fat ass wallet to get any sugar, man.”
“Shit. Bet I can score before you do.”
“You’re on. Let’s go.”
***
“Any luck, Mr. Reese?”
“Not yet, Finch, but I have a couple new places to look. What can you tell me about a butcher shop called Clancy’s?”
“Hold on.” The keys clicked softly, with certainty.
“They’ve been cited three times in the past year for health violations. I don’t think I’d buy any of their sausage.”
“Good to know.” Reese stopped across the street and watched the storefront. “They don’t seem to do much business.”
“I’ll take a look at the financials. Why are we suddenly interested in fresh meat?”
Reese scanned the street. There was a black town car at the end of the block. Nothing surprising there; they were almost as common as taxis in the city. But the blacked-out windows drew his attention; again, nothing new, but not quite as common. The car was running. He snapped a picture of the license plate with his phone and sent it to Finch. “Just sent you a plate. Run it first, please.”
“All right.”
“The word on the street is that Clancy also does a little business in stolen credit cards.” Reese crossed the street and walked down past the town car. Through the windows he could only see vague shapes inside, two in the back and a driver He walked around the corner and circled to the back of the shop.
The keys continued, quiet, competent, in his ear. “The vehicle is registered to a Genevieve Rossi,” Finch reported. “Address on the upper West Side.”
“Hmmm.”
“No criminal record … although her father has quite a long one. He seems to have been one of Don Caparelli’s lieutenants.”
“Mob princess,” Reese mused. “Interesting.”
“And apparently keeping it in the family. Her husband, Aldo Rossi, seemed to be an up-and-comer in the mob.”
“Any reason he’d be after Clay?”
“Not that I’ve found so far.” Finch sounded aggrieved. “I’m sending you a picture of him now.”
Reese glanced at his phone. He couldn’t tell if Rossi had been one of the shapes in the car. “Tell me about Clancy’s.” He found the service door, listened for a minute, and then picked the lock.
“They are barely breaking even,” Finch announced after a few minutes. “Just the owner and two employees, and the owner hasn’t drawn a paycheck in two years.” There was another pause. “But they recently installed a T-1 line.”
“The better to steal identities with.” Reese pushed the door open two inches and listened again. There was no reaction. He could hear a television set, far away, probably in the front. He opened the door a little further and looked around.
There was no one in the back room. Reese went inside and closed the door quietly behind him.
There was a narrow walkway up the center of the back room. To the left was a huge walk-in cooler; to the right were two long stainless steel worktables. Behind them was a counter, cluttered with meat trays, cleavers, knives, a grinder, a slicer, a roll of cling wrap as big around as Reese’s thigh. At the end of the counter nearest the door was a laptop, in sleep mode. There was a door to a tiny room with a small sighed that read ‘Restroom “ Employees Only’.
At the front of the room, strips of heavy plastic separated the front of the shop. Reese could see a young woman behind the counter. She was leaning against the meat case, watching some soap opera on a small TV. Just on the other side of the doorway, an older man with red hair dozed in a lawn chair.
“If Clay stole Aldo Rossi’s wallet, that may be why he’s in danger.” John moved behind the work tables and slipped a flash drive into the side of the laptop. It woke up; the screen saver was a sea of flaying dollar signs in various colors. While the computer downloaded, he looked underneath the counter. There were boxes of papers, some junk and clutter, but nothing that looked like wallets and purses.
“You think he’d kill a man for lifting his wallet?” Finch asked.
“That would depend on what was in the wallet, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
Reese snagged the flash drive out and tucked it in his pocket. Then he looked toward the cooler thoughtfully. He checked on the dozing man and the bored girl again. Then he slipped into the cooler.
There were sides of beef hanging, and pork. Dead chickens. Huge tubs of sausage. And at the very back, a curiously empty little work table. There was a box beside it, half-full of wallets and purses. On the shelf below the table there was a shopping bag from Macy’s. It held, at a guess, two hundred credit cards and ID’s.
“Okay,” Reese breathed. “Guess we’ll find out.” He took the bag and moved back to the cooler door.
As he closed the door behind him, he heard the bell over the front door of the shop. He slipped into the narrow spot between the cooler and the wall to watch. The skinny young girl who came in barely glanced at the counter girl; she clearly wasn’t there to buy any meat. Instead, she went and stood in front of the dozing man.
“Mr. Clancy?” she said quietly.
The man stirred, looked up at her. “Hey. Where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s outside.”
“You got something for me?”
The girl nodded.
“C’mon back, then.” The man heaved himself out of the chair with some effort and walked toward the back room.
Reese ducked further back into the little space.
The girl looked very young and very thin. She had dark brown hair with big streaks of bright purple through it, long and dirty-looking. Her clothes were dirty, too, but they’d come from some mall somewhere, not very long ago. She wore a backpack, sky-blue with flowers on it. It was half-full.
Clancy went around the work table and turned back to the girl. “Show me.”
The girl brought two leather wallets out of her jacket and handed them across. The butcher opened the first one with quick efficiency and shuffled through the cards.
“Platinum Amex. Nice. Nebraska, huh? Time Square?”
”Ground Zero.”
Clancy grunted and turned his attention to the second wallet.
The front door of the shop flew open and Edward Clay ran in, past the front cases and straight into the back room. “We gotta go, we gotta go.” He grabbed her arm frantically and dragged her toward the back door.
“What … “
The door banged again, and Aldo Rossi and one of his guys came in, obviously chasing Clay.
Clancy said, “Oh, shit!”
He picked up a cleaver, but Reese was more concerned about the guns Rossi and his man had. The teenagers ran past his hiding place and out the back door. Reese stepped out and stuck his arm out to clothesline the first man ” the muscle, as it happened, not Aldo. He dropped like a rock. Behind him, the young mobster yelled, “Smithy! Out back! Get them!”
Reese threw a short-armed punch at Rossi’s face and he staggered back. He dropped his gun in the process. He wasn’t out, though; he scrambled up and back. John started after him. The butcher came around the far end of the work table and stood in his way.
He still had the cleaver in his hand.
Reese paused for a split second. The man pulled his hand back threateningly, waving the cleaver near his ear. That was all the opening the ex-op needed. He moved in fast, threw a combination at the man’s unprotected ribs. The butcher made a predictable ‘ooooff’ sound and doubled over, bringing the cleaver down conveniently into Reese’s grasp. He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted hard. The blade clattered to the floor and he kicked it away. Then he banged the butcher’s head against the table and dropped him.
He looked toward the front of the shop. The door was already closing behind Aldo Rossi. The counter girl stared at him. Reese shrugged his jacket back into place. “Sorry for the mess.”
“No problem,” she answered calmly.
John retrieved the bag of stolen property, added the two new wallets, and let himself out the back door. He looked both directions, but there was no sign of the young couple or anyone pursing them. The black town car rolled past the end of the alley slowly; with the dark windows, Reese couldn’t tell if they were looking for Clay or for him. In either case, the car sped away.
“Mr. Reese?” Finch worried in his ear.
“I almost had Clay, Finch,” Reese answered. “Aldo Rossi is definitely after him.”
“Rossi’s a third-tier mobster at best,” Finch told him. “He only has a dozen or so men in his direct organization.”
“Well, he’s short one now.” John stalked toward the end of the alley and back toward the main street.
It was instinct, he supposed, more than any special perception, but something told him to stop and wait. He tucked into the back doorway of the next business, half-concealed, and waited.
It was less than two minutes before the teenagers came up from their hiding place, in a stairwell two doors past Reese’s position.
The girl looked very scared. But William had been right in his assessment: It wasn’t Clay that she was afraid of. It was everything else on the street.
“Who were those guys?” she asked anxiously.
“I don’t know,” Clay answered. He kept his arm around her, protectively. But he was skinny and young and inexperienced. He wasn’t really much protection. “But don’t worry. They’re after me, not you. You’ll be fine.”
“They had guns.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
Reese stepped out of the doorway and strode toward them. “Edward Clay? I need to have a …”
The girl squeaked. The boy swore. And then, unexpectedly, Clay shoved the girl hard into Reese’s chest. He caught her by her upper arms to keep her from falling. The boy spun and ran the other direction.
John started after to go after him. The girl grabbed his wrist and held him. He stopped to pry her fingers loose. By then the boy was gone.
But he still had the girl.
The minute he stopped trying to chase Clay, she released his hand and tried to run the other direction. He grabbed her arm again. “I don’t think so.”
“Let me go!” she snarled. “Let go, you … you f-fucker!”
Evidently she didn’t have much practice at swearing. “No.”
She pulled and struggled wildly. Reese didn’t have any trouble detaining her with just one hand; his fingers circled her upper arm easily. “Let go, you fucking pervert!” she yelled. She was getting the hang of swearing now. She elevated her voice to a scream. “Help! Somebody help me! He’s trying to hurt me! Help me!”
“You’d be better off yelling ‘fire’,” Reese told her calmly. “Where’s Clay going?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” she snarled. “Help! Somebody help me!” She sounded genuinely frightened, but she tried hard to cover it with anger.
“Mr. Reese?” Finch asked. “Is there a problem?”
The girl tried to pull free one more time. John just shook his head. “What’s your name?” he asked.
She stopped pulling. Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re hurting me.”
Reese loosened his grip a little, but didn’t let her go. “I’m not going to hurt you. Your boyfriend’s in danger, and I need you to help me find him.”
She looked at her feet, sniffed. “Let me go.”
“Where is Clay going?”
Unexpectedly, the girl brought her free hand up and slashed at his face with her nails. From the sting, she got at least one nail against his skin. Reese clamped his hand over her wrist and held her immobile. “Stop that.”
She threw her head back and screamed.
“Mr. Reese?” Finch said again, more urgently.
John looked around the alley. No one had shown up to help the girl yet, but it was only a matter of time. He had Stills’ badge in his jacket; he could walk it off. But he’d need a free hand to flash the badge, and he didn’t relish letting her take another kitten swipe at him.
His face stung.
He slid his right hand down until he had her wrist. Then he pulled both hands behind her back and held them with one hand while he brought out handcuffs. The girl continued to scream and struggle. Reese snapped the cuffs on her, grabbed the bag of credit cards and the girl’s pack with his other hand, and marched her around the corner to his car.
On the street, several people noticed the screaming girl in handcuffs, but no one tried to interfere. They looked at her, at him, and then they looked away. Reese growled to himself. Sometimes he hated the city.
He opened the door and put the girl in the passenger seat. She kicked and squirmed and continued to yell. Her obscenities became more fluent by the minute. Reese ignored her while he buckled her into the seat. He slammed the door and went around to put the bags in the trunk.
The man from the newsstand took a few steps toward him. “Hey,” he called. “You a cop?”
It was all Reese could do not to go shake the man’s hand. Instead, he pulled Stills’ badge out and waved it at him. The man simply nodded and retreated.
John got in the car. The girl was still shouting. In the confine space of the car, the volume was almost painful.
“You can quiet down,” he said, “or I can gag you.”
“You can’t gag me, you fucking asshole!” the girl shrieked. “Cops aren’t allowed to gag people!”
“True,” Reese answered. He took out his handkerchief. It was fairly clean. “But I’m not really a cop.”
The girl opened her mouth to swear some more, and he stuffed the handkerchief into it.
“Mr. Reese!” Finch said firmly. “What is going on there?”
John knew the genius could hear the girl’s muffled complaints, and probably her furiously kicks at the floorboards. “At least I didn’t kidnap a baby, Finch.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s Clay’s girlfriend. She can probably lead us to him, once she settles down.”
“And what are you going to do with her in the meantime?”
Reese turned the rearview mirror and checked the mark the girl had made on his cheek. It was just a scratch, barely bleeding, but it hurt. “I don’t know. What do you usually do with screaming teenagers?”
“Have them committed,” Finch answered immediately. “But barring that solution … perhaps this would be a good time for you to return the car.”
John looked at the young woman beside him. She was still screaming behind the gag. But behind her rage, there was true fear in her eyes. She was new to the street. In the space of five minutes she’d been threatened by gunmen, abandoned by her boyfriend, and essentially kidnapped by a tall strong stranger. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again. But he could see that she didn’t believe him, and honestly, he could understand why.
Return the car, Finch said. It sounded like the best possible solution.
***
q95;
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