The old man looked like his grizzled head might explode. "What do you mean 'if she wuz here'? Ain't no if. She wuz here! How many more times do I gotta tell you people? Grace. Brookstein. Wuz. Here."
"I'm sure she was, sir," said Mitch. But she's not here now. Another dead end.
"How's about my reward? Man on the TV said two hundred thousan' dollars."
"We'll be in touch."
THERE WERE MESSAGES WAITING FOR MITCH back at the station.
"Your wife called," the sergeant on the desk told him.
"Ex-wife," Mitch corrected her.
"Whatever. She was yelling something about your kid's school play. She wasn't a happy camper."
Mitch groaned. Damn it. Celeste's play. Was that today? Mitch had sworn up and down he'd be there, but with all the excitement of the last forty-eight hours, he'd totally forgotten. I'm the worst father in the world and the worst cop. Someone should give me a medal. Guiltily he began punching his old home number into his cell when the desk sergeant interrupted him.
"One more thing, sir. A guy was here earlier. He said he had information about Grace Brookstein; said he knew her. He wanted to talk to you but he wouldn't wait."
"Well, did you get his details?"
She shook her head. "He wouldn't tell me anything. He said he'd wait for you in this bar until six." She handed Mitch a dirty piece of paper with an address scrawled on it.
Mitch sighed. It was probably another crank. On the other hand the bar was only a couple blocks away. And anything was preferable to facing Helen's wrath, or hearing the disappointment in Celeste's voice.
The clock on the wall said ten of six.
AT SIX O'CLOCK EXACTLY, MITCH WALKED into the bar just as a good-looking, dark-haired man with a hawklike nose was walking out. When Mitch saw there were no other customers, he ran back onto the street and caught up with him.
"Hey. Was it you who wanted to see me? I'm Detective Connors."
The dark-haired man looked at his watch. "You're late."
Mitch was irritated. Who does this dickhead think he is? "Look, buddy, I don't have time for games, okay? Do you have information for me or don't you?"
"You know, you might want to be a little more polite to me. Your ass is on the line, Connors, and I can save it. For a price, of course. I know where Grace Brookstein's going to be at noon tomorrow. If you're nice to me - real nice - I'll take you to her."
CELESTE CONNORS CRIED HERSELF TO SLEEP that night.
Her daddy never called.
Chapter Twenty
DAVEY BUCCOLA PACED HIS HOTEL ROOM like a caged tiger. His suite at the Paramount on Times Square was luxurious. Frette bed linen, sleek modern furniture, $500 cashmere blankets draped casually over the back of the armchair. Davey thought, This'd be an impressive place to bring a woman.
Unfortunately, he wasn't with a woman. He was with a bunch of cops. And they were starting to make him nervous.
"Stand still, please, Mr. Buccola. We need to check your wire."
Davey lit a cigarette, his third in as many minutes.
"Again?"
"Yes. Again." Mitch Connors was in a pissy mood. "You want to see that two hundred grand, Mr. Buccola, I suggest you cooperate."
Davey thought, He's probably nervous, too. Doesn't want anything to go wrong.
Davey felt bad, doing the dirty on Grace Brookstein. He'd always liked her. What's more, he was convinced she was innocent of the crimes she'd been convicted of. But $200,000...two hundred thousand... He tried to rationalize the decision to himself. He was protecting Grace. This way she would be captured unharmed. He hadn't told Connors or any of the cops about the information he'd uncovered, either. Later, once Grace was safe, he'd use it to launch an appeal against her conviction and reopen the inquest into Lenny's death. Either that or sell it. What would Vanity Fair pay for a scoop like this? If he was lucky, he might double his reward money!
Of course, deep down, Davey Buccola knew the truth. He was betraying an innocent woman for money, the same way everybody else had betrayed her. It wasn't $200,000. It was thirty pieces of silver.
"Mr. Buccola. Are you with us?"
Davey looked up, startled. Mitch Connors was shouting at him again.
"We only have an hour. Let's run through the plan one more time."
GRACE DIPPED HER DOUGHNUT INTO THE hot black coffee and took a big, satisfying bite.
Delicious.
She and Lenny used to have the finest chefs on staff at all their homes, ready to prepare lobster Thermidor or whip up a Gruyere souffle at any hour of the day or night. But not until this week had Grace tasted a Dunkin' Donut. She couldn't imagine how she'd ever lived without them.
The week had been full of new experiences. The familiarity she felt when she first came back to New York had been replaced by a sort of delighted wonder. It was the same city she'd lived in, on and off, for her entire life. And yet it was completely different. This New York, the New York of the ordinary people, of the poor, was like another planet to Grace, with its subway trains, its dirty buses, its doughnut shops, its walk-ups and shared bathrooms and television sets with wire coat hangers jammed into the top. Lenny had always told Grace it was terrible to be poor. "Poverty is the most degrading, most soul-destroying state into which the human soul can sink." Grace disagreed. True, she had never been poor before, but then Lenny had never been to prison. Grace had. She knew what "soul-destroying" meant. She knew what it was to be degraded, to be robbed of one's humanity. Poverty didn't come close.
By all objective standards, the hotel in Queens where Grace had been staying was a dump - dirty, cramped, with depressing mustard-colored walls and linoleum floors. But Grace had come to enjoy the smells of fried onions wafting up from the hot-dog stand outside her window, and the ridiculous arguments between the couple across the hall. It made her feel less alone. As if she were part of something.