Hearts Content
Over coffee and cornflakes Joe spelled out for Ann the idea that had come to him during the night, as she slept bruised and exhausted beside him and he watched the moon through the bedroom window.
He began by saying, This may be crazy.
But she didnt think so. Its perfect. Her eyes glowed. Walter wont be able to stand it. Hell have to make a move.
Youll have to convince Ford Corrington to go for it.
Thats the only part that might be hard. But hes in a bad situation. Im hoping hes desperate enough.
But it cant be Lowry. In case something goes wrong. Find a way to get Perez.
He wont, Joe. No one will but Lowry.
He poured more coffee and that argument went on. They spent Sunday refining his plan, going over the angles. Planting the dicentra, weeding the herbs. And having that same argument. Until, finally, he gave in.
*
Monday there was one more argument before they left for New York.
Youre not coming, Ann said.
It has to be me. No one will listen to you. I didnt want Lowry and it took you all day yesterday to convince me theres no one else. But you were right and I bought it.
And now youre planning to argue over this all day today?
I dont have to. You know Im right.
If you get caught, Joe, she hesitated, they could revoke your parole.
Get caught doing what? He spoke as though that thought hadnt haunted his night, hadnt forced him out of bed at dawn and sent him scrabbling up the boulder wall to inspect the cascading trumpet vine. Hed stood up there for a long time, astonished, as always, by the vast, unblocked view.
Leaving the county, Ann said.
I called my case officer, he told her. I said I had a chance of a job in Manhattan, told him how Id be going and that Id be back Friday at the latest. He gave me his blessing.
You did that already?
I was up early.
It cant be you.
It cant be anyone else.
Irene could do it.
Irenes a lawyer. She has too much to lose.
And you dont?
She can get in trouble for acting unethically. I cant. Just illegally. Which this isnt. Theres nothing Ill be doing thats against parole regs.
Youll be lying.
He grinned. Youre kidding, right?
I cant ask you to do this.
Youre not. I said I wouldnt hand you to Lowry and you said it wasnt my choice. This isnt yours.
*
The argument they didnt have was over whose car to use. After theyd made the phone calls that got things rolling, Joe packed an overnight bag and locked up the cabin, but he didnt even take the pickups keys.
*
With the top down they raced past farm fields and stands of pine, swooped up and over the Tappan Zee, and followed the Thruway until it became the FDR. Ann wove the little red car through traffic and out onto the Manhattan streets. Joe stayed silent as they stopped-and-started past buildings in whose shadows he was raised and others that had not been there when he went away. It was only as they neared Anns place that he realized his palms were sweating.
When they turned into the driveway to her garage, Joe saw Anns face harden.
We dont have to go in here, he said. We could put the car in another lot.
Im fine, she said tersely, and wheeled the Boxster down the ramp.
A few flattened flower petals lay on the oil-stained concrete. Ann didnt look at them. She parked in the most impassive and precise manner Joe had ever seen, locating the car in the exact center of her space. They crossed the garage to the elevator, Ann striding ahead with her jaw thrust out. Once in the elevator she visibly relaxed, and by the time she unlocked her door the color was back in her cheeks.
She dropped her bag on the foyer table. Not bad, huh? I told you I bought it for the view.
Joe crossed to the wall of glass at the end of the living room. Sun gleamed on the East River and a summer haze obscured the horizon.
From behind him, Ann said, Im going to change. I couldnt talk anyone into anything looking like this.
When she was ready, he left with her.
Where are you going to go? she asked.
Nowhere. But its been a while, he said, in explanation.
She gave him a long look, then turned and peered critically at herself in the mirror.
You look great, he said.
Thanks. I kind of thought the shirt went well with the purple around my eye.
What are you going to tell people about that?
The truth. That its just one more example of why Walters got to be stopped.
At a Cell Hut he bought a throwaway phone and gave her the number. Then she hailed a cab and he started to walk.
He headed uptown randomly, crossing at corners and stopping at lights. He fell right back into the rhythm as though he hadnt been gone for years. Rumbling traffic punctuated with horn honks and overlayed with passing sirens supplied the soundtrack. Hot dogs and bus exhaust provided the perfume. The visuals were ever-changing and exactly the same: distracted pedestrians, speeding bike messengers, tame city trees; towering straight-walled glass and steel, lower, older brick and stone.
He found himself noticing the changes: a construction site where four walk-ups had been, new windows going into a long-abandoned hotel. That these places had remained so lodged in his memory alarmed him; that he found himself passing judgment, thinking this change good and that one bad, was disconcerting. He no longer cared what happened here. He was gone, somewhere else, started over. Good changes and bad ones had meaning only if you had a vision for a place and they matched it or crossed it. New York was in his past, no vision now, just freeze-frame photos, fading, indistinct.
He jaywalked with a practiced skill, read headlines as he passed newsstands and noted an ailanthus tree reaching for the sunlight from a rubble-littered lot.
You could come back.
The tires hiss, the sharp shadows of fire escapes, the scent of salt pretzels from a street cart all seemed to have one thing to say. The pulse of his blood answered the cadence around him. Hed been born here, raised in a walk-up like the one he was passing; hed played stickball on asphalt streets like these, had his first kiss in a shadowed doorway like that one across the way.
It hasnt been that long. You could come back.
Sutton Place
Joe? Corrington went for it.
Hey, good work! Was it hard?
His board meets next Thursday and he thinks theyre planning to ask him to resign. He called this a Hail Mary pass. I said, Hallelujah, and that was that. Where are you?
Madison and Eighty-third.
What are you doing?
Walking around.
Are you okay?
Im fine. Why shouldnt I be?
I dont know. Being back, thats all.
Im fine, Ann. How about you?
Stiff and achey. Or I would be if I werent on such an adrenaline high. Ill call you after I see Greg Lowry.
*
Joe? Gregs in.
Holy cow. How did you do that?
I told you he was bound to be.
I didnt believe you.
Because Im blonde?
No doubt.
Where are you?
Carl Schurz Park.
Over by Gracie Mansion?
It has all new plantings.
Joe?
Yes?
Nothing. Two down. Ill call you again.
*
Joe? Don Zalensky said hell think about it.
Does it look likely?
Well, he didnt throw me out. It was harder than Corrington or Greg, but in the end I think hell do it.
If he can sell it.
Hes not going to try. Hes going to handle it on his own. To keep Hizzoner clean.
Can he manage that?
He wouldnt have to do much, just confirm that Charlies about to do what were saying he is, if anyone asks.
Youre amazing.
No. Im right. Where are you?
Harlem, 128th Street.
What are you doing up there?
That jobsite. I thought Id take a look.
What do you think?
I think its worth fighting for.
City Hall
The mayor stared at the deputy mayor in disbelief. You know, he said, three weeks ago I was the Mayor of the City of New York. Now were down the rabbit hole and I must be the goddamn Mad Hatter. Who are you and what have you done with Don Zalensky?
All right, its extreme, Don said. But if it works, you may get to Albany yet.
If Albanys anything like this Im not so sure I want to go there anymore. This is the craziest goddamn idea I ever heard.
Could work.
Only if Walters guilty!
I hate to point out the obvious, but nothing ever said he wasnt. He just got too hot to handle.
And this could make him radioactive! Setting him up for the murder of a girl we dont even know he knew !
Of course he knew her. And were not setting him up, Charlie. This is a trap only Jens killer would fall into. If Glybenhall didnt do it, he wont fall for it.
Its nuts. It cant work.
I think it can. And it could prove we were right all along and make our people look really clever. Ill tell you what part wont work, though: Joe Cole going to Glybenhall. Glybenhall knows all about him and Ann Montgomery. He wouldnt let Cole through the door.
There, see
Im going to suggest they go through Edgar Westermann.
Edgar? Jesus, Don, what are you trying to do?
Whether or not Westermann believes Glybenhall killed Jen, the rest of it the part about you and Corrington will get him upset. Hell take it straight to Glybenhall.
Charlie ran his hand over his bald head. What if this bright idea blows up in our faces?
No one will ever know you knew anything about it. I told Ann Montgomery Id consider it, but that if I agreed, it would just be me. That I wouldnt tell you anything. This way if it comes back to bite us, it wont get any farther than me.
Are you nuts? I dont work like that.
If things keep going the way they are, Ill be out of a job soon anyway. Youll have to throw someone to the wolves.
Not you, for chrissakes.
Me, or six nonfranchise players. And that might not be enough to get you to the finals.
Thats a sports metaphor, Charlie objected.
You didnt think I could do that? Ive been practicing.
In case you get traded to another team?
Something like that. Don eased a cigarette from the pack.
Give me one of those.
Really?
No. But give me something. This is insane. This could sink us. Charlie ran his hand over his head again. Ah, what the hell. Go ahead. Were sunk already.
Hearts Content
What can I do for you, Mr. Cole? Please, please, sit down.
Edgar Westermann reestablished himself behind his massive desk. The collar of his white-on-white shirt sat slightly askew, leading Joe to think hed tightened his tie and shrugged back into his jacket when his visitor was announced.
Joe sat unhurriedly on a chair as substantial as the desk. Behind him, a wall of photographs showed the Borough President in three-piece-suited splendor performing various official functions. Heavy brocade drapes echoed the patterned Persian carpet. Joe wondered if all the furnishings in this office had been selected for the amount of light and air they were able to displace.
He waited a few extra seconds just to get Westermann off balance, then asked without preamble, Do you remember me?
Westermann made a show of frowning and searching his mental database. Yes, I believe I do, he said tentatively. But Joe had seen calm familiarity in Westermanns eyes when hed walked in the office.
Joe said nothing.
Like most politicians, Westermann was not on good terms with silence, so after a brief time the Borough President went on. You used to work for the city. DOI, I believe. You were involved in that Dolan Construction disaster.
Good, Joe said. We dont have to go through the early chapters, then.
Westermann raised his eyebrows. I dont take your meaning.
I spent two and a half years in prison. Im on parole for the next half-dozen. My wife divorced me and I dig ditches for a living. What happened in Dolan Construction wasnt my fault but the city needed a scapegoat and I got tagged. Im pissed off, Mr. Westermann.
Well, I can understand you might feel that way, but the law and the community saw it different. Now, if youre here to rehash all that, Im not sure I see the good that can come of it.
Im not. Ive come across some information that I think will be valuable to you. I want to make a deal.
Deal? What sort of deal?
Money, of course.
Westermann grunted. General run of things, people dont come to me much for money. Im just a public servant.
You do all right. And your friend Walter Glybenhall is loaded.
This has to do with Mr. Glybenhall?
It does.
So why come to me?
If you remember me, you remember that Ann Montgomerys a friend of mine. Glybenhall knows that, too. He wouldnt have let me through his door.
No, I dont suppose he would.
What Im hoping is that you find what I have to say interesting enough to tell Glybenhall about. Because even though it came from Ann, its something hell want to know.
Ann Montgomery is a troubled young woman.
Troubled especially by the way the citys dealt with her.
She didnt want to be heaped with scorn, could be she shouldnt have treated one of New Yorks leading citizens the way she did.
I warned her. I told her, whether youre right or wrong, you cant go up against Walter Glybenhall, hell crush you like a bug. But she had the same problem I had three years ago.