CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Take the Harlem River Drive,” Larkin ordered.
Doyle flicked on the blinker and tore around the corner of Amsterdam Avenue, deftly moving in and out of rush hour traffic as they headed uptown in order to swing back down.
Hundred-year-old, six-story multiuses in the distinct “H” shape whizzed by the left side of the road in a blur of sun-faded awnings and colorful graffiti sprayed across rolled-down security gates, while the greenery and rocky outcroppings of Highbridge Park kept pace on the right.
Both of them were compartmentalizing. Doyle had dragged himself free from all his anguish—but it was like a black muck that’d been dredged from the bottom of a lake, so thick and so concentrated that if he stopped struggling against it, he’d be sucked right back in—and Larkin had neatly tucked away the reality of their situation—that thirty minutes was not enough time to traverse Manhattan Island, that this was a hunt for the proverbial needle in a haystack, and that he would not see his ex-husband alive again.
In this moment, this second , there was only seeking a solution against the backdrop of a sputtering flame and grains of falling sand.
Twenty-eight minutes left.
“You showed Bridget the composite sketch I made.”
“She identified the shooter as Ralph Noonan,” Larkin said by way of agreement.
“Is that who you suspected it was?”
“Yes. I spoke with Bailey just before seeing you, and it came up in conversation that the NYPD used revolvers until the early ’90s,” Larkin explained while busily scrolling on his phone.
“That, in and of itself, is not strange, since criminals would have been using similar pistols, but he mentioned the older generation having to get trained in how to use their new 9mms, and that began to suggest—to me, anyway—the shooter’s identity might be that of an old-school cop who never got recertified because he’d retired by the time department policy mandated a change to service weapons.
“When Bridget claimed Noonan’s mob job was that of cleaning up after Vargas and his fellow Westies, my inkling became more than a mere hunch.
I think he’s guilty of racketeering, and Worth knows it.
He’s hanging it over Noonan’s head, forced him to rid the world of Wagner in the very method once used by the Westies that he protected.
It’s rather poetic, in a way. Worth is no hero, but he does seem to be particularly adept at rooting out police corruption. ”
Doyle turned right onto the Harlem River Drive, speeding up as they got off the surface streets. “Why’d you tell Bridget she was in danger?” he finally asked, like the question had been simmering on the back burner and it’d finally come to a boil.
Larkin didn’t look up from his phone. “Olfactory memory.”
“What?”
“Bridget smokes Newports. They reminded me of the mail carrier yesterday morning—at the diner. She smelled like Djarum Black, which have a very distinct, clove scent.”
“And?”
“And I smelled the same cigarette smoke wafting out of the Honda Civic, when the shooter rolled down the window and shot Joe.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Larkin huffed and said quickly, almost distractedly, “Because that’s how olfactory memory works.
It didn’t occur to me what I was smelling, not until the stink of Bridget’s Newports hit me square in the face and I could compare and contrast. Dammit, this isn’t working on my phone.
” He tapped a few buttons before putting it to his ear.
“Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘Help, help, a wild buffalo just bit my dick off,’ I don’t have time for you, Grim,” O’Halloran stated.
“Are you still at work—at your desk,” Larkin asked.
“Mentally, I’m sitting on my couch, scratching my nuts, drinking a beer, and watching the game. Physically, I’m sitting in a windowless bullpen, scratching my nuts—”
“Ray, shut up,” Larkin cut in. “Yesterday, I asked CO Rodriguez to forward me Anthony Vargas’s paperwork from his 2013 arrest and he never got back to me.”
“Yeah, I know,” O’Halloran snapped. “I mean, I didn’t know that, but I’ve been trying to schedule a time to chat with Tony the fuckin’ Tiger, and it’s been a whole fiasco with his lawyers and the prison, blah, blah, blah.
I got a copy of his file this afternoon—a kinda consolation prize, I guess.
What’d you need that has your panties in a twist? ”
Larkin said, “Anthony Vargas had a girlfriend at the time of his arrest. She was hiding at the crime scene and later stabbed the OCME driver who was there for the body transport. I never learned her name, and I need to know when she was released from prison. I have less time and even less patience at the moment, so let’s perform our usual song and dance at a later date.
I’ll even let you take the first swing.”
“Gosh, my heart’s all a flutter,” O’Halloran replied, but there was a distinct click , click , click of a computer keyboard just underneath his words.
Larkin glanced at Doyle. He had one hand on the wheel, both eyes on the road, and all his attention on the one-sided conversation—and yet he never interrupted, always waited to be kept informed.
Larkin lowered the phone and tapped Speaker.
He caught a ghost of a smile as it flickered across Doyle’s face.
“Her name’s Lisa Murray,” O’Halloran said. “DOB October 23, 1961. In 2013 she was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the second degree and sentenced to three years. They let her off at two for good behavior.”
“Does she have past charges,” Larkin asked. “From the late ’70s or early ’80s.”
“No,” O’Halloran said ardently. “Squeaky-clean record, just like Vargas—up until that drug bust, anyway.”
Larkin checked his watch a second time.
Twenty-four minutes.
Doyle pressed on the gas and the Audi’s engine let out a deep purr as it ate up the asphalt.
“Need anything else?” O’Halloran inquired.
“Find out why Rodriguez never called me back,” Larkin answered.
“Oh, yeah, lemme just go tattle to his mommy—”
Larkin promptly tapped End. He pulled up the browser on his phone, did a search of “Lisa Murray NYC 2013” and found articles citing hers and Vargas’s arrest, detailed in scummy subway rags as well as The New York Times on the first page of results.
The Times reported that both convicted criminals were long-term residents of Hell’s Kitchen while displaying their less-than-glamorous mugshots in full color.
She was younger here, of course, and wearing hoop earrings, but Lisa Murray was sporting done-up black hair that looked a little crunchy from hairspray, and wore a hideous shade of blue eyeshadow.
Some folks never left the ’80s, it seemed.
“Would you allow me to theorize with only circumstantial evidence,” Larkin asked.
“Please do.”
“Lisa Murray is from Hell’s Kitchen, and although she’d have been young, hardly eighteen, I feel there’s a strong likelihood she knew Vargas, Noonan, even your—Bridget, around the time Barbara took off,” Larkin began.
“Keep in mind, Vargas wasn’t the only one to get away with Westie-associated murders. ”
“You think she might’ve gotten away with mob murders back then?”
“I think you were correct when you suggested the stalker was more than one person,” Larkin answered.
“Someone was in the driver’s seat when Noonan shot Joe, and I believe it was Murray.
In 2013, I never actually saw her face. I was a patrolman.
I was on crowd control. But this woman—” He waved his phone, the mugshot still visible on the screen.
“—was the mail carrier at the diner. I think I might’ve seen her again near Joe’s apartment.
What better way to watch me— us —without being noticed.
We expect mail carriers in a city, so we become blind to them.
Worth blackmailing Noonan makes sense, but if he’s involving Murray too, he must have something big on her as well. And what’s bigger than murder.
“Here is where I’m forced to theorize, however,” Larkin said.
“Wagner went to Brooklyn. Whether she knew that home on Carroll Street, knew Phyllis, or had—I don’t know—been purposefully misled, that’s where she ended up.
She was shot, execution-style, with a .38 special that will undoubtably match the bullet used to kill Joe.
And Murray, no stranger to knives after having stabbed the driver in 2013, helped dismember Wagner.
Together, they moved the fridge from the basement and drove it to the Hudson. ”
“I’m still unclear what Murray has to do with Bridget being in danger.”
“Bridget works for the post office,” Larkin answered.
“Murray does not. And while I’m unaware of regulations pertaining to whether or not one is allowed to wear an out-of-date USPS emblem, it seems unlikely an employee today would still be sporting a uniform top from roughly 1990.
I suspect the one she had on was acquired online.
Vintage thrifting on eBay or something.”
“Have they been stalking Bridget as well?”
Larkin said, “When you suggested Worth might be trying to instill distrust or uncertainty in me, I admit I thought it was a bit tinfoil hat.”
Doyle spared Larkin a critical glance as they sped past Exit 16 at East 116th Street.
“But you’re right. That’s exactly what he’s been doing,” Larkin continued. “He’s a spider, spinning a web, and the farther it reaches, the more people who get caught up in it.”
“Where does it end?”
“I don’t think it does,” Larkin said solemnly. “Not until Worth is caught. Everyone who associates with me—and by proxy, who they associate with—might be in danger. Why else would Noah—”
It’s all my fault.
Larkin looked at his watch.
Nineteen minutes.
“We need to decide which cross streets soon.” There was a heaviness to Doyle’s voice, like he’d begun fighting against the squelching muck again in that brief interlude of silence. “We’re coming up on Ninety-Sixth Street already.”