Page 59 of Two Kinds of Stranger

‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said, pulled a twenty from my fold and held it out to him.

He waved it away.

‘Please, I insist.’

‘It’s fine. Anyway, I don’t have change,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry about it. Please, for your kindness.’

He smiled, nodded and took the cash.

New York had a bad reputation for many years. It still does, in certain parts of the city and the subways. What most people don’t understand is that what makes this the greatest city in the world isn’t the architecture and the history, it’s the people.

The server put our drinks on the counter. We found a table.

‘What the hell is green tea, anyway?’ I asked.

‘Now that I come to think of it, I have no idea,’ said Lake.

‘Is it, like, tea leaves and something else? Like mint? You should know this.’

‘No clue, actually. It’s not mint. That would be mint tea. Never thought about it before. It’s green. It must be healthy.’

‘It smells terrible.’

‘Then it’s definitely good for you.’

Lake talked more about his morning with Bloch. The VA hadn’t been much help in finding Joseph Novak, the homeless man who had helped Elly when she got out onto the street and had vomited and passed out. A volunteer at the VE Center said they would pass on a message to Joe Novak, but they wouldn’t give out any further information.

After a few minutes, an NYPD patrol car came in answer to my 311 call. It pulled up behind the Silver Taurus. A patrolman got out, checked the vehicle and got on his radio. If he had read the license plates and radioed for a check, it would have come back that this was an NYPD pool car.

No license plates, parked in a no-stopping zone and, considering the amount of flyers on the windshield, it had probably been there for some time.

Three minutes later, the tow truck arrived.

I took out my phone, sent a text to Harry. He would be standing near Elly’s window, checking the street and keeping Sacks talking while Bloch took her time in Elly’s apartment packing her a bag. Then when Harry saw the police towing Sacks’s car, he would take a moment to point that out to the detective. That left us with a window of time where we could get in and search.

That was the plan.

We got up, left the coffee shop and stood with our backs to Elly’s building, ten feet from the doors.

Detective Sacks came charging out of the building, his hand in the air, waving to the tow driver who was shackling straps to the wheels of the Taurus. I moved, caught the door before it shut and together we slipped inside, called the elevator and rode it to Elly’s floor.

Harry was waiting outside the elevator.

‘What took you so long?’ said Harry.

‘Sorry, how did it go?’

‘Sacks is a baseball fan. I know nothing about baseball. It was hell. Bloch had to pretend she was looking for a purse that proved impossible to find. We’d better be fast. I got the impression he’s already suspicious.’

Bloch came out of the bedroom, dropped a gym bag off her shoulder and put on latex gloves.

‘I didn’t see any bloodstains. The apartment looks normal apart from the bedroom. The bed is stripped to the mattress, but I didn’t see any blood or signs of violence,’ said Bloch.

‘Let’s go dark and take a look,’ said Lake.

Harry and I closed the curtains in the kitchen, the living room, then went to every room, closing the blinds to ensure the place was as dark as possible.