Page 83 of One of Us Is Guilty

‘Didn’t you say Teresa Chase had a half-sister?’ I said.

‘Willow Chase, but that’s a dead end. Winchester looked for her for years,’ said Bloch. ‘She was a junkie who moved away and dropped out of the world long before Teresa was murdered. Chances are she’s dead too.’

I said, ‘If she was a serious junkie, there’s every chance she was arrested. That means there might be a DNA profile for her somewhere. If she is dead, then we need to find her anyway. Maybe she had a husband, or a partner, someone who might consent to allow a DNA test.’

‘That’s a real moonshot,’ said Lake.

‘Then get your rocket fueled,’ I said. ‘Harry, can you go talk to Vanessa?’

‘Sure. Where are you going?’

‘Those pictures of Amy are still online. I have to make a call,’ I said, putting on my coat.

‘Who are you going to call?’ he asked as I headed for the door.

I stood at the doorway, everyone’s eyes on me, waiting for an answer.

I shook my head, opened the door and made my way down the steps to the street.

Once outside, inhaling the cold Manhattan air, I huddled into my coat and started walking. I didn’t have a burner phone, and I preferred my call to this number wasn’t located in a cell tower near my office. Protection for the team, not for me.

There was no going back now. I was in this with both feet. All I could hope for was that I was the only one who got burned.

It was five blocks before I found a payphone. I used quarters for the call.

The phone rang three times before it was picked up. I said hi.

‘Eddie Fly, how you doin, Flyman?’

I had known the man who answered my call for over thirty years. At one time, we were like brothers. In many ways, we still were. We helped each other when we could. He was someone I could always rely on to do the wrong thing at the right time.

His name was Jimmy the Hat.

‘Not so good, Jimmy. I need some help.’

‘Money or muscle?’

‘Something a lot worse.’

I’d guessed it would take a day. Maybe a day and a half.

But in less than eight hours I found myself driving to a nice suburban neighborhood in Queens. Jimmy used to say that he was in the problem-solving business. It’s a much more polite moniker than saying you run the major Italian crime family in New York, but in a way problem-solving wasn’t a bad description, even if some of the problems he solved were very much of his own making.

When family was involved, problems tended to get solved quicker.

Still, eight hours was pretty fast.

It was dark when I pulled into the driveway. I hadn’t been out here in a few years, and in some ways I was glad to see the place. The lawn was neat and well kept, as always. The house must have had a fresh coat of paint not too long ago. A Cadillac with purple and silver-flecked paint took up the entire driveway. Compared to my Mustang, the Caddy looked like an aircraft carrier. The homeowner’s Dodge Ram was on the street, outside the house. I guessed his van was in the garage.

I pressed the door buzzer, and as I waited I thought about the events that would’ve taken place in the last eight hours.

I guessed that the identity of the photographer wouldn’t have taken long to establish. The hotel where Amy had attended theparty wasn’t part of a major chain and only a few years old. There’s a lot of carefully curated and managed bureaucracy to navigate before you can open a hotel in Manhattan. There are dozens of permits required, fire safety regulation standards to be met, hospitality and food safety certificates to obtain, then there’s the unions whose staff will provide the beating heart of the hotel.

That’s a lot of red tape to get tangled in. Happily, or unhappily, depending on your point of view, for a fee and a modest ongoing monthly percentage, all of these potential pitfalls with unions and city departments can be navigated swiftly and smoothly. It’s not cheap because there are a lot of union leaders and city officials who have to be given a lot of brown envelopes, but it can mean the difference between opening and running a hotel and not opening or running a hotel.

If you wanted things done in Manhattan, you paid Jimmy the Hat.

I imagined the purple Caddy and the black van in the garage had paid a visit to the hotel, and the occupants of the vehicles entered the security suite and viewed security camera footage where they identified a certain newly employed bartender, who was really a paparazzi working an angle. That bartender’s name, address, social security and phone number would have been swiftly provided to the gentleman in the purple Caddy and his tall, quiet companion in the black panel van.