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“What you say?” I asked, almost fully back to normal.
“I just made shit up. Said I was doin’ a foot patrol in Central Park, which I was, and this guy comes up and tells me that I should tell my superior that Bato Hernandez has to make a drop. He said to say that he needed to speak to Adamo Cortez, that Cortez knew how to make contact.”
“What they say?”
“They wanted a complete description. What the guy wore, how old he was, and everything else. They even asked if anybody saw us.”
“They wanted an eyewitness alibi?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you ready?”
“You’re the one told me that I always had to be ready with a lie, Joe. That I should have one all worked out in my head because you never know.”
“I must have told a hundred cops that, Henri, but you’re one of only two that took me up on it. I’m sorry, kid, I didn’t think you’d actually call in like that.”
“I tried the database,” the Haitian cop replied. “He just wasn’t there. Not as a cop, a CI, or even some suspect. Nowhere. But I thought that if somebody called it in, then they might look in some secret database that the uniforms don’t know about.”
“With a question on your lips and a lie in your pocket,” I said in admiration. “You know, there was something I never taught you, kid.”
“What was that, Joe?”
“That sometimes you can be too smart.”
“So what are you into, man?”
“Is this a safe line?” I asked, way too late.
“Pay phone in the lower level of Grand Central. I’m surprised these suckers still work.”
“Don’t worry about what I’m doin’, Henri. It won’t do either of us any good. But tell me the names of the suits.”
“Inspector Dennis Natches and Captain Omar Laurel.”
“An inspector,” I said. “Damn. Did they give anything up?”
“Not really. They threatened me with a review. Said that I should have detained the suspect. But I said that he wasn’t a suspect, that all he did was to say to ask a question, and anyway, I thought he was crazy.” He spoke as if he were arguing with the brass, showing that he was a good cop, a good liar.
“Nothing else?”
“That’s what Laurel asked,” Henri replied. “When he did I asked, ‘Like what?’ And he asked did the guy give any other names? I told him that French was my first language but that I had excellent English except for all the foreign names. ‘At one point,’ I said, ‘he asked me to try “Guys-which” or “toucan”—something like that.’ ”
I grinned at my desk, thinking that the kid would be a great detective one day.
“And did he come up with a fit?” I asked.
“He said, ‘Cumberland’?”
“Too smart by half,” I said. “Listen, man, forget you talked to me. Drop the whole thing.”
“You not gonna tell me what it’s about?”
“Your father once told me that the day after you were born he bought a pistol. He said that he’d never needed one before, but when he saw you he knew that he had to be ready to die for his son.”
“That’s my dad. Good luck, Joe. Call if you need me.”
One e-mail answered and four to go.
