23

I GOT UP AT five the next morning. The first thing I did was check the transmitter. Accinelli’s car hadn’t moved-it was still at his house in Sands Point. I showered, shaved, and got dressed, then went down to the restaurant for breakfast. I kept the iPhone open in front of me while I ate, in case Accinelli moved earlier than I thought likely.

At six o’clock, I started driving circuits on 25A and the Long Island Expressway between Mineola and Sands Point. At six-thirty, the transmitter started moving. I wasn’t surprised. Accinelli was a self-made man, with all the ambition self-made success implied. I hadn’t expected him to show up and punch a time clock at nine.

I watched on the iPhone as he came down Searingtown Road, then fell in behind him on the LIE. Traffic was already thick in the other direction, toward New York, and I supposed one of the benefits of living in Sands Point and working in Mineola was that doing so offered him a reverse commute.

As I followed him I hoped, but didn’t really expect, that he might pull over at a rest stop, or a favorite diner, or some other place where I might find an opportunistic few minutes alone with him. But he didn’t. From the LIE, he went south on the Northern State Parkway, then onto East Jericho. By the numbers, from home to the office. I went past as he waved to the guard in front of the parking lot, then watched him drive inside.

I picked up some sandwiches and fruit at a supermarket and went back to the hotel room. If Accinelli didn’t go anywhere until he was done at work, it was apt to be a long day of watching and waiting.

But at just before eleven o’clock, he moved. I went to the car, watching on the iPhone as he headed west on the LIE, toward New York. On the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I came close enough to spot his car, and stayed behind him across the Williamsburg Bridge. Downtown again. Interesting.

I followed him onto Delancey, keeping several cars between us. Where are you going? I wondered. Same place as yesterday?

I expected him to go right on Bowery and park at the lot I’d seen him use the day before. Instead, he continued onto Kenmare, then made a left on Mott, going the opposite direction from where I’d spotted him yesterday. Then right on Broome, right on Crosby, and into a parking lot between Spring and Prince. And all at once it came together for me. I knew why he was here.

I drove past the lot, made a right onto Houston, then another right onto Mott, the same block I’d seen him turn off yesterday. I paused at the corner of Mott and Prince, but didn’t see him coming. If I was wrong, I had already lost him, and wouldn’t be able to reacquire him until he was moving in the car again. But I knew I wasn’t wrong. The signs had all been there; I was just too distracted by thoughts of Midori and Koichiro to put them together.

Accinelli had a mistress.

Why had he still been in his golf clothes when I saw him yesterday? Why was he hurrying, first on foot, then on the highway? And he hadn’t been shopping here-he was carrying no packages.

I pictured it: he tells his wife he’ll be golfing at the club, and he will be, too, because it’s important that he’s seen there, that his buddies will unintentionally vouch for him, unwittingly provide an alibi. But he’s only staying for nine holes, not eighteen. The difference creates a two-hour window for him. He wants to make the most of it, so he doesn’t even change his clothes. In fact, he wants to stay in the clothes, wants to be wearing them when he gets home later. And then he stays too long, and hurries to return before his wife gets suspicious.

And why the different parking lot today? Everything else I’d seen about Accinelli indicated he was comfortable with patterns-foolishly comfortable, in my opinion, because even aside from the fact that Hilger wanted him dead, his wealth and stature made him an inviting target for kidnapping. But today, he’d practically driven right past the lot on Bowery, in favor of another that wasn’t a half-mile away. Why the change, and why only now? Could it be because he didn’t want to be seen by the same attendant every time he came here?

I’d come across this kind of thing before. When a large part of your job involves following people surreptitiously, discovering patterns you can exploit, you see a lot of behavior that goes unnoticed by the outside world. Drugs. Prostitution. Gambling. Affairs. Closet homosexuality. Addictions and compulsions, cravings and lust. The real world, the id, the dark constants of our nature.

Maybe it wasn’t a mistress. Maybe it was a gay lover, or a catamite, or some such thing. My gut told me a mistress, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I had a new focal point, one potentially more accessible than his home or his office.

I crossed Prince and parked in front of a hydrant on the other side of Mott. I didn’t expect to be more than five minutes, and confirming my suspicions would be worth the small chance of a ticket, and the even smaller chance that the BMW’s presence here today would ever be discovered as meaningful.

I got out, the hat and shades already on, and headed north on Mott, my breath fogging in the cold. Cars and trucks lurched along on Prince in front of me, gears grinding, the occasional horn honking. I heard children yelling and laughing somewhere, probably at a nearby school. A construction team was tearing up a sewer line, and for a moment the explosive pounding of a jackhammer drowned out everything else. I glanced left at the corner of Prince and bingo, there he was, wearing a navy suit, coming toward me. The light across Prince was red, and I was happy to be a good, law-abiding citizen and wait for it. It gave Accinelli time to make a left on Mott and get ahead of me.

The light changed. I crossed Prince with a dozen other people and stayed on the west side of Mott, the opposite side from Accinelli, and therefore the more likely to escape his notice if he were to glance behind. To my left was a church, the grounds around it enclosed by an old brick wall. On the right side of the street, various awnings and signs for ground-level stores and cafés; above them, fashionable, red brick apartment buildings that had once been tenements and warehouses, dark fire escapes zigzagging down their façades. I counted four floors of living space on some of the buildings; others had five. My eyes tracked everywhere as I walked. Two men and a woman stood smoking and shivering in front of a place called Café Gitane, but they were too young, too hipster-looking, and I didn’t make them as a problem. An attractive brunette in a long leather coat was rolling up the metal gate in front of a store, opening for the day’s business. She displayed no awareness of anything around her and again I detected no problems. A bike messenger in dreadlocks and shades was taking a package from a woman in an apron in the doorway of a florist called Polux. Like everyone else I’d seen so far, they paid no attention to the street scene around them. They felt like civilians, and nothing more.

As he walked, Accinelli reached into his pocket and took out a set of keys. Right, keys out now for faster entry, don’t want to linger on the street where you might be seen. About halfway down the street, he turned and went up a flight of four granite stairs to an apartment building entranceway. He unlocked the metal framed glass door and went in.

I continued on Mott to Houston, then crossed the street and came back, checking hot spots. Everything still seemed fine. No good hides for a sniper, I was glad to see: this stretch of Mott offered no parking; the crosstown traffic on Houston and Prince rendered untenable a shot from a vehicle farther away; and with the church grounds across the street from the apartment, the only accessible windows and rooftops were directly overhead, too sharp an angle to be useful.