Chapter 22

IT WAS A little before noon when I walked into Jimmy D’s Pub three blocks south of my apartment. Any self-respecting writer has a local bar that doubles as his second home. I read that in Pete Hamill’s memoir, so it must be true, right?

A couple of doors from Jimmy’s I gave a buck to a pan-handler I know named Reuben. Reuben’s a homeless man, nearly blind, unemployable. A quirk of mine is that I leave the house every morning with ten singles. I give them out on the streets until they’re gone. My father used to do the same thing with five singles when we would visit New York together. He didn’t think it was a big deal, and neither do I.

“Hey, Nick,” I heard from behind the bar as I grabbed a stool inside Jimmy’s. It wasn’t quite a chorus of people shouting “Norm!” on Cheers, but it was welcome just the same.

“Hey, Jimmy.”

Jimmy Dowd was the owner as well as his own daytime bartender. He poured a mean shot and could draw a clean pint of Guinness. I had no idea how his mixed drinks were because I’d never had one, let alone seen him make any. Jimmy’s was a pub for those who had only one decision to make with their liquor: straight up or on the rocks?

But I was holding off on either. At least until Dwayne Robinson arrived for our meeting.

Jimmy nodded when I told him as much, and the two of us chatted for a few minutes about the Yankees’ upcoming series against the Red Sox at Fenway. “We’ll take two of three,” predicted Jimmy. “As long as we pitch around Big Papi. Slumping or not, he always kills us!”

There were a lot of reasons why I liked hanging out at Jimmy D’s, not the least of which was Jimmy himself. He was a Vietnam vet who had made some money in stocks and decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of owning a pub. There was also the fact that three years ago Jimmy had saved my life one night. But that’s a story for another time.

The story now was Dwayne Robinson. I checked my watch – he was due any minute. Knowing that Jimmy, a Bronx native, shared the same passion for the Bombers that I did, I told him who I was waiting on.

“No shit, really?” he said, tossing back his head of jet-black hair with a surprised look. Then he summed up an entire city’s feeling with four words. “He broke my heart.”

We started comparing favorite Dwayne Robinson pitching performances. With lots to choose from, it wasn’t long before I lost track of the time.

“When was he supposed to meet you?” Jimmy finally asked, glancing at his watch.

“Noon,” I answered, doing the same.

Shit! It was twelve thirty. Here we go again!

I reached for my cell phone and dialed Robinson’s apartment. By the sixth ring I was about to hang up. That’s when I heard the beep of an incoming call. I hit the flash button to switch over to the other line, not bothering to check caller ID. I was sure it was Dwayne.

It was Courtney.

I dispensed with “Hello” and cut to the chase, my frustration leading the way like a bulldozer. “He didn’t show,” I said. “Dwayne Robinson screwed me again.”

“I know,” said Courtney.

I know?

“Are you near a television?” she asked.

I motioned for Jimmy to turn on the TV.

“What channel?” I asked her.

“Take your pick,” Courtney said. “I’m watching ESPN.” She didn’t say another word.

Chapter 23

“ESPN!” I SHOUTED to Jimmy.

He punched the remote, the picture came up, and within a few seconds my heart sank down into the floorboards.

A reporter was talking, the street scene behind him not giving too much away. I could see a cop car, a bunch of people milling about.

But it was all summed up on the bottom of the screen in plain English.

DWAYNE ROBINSON IS DEAD.

The reporter was rambling on, but it was as if I’d gone deaf. Jimmy said something to me and I couldn’t process his words, either. I just kept staring at the TV screen in shock, getting numb all over.

The picture changed as a few words from the reporter finally began to sift into my ears.

Jump… building… apparent suicide… mystery man… now mystery death.

I snapped out of it to watch the TV screen fill with the shaky image from what looked like a handheld recorder. There was a hardwood floor – a hallway – and the pink slippers of the woman running with the camera. She was heading for a sliding-glass door off her living room.

Word for word, I could hear the reporter’s voice-over.

“What you’re about to see is dramatic home video shot by one of Dwayne Robinson’s neighbors right after she apparently heard the crash outside her apartment window. I must warn our viewing audience that this footage is very unsettling.”

The handheld camera finally stopped jumping around, the focus tightening from blurry to clear. Dwayne’s neighbor was shooting from her terrace high above the street below.

Dwayne Robinson’s six-foot-four body was sprawled face-down on the roof of a white van, the impact creating a crater of twisted and bent metal around him.

I went partially deaf again as the shot returned to the reporter standing on what was clearly the same street where Dwayne had lived.

And died.

“Guess he’s not coming,” Jimmy muttered, sounding as shaken up as I felt. “The poor son of a bitch. He blew us off again, huh, Nick.”

Part Two. THE SETUP MAN

Chapter 24

BRUNO TORENZI OPENED the door to his room at the San Sebastian Hotel overlooking Central Park and gave a head-to-toe gaze at the five-foot-ten-inch blonde standing before him in the hallway. She was wearing a shiny red cocktail dress with matching high heels and strands of gold jewelry.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “Your real name?”

“Anastasia,” she answered. Her Russian accent was almost as thick as his Italian. “What’s your real name?”

Torenzi ignored the question and simply turned around, walking back inside.

“Nice to meet you,” the blonde said, closing the door behind her. “I’ll call you Sebastian, then. Like the hotel?”

“I get the joke,” Bruno Torenzi called back to the girl.

Torenzi’s preference was for Italian girls, but the ones on this side of the Atlantic were like eating at the Olive Garden: you would never mistake the experience for a home-cooked meal. As for the American girls, they talked too much about themselves. And the Asians were too skinny for him, nothing to grab on to.

Thank God for the Russian girls. Or Polish, or Greek, for that matter.

“Take your clothes off,” said Torenzi, grabbing a beer from the minibar. There was no offer of anything for the girl.

“First things first,” she shot back. “Sebastian.”

“Sure,” he mumbled, walking over to an open black duffel bag perched on a round table in the corner. He pulled out a stack of cash. “Two thousand, right?” he asked, removing the rubber band holding the wad together.

“Not including gratuity,” said Anastasia, hoping the Italian man, the apparently rich Italian man, didn’t know the rules of the game.

Torenzi peeled off twenty crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and stuck out his hand. “I wasn’t born yesterday… Anastasia.”

She took the two thousand and thought that would be good – for a start.

Then she nuzzled up to his ear while sliding her hand down to the crotch of his black trousers. Nice material, Italian-made. “You know what Anastasia means?” she whispered through lips painted cherry red. “Means ‘flower of resurrection.’”

Torenzi took a swig of his beer. “Excellent. Now take off your clothes,” he repeated. “Forget about the history lessons.”

The big guy liked to be the boss and he was hardly the first, thought Anastasia as she reached for the zipper running down the back of her dress. Let him enjoy it while he still can.