“Hello, Uncle Marty.”
“Nice to hear from you, son. How’s school?”
“It’s fine.”
“Wonderful. Do you have plans for the summer?”
“Not yet.”
“No rush, am I right? Enjoy it, that’s my advice. You’ll be out in the real world soon enough. You hear what I’m saying?”
Martin Bork was nice enough, but all adults, when they start with the life advice, sound like blowhards. “I do, yes.”
“So I got your message, Brandon.” All business now. “What can I do for you?”
The pathway started down toward the lake. Brandon got off it and moved closer to the water’s edge. “It’s about my mother’s account.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. Brandon pressed on.
“I see she made a pretty big withdrawal.”
“How did you see that?” Bork asked.
Brandon didn’t like the change in tone. “Pardon?”
“While I won’t confirm or deny what you just said, how did you see this supposed withdrawal?”
“Online.”
More silence.
“I have her password, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Brandon, do you have any questions about your own account?”
He moved away from the lake and started over the stream. “No.”
“Then I’m afraid that I’m having to go now.”
“There’s nearly a quarter of a million dollars missing from my mother’s account.”
“I assure you that nothing is missing. If you have any questions about your mother’s account, perhaps it is best if you ask her.”
“You talked to her? She approved this transaction?”
“I can’t say any more, Brandon. I hope you understand. But talk to your mother. Good-bye.”
Martin Bork hung up.
In something of a daze, Brandon stumbled over the old stone arch into a more secluded area. The vegetation was denser up here. He finally spotted a bird—a red cardinal. He remembered reading that the Cherokees believed cardinals were daughters of the sun. If the bird flew up toward the sun, it was good luck. If the bird chose to fly downward, well, obviously the opposite would be true.
Brandon stood transfixed and waited for the cardinal to make his move.
That was why he never heard the man lurking behind him until it was too late.
• • •
Chaz, her soon-to-be-ex-partner, called Kat’s cell phone. “I got it.”
“Got what?”
Kat had just gotten out of the Lincoln Center subway station, which smelled decidedly like piss, and onto 66th Street, which smelled almost as decidedly like cherry blossoms. Kat
“You were trying to put in a request for a surveillance video,” Chaz said. “It came in.”
“Hold up, how did that happen?”
“You know how that happened, Kat.”
She did, bizarre as it was. Chaz had put in the request for her. The only consistent thing she understood about people was that they are never consistent. “You could get in trouble,” Kat said.
“Trouble is my middle name,” he said. “Actually, my middle name is Hung Stallion. Did you tell your hot friend I’m rich?”
Yep. Consistent. “Chaz.”
“Right, sorry. Do you want me to e-mail you the video?”
“That’d be great, thanks.”
“Were you trying to see what car that lady got in?”
“You watched the tape?”
“That was okay, right? I’m still your partner.”
Fair point, Kat thought.
“Who is she?”
“Her name is Dana Phelps. That was her son who came to see me the other day. He thinks she’s missing. No one believes him.”
“Including you?”
“I’m somewhat more open-minded.”
“Could you tell me why?”
“It’s a long story,” Kat said. “Can it wait?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So did Dana Phelps get in a car?”
“She did,” Chaz said. “More specifically, a black Lincoln Town Car stretch limo.”
“Was the driver wearing a black cap and suit?”
“Yes.”
“License plate?”
“Well, here’s the thing. The bank video didn’t pick up his plates. The guy kept the car on the street. Hard enough to figure out the make.”
“Damn.”
“Well, no, not really,” Chaz said.
“How’s that?”
Chaz cleared his throat, more for effect than need. “I checked Google Earth and saw that there was an Exxon station two stores down in the direction the guy was driving. I made a few calls. The gas station surveillance video captures the street.”
Most people understand on some level that there are a lot of surveillance cameras out there, but very few people really get it. There are forty million surveillance cameras in the United States alone and the number keeps growing. You never go through a day without being recorded.
“Anyway,” Chaz said, “the request may take another hour or two, but when we get it, we should be able to spot the license plate.”
“Great.”
“I’ll call you when it comes. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Okay,” Kat said. Then: “Chaz?”
“Yeah?”
“I appreciate this. I mean, you know, uh, thanks.”
“Can I have your hot friend’s phone number?”
Kat hung up. Her phone rang again. The caller ID read Brandon Phelps.
“Hey, Brandon.”
But the voice on the other end wasn’t Brandon’s. “May I ask with whom I’m speaking?”
“You called me,” Kat reminded him. “Hey, who is this? What’s going on?”
“This is Officer John Glass,” the man on the phone said. “I’m calling about Brandon Phelps.”
• • •
Central Park’s 840 acres is policed by the 22nd Precinct, the city’s oldest, better known as the Central Park Precinct. Kat’s father had spent eight years there in the seventies. Back then, the officers of the “two-two” were housed in an old horse stable. They still were, in a way, though a sixty-one-million-dollar renovation had given the place maybe too much of a new shine. The precinct now looked more like a museum for modern art than anything to do with law enforcement. In a typically New York City move—that is, you didn’t know if it was for real or a joke—the rather impressive glass atrium had been built out of bulletproof glass. The original estimate called for the renovation to cost almost twenty million less, but in what one might also consider classically Manhattan style, the builders had unexpectedly run across old trolley tracks.
The old ghosts never quite leave this city.
Kat hurried to the front desk and asked for Officer Glass. The desk sergeant pointed at a slender black man behind her. Officer Glass was in uniform. She may have known him—Central Park Precinct was pretty close to her own 19th—but she couldn’t be sure.
Glass was talking to two elderly gentlemen who looked as though they’d just come from a gin tournament in Miami Beach. One wore a fedora and used a cane. The other wore a light blue jacket and trousers the orange of a mango. Glass was taking notes. As Kat approached, she heard him tell the two old men that they could go now.
“You have our numbers, right?” Fedora asked.
“I do, thank you.”
“You call us if you need us,” Mango Pants said.
“I’ll do that. And again, thanks for your help.”
When they started away, Glass spotted her and said, “Hey, Kat.”
“We know each other?”
“Not really, but my old man worked here with your old man. Your dad was a legend.”
You become a legend, Kat knew, by dying on the job. “So where’s Brandon?”
“He’s with the doctor in the back room. He wouldn’t let us take him to a hospital.”
“Can I see him?”
“Sure, follow me.”
“How badly was he hurt?”
Glass shrugged. “Would have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for those two reliving their youth.” He gestured toward the two old men, Fedora and Mango Pants, slowly exiting the atrium.
“How’s that?”
“You know about the Ramble’s, uh, flamboyant past, right?”
She nodded. Even the official Central Park website referred to the Ramble as a “gay icon” and a “well-known site for private homosexual encounters throughout the twentieth century.” Back in the day, the dense vegetation and poor lighting made it perfect for so-called gay cruising. More recently, the Ramble had become not only the park’s premier woodland but something of a historical landmark for the LGBT community.