Truth or Die Read online

  I couldn’t help myself, though. As I passed the door to room 1701, I stopped and listened. I could hear a guy’s voice. At first, I thought he was talking to someone else in the room, that he hadn’t come alone. Then he made it clear he had. He was talking on a phone or some kind of radio.

  “The kid’s still alive,” he said. “I repeat, the kid is still alive.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I DIDN’T need any added incentive for what I planned to do next, but there she was anyway as I walked as casually as possible through the lobby of the Lucinda and out to the street.

  The same wary-eyed woman behind the front desk wearing a turquoise blazer watched me step by step. Still, she didn’t say a word. That would change, of course, once she learned of the dead body in the bathtub seventeen floors up. She’d have plenty to say then, a description of me sure to be included.

  “Did you notice anything or anyone out of the ordinary?” the crime scene detectives would ask her. With the help of Forensics, they would’ve already determined the time of death as during her shift, and quite possibly between the times I came and left.

  Safely down the block, I dialed my own crime scene detective. As they say in both PR and politics, always get ahead of the story.

  “Wait, slow down,” said Detective Lamont from behind his desk. I could hear him through the phone shuffling papers, probably moving Claire’s file back in front of him.

  I apologized. I was getting too far ahead of the story, talking a million words a minute. My heartbeat, still racing, was acting like a metronome for my mouth.

  I stopped, took a deep breath, and began again to detail what had happened since I shook his hand on my way out of the Midtown North precinct house. “Talk to you soon,” Lamont had told me. He’d had no idea just how soon.

  I could tell now that I was trying his patience. The fact that Claire had left my apartment to go see a source did nothing to challenge what he knew—or, at least, thought he knew—to be true: that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the back of that taxi.

  And why wouldn’t he believe that? I certainly had. The incident was designed that way, caught on video for all to see.

  I told him about the phone call Claire had received, and how I’d figured out the address.

  Lamont interrupted me. “Where are you going with all this?” he asked, wanting me to move the story along.

  “To the Lucinda Hotel,” I answered.

  “Hurry up and get there.”

  I couldn’t blame the guy. It was late and he was tired. But I knew all would be forgiven with one sentence about room 1701.

  “The guy in the bathtub is the guy who killed Claire,” I said.

  I could literally hear him sit bolt upright in his chair.

  “Where are you right now?” he asked. No, demanded.

  “Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth.”

  “Don’t move, I’ll have it radioed right now. A cruiser will be there shortly,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

  “Hold on, there’s one more thing,” I said.

  I was back to talking a million words a minute as I tried to explain the guy with the magic pliers. The more I listened to myself, the more I realized how crazy it must sound to Lamont. If it did, though, he didn’t let on. Instead, he cut to the chase, the only thing that mattered at the moment.

  “Good guy or bad guy?” he asked.

  “Bad guy,” I said.

  He paused for a moment. “Aren’t they all?”

  Click.

  CHAPTER 17

  FROM THE moment I first got the call from Claire’s sister, Ellen, so much had changed, and then changed again. Still, in some ways, I couldn’t help thinking I was right back where I’d started. With more questions than answers.

  The kid is still alive.

  As I waited for the cruiser courtesy of Lamont, I kept repeating the line in my head. It couldn’t literally be a kid, could it? I didn’t think so, but anything was possible. The night so far was a testament to that, and here we were rolling into the next day.

  A few minutes later, I caught a flash of red and blue lights out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see my escorts pulling up along the curb on Eighth Avenue. The officer riding shotgun stepped out. He looked like a very young version of Kiefer Sutherland, albeit on some serious steroids. The guy was ripped and he knew it. Had the sleeves on his uniform been rolled up any higher, he would’ve officially been wearing a tank top.

  “Trevor Mann?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded at the door to the backseat. “Let’s go.”

  I climbed in and answered a rapid-fire succession of questions from him while his partner, a guy who didn’t resemble any actor I knew, took the turn onto Thirty-Fourth Street, driving slowly toward the front of the Lucinda.

  Basically, I was confirming everything I’d told Lamont. The room number. The guy in the bathtub. The other guy who still might be in the room.

  “And this other guy, you never actually saw him?” asked the officer.

  “No, I just heard him through the door.”

  “What did he sound like? Black? White? Hispanic?”

  “White,” I said.

  He turned to his partner behind the wheel and smirked. “Shoot the white guy.”

  They both chuckled as we pulled up in front of the hotel. Engine off, battery on. I reached for the door handle, thinking I was going inside with them. Silly me.

  “Stay here,” I was told.

  It made sense. Of the three of us, I was the only one who didn’t have a 9mm pistol strapped to my belt. Besides, I was happy never to set foot inside the Lucinda again.

  “Do me a favor, though,” I said. “Could you turn off the flashers?”

  The cop behind the wheel smiled and nodded. He understood. There might not have been a lot of foot traffic on the cusp of dawn, but there was still no need for me to look like a perp sitting in the backseat. Off went the flashers.

  The two disappeared into the hotel as I did my best to keep my eyes open. I was exhausted, my lack of sleep suddenly crashing down on me. Point being, I had no idea how much time had passed when I was jolted awake by the sound of knuckles rapping on the window. Kiefer’s doppelganger was waving for me to join him on the curb.

  I stepped out, glancing quickly at his name plate. OFFICER BOWMAN, it read. The moment seemed to suggest that it was time I knew that.

  “Was the other guy in the room gone?” I asked.

  He nodded. It was the way he nodded, though. There was something else, more to it.

  “How long did you wait before you called this in?” he asked.

  “I didn’t wait,” I said. “It was right away.”

  He nodded again. The same kind of nod.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  CHAPTER 18

  SO MUCH for my never setting foot in the Lucinda again.

  I followed Officer Bowman through the lobby, where his partner was questioning—who else?—the wary-eyed woman in the turquoise blazer behind the front desk. I kept waiting for her to glare at me as we passed by, but it didn’t happen.

  On the ride up in the elevator, I kept waiting for Bowman to give some clue about what was going on. But that didn’t happen, either.

  We walked the long, beige hallway in silence, and as we reached the door of room 1701, he stepped inside first and immediately spun around to look at me. Only in hindsight did I realize what he was doing. Gauging my reaction.

  I turned and stared into the bathroom, my jaw literally dropping. It was as if nothing had happened.

  The light was working. The hair dryer was unplugged and sitting on the shelf beneath the sink, the cord neatly wound. There wasn’t a drop of water on the floor or in the tub.

  Also not in the tub? The guy who killed Claire. He was gone.

  I stared back at Bowman, who was still watching me like I was a science experiment, or more accurately, a science experiment with the title “Is This Man Telling t
he Truth?”

  “You don’t seriously think I’ve made this up, do you?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” he said. “That would make you crazy.”

  Of course, the way he said it made clear that he was leaving the door open. Speaking of which …

  “You did notice the sheared-off door guard behind me, right?” I asked. I certainly had as I walked in.

  Bowman nodded. “Yep, saw it,” he said. “I can also feel the squish beneath my feet. The carpet’s definitely wet.”

  He left it at that. I knew what he was thinking, though, if only because I was thinking the same thing. There was no dead body in the bathtub, and the combination of a sheared-off door guard and some wet carpet didn’t prove there ever had been.

  “They must have moved the body and cleaned up afterward,” I said.

  “They?”

  “I heard only one voice through the door, but that doesn’t mean there was only one person.”

  “You’re right, it doesn’t,” said Bowman before checking his watch. “And about how much time would they have had to do this?”

  “Apparently enough.”

  But even I was doing the math in my head. Ten minutes. Fifteen, tops. I looked back into the bathroom at the neatly folded dry towels, and especially the dry floor. In addition to the magic pliers, was there also a magic mop?

  I could see how Bowman or anyone else would be a bit skeptical. That didn’t concern me. Truth was, it didn’t matter how it’d been done. It had been done. Quickly. Quietly. Professionally. And that combination could mean only one thing. The story that Claire was working on was getting bigger by the minute.

  The kid is still alive.

  The words were echoing again in my head. Someone had checked into this room and maybe even the room next to it. All I could look at now was the other thing strapped to Bowman’s belt besides a pistol. His radio.

  “Your partner downstairs,” I said. “Did he get the name of who was staying in this room?”

  “Yeah, he got a name,” came a voice from behind me. I knew right away it wasn’t Bowman’s partner.

  I turned to see Detective Lamont. Quite the sight. His glasses were askew, his tie loosened to the point of looking like a noose. His suit jacket, meanwhile, had more creases than an unfolded piece of origami.

  Still, for a guy so disheveled, he somehow maintained an aura of complete control. You can’t fake experience.

  After silently studying the sheared-off door guard for a few seconds, Lamont stepped past me, gazing inside the bathroom as if confirming what he’d already been told in the lobby. There was no dead guy in the tub.

  All the while, I was waiting for him to say the name of whoever it was who’d been staying in the room. He didn’t.

  “Is it supposed to be some kind of secret?” I finally asked. I couldn’t help the sarcasm.

  “No,” said Lamont, bending down to touch the wet carpet. “No secret. It’s just not his real name, that’s all.”

  “How do you know?”

  He stood up, looking at me for the first time. “Because I graduated high school in 1984.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Bowman. “Besides the fact that you’re old.”

  Lamont ignored him. He was also ignoring the notepad clutched in his hand, suggesting that he’d never even bothered to write down the name.

  Instead, he simply recited it, as if from memory. “Winston Smith.”

  Bowman looked at both of us and shrugged. I looked at Lamont and nodded.

  “You’re right,” I said. “That’s not his real name.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “WHY CAN’T Winston Smith be his real name?” asked Bowman.

  “It’s from a book,” said Lamont, straightening his glasses with a professorial nudge. Class was in session. “George Orwell’s 1984. Everyone in my high school had to read it that year. They practically made us memorize it. The name of the main character was Winston Smith.”

  Bowman shrugged again. “What? So no one else can have that name?”

  “They could, but Winston Smith was supposed to represent Everyman,” I said. I caught Lamont’s eyes and cracked a smile. “It was a few years later, but I read it in high school, too.”

  “Good for you both,” said Bowman, getting his Bronx up. “I wasn’t even born in 1984.”

  I was really starting to dislike this guy. “Anyway,” I said, “Winston Smith is simply a more clever version of John Doe.”

  “Not to mention that our Mr. Smith also paid in cash for this room and the one next door,” said Lamont.

  As if having prompted himself, he took a walk through the connecting doors to look at the other room. He was back within seconds.

  “Do me a favor, Bowman,” he said. “Give Mr. Mann and me a few minutes, will you?”

  Bowman was more than happy to oblige. “I’ll be in the lobby,” he said.

  As he walked out, Lamont closed the door behind him. He turned and made a beeline for the minibar fridge, grabbing a Diet Coke.

  “What do you think they charge for this?” he asked, digging a fingernail under the tab. He popped open the can with a loud snap and grinned. “I guess we’ll just have to put it on Mr. Smith’s bill.”

  After taking a long sip, he stepped back and settled into the armchair in the corner. He was in no rush, and whether or not that was calculated I didn’t know. He surely had questions for me. I just didn’t expect his first one to be the same one I had.

  “So what happens now?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

  “Well, I know what I need to do,” he said, pointing at his chest. “I need to eyeball all the exits and hope that the security cameras aimed at them were actually recording. I also need to get a description of our Mr. Smith from the clerk who actually checked him in, since the beady-eyed woman downstairs told me it wasn’t her.”

  He was right. I had the wrong word. The woman at the front desk was more beady-eyed than wary-eyed.

  Lamont paused, taking another sip. “Then maybe, just maybe, we can start piecing this whole thing together. Because until then, we’ve got a little problem.”

  Yes, we did, and he didn’t need to spell it out. I’d learned it in law school; he’d learned it at the police academy.

  No body? No crime.

  “So, like I said, what happens now?” he asked. “What do you need to do?”

  “You mean, besides getting some sleep?”

  “That’s a good start,” he said. “But yeah, besides that.”

  I was stalling because I had no idea what he was getting at. Of course, that was his point.

  “You tried to trace Claire’s footsteps tonight and look where it got you,” he said.

  “I know her killer is dead, don’t I?”

  “Yes, and if it wasn’t for those dumb doors being open to the next room, you could’ve been next.”

  “Is this your way of saying let us do our jobs?”

  Lamont winced. “God, I hope not. They only say that on cop shows. What I’m saying is this: Stop trying to do hers.”

  I was about to shake my head, tell him he was off base. No, worse. Delusional. Like Donald Trump with a comb.

  But Lamont knew that was coming and was way ahead of me. He’d already reached into his pocket and was now holding it in the air, Exhibit A.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” I asked.

  He broke into a smile, and as he did, I could practically see the canary feathers caught in his teeth.

  “Did I mention you’re a lousy liar, Mr. Mann?”

  CHAPTER 20

  LAMONT WAS holding Claire’s cell phone, the old Motorola she used strictly for her sources.

  The Stopper.

  “Why didn’t you say anything back at the precinct?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t sure that was what she was doing,” I said.

  “Still, what the hell were you planning? Hop the fence later this afternoon at the Whiteston
e Pound and search behind the backseat?”

  “It was really there, huh?”

  “The second you wanted to watch that part of the recording again, I knew you saw her do something,” said Lamont.

  “Only I didn’t know it was her phone she was hiding.”

  “You know why she would, though, don’t you?”

  He had me dead to rights on everything, right down to my waiting until the taxi had been cleared by Forensics, then shrink-wrapped and flatbedded from Lamont’s precinct to, yes, the Whitestone Pound in Queens, where it would eventually be claimed by whoever owned the medallion for it.

  The only part the detective got wrong was the timing. Screw the afternoon. Way too risky. Criminal trespassing is better left for the dark, no? I wasn’t planning on hopping that fence until well after midnight.

  “She was just protecting her sources,” I said. “That phone was for them exclusively.”

  With that, I cocked my head, and he immediately shook his. He knew what I was about to ask.

  “Counselor, we both know I can’t turn it over to you, at least not yet,” he said. “Pretty damn impressive, though, her presence of mind. Even in that moment … wanting to shield them.” He flipped open the phone. “Of course, I can see why. There are a lot of boldfaced names in the directory, at least those I could decipher. Most were just listed by initials.”

  “Was there a W.S., by any chance?”

  “No such luck,” he said, pointing at the table between the two beds. Winston Smith had called from the phone in the room.

  The kid was still alive, and we still had no way of contacting him.

  Like a kick in the head, though, it occurred to me. What about the people who wanted to kill him? What about contacting them?

  I took out my own phone, quickly sending an anonymous text to a number I knew by heart.

  Lamont’s eyes narrowed to a suspicious squint. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Something you’re definitely not going to like, Detective.

  CHAPTER 21