CHAPTER
19
COWL’S SUBURBAN PALACE WAS QUIET tonight. Or so Devine thought as he sat on his bike and surveyed the place with a pair of night optics he’d brought back from the war. He figured the Army owed him that. Lights were on, people were moving around inside, and there were a couple of normal cars in the front, meaning a BMW Eight Series and a Maserati convertible. You could have bought at least ten of them each for the cash Cowl had dropped on the Bugatti.
Devine jogged across the road and took up position in the hook of a tree in a stand of oaks, which had been allowed to live when they had otherwise clear-cut this area. He could see into a fresh set of rooms from this vantage point. He hadn’t seen the bikini blonde yet and there was no sign of Cowl. But the place had eight garage bays, so the Bugatti could be in one of them.
Devine sat there for a few minutes. Remaining motionless for long periods seemed to be counterintuitive when thinking about what a soldier spent time doing. But the more intelligence you had beforehand, the better the eventual fight would go.
He shifted out of the tree, hustled over some open ground, and jumped up on the perimeter wall. Then, keeping his upper arms and elbows planted firmly against the wall, he slowly lifted the optics up to his eyes, adjusting the focus.
That was when he hit pay dirt.
The bikini blonde was out back at a table beside the pool. She had on white slacks and a pale blue sleeveless blouse. Blue backless casual shoes completed the fashion pool-sitting ensemble. She looked like she could step right onto a magazine cover.
Yet the man sitting opposite her was even more intriguing.
His face was bandaged, but Devine had little trouble recognizing WASP from the Greenwich Village alley. As he looked at them together, sitting close and speaking earnestly, Devine wondered two things: First, was WASP’s car the big-ass BMW or the Maserati? Second, were they brother and sister? Because they sure looked like they could be.
Then he also wondered about something else. WASP’s being here was one hell of a coincidence. And not one Devine cared for at all. But then again the bar in the Village was popular with folks who worked in the Financial District. He’d been there before on some official Cowl and Comely outings with his fellow Burners. So if WASP was there and he was in the financial field as well, he could very well know Brad Cowl.
Devine couldn’t hear what either was saying, so he dropped back to the ground, returned to his bike, and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
WASP came out and climbed into the BMW. Devine had gotten that wrong. He’d figured the guy for the Maserati. The BMW pulled out through the gates and WASP hit the afterburners. The car roared off, and Devine took up the chase once more.
He was not completely surprised when the route took them to Manhattan. The BMW finally stopped in front of a brownstone on the Upper East Side after sliding into a permit-only space. WASP walked up to the door, unlocked it, and went inside.
Devine pulled in across the street and took pictures of the BMW’s plate and the home and its address, which were detailed by brass numbers attached to the stone next to the front door. Every window in the place had coverings, rendering his optics useless. He eyed the homes on either side. They were dark. Cars were parked up and down the street.
He figured the brownstone was worth twenty mil or more. And the WASP looked to be no more than thirty. Maybe he’d inherited the place. There was a lot of that going on in this town.
Devine drove off and headed to Broadway. He’d looked up the address where Waiting for Godot was playing for another two weeks. It was on Forty-Fifth in the heart of the Theater District.
The Lombard.
He bought a ticket at the box office for the Sunday matinee. After that he turned toward Downtown and soon pulled up to the place in the Village where he had fought the three men. He parked diagonally behind a car at the curb and looked around. There was no police tape up, and he saw no other evidence of this being any type of crime scene. Maybe Stamos had been telling the truth. He next drove farther south to the Cowl Building and stopped in front. He could see the security guard through the glass.
Devine craned his neck back to look up to the fifty-second floor, where it seemed now that someone had killed Sara Ewes. And since he had to find out what was happening at Cowl that might be illegal, he figured he also had to find out who had killed Ewes, because they had to be connected. And that connection might stem from a Broadway play.
And if I don’t solve this thing, even with my best efforts, why do I think Emerson Campbell will send my ass right to USDB?
He headed to Brooklyn, crossing over the East River via the Brooklyn Bridge. The dark water looked sulky and uninterested in its surroundings, at least to him. A few minutes later he reached a street in Park Slope a block over from Prospect Park. It was a quiet and tree-lined neighborhood of upscale homes, many of which had been renovated.
Sara Ewes had lived in one of them, and there were two police cars parked in front of it. A cop was standing guard by the front door and the lights were on inside.
A man in a suit came out of the place and looked around. A slender redheaded woman hurried over to him and they met at the bottom of the front steps. She had a microphone and a power pack under the back of her blouse, and was trailed by a burly cameraman.
So the media has gotten wind that something is up.
The suit engaged with the reporter and they spoke briefly, though the cameraman did no filming. This appointment must have been prearranged, thought Devine. When the man turned and walked back to the house, the woman trailed him, ostensibly asking more questions and perhaps wanting to get something on film. Devine couldn’t hear exactly what they were, but the reporter obviously had not gotten her fill; however, the man had. He closed the door in her face, and she clearly wasn’t happy about that.
The uniform stepped forward and motioned for them to leave. She gave him an earful and then turned away to jabber with her cameraman, who had lowered his piece of equipment. They walked back to a van parked farther down the narrow street and emblazoned with the station’s logo. A minute later they pulled off. Devine saw the woman close up as the van sped past. The dented and grimy vehicle said they were with Channel 44, which he didn’t even know was a thing. She was around Devine’s age. Her expression was determined, and she looked like the type who lived only to be in the middle of all the biggest news stories of the day.
Devine’s attention was then drawn to a cab that pulled slowly down the street and stopped in front of the house. Two people got out, a man and a woman. They looked to be in their fifties. The man was bald and dressed in slacks and a white dress shirt. He looked like death itself. The woman’s face held the anguish of the recently bereaved. The man pulled out a large roller suitcase from the cab’s trunk and then the cab drove off.
The man put his arm around the woman, supporting her, and they slowly headed up the steps, where they were met by the cop. After each of them showed him something, probably ID, the cop spoke into the mic Velcroed to his shoulder pad. The door opened a few seconds later and the same suit appeared. He ushered the couple inside and closed the door.
Devine took all this in. Obviously, Ewes’s parents had just shown up from wherever they lived outside of the country. He wondered if they knew that the official verdict had changed to homicide. If they didn’t, things were about to get far more difficult for the couple. There was guilt in thinking your child had killed herself. You would find yourself in What signals did I miss?, What could I have done? sorts of mind games.
But with murder came horror. Knowing that someone out there had killed your kid. Your first instinct was to avenge your child. Then, when that emotion died down, things would be looked at more rationally. At that point, the understanding that someone had violently taken your child’s life could make you delve into all sorts of personal spaces where most parents would probably rather not go.
But if Ewes indeed had been murdered, it was someone at Cowl and Comely who had done it. And that meant everyone there, including Devine, was now a suspect.