Fade Away (Myron Bolitar 3)

It was Ms. Goodbar.

The two women talked for a bit. They had a drink from the room’s minibar. Then they began to undress. Myron’s stomach coiled. By the time they moved to the bed, he had seen more than enough.

“Turn it off.”

Felder did so, still not looking at the screen. “I meant what I said before. I’m not proud of that.”

“What a guy,” Myron said.

So now he understood Emily’s ferocious hostility. She had indeed been taped in flagrante delicto—not with another man, but with a woman. Certainly no law against it. But most judges would be influenced. It was the way of the world. And speaking of the way of the world, Myron knew Ms. Goodbar by another nickname:

Thumper.

Chapter 29

Myron walked back to his office, wondering what it all meant. For one thing, it meant that Thumper was more than a harmless diversion in all this. But what exactly was she? Had she set up Emily or had she, too, been taped unaware? Were they steady lovers or participants in a one-night stand? Felder claimed he didn’t know. On the tape, the two women hadn’t appeared to be all that familiar with each other—at least, not in the small portion he had watched—but he was hardly an expert on the subject.

Myron cut east on 50th Street. An albino wearing a Mets cap and yellow boxer shorts on the outside of ripped jeans played an Indian sitar. He was singing the seventies classic “The Night Chicago Died” in a voice that reminded Myron of elderly Chinese women in the back of a laundromat. The albino also had a tin cup and a stack of cassettes. A sign read “The Original Benny and His Magical Sitar, only $10.” The original. Oh. Wouldn’t want that imitation albino, sitar, AM seventies music, no sir.

Benny smiled at him. When he reached the part of the song where the son learns a hundred cops are dead—maybe even the boy’s father—Benny began to weep. Moving. Myron stuffed a dollar into the cup. He crossed the street, his thoughts reverting back to the videotape of Emily and Thumper. He wondered now about the relevance. He’d felt like a dirty voyeur for watching the tape in the first place, and now he felt that way for rehashing it in his mind. It was, after all, probably no more than a bizarre aside. What possible connection could there be in all this to the murder of Liz Gorman? None that he could see; then again he still had trouble seeing how Liz Gorman fit in with Greg’s gambling or how she fit in at all.

Still, the video undoubtedly raised a few fairly major issues. For one thing, there were the abuse allegations made against Greg. Was there anything to them, or as Marty Felder had indicated, was Emily’s attorney just playing hardball? And hadn’t Emily told Myron she would do anything to keep her kids? Even kill. How did Emily react when she learned about the videotape? Spurred on by this awful violation, how far would Emily go?

Myron entered his office building on Park Avenue. He exchanged a brief elevator smile with a young woman in a business suit. The elevator reeked of drugstore cologne, the kind where some guy decides that taking a shower is too time-consuming so he opts for sprinkling himself with enough cologne to glaze a wedding cake. The young woman sniffed and looked at Myron.

“I don’t wear cologne,” he said.

She didn’t seem convinced. Or perhaps she was condemning the gender in general for this affront. Understandable under these circumstances.

“Try holding your breath,” he said.

She looked at him, her face a seaweed green.

When he entered his office, Esperanza smiled and said, “Good morning.”

“Oh no,” Myron said.

“What?”

“You’ve never said good morning to me before. Ever.”

“I have too.”

Myron shook his head. “Et tu, Esperanza?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You heard about what happened last night. You’re trying to be—dare I say it?—nice to me.”

The fire in her eyes flamed up. “You think I give a shit about that game? That you got your butt burned at every turn?”

Myron shook his head. “Too late,” he said. “You care.”

“I do not. You sucked. Get over it.”

“Nice try.”

“What, nice try? You sucked. S-U-C-K-E-D. A pitiful display. I was embarrassed to know you. I hid my head in shame when I came in.”

He bent down and kissed her cheek.

Esperanza wiped it off with the back of her hand. “Now I got to get a cootie shot.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”

“Like I care. Really.”

The phone rang. She picked it up. “MB SportsReps. Why yes, Jason, he is here. Hold on a moment.” She put a hand over the receiver. “It’s Jason Blair.”

“The vermin who said you had a nice ass?”

She nodded. “Remind him about my legs.”

“I’ll take it in my office.” A photograph on the top of a stack of papers on her desk caught his eye. “What’s this?”

“The Raven Brigade file,” she said.

He picked up a grainy photo of the group taken in 1973, the only shot of the seven of them together. He quickly found Liz Gorman. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her, but from what he saw, there was no way anyone would ever imagine that Carla and Liz Gorman were one and the same. “Mind if I keep this for a few minutes?” he asked.

“Suit yourself.”

He moved into his office and picked up the phone. “What’s up, Jason?”

“Where the fuck have you been?”

“Not much. How about you?”

“Don’t play smart guy with me. You put that little lady on my contract and she fucked it all up. I got half a mind to leave MB.”

“Calm down, Jason. How did she fuck it up?”

His voice cracked with incredulity. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Here we are, hot in the middle of negotiating with the Red Sox, right?”

“Right.”

“I want to stay in Boston. We both know that. But we have to make a lot of noise like I’m leaving. That’s what you said to do. Make them think you want to switch teams. To up the money. I’m a free agent. This is what we got to do, right?”

“Right.”

“We don’t want them to know I want to be on the team again, right?”

“Right. To a degree.”

“Fuck to a degree,” he snapped. “The other day my neighbor gets a mailing from the Sox, asking him to renew his season tickets. Guess whose picture is on the brochure saying I’m gonna be back? Go ahead. Guess.”