The Turtle Bay Diner had smudged plate-glass windows that wrapped around the corner of Forty-sixth and Second, and twin plastic signs announcing the name on both facades in faded sea green script. It looked like a neighborhood place, the kind that had been there for twenty or thirty years, and that nobody who lived or worked outside a five-block radius of it had ever noticed. I was reaching for the door handle when I heard Reggie’s voice.
“Hey.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw his battered blue undercover car parked at the back end of a bus stop. He was in the driver’s seat, leaning sideways to call out the open passenger window.
“What’s up?”
“I just got word that I need to be in Staten Island ASAP. You think you can handle Gallegos by yourself?”
“I guess,” I said, resting my forearm on the roof of his car.
He leaned over a little farther to get a better angle on me.
“You sure? You look kind of beat this morning. No offense.”
“I didn’t get a lot of sleep. And I had to tell Claire and Kate about Alex before they heard about it somewhere else. They were both pretty upset.”
“I bet,” he said, shaking his head. “What about you?”
“I don’t know.” I was grateful he didn’t ask if I’d also told them about the Kyle e-mail. I hated keeping things from Claire. Our relationship was initially built on the idea that we were a nation of two, without secrets. But Kate’s revelation and my conversation with Claire in bed had rocked me. I couldn’t risk upsetting her further until I had a better sense of how to respond. “I feel like I could use a stiff drink.”
“One of the first things you learn as a rookie cop on patrol-if you feel like you need a drink, take one.”
“Great,” I said, laughing despite myself. “That makes me feel a lot better about our police force. Any update on Alex or the missing hard drive?”
“Not that I know of, but I’m not sure I’d hear. His father has everybody from the mayor down on eggshells. I’m betting the coroner rules it an accident unless they turn up a note, and maybe even then. Families tend to resist suicide verdicts.”
I understood how Walter must feel. It would be horrible to think your child was so unhappy that he deliberately took his own life.
“So, listen,” Reggie continued. “Gallegos. Don’t go barging in with a bunch of questions about his brother-in-law or he’s likely to just clam up. Get him talking about himself first, and then work your way toward the subject when he seems comfortable.”
“Is that from the police handbook?”
“Yeah,” he said. “And if that doesn’t work, smack him in the kidney with your nightstick.”
“Fifty percent of my job is getting people to talk to me. I’ll be okay.”
“Try and find out as much as you can about the car, the motel, and the hooker. How often Carlos used it, where he usually went, and whether he was in the habit of picking up working girls. Also, if he had any enemies that Gallegos knew about.”
“The cops must’ve asked those questions the first time around.”
“The file’s pretty skinny on what Gallegos had to say. I’m a little curious about that.”
A bus pulled up behind Reggie’s car and blasted its horn. Reggie hit the switch to activate the red emergency lights in his rear window and waved it around. I could read the obscenity on the driver’s lips as he wrestled with the oversized steering wheel.
“You, too, buddy,” Reggie said, watching the driver in the mirror. “And one more thing, Mark. Make sure to ask Gallegos his opinion about what happened. It’s a question that a lot of detectives tend to forget.”
• • •
The smell of bacon greeted me as I pushed the diner door open. The interior was long and narrow, with ten or twelve booths to the left of a central aisle, and an old-fashioned lunch counter to the right. It was about half full. A sullen, purple-mascaraed cashier was perched on a stool next to the entrance, the tendrils of a ragged spider plant trailing into her hair.
“One?” she said, reaching for a menu.
“I’m supposed to be meeting a guy named Mariano Gallegos. You know him?”
She snapped her gum and led me toward the rear of the restaurant. A man wearing a light brown suit and a maroon tie was seated in a booth, facing in my direction. He was pudgy, with a weak chin and thinning hair, and looked to have about ten years on me. He half stood as I approached and extended a hand.
“Mark Wallace?”
“Nice to meet you.”
We shook hands and sat down.
“I know who you are and what you do,” he said rapidly, fidgeting with a fork. “Pardon my saying so, but I think you’ve made a mistake. I’m a commercial attache. I deal with contracts. Everything oil related is handled by a different section.”
“I understand,” I said, caught a little off guard by his abruptness. “But your name came up in conversation recently, and I thought it might be good to get to know each other.”
“What conversation?”
“A conversation with a friend,” I said, wondering why he seemed so edgy. “Relax, please. There’s nothing to worry about.”
The waitress approached with a tired smile to pour coffee and take our orders. Gallegos asked for an egg-white omelet. I stuck to coffee and toast. He glanced left and right as she walked away and then hunched forward.
“It was an assistant to the ambassador who told me you wanted to meet,” he whispered. “My colleagues are aware that you work with some very influential people.” He rubbed the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand together to indicate the type of influence he was talking about. “Everyone at the embassy is a patriot, but I’m instructed to tell you that if you’re interested in information, certain arrangements could be made.”
It was a pitch I’d heard a hundred times before. The energy business is the sleaziest corner of the financial universe-guys in my line of work get hit up for bribes the way investment bankers get leaned on to buy program ads for charity galas. The surprise was how uncomfortable Gallegos seemed delivering it. He had a death grip on the fork in his left hand, and I could feel the table vibrating as one or both of his legs shook. My snap read was that he was a mild-mannered, midlevel diplomat a few years away from his pension, and deeply unhappy to find himself so far outside his comfort zone.
“Listen,” I said, as soothingly as I could manage. “Let me apologize. I’m not trying to get you involved in anything you don’t want to be involved in. And I’m not here to ask questions about Venezuela’s oil industry.”
“Then what?”
Reggie’s caution regardless, I wasn’t about to be coy.
“Your former brother-in-law, Carlos Munoz. I’m hoping you can tell me more about him.”
Gallegos looked blank for a few seconds and then shook his head.
“I have nothing to say.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a private matter.”
He’d already solicited money once. My immediate reaction was to ask if a cash payment would make him feel better about sharing, but I sensed it would be a mistake. I noticed that he was wearing a wedding ring. I took my wallet from my jacket and opened it to a photograph.
“This is a picture of my son, Kyle. Seven years ago, the very same night that your brother-in-law was murdered, Kyle was kidnapped. He’s never been found.”
Gallegos flinched, murmuring something in Spanish. I caught the word Dios. He was a parent himself; I could tell.
“I need your help,” I said. “Please.”
“I don’t understand what you want from me,” he answered, sounding shaken.
“The police have information that suggests my son might have been in your car the night he disappeared. They say you’d lent the car to your brother-in-law.”
Gallegos’s face hardened.
“The police think Carlos had something to do with your son’s disappearance?”
“Their best guess is that the people who stole the car from Carlos might have been involved.”
It wasn’t quite the denial it sounded like, but fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice.
“The police are fools,” he spat bitterly. “I wouldn’t believe anything they tell you.”
“What makes you say that?”
He sipped from his coffee cup and then sighed.
“Because they got everything wrong. Carlos was not the victim of a random crime. He was deliberately murdered.”
I blinked. It wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting. I was torn between a sudden hope that I was about to learn something important and a fear that Gallegos was delusional.
“Murdered by whom?”
He touched the picture in the open wallet I’d set down on the table.
“Everything I tell you is between us. You have to swear it on your son.”
“Between us and the policeman I’m working with, a detective named Reggie Kinnard. He’s a good cop. I trust him. Nothing you tell me will go any further without your permission. I swear.”
He hesitated, and I was afraid I’d put him off.
“Fine,” he said eventually. “Let me explain. Carlos and I grew up poor in the same neighborhood. We were scholarship students at secondary school together. He was captain of the football team, captain of the debate team, a natural leader. I was quiet, but he always had time for me because we’d known each other in short pants. After university, we married sisters. Carlos introduced me to my wife. The sisters are from an old Caracas family, and their connections were enough to get us both good jobs with the government.” He touched his chest with a trembling finger. “Me, I’ve never had much ambition. A good book, a nice glass of wine, a fast car-that’s always been enough. But Carlos was destined to be a great man. He rose rapidly. There were people who thought he might become president someday.”
“You admired him,” I suggested, uncomfortable at the discrepancy between the Carlos he was describing and the violent thug Reggie had told me about.
“Very much.”
“So, what happened?”
Gallegos’s eyes shone, and I had the impression that he was on the verge of tears.
“Carlos and I met for lunch the week before he was murdered. He was agitated and unhappy. I’d never seen him that way before. I asked what was wrong. He said that he and some of his political rivals had been offered a bribe-a very large bribe-to do something that wasn’t in the best interests of Venezuela. The others had agreed, but he’d said no. Afterward, he had the feeling that these men were suspicious of him-that they thought he might use what he knew to embarrass them. He told me that he’d been falsely accused of harassing some women at work. He suspected that he’d been followed, and that someone was listening in on his phone calls. He believed it was all part of an effort to intimidate him, to suggest what life would be like if he didn’t cooperate.”
“How did he respond?”
“He hadn’t decided yet. It was the last time we spoke. A week later, his wife called to say that he was dead.”
“And you think these people had him killed.”
“I’m certain of it. His rivals used his death to generate political capital. The Venezuelan papers went on at length about the ‘criminal behavior’ that led to his ‘sordid demise.’ Carlos was a reformer. Everyone like-minded had to distance themselves from him, no matter how suspicious they were of the circumstances.”
The waitress put food on the table. We both ignored it. He seemed sincere, but I strongly suspected he was seeing his former brother-in-law through rose-tinted glasses. During my twenty-year career in the financial industry, I’d never met a guy wrongly accused of sexual harassment.
“And you told all this to the police?”
“No. None of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I got a call ordering me not to. You have to understand. I’m not brave like Carlos was. I had a wife, two daughters, a newly widowed sister-in-law, and four fatherless nieces and nephews. I did what I was told to do. I kept my mouth shut.”
“Who called you?”
He shook his head wordlessly.
“I need to know,” I insisted.
“I can’t tell you,” he said softly. “It’s not right of you to ask. Things happen. You have no idea.”
I was well aware that things happened. I had a sudden urge to grab him by the collar and bang his head against the wall. The fact that someone didn’t want him spouting wild notions didn’t mean the notions were true, but a name would have given me an avenue to investigate.
“You mentioned your sister-in-law,” I said, struggling to keep the animus out of my voice. “What was her relationship with Carlos like?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You read the police report. You want to know if he was violent.”
I was beyond apologizing.
“Was he?”
“It was all lies. Carlos never hit a woman in his life. He was a devoted husband.” He smiled grimly. “Your next question is why a devoted husband kept a girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Americans are unreasonable about sexual matters,” he said, flapping a hand dismissively. “Carlos cared for his family, but he had normal desires.”
“You knew he was seeing another woman?”
“Of course. He told me when he first asked to borrow the car. The woman lived east of the city, on Long Island. They’d been seeing each other only for a few weeks, and he was planning to end it. It was nothing important.”
“How often did he borrow the car?” I asked, reverting to Reggie’s list of questions.
“Once or twice a week. He had a key.”
“And always to drive out to Long Island?”
“As far as I know.”
“Carlos was with a prostitute when he died. Did that surprise you?”
He grimaced.
“Men are men. But yes, it surprised me. Carlos was a romantic. He always had an infatuation for some girl. There’s nothing romantic about a prostitute.”
My cell phone chimed softly, indicating an urgent text message.
“Excuse me a second,” I said, taking it from my pocket and checking the display. The message was from Amy: Walter wants to see you in his office as soon as possible. I swore softly, wondering what the hell he was doing at work the day after his son’s death. Twenty minutes, I texted back.
“You have a problem?” Gallegos asked.
“It’s nothing,” I said, berating myself for having broken his flow. I needed to get as much as I could from him while he was still inclined to talk. “The bribe you mentioned. Did Carlos tell you anything more about it?”
“A little. He and his colleagues had been offered an opportunity to buy shares in an oil company. The oil company owned drilling rights that were worth more than the market realized. The idea was that everyone could buy the shares inexpensively and then make a big profit when the news came out.”
“In return for what?”
“Carlos didn’t say.”
“You know the name of the company?”
“No. Nothing more than I’ve told you.”
There couldn’t have been that many oil companies whose stock prices had popped seven years ago because of hidden reserves. It was a lead, although I wasn’t sure to what. I was about to thank him and say good-bye when I recalled Reggie’s final question.
“Tell me,” I said. “What exactly do you think happened that night at the motel?”
Gallegos lowered his head. When he looked up again, the tears I thought I’d spotted earlier were flowing.
“I think a brave man died for being honest.”
We said our good-byes, and Gallegos disappeared into the men’s room to pull himself together. I was paying the cashier when I glanced into the mirror behind the lunch counter and caught the eye of a man at the counter who was sitting with his back to me. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled low, but I could see a wide, shiny scar stretching from his mouth to his ear, as if he’d been badly burned at some point. I turned away quickly, feeling bad about having stared.