Friendly. Just like the ad promised.
“My name is Jessie Tucker, and I’m a reporter for the New York Tribune. I’m working on a story about Maura Walsh, a police officer that was murdered recently. I’ve been told you might have some information about her.”
“Oh, I’ve got information. I’ve got a whole lot of information about Maura Walsh and her partner. Pictures. Video. Audio recordings. The works. It’s all there for the right buyer, honey.”
“Information for sale?”
“That’s the only kind I deal in.”
“What’s your connection to her? Why are you looking into what she was up to?”
“I’m not telling you anything for free. Let’s just say for now I was doing another job for someone. A personal matter. Anyway, I stumbled on this funny business going on with the Walsh woman while I was checking it out, and I figured it might be worth some money. Now the Tribune is a big newspaper. You must have plenty of money. So if you want to make me an offer…”
“How much? I suppose I might be able to give you a little something, if it checks out.”
“Big money. You want to find out what I know about Maura Walsh, you’ll have to pay plenty for it. It’s the law of competitive bidding.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve got another potential buyer for this information.”
“And you want us to get in a bidding war against each other?”
“Something like that. I’m offering that buyer the same deal as you. I’m open to the best offer. It’s a seller’s market.”
No way the Tribune was going to pay big money for this kind of information, we didn’t work that way. But I didn’t want to tell Walosin that. Not yet, anyway. I decided to string him along a bit and see where that took me.
“How about we get together and talk about this?” I suggested.
“Sure. Talk’s cheap.”
“When?”
“Give me your number.”
I did.
“I’ll get back to you,” he said.
“I could meet with you today, Mr. Walosin—”
But he’d already hung up on me.
Seven
The final spot I knew Maura Walsh had visited before she and Billy Renfro stopped at the pizza place was the restaurant on the Upper East Side.
It was a place called The Hangout in the East 70s. It was already half-filled when I got there, even though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. It looked like a popular drinking and meeting up place for singles. Everyone was laughing and having a good time. I was the only woman there who wasn’t standing with a man. No big deal. I was used to being by myself.
I sat down at the bar, ordered some wine and told the bartender I wanted to talk to the manager.
While I was waiting, a guy slipped on to the barstool next to me.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You know, a pretty girl like you really shouldn’t be drinking alone.”
Terrific, the local Romeo.
“Yeah, well I have impetigo. Very contagious.”
“Is that terminal?”
“Just itchy.”
“I can live with that.” He smiled.
I swiveled around on the barstool to face him. He was maybe thirty-five years old, with a shaggy beard and long sandy hair that hung down to his shoulders; wearing blue jeans, a gray T-shirt and sandals. He was looking at me with an eager, puppy-dog kind of expression. Under different circumstances, I might have been mildly interested. But not now. I didn’t have time for this now.
“I’m waiting for someone,” I said.
“Me too.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“Now, goodbye?”
He didn’t move from his seat.
“Look, I’m here to meet the manager of this place,” I said. “If you don’t go away, I’ll tell him you’re hassling me.”
“You’d do that? After all we’ve meant to each other?” He chuckled at his own joke and put his elbows on the bar.
“I’m serious.”
“Okay, then I’ll find the manager for you myself.”
He made a big show of looking around the place, then turning toward me with a big grin on his face. “Well, Goll-darn! I almost forgot – that would be me.”
“You’re the manager?” I raised my eyebrows.
He nodded. “I’m Sam Rawlings.”
“Jessie Tucker.”
We shook hands.
“Why didn’t you just tell me who you were in the first place?” I asked him.
“Oh, I was enjoying myself too much.”
I explained to Rawlings why I was there. How I was a reporter at the Tribune working on a story about the murdered policewoman who had been to the restaurant on the night she died. He seemed very interested in the fact that I worked for a newspaper.
“I’m a writer too,” he said.
“I thought you were a restaurant manager.”
“I’m a restaurant manager and writer.”
“That must keep you pretty busy.”
“I’m actually a lawyer as well.”
I looked at him quizzically.
“I went to law school and graduated and passed the bar, then decided that I didn’t want to be a lawyer,” he said. “I got a job doing corporate law, and it was b-o-r-i-n-g. What I really wanted to do was be a writer, but I learned pretty quickly that writing unpublished novels doesn’t pay all that well. So I got involved in this restaurant. I manage it during the day, then go home and work on my Great American Novel at night. It’s only a matter of time, I figure, until I become rich and famous.”
“How’s it going so far?”
“The novel or the restaurant?”
“Both.”
“The restaurant’s doing pretty well. I guess there’s a lot of thirsty or hungry or lonely people in Manhattan looking for a place to go. The writing is kind of a different story. I’m a good writer, I really believe that. And a good writer can make it with a bit of luck and good connections. Everyone’s looking for the next Stephen King or Lee Child or James Patterson. There’s a lot of money being paid out to a lot of writers these days.”
“But not to you?”
“It’s a world gone mad.” He grinned.
I asked him about Maura Walsh. He said that she and her partner came into the place about nine-thirty p.m. or so. They ordered something to eat and then they left.
“They weren’t responding to any complaint of trouble here?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Did they talk to you?”
“Just for a minute.”
“What’d they say?”
“They wanted to know if the chicken cutlet special was any good. I said it was a bit dry. My chef had an off day. They went for the hamburger platter instead.”
“And that’s all that happened?”
“As far as I can remember.”
Billy Renfro and Maura Walsh had called in a Code 7 – a meal break to go to the pizza parlor – at 10:30. That was barely an hour later. Why would they eat dinner here, then go out for a pizza an hour later?