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Thirty-Two

Wednesday 6.30pm

Grand Central station was packed, and though Charlie knew it would be chock full of CCTV cameras, he felt safe there. He didn’t think it was somewhere Special Agent Mead and his cohorts would look for him. He wanted to be in Tom’s overheated room, with Tom, but that was somewhere the FBI could find him easily. When he had thought Tom was dead, being arrested hadn’t mattered. Now it did.

He’d considered various places he could hide in the hospital and rejected them all. Maybe he would try to sneak in at night, but that might be what Mead would expect him to do. In the meantime, he would wait for Unwin’s call here, where he could get coffee and enough cake to sink a ship. He loved everything about the station from the warm buff-coloured walls to the entrances to the different tracks with their crown-like carvings and the little Art Deco-style lights. It felt like a place where anything could happen and probably did.

The choice of places to eat almost defeated him. Many of them seemed to offer the same or similar food items: made-up baked goods like cronuts or cinnamon bites; things employing sourdough bread, and, of course, pizza. Some focused on their coffee. Others offered juices and still others, tea. After wandering for twenty minutes, Charlie chose at random and ordered coffee and a cinnamon roll. He thought he probably looked ridiculous in his baseball cap and dark glasses, but the barista took his money with a smile. Once he relaxed enough to look around at people rather than food options, he realised than plenty of them were as oddly dressed as him.

Disentangling social classes was hard here in New York. At home, he could have told who was on their way to or from work, who was on holiday, who going home after a day’s shopping or heading out for a meal with friends. Here, trainers and sweatpants were ubiquitous. He wondered where the men in expensive suits were, and the women in high end fashion. It was something he would have discovered if he and Tom had finished their holiday. Because they wouldn’t have spent all their time in Central Park or in bed. Probably.

The phone rang and it was Unwin.

“Andrew Dwyer. Interesting character.”

“I know that, Unwin, mate. How is he interesting exactly?”

“In no particular order, then. He’s probably broke, he’s a major league Donald Trump supporter, his business is formally construction, but informally, protection rackets and illegal fights. It is nowhere suggested that the former president is aware of any of these less savoury activities. He appears to have political ambitions, though exactly what those ambitions are is not stated; there is just a lot of talk about his desire to serve the public, which I understand to be code for Vote For Me.”

“Political ambition and being broke don’t go hand-in-hand. Nor does being broke and being a mate of Donald Trump. And the last I heard, protection and illegal fights tend to be lucrative.”

“Which is all interesting, right?” There was a pause. “Thing is, Dwyer had this swanky office downtown, and now he doesn’t. He has a post office box giving a swanky address, but no physical presence there, just a mail drop.”

“So, the lease expired on his offices, and he couldn’t get anything new? Like in Trump Tower? Do they have offices in Trump Tower?”

“No idea. But the old office is still empty. It’s been advertised, but no takers. And like I say, Dwyer has no office.”

Charlie suspected that Dwyer did have an office and that he’d seen it — the temporary one at the building site.

“This shortage of money? Sudden crash or a slow drain?” Charlie asked. He was fairly certain that Unwin would be following the same train of thought as him.

“You mean, did Kaylan steal all Dwyer’s cash?”

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“There’s no way of knowing. I haven’t had time to do a deep dive into Dwyer’s finances, but it’s suggestive. If Dwyer pissed Kaylan off, well, we both know how Kaylan gets his revenge.”

Charlie thought that idea fitted well with the way Dwyer had sprung to Kaylan’s defence. Because what Dwyer had been saying was that Charlie should not look at Kaylan’s behaviour or investigate his death. Had Kaylan stolen the money Dwyer was relying on to further his political ambitions, and spent it on a stunning million-dollar apartment? If so, and if Dwyer had killed his nephew, then he wasn’t going to want Charlie poking his nose in. If what he suspected was true, then Charlie thought he was very lucky not to be wearing concrete boots at the bottom of the Hudson River. But if Dwyer had moved his office to the building site rather than some expensive skyscraper office with a doorman and a million security cameras, then going and checking it out for evidence was a possibility…

“Sarge.” Patsy’s voice interrupted Charlie’s chain of thought. “This Dwyer sounds like a piece of shit, but a dangerous piece of shit. Like with guns and a bunch of cage fighters on tap.”

“Your point is?”

“My point is that Eddy is acting sergeant while you’re away, and he’s crap, and they’ve sent a right idiot to make up the numbers. We need you to come back, not finish up sleeping with the fishes.”

“Sleeping with the fishes?” Charlie said. “Who says sleeping with the fishes?”

The same people who say “Wearing concrete boots at the bottom of the Hudson River,” that’s who.

There was something about Dwyer that set alarm bells ringing on both sides of the Atlantic. He would be stupid to ignore the noise. If Tom had to stay alive for him, then surely Charlie owed it to Tom to stay alive too. Breaking into the site office was tempting but it was also the equivalent of poking an angry bear with a short stick.

“Trust me,” Charlie said, “and be kind to Eddy.”