Don’t Blink

It was a bad day for the Belova brothers.

Now the only sound in the room was Anastasia crying like a little girl.

She had fallen to her knees, the red cocktail dress still unzipped in the back, hanging off her shoulders. She wanted to run for the door but couldn’t. She was in shock, paralyzed, scared to death that she would be next.

“Get on the bed!” Torenzi ordered. “Take off that goddamn red dress.”

“Please,” she begged, her blond hair covering her face and tears. “Please, don’t…” But then she shrugged off the dress. She climbed onto the bed.

“Now, where were we?” said Torenzi. “By the way, Anastasia, my name is Bruno. That is my real name.”

Hearing that, the girl began to cry even harder. She knew what he meant.

“That’s right. You know my name. You know what I look like,” he whispered. “You might as well enjoy your last time in the sack.”

Chapter 27

DWAYNE ROBINSON’S unspeakably sad funeral unfolded under a rain so heavy that had it been a baseball game, it would’ve surely been postponed. There was no church service. Instead, we all gathered graveside with a nondenominational minister at the sprawling Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, final resting place for Joseph Pulitzer, Miles Davis, and Fiorello La Guardia among so many others.

The turnout was sparse, although bigger than I thought it might be. Many of Dwayne’s ex-teammates were actually there – former Yankees and heroes of mine, whom on any other day I would’ve been thrilled to see in person.

Just not on this day.

Also on hand was Dwayne’s ex-wife, who had left him the same week that he’d been ba

“Let us pray,” said the minister at the front of Dwayne’s mahogany casket.

Hanging toward the back, hunched under an umbrella like everyone else, I felt strange being there. Technically, I’d only met Dwayne once. Then again, I was one of the last people to speak to him.

Maybe even the very last. Who knew?

Certainly not anyone standing around me. As the service broke, the chatter was all about the “man they once knew.” It was as if the poor soul who had reportedly jumped to his death from the terrace of his high-rise apartment had been a complete stranger to just about everyone at his funeral.

“Once he was ba

Now he’d just made it official.

What wasn’t official yet was the autopsy, but in the intense media frenzy following Dwayne’s death, a leaked toxicology report showed he was high on heroin. Space-shuttle high. That probably explained why he hadn’t left behind a suicide note.

One mystery down, perhaps.

Another still unresolved.

What the hell had Dwayne wanted to tell me?

Weirdly, I felt as though I was also hiding some kind of secret. Courtney was the only other person who knew about the late phone call Dwayne had made to me the night he killed himself.

But as secrets go, mine was minor league. Dwayne’s was a whole lot bigger, and he’d just taken it to the grave.

I walked back to my car, an old Saab 9000 Turbo – my one “extravagance,” if you can call it that, in a city dominated by subways, taxis, and crosswalks.

Closing up my umbrella and sliding behind the wheel, I kept replaying that last conversation with Dwayne in my head. I wondered if I was overlooking something, if there was an important clue I wasn’t catching.

Nothing came to mind yet. Or maybe my memory was a poor substitute for a tape recorder. What I wouldn’t give to have a recording of that last phone call with him.

I was about to turn the key in the ignition when my phone rang.

I glanced at the caller ID.

Now, I’m not a big believer in the notion that nothing happens by accident, but for sheer timing this was stretching the boundaries of coincidence. It was spooky, actually.

The caller ID said “Lombardo’s Steakhouse.”

Chapter 28

“HI, I’M LOOKING for Tiffany.” I said this to the man with the reservation book standing behind the podium at Lombardo’s. I thought I recognized him, but it took me a few seconds to be sure.

Of course. He was the manager. I remembered seeing Detective Ford interviewing him on the afternoon of the murders.

“She’ll be right back – she’s seating someone,” he said, barely looking up at me. He was average height and build, his tone sprinkled with an air of superiority that presumably came with the job. “Are you the man with the jacket?” he asked.

Actually, I was the man without the jacket.

Although not for long.

Before I could answer, I heard a voice over the manager’s shoulder. “You made it,” she said.

She remembered me. I certainly remembered her. “Tiffany,” I said, extending my hand. “Like the pretty blue box.”

She smiled. Great smile, too. “Hi, Mr. Daniels,” she said.

“Please, it’s Nick.”

I followed Tiffany to the coat-check room opposite the bar area. “Your jacket’s over here,” she said with a glance back at me. “We kept it nice and safe for you.”

I nodded. “Listen, I appreciate your calling me. I didn’t even realize I’d left it here.”

“Pretty understandable, given the confusion that day.” She stopped on a dime, turning to me. “Confusion. That word doesn’t really capture it, does it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Tiffany shook her head. “You know, I was going to quit this job the next day. Go back to Indiana where I’m from. I even discussed it with Jason.”

“Jason?”

“The guy you talked to at the desk. The manager.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That this was New York, and I should just suck it up, and I would if I belonged here.”

“What a sweetheart.”

“I know, tell me about it,” she said. “Then again, look around at the crowd of ghouls. I don’t know whether to be amazed or really depressed.”

I could see what she meant. Lombardo’s Steakhouse was even more crowded than usual, if that was possible. Call it the perverse logic of hipness, especially in Manhattan and, I would guess, LA. After serving as the backdrop to three vicious murders, the joint actually gained in popularity.

Tiffany continued on to the coat-check room, grabbing my jacket. “Here you go,” she said. “It is yours, right?”

“Yep, that’s it, all right.” A leather car coat I had gotten for a near steal years back at a Barneys outlet sale.

As I folded it over my forearm, something occurred to me. “Tiffany, how did you know this was mine?” It was a good question, I thought. It’s not as if I had my name sewn inside the collar like some kid at summer camp.

“I went through the pockets. Hope you don’t mind,” she answered. “I found one of those e-tickets for a flight you recently took to Paris. It had your name and a phone number listed. That’s how I -”

She stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

Tiffany’s jaw dropped. I could practically see the wheels churning behind her dark brown eyes.

“Oh my God!” she blurted. “You were here with the baseball pitcher that day, weren’t you? The poor man who just killed himself?”

“Yes, Dwayne Robinson,” I said. It still hurt just to say his name. “I just came from his funeral, actually. Very sad.”

She shook her head slowly. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on the news.”

“You remember him, huh? From when he was here that day?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And from the day before, too.”

I looked at her sideways as her last sentence knocked around in my head.