The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [87]
When the front door opened, I fired the shotgun.
You can imagine the rest, I’m sure.
“He’s kind of late getting going this morning. Must be having his Cocoa Puffs.” Isiah Parker finally spoke up inside the surveillance car.
Stefanovitch had told him about the phone call from St.-Germain, and Isiah knew it had shaken him. Lately, he, too, had had nothing but sleepless nights. Two, three hours at the most. He was completely committed to the case they were building against Alexandre St.-Germain. He thought of it as his own personal survival kit.
“Why do you think he called me?” Stefanovitch asked. “Why now? What the hell is going on?”
“Maybe the pressure’s getting to him. You embarrassed the shit out of him yesterday. Before that, you treated him like some cheap punk in front of his apartment. He’s arrogant. I could see that the first time I looked into his eyes.”
“No, there’s something else. Something about that phone call.”
“I don’t think so. Only that he’s still in control.”
“Maybe he’s taking control again,” Stefanovitch said. His eyes were trained thirty yards down the street. On the Grave Dancer’s car.
The blue limousine continued to wait in front of the apartment building. The motor running, smoke curling lazily from the exhaust. Taxis, other private cars arriving for pickups had to park in front of or behind the almighty limousine.
Eight-thirty became nine on Stefanovitch’s watch, a gift from his father when he’d left Minersville. The old Bulova still kept time. It also kept his fashion image right about where he wanted it on this particular morning—early racetrack.
Something was happening right now. His cop’s instincts told him that as he and Parker sat watching Alexandre St.-Germain’s building, another complex universe was operating, completely separate from theirs. St.-Germain’s sordid universe; the Midnight Club’s universe.
“This is getting a little too familiar,” he finally said. “The stakeout routine. Maybe that’s what’s bothering me. I’ve got ten past nine. He’s never this late. The limousine’s just sitting there. What do you want to do?”
Isiah Parker pushed open the car door and stepped out onto Central Park West. Traffic noise rushed inside the car. “I’ll go this time. Bet I get that asshole chauffeur to roll down the window in the limousine.”
“I’ll bet you do, too.”
Isiah Parker walked up Central Park West toward the waiting stretch limousine. His long stride ate up the sidewalk distance quickly. His dark glasses seemed to ward off glances from the other people on the street.
When he reached the limo, he knocked hard on the driver’s door. The window was mirrored. Parker could see himself, and the cars sliding past on the street. Finally, the glass eased down.
Isiah Parker smiled as he leaned in toward the driver. It was a typical New-York-cop-versus-New-Jersey-wise-guy confrontation, the kind that happened every day on the street. The driver wore a shiny black monkey suit. His smile was typically smug, behind dark Ray-Ban sunglasses.
“Where’s the Grave Dancer, my good man? Your boss is going to be late for work today,” Parker said.
The driver shrugged and he issued a coarse grunt. The gesture signified a what’s-it-to-you kind of attitude that Isiah Parker just loved.
“Mr. St.-Germain’s already gone to work. He left a message for you, though. He says for you two traffic cops to go ahead, give me the morning’s traffic ticket. He told me to tear it up in your faces. He says you have your laws, he has his. He said to tell you, and your buddy the cripple, that the game’s just beginning. It’s just the beginning, Dick Tracy.”
Moments later, an emergency call came over the police radio in Parker and Stefanovitch’s car. Something had happened. The Grave Dancer had gone to work all right.
84
Alexandre St.-Germain; New York
ALEXANDRE ST.-GERMAIN RODE through the city in grave silence that morning. He was pondering recent actions he had undertaken: a temporary end to respectability;