“Bullshit,” she barked. “Listen—if you don’t want me to show up on location at Radio City and watch the pyrotechnics, fine. I can live with that. But if you’d rather go to Long Island City in the middle of the night than fuck, you damn well better tell me why. I’m not the girl at the popcorn counter anymore, Gabe. We’re either in this together, or you’re in it by yourself.”
He sat down on the bed. “Sorry, Lex. You’re a worrier, and I was trying to spare you.”
“Don’t. Don’t ever. Now tell me what’s going on?”
“Did I ever tell you about Mickey Peltz?”
“No.”
“He was one of the best special effects guys in the business—especially with explosives. He was good at blowing things up, but he cut corners so he could siphon off some of the production budget and put it in his pocket. One day he’s working on a bank heist movie and they needed to blow up an armored car. Mickey was in charge of the blast, and he decided to buy some bargain-basement crap that was cheap and volatile instead of expensive and stable. A bomb went off prematurely, a stuntman lost an arm, and Mickey pulled four years at the Adirondack Correctional Facility up in Ray Brook.”
“And?”
“And it looks like he got out early, saw the Molotov on TV, and knew it was me.”
“How is that possible?”
“The one I tossed was wickless,” The Chameleon said. “Only a handful of guys in the business do it that way. It was one of Mickey’s signature effects. He taught me how to make it, and I guess he put two and two together.”
“So what does he want from you?” Lexi said. “A screen credit?”
“My guess? He wants a few bucks, and he’ll promise to keep his theories to himself.”
“Blackmail.”
“He didn’t use that word, but that’s where my brain went.”
“And it won’t just be a few bucks, will it?” she said.
“Blackmailers have delusions, so I guess his starting price will be somewhere between ridiculous and out of his fucking mind.”
“I have one more question,” Lexi said.
“And I already have the answer. No, you can’t go. But you knew that before you even asked.”
She hopped off the bed and wrapped her arms around him. She was still naked. The fading scent of their lovemaking still hung in the air. He draped his arms over her shoulders and pressed her close.
“You’re a glass-half-empty person,” she said. “I’m a glass-half-full.”
“Understatement,” he said, planting a kiss on the back of her neck. “You’re a glass-overflowing person. What’s your point?”
“This is the best thing that could have happened to us,” she said. “Your little trip to Mickey’s loft could be an incredible scene. It’s another twist. Even we didn’t expect it, and we wrote the script.”
As soon as she said it, he knew she was right.
“This is why I love you,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it right away, but you nailed it. Let’s go write the scene.”
“You and me?” she said.
“Who else would I write it with?” he said, pressing her to his chest and kissing her hair, her nose, her lips. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”
Chapter 31
WE FINALLY HAD something solid to go on. Photos of our killer. We sent Ellen Dobrin and Jason Garza, two bilingual detectives, out to the Bronx to wake up Rafe, the waiter from the Regency Hotel.
They showed him the picture of the fake E! channel cameraman and asked if it reminded him at all of the busboy from that morning.
“This is an old white guy,” Rafe said. “I told them other cops that the busboy was a young Latino.”
“Yes, sir,” Dobrin said. “But imagine that this is a disguise. Let’s say the white hair is a wig. Now imagine that the busboy was also wearing a disguise. Do you see any similarities between the two of them—you know, like height, build, bone structure?”
Rafe took another look at the photo. “They’s both dudes,” he said, hoping to be helpful.
Dobrin sent me a text. We got nada. Nuance no es Rafe’s strong suit.
Then Matt Smith, our techie, put the bomber’s picture through facial recognition software. Even with a disguise, it’s not easy for a person to change the distance between his eyes, the depth of his sockets, the shape of his cheekbones, or eighty other distinct facial landmarks.
We collected headshots of every extra and every crew member on the set of Ian Stewart’s movie. We also had a second batch of pictures of random people lifted off the Internet that we used as a control group. The software then uses some magic algorithm and compares each face to our perp.