The Sixth Station(43)
“Try to hit ‘call back’ or something. It’s getting cold, but I’ll hang around another half hour or so. I’m wearing a skirt so short my ass is out. I’m fairly sure I’m not being watched. I figure I’m okay because, well, remember that cute cop? I looked him up. We just had a, hmmm, I guess you’d call it a date. He’s got my back.”
What a woman.
When I hit the “call back” button on Sadowski’s magic phone, it automatically brought up a Google map, and I saw the exact place she had been standing when she made the call: Thirty-eighth and Tenth—near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.
Good girl. This was serious hooker territory. And here I thought she’d worn that skirt for the cute cop. I had always teased her that she had the legs to be a hooker while all I had were the shoes. Anyway, nobody would find it suspicious for a woman to be near a pay phone in that location. That’s why the Russian mobsters who ran the girls there put in these phones under some legitimate guise. I knew (everybody did, actually) that these were the only busy pay phones left in the city. Hookers got calls from their Russkie pimps there, because when the heat was on, the cops couldn’t trace their “dates.” Brilliant!
I hit “call back” again, and after a few seconds, I could hear it ringing. Please, please, please be there.
“You all right?” was what she said when she picked up, and I had to fight back tears.
“No.”
“Where are you?”
“Not a good question.” I knew she wouldn’t have been able to map my location anyway because she was at a pay phone and I was on a secure line.
“Right.” I could hear the wind whistling behind her and car horns of impatient drivers desperate to get into the tunnel. All so far away and normal.
She took the phone away from her ear, and I could hear her telling some tunnel-bound husband looking for a quickie on the way home to his wife, “Sorry, honey—I’m booked tonight.”
Then back to me: “Sorry. So Donald managed to do something or other to get your number. You heard about Sadowski, I assume?”
“Yes. I’m just sick about it.”
“Me too.” And then as though she weren’t dropping a big bomb, added, “They’re saying you killed him in a jealous lover’s rage.”
“Who’s saying that?” I demanded, feeling the fury rise in my throat.
“The cute cop told me that’s the word. They’re going to announce tomorrow that a person familiar with the case says you caught him with a young boy and went nuts.”
“What the—?”
“They even say they know who the child is, which of course will never be revealed under the Protection of Minors Act.”
“Oh, my God. Who?”
“I don’t know. But my money’s on that cheap blonde in the jeans at the church.”
“No!”
“Makes sense, right?”
I had to admit that, yes, it made a whole hell of a lot of sense.
“Is there nothing they won’t stoop to?”
“Who?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be in this jam.”
Time was short and this wasn’t a gossip call, so I cut it short.
“Listen, I really need you to do something for me. I’m not comfortable getting online much while I’m still on American soil.”
“Shoot.”
“Go to the Fox archives, or better yet, the Post morgue.…” A “morgue” is where newspapers and media keep the old clippings, tapes, and papers.
“I know it well. Basement at 1211 Sixth—right? I’m tight with the librarian; she’ll bring me down.”
“Great. See what you can find related to a comet in the year 1982.”
“A comet?”
“A comet. And a blackout in parts of Europe and elsewhere.”
“Okay … but—”
“Also, see if, earlier that year or the year before that, there is anything on a missing girl from Manhattan named—what is it again?” I reached into my bag for my reporter’s notebook and rifled the pages. “Here—first name, Theotokos, with a k. Last name, wait a sec—last name, B-i-e-n-h-e-u-r-e-u-x.
“Blessed one?”
“No, I said, ‘B-i—”
Dona cut me off. “Bienheureux—it means ‘blessed one’ in French.”
“You’re kidding me. Seriously?”
“Is this the time for jokes?”
“Not really. No.”
“What else?”
“Also see if there’s anything on a Catholic priest—or maybe not Catholic, but a cleric by the name of Father Paulo—that’s P-a-u-l-o Jacoby; I think it’s J-a-c-o-b-y. Please, whatever you can dig up would keep me indebted to you forever.”