“You made the right call, Jack.”
“Just so you know, too, I was previously a person of interest. Diplomatic Security visited the Internal Affairs Bureau in Manhattan. Then the Secret Service in Brooklyn wanted to talk to me.”
Ryan added that to his notes. “That is interesting.”
“I’ve been cleared. At least that’s what the Secret Service said. Agent Finks.”
Ryan sighed. “I’m assuming because your wife worked on Capitol Hill, she knew people there, hence the involvement of the Secret Service?”
“Right. Diplomatic Security couldn’t find her hard pass. She attended White House press briefings, that kind of thing. She was a political journalist.”
Ryan nodded. “Appreciate the heads-up. Makes sense. You got a cell number I can call you on?”
Jack handed over his Internal Affairs business card. “Day or night, call the cell phone number.”
“I’ll get back to you in a couple of days and hopefully give you a preliminary update of what’s happening.”
Peter stared at Ryan, long and hard. “We’re trusting you to do the right thing. Just make sure you do.”
Twenty-Two
The rain lashed off the eighty-seventh-floor windows as Henry Graff stared out over Manhattan’s West Side. He had grown up in New York, privileged. But he never felt at home here.
The way the poor and wealthy mingled so freely. It unnerved him. Wealth could inoculate a man from the poverty and disease, though all too often the two worlds collided on the streets of New York. A simple walk down Fifth Avenue, and you could encounter a knife-carrying gangbanger who wanted your watch, drugged-out panhandlers, and mental patients who had been discharged from the hospital.
It was enough to keep any sane person on edge.
Graff could never relax in the city. A lot of people enjoyed the manic buzz, the constant noise, the relentless assault on the senses. He, on the other hand, loathed the appalling madness of New York. The sounds of jazz, hip-hop, and rock music blaring from cabs, buildings, bodegas, and headphones; the cacophony of traffic; the air pollution; the construction workers drilling holes in the fucking roads morning, noon, and night. If all that wasn’t enough, there were people from New Jersey! If talking loudly, brashly, and fast was an Olympic sport, people from New Jersey would win the gold. Then there was the weather. One hundred degrees, stifling humidity, choking on car fumes. In the winter, ankle-deep slush. The list went on and on. It never stopped.
“Why in God’s name did you want to set up shop here, Karen?” Graff chided. He turned around and looked at Karen Feinstein, who sat beside her desk, tapping away at her computer.
Feinstein smiled. “What is it with you and New York? How can you hate New York? How is that even possible?”
“It’s dirty. The weather’s terrible. It smells of piss and garbage in summer. There are socialists and communists everywhere. You want me to go on?”
“What do you even know about New York?”
“I know enough. I lived here once.”
“When? Growing up at that townhouse on East Sixty-Third? Gimme a break.”
“I was fortunate, I know. But this city makes me want to scream.”
“Know why you feel uncomfortable here?”
“Why?”
“Do you really want me to tell you?”
“Are you trying to psychoanalyze me?”
“There are people from the Third World here. Is that what it is? People from Guatemala, Honduras, Puerto Rico. Am I wrong?”
Graff sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t look like anywhere else in America. That’s what it is. Maybe Los Angeles without the smog. It doesn’t think like anywhere else in America either. It doesn’t even smell like America. Heartland America.”
“What does America smell like?”
“The prairies of Iowa. The small towns of Virginia. The open spaces. New York doesn’t smell like that.”
“Henry, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this degenerate city.”
“Seriously, Henry, you need to get out more. It’s the twenty-first century.”
“Diversity and fuck knows what else they’re throwing at us. And still they come. Hordes of them. It’s the fucking gateway to this country. If they can get here, they can disappear.”
“Or work. Or wait tables. Tend bars. Pick up the trash. And save and go to college. The American Dream, right?”
“Are you kidding me? Picking up the trash? I wish they would. It’s filthy. Do you know what I saw on Fifth Avenue earlier?”