Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(26)

“Great story,” I lied. “How do you know Shelley?”

“Kylie introduced us. She told me she had a friend who hosted a biweekly Texas Hold’em game, and she got me an invite. This is only my third time here. The other two times I got played under the table by a plastic surgeon.”

Knowing Kylie, I figured she hadn’t told him anything about our past. And then he said, “Enough about me. I want to hear all about you. Come on over to the losers’ lounge, and let’s throw down a few drinks.”

The losers’ lounge. Of course she had told him, and now the fucker was sticking it to me.

“Another time,” I said, looking at my watch. “I’ve got to get back home and shoot the cat.”

He stared at me, dark eyes curious, a bright white smile and a crown of black hair on a copper canvas.

“I have a diabetic cat,” I said. “I’ve got to give him an insulin shot every twelve hours.”

“Ah, shoot the cat,” he said. “Cop talk. Funny.”

I left him laughing.

My apartment was only two blocks east. I walked slowly, but my mind was racing.

I understood why Shelley didn’t want NYPD to investigate the robbery. It’s not just the publicity. There’d be interviews, digging into the private lives of the victims, and then if there was an arrest, there would be depositions, subpoenas, a trial. It was far too time-consuming for these high rollers. Like the comic said: he had expected to lose the money anyway, so why get tied up in a criminal investigation?

And yet the criminal investigator in me couldn’t let it go.

The details of Shelley’s high-stakes poker games are a well-kept secret. It’s by invitation only. Reitzfeld said the two guys with guns were amateurs. So how did they know where and when the game was being held? And how did they know to sneak up on Reitzfeld from behind?

I knew the answer in two words: inside job.

Someone on the inside tipped them off. It could have been someone at the hotel—a manager, a reservation clerk, a room service waiter—or it could have been someone at the table.

According to Reitzfeld, most of the players were regulars. Same cast of characters, he said. About a dozen all told, but they rotate. But there was one new guy, an engaging rogue who had lost a hundred grand to the plastic surgeon in his first two sit-downs at the table. C. J. Berringer.

I got to the corner of 77th and Lexington and looked up at my apartment building. I was in no hurry to get home. It’s not like I had a cat to take care of.

I began walking south on Lex. The precinct was only ten blocks away. I knew Shelley wanted NYPD to back off, but it was too late. I already had a prime suspect, and I wanted to sit down in front of a department computer terminal and do some digging.

For starters, I wanted to know what the C.J. stood for.





PART TWO





THE BANGKOK HILTON





CHAPTER 25



There was fresh hot coffee in the break room. I took that as a positive omen, poured myself a cup, and logged on to the Interstate Identification Index, a catalog of criminal histories in the U.S. If C. J. Berringer had a rap sheet, it would pop up on Triple Eye. It didn’t.

I tried two other law enforcement databases. No luck. Either he wasn’t a crook or he hadn’t been caught yet.

“You can run, C.J.,” I said as I booted up the LexisNexis Accurint Virtual Crime Center, “but you can’t hide.” I dove into the bottomless pit of public and not-so-public records, and there he was—Clyde Jerome Berringer, a Hawaiian-born college dropout who traveled the world playing cards. He had an excellent credit rating, impressive reported earnings, and no criminal history.

But I did find something almost as damning. Clyde Jerome was married.

My first instinct was to pick up the phone and tell Kylie. My second instinct was to play out that phone call in my head. Hey, Kylie, you’ll never guess what I stumbled on when I was running your boyfriend’s name through the system to see if I could find something that would put him behind bars.

I needed a better plan. Normally when I’m confronted by challenging interpersonal situations like this, I go to Cheryl for advice. But telling my new girlfriend that I felt compelled to investigate my old girlfriend’s new boyfriend had all the earmarks of a bad soap opera where the Zach character winds up losing his new girlfriend, his old girlfriend, and his balls.

My motives for digging into C.J.’s past may not have been pure, but now that I knew the truth, someone had to tell Kylie that her handsome gambler was gambling on the fact that she’d never find out about Nalani, his wife of seven years, who lived five thousand miles away in Honolulu.

And I knew just the someone who could do it.

The next morning at 5:45, I arrived at Gerri’s Diner. The sign on the door says NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE. There should be a second sign that says NO BOUNDARIES, because as soon as you walk through that door, your private life belongs to Gerri Gomperts.

She’s one part short-order cook and one part Internal Affairs. The difference between Gerri and IA is that cops are happy to share their deepest, darkest secrets with her.

“Good morning, Zachary,” she said. “What’ll you have this morning?”

“Greek omelet, rye toast, coffee, and five minutes of your time.”