Gone Tomorrow

him.”
    “Who?”
    “Just a guy. The cops figured he didn’t want his name in the system. They figured he was maybe cheating on his wife.”
    “Possible.”
    “Yes,” I said. “Possible.”
    “And?”
    “Both the feds and the private guys asked me if your sister had handed me anything.”
    “What kind of anything?”
    “They didn’t specify. I’m guessing something small.”
    “Who were the feds?”
    “They wouldn’t say.”
    “Who were the private guys?”
    I hitched up off the bench and took the business card out of my back pocket. Cheap stock, already creased, and already rubbed a little blue from my jeans. New pants, fresh dye. I put it on the table and reversed it and slid it across. Jake read it slowly, maybe twice. Sure and Certain, Inc. Protection, Investigation, Intervention . The telephone number. He took out a cell and dialed. I heard a delay and a chirpy little three-note ding-dong tone and a recorded message. Jake closed his phone and said, “Not in service. Phony number.”

Chapter 13
    I took a second refill of coffee. Jake just stared at the waitress like he had never heard of the concept. Eventually she lost interest and moved away. Jake slid the business card back to me. I picked it up and put it in my pocket and he said, “I don’t like this.”
    I said, “I wouldn’t like it, either.”
    “We should go back and talk to the NYPD.”
    “She killed herself, Jake. That’s the bottom line. That’s all they need to know. They don’t care how or where or why.”
    “They should.”
    “Maybe so. But they don’t. Would you?”
    “Probably not,” he said. I saw his eyes go blank. Maybe he was rerunning old cases in his head. Big houses, leafy roads, lawyers living the high life on their clients’ escrow money, unable to make good, ducking out ahead of shame and scandal and disbarment. Or teachers, with pregnant students. Or family men, with boyfriends in Chelsea or the West Village. The local cops, full of tact and rough sympathy, large and intrusive in the neat quiet dwellings, checking the scenes, establishing the facts, typing reports, closing files, forgetting, moving on to the next thing, not caring how or where or why.
    He said, “You got a theory?”
    I said, “It’s too early for a theory. All we got so far is facts.”
    “What facts?”
    “The Pentagon didn’t entirely trust your sister.”
    “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”
    “She was on a watch list, Jake. She must have been. As soon as her name hit the wires, those feds saddled up. Three of them. That was a procedure.”
    “They didn’t stay long.”
    I nodded. “Which means they weren’t very suspicious. They were being cautious, that’s all. Maybe they had some small thing on their minds, but they didn’t really believe it. They came up here to rule it out.”
    “What kind of thing?”
    “Information,” I said. “That’s all the Human Resources Command has got.”
    “They thought she was passing information?”
    “They wanted to rule it out.”
    “Which means at some point they must have ruled it in.”
    I nodded again. “Maybe she was seen in the wrong office, opening the wrong file cabinet. Maybe they figured there was an innocent explanation, but they wanted to be sure. Or maybe something went missing and they didn’t know who to watch, so they were watching them all.”
    “What kind of information?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Like a copied file?”
    “Smaller,” I said. “A folded note, a computer memory. Something that could be passed from hand to hand in a subway car.”
    “She was a patriot. She loved her country. She wouldn’t do that.”
    “And she didn’t do that. She didn’t pass anything to anyone.”
    “So we’ve got nothing.”
    “We’ve got your sister hundreds of miles from home with a loaded gun.”
    “And afraid,” Jake said.
    “Wearing a winter jacket in ninety-degree weather.”
    “With two names floating around,” he said. “John Sansom and Lila Hoth, whoever the hell she is. And Hoth sounds foreign.”
    “So did Markakis, once upon a time.”
    He went quiet again and I sipped coffee. Traffic was getting slower on Eighth. The morning rush was building. The sun was up, a little south of east. Its rays were not aligned with the street grid. They came in at a low angle and threw long diagonal shadows.
    Jake said, “Give me somewhere to start.”
    I said, “We don’t know enough.”
    “Speculate.”
    “I can’t. I could make up a story,