The Hook Read online

  ‘You boys playing with your toys again?’

  I turned and got a full kiss on the mouth from Allison. I was going to ask how she knew where I was, but I was smarter than that. She gave Edgar a kiss on the back of his head. Deep in thought, he barely noticed. Allison took a look at Gray Man’s picture on the laptop and said, ‘Why the hell are you watching him?’

  When neither of us responded, she pointed at the screen. ‘That’s Duke Lansing,’ she said. I gave her a blank stare. Edgar remained silent. ‘If you didn’t know that, why are you watching his show?’

  ‘Show?’ I asked.

  Allison put her hands on my shoulders. ‘What am I missing here, Ray?’

  ‘Less than I am. Who’s Duke Lansing and why does he …?’ Now it came to me.

  ‘The White Supremacist guy?’ Edgar said.

  ‘The one and only.’ Allison squeezed between us. ‘And it’s White Nationalist. And calling it a show is being kind. He has a channel on social media. He spews his racist shit in the guise of American Values and people who probably still use rotary phones call the show to speak with him. I’m actually thinking of doing a series on what’s left of his movement.’ As Mikey came by she ordered a white wine. Working tonight? Then she repeated, ‘Why the hell are you watching this?’

  As I explained, it came to me why I had had trouble placing Lansing’s face. Five years ago he had darker hair, fifty fewer pounds on him, was beardless and running for a seat on the New York City Council. Some right-wing group had paid for a lot of TV spots that played during the local news and Yankees games. His main point seemed to be that certain people were ruining our city, our state and our country, and those certain people didn’t look like us.

  ‘Edgar,’ Allison said, ‘you were working for him and didn’t know who he was?’

  ‘I wasn’t working for him.’ Pause. ‘MoJo was.’

  Allison and I both got silent again. After a while, we both said, ‘Shit.’

  Edgar, eyes still on the screen, agreed. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Crapola.’

  SEVEN

  We all had fresh drinks in front of us and were sharing plates of chicken wings, calamari, and onion rings. Looks like I picked the wrong day to start on that diet. Allison dipped a ring in a mixture of hot sauce and ketchup and brought us up to date.

  ‘After he lost the city council race,’ she said, ‘Lansing and his family went underground. Some say literally.’

  ‘Meaning …?’ I said.

  ‘They owned land upstate. Dozens of acres by some accounts. He’s reportedly got some rebuilt bomb shelters on the property and the rumor was that he lived in them after the election, fearing for his family’s life.’

  ‘With all the shit that came out of his mouth,’ I said, ‘I don’t blame him.’

  ‘I tried to get an interview with him after he lost. I was still the new girl at the paper and thought it would be a big scoop, get my name out there, so I went up to what he called his estate. Big house, no one home. I walked around for a few hours hoping to find someone to talk to.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘A couple of guys dressed in camouflage from head to toe, carrying automatic weapons, who asked me to leave.’

  ‘Asked?’

  She laughed, but not like I had said something funny. ‘After I assured them I was not a member of the Jewish-run liberal media, only a real estate agent looking for the owner.’

  ‘Quick thinking,’ Edgar said.

  ‘Standard line for reporters. Especially those of us who work for the Jewish-run liberal media.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘There have been three times I’ve been afraid for my life. That was one of them.’

  I knew about one of those times – Allison had been run over by a Jeep while running in high school – and made a mental note to find out about the other. ‘So, did they ever resurface?’ I asked. ‘The Lansings?’

  ‘Not that I know of. The house and property were sold. They have that web channel and a podcast but that could be coming from anywhere in the world.’

  ‘Or beyond,’ Edgar added. ‘With the right equipment, you can hide the physical location of your server and your phone.’ He thought about that. ‘It really sucks that some people use this technology to spread hate instead of to bring people together. Then they hide behind the same technology because they’re cowards.’

  I put my hand on Edgar’s shoulder. ‘That was well said.’

  ‘I don’t get people sometimes, Ray.’ He touched his pint glass but made no effort to lift it. ‘And what was MoJo doing with him? He woulda known I wouldn’t work with someone like Lansing.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell you,’ Allison said.

  ‘No, no. There’s more to it than that. There has to be.’

  I knew there didn’t have to be; Edgar wanted there to be. That was another tough thing about being Edgar. Like Kennedy said, some people see the world the way it should be and ask, ‘Why not?’ JFK never had to deal with the Internet.

  ‘You said so yourself, Edgar. With the baby coming, MoJo was looking forward to earning more money. Maybe this was something he felt he had to do and didn’t want to tell you because he knew you’d say no.’

  ‘No!’ Edgar said loud enough to get the attention of everyone at the bar. ‘MoJo would not do that. It’s not the way we set things up. We agreed to discuss any purchases over fifty dollars and not to take on any clients without the other partner knowing about it.’ He took a few breaths to make up for the ones lost during that little outburst. ‘That’s what we agreed on. Any change in the rules had to be discussed.’

  ‘We know that, Edgar,’ Allison said just above a whisper. ‘But having a child on the way changes the rules sometimes. It’s possible that – with his past history of instability and now finally getting himself clean – MoJo wanted this Lansing job so much that he changed the rules without telling you, knowing you’d say no and he’d miss out on all this money for his family.’

  The three of us went silent again and the rest of the bar patrons went back to whatever they’d been doing before Edgar’s outburst. After a few more sips of beer and eating the rest of the appetizers, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. There was – as my mother would say – an elephant in the room that no one was addressing.

  ‘How,’ I finally said, ‘did MoJo get in touch with Duke Lansing?’ Edgar and Allison turned their gazes to me. ‘If this guy and his family were laying so low that no one knew where they were, how did they get in touch with each other? Did MoJo find Lansing? Or was it the other way around? These are two guys from completely different worlds. Lansing would never do business with MoJo if he knew MoJo’s pregnant wife was black. That was one of his big things,’ I continued. ‘The mixing of the races. The extinction of the white male by means of miscegenation. He stoked up a lot of fear and anger during that campaign by basically saying, “They’re stealing our men. They’re mating with our women.” I don’t think any candidate for any office anywhere got more use out of the word “mongrel.” This was not a business relationship that should have happened.’ I paused. ‘So how did it?’

  This question just brought about more silence. Mikey, who’d just come on shift, must have picked up that the silence was tension-filled, so without saying a word he brought us another round of drinks and cleared our plates away. I gave him a Thank You smile just before Edgar spoke again.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? He didn’t tell me shit.’

  In all the years I’ve known him, that may have been only the third time I’d heard a curse word cross Edgar’s lips. This was eating him up.

  ‘Is there anything else in the bag, Edgar?’ Allison asked. ‘Something that maybe connects MoJo to Lansing?’

  Edgar went through the receipts again, this time much slower. Nothing there. He opened the box of paper clips and found nothing unusual. He picked up the two pens and rolled them around with his fingers. He put one down, but seemed extra interested in the one he was still holding. He looked back at
the receipts and shook his head.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

  ‘Spy pen,’ he said. ‘Another thing I didn’t know he had, and it’s not listed on the receipts like the camera case recorder is.’

  ‘A spy pen,’ Allison said. ‘Is that what it sounds like?’

  ‘Yep.’ Edgar placed the pen in his shirt pocket and rotated it so the clip was facing us. ‘I just click this and it records. You can even write with it.’

  ‘Sounds like something out of James Bond,’ I said.

  He took it out. With great care, he unscrewed the pen so it was now in two parts. He removed something and held it up for Allison and me to check out. ‘A micro SD card,’ he explained. ‘You get about an hour on one charge of the pen and thirty-two gigs of memory with the card. A lot of corporate guys and gals use them to record meetings. This is the kinda stuff we were going to sell when we opened our office. We have a few at my place. I don’t know why MoJo has his own.’

  I looked at the card. ‘Can you put that in your computer and see what’s on it?’

  Without a word, he slipped the card into the side of his laptop, pressed a few buttons again and up came a picture on the screen. This picture was not as clear as the other one, but we could easily make out a man of about thirty with glasses and a dark beard. The guy was wearing a white sweatshirt and jeans. Edgar pressed Play and the man started talking.

  ‘ … to see you again, Maurice. How’s Lisa?’

  ‘Getting bigger every day,’ MoJo said. ‘June fifth. We’re glad she doesn’t have to carry over the summer.’

  ‘Thank God for small blessings,’ the man said. ‘You’ve seen the guys I guess?’

  ‘Most of them,’ MoJo said. ‘Everybody’s looking good.’

  ‘You’re a good role model, Maurice. It’s nice you were able to take the time and come up. They need to see how well you’re doing as much as you want to see them.’

  ‘Working works, right?’ MoJo said.

  The man laughed. ‘Don’tcha love a rule that fits on a bumper sticker?’

  ‘Yeah. Even I can remember them.’

  The picture froze and the three of us looked at each other. Edgar said, ‘I guess the battery ran out. Maybe he didn’t know he was recording.’

  ‘Any idea who that was?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Nope.’ Then he leaned into the screen and studied it for a while. ‘There’s a logo on the sweatshirt,’ he said. ‘Looks like a house and a bunch of trees. No idea.’

  I got closer to the screen and saw what Edgar saw, except I had seen that logo before. It took about ten seconds to remember where.

  ‘That’s the residential facility MoJo was at. Newer Leaves.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’ Allison asked.

  ‘No. It was on the letterhead of their stationery when they sent me the paperwork to sponsor MoJo at the school. Corny name, but good program.’

  ‘Did he say anything about going up there, Edgar?’

  ‘Not to me. But there’s no reason he would tell me, I guess. I mean if he’s keeping the other secrets from me, then I guess there’s—’

  I held up my hand. ‘Part of the program required MoJo to go back up to Newer Leaves on a regular basis. It was like part check-in and part showing the other residents what you were up to. Like the guy said, he was a good role model. MoJo also kept a journal while at the school. I think he took it upstate whenever he visited.’

  We all took final sips from our glasses and Mikey was right with us as he placed fresh ones in front of us. ‘You guys watching anything good?’

  Edgar quickly shut the screen down. ‘No, Mikey. Nothing.’

  ‘Fine, man.’ Mikey picked up a bar rag. ‘Just asking.’ He walked away.

  ‘So what do we do with this stuff, Raymond?’ Edgar asked.

  I gave that some thought. ‘You gotta let Detective Royce see the video with Duke Lansing. Too big to be a coincidence that MoJo has a meeting with that guy and then ends up dead.’

  Edgar closed his eyes. ‘You think Lansing had something to do with MoJo’s—’

  ‘I don’t think anything yet, Edgar. That’s going to be up to Royce to decide.’

  Edgar got quiet for about thirty seconds. ‘Can you call Royce?’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s something you should do? MoJo was your partner and this is a business thing.’

  I believed every word I had said. I also believed the more I got involved with Royce, the more pissed off he’d be. I didn’t need that; this investigation didn’t need that.

  ‘Besides, you just had a good talk with him. You guys exchanged cards and said you’d be in touch if anything came up.’ I touched his shoulder. ‘This is something that came up, Edgar.’

  Again, he got quiet. I decided that if he asked me one more time, I’d agree to do it. Reluctantly. He asked one more time. Shit.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But this is the kind of stuff we’ve been talking about, Edgar. I can’t keep holding your hand. You have a business now. I’ll help out when I can, but it’s your circus, your monkeys.’

  ‘Thanks, Ray.’

  I looked at my watch and decided, ‘I’ll call him in the morning. There’s no rush and it’s a Saturday. The last thing he needs right now is to hear from me.’

  Edgar picked up the pen and examined it more closely. ‘The stuff I have at home is much better than this. This looks like it’s from a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Maybe MoJo was just using it as a pen,’ Allison suggested.

  ‘I guess. Why would he secretly be taping up at the recovery house? You really think he didn’t know it was recording?’

  ‘Like you said, it’s an old pen and a recent recording. He’s talking about Lisa being pregnant. My uncle always tells his cops, “When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.”’ When I realized Edgar didn’t get that, I added, ‘The obvious answer is usually the right one. He was using the spy pen as a pen and it must’ve had a little juice left in it.’

  Then again, if I believed it was too big a coincidence for MoJo to be secretly recording Duke Lansing around the time of his death, what made the other recording more than mere coincidence?

  And then I was reminded of something else my Uncle Ray always says: Ray, you think too damned much.

  EIGHT

  I found out on Sunday morning – along with everybody else who subscribed to and read New York Here and Now – who Allison had been meeting with on Friday night. I was sitting on the futon in our living room, drinking coffee, eating a buttered bagel, and reading her website on my laptop.

  WHITE NATIONALIST TO AMERICAN RUNAWAY

  A YOUNG MAN’S JOURNEY OUT OF NYC WHITE SUPREMACY

  First in a series by Allison Rogers

  Harlan S. stands just a little over 5 feet 6 inches and weighs maybe 140 pounds wearing the skin he was born in, but he is the owner of ‘one hell of a right hand.’ He knows this because even at the tender young age of sixteen, he has used it to get himself into and out of trouble any number of times.

  ‘Lost count after a dozen or so fights,’ he tells me at a New York City area diner. ‘I don’t mean to say I’m proud of that.’ He pauses to sip from his diet cola. ‘Not anymore, I mean.’

  If you didn’t know any better, just by looking at Harlan – not his real name – you’d think he was a tourist from the American Heartland. He’s got the blond hair and blue eyes of a Missouri farm boy and the muscles to go with them. If his haircut were any shorter, you’d think he was heading off to boot camp. Or maybe posing for a White Nationalist poster.

  Which he has.

  ‘I was born into it,’ he explains. ‘Just like babies are born Catholic or Jewish or Muslim. I didn’t have a choice. My whole family was White Nationalist, so I was White Nationalist.’

  But Harlan was not born in the Midwest or Appalachia or someplace where tourists have difficulty getting a cell phone signal. He was born right here in New York City. It doesn’t matter which borough; Harlan is a born-a
nd-bred native New Yorker.

  He is one of us. Now he wants out of what he was born into.

  ‘I’ve done some terrible things,’ he tells me, his blue eyes getting shiny. ‘Ever since I can remember, it’s been Race, Family, Country. In that order. So if I did something bad to “protect” any of those three things, it wasn’t considered bad. I was praised and celebrated. Like a Little Leaguer hitting a home run. Some of the stuff I’ve done’s been …’

  As he trails off, I can’t help but think, here’s a kid who should be enjoying tenth grade, playing sports, chasing girls. Instead, he’s afraid of things the rest of us take for granted: Where’s my next meal coming from? Where do I sleep tonight?

  And, worst of all: What if my family finds me?

  Harlan S. is from the (Home) School of Hard Knocks.

  ‘I never met a black kid until I ran away,’ he says. ‘Not in the sense that most people mean. I mean I saw them on the other side of police barricades. I was close enough to throw rocks at them, let the air out of their daddy’s and mammy’s tires. But met met? Nope. Same goes for Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Chinese. I didn’t know anyone except white Christians.’

  The African-American server comes over to our table and asks if there’s anything else we’d like.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Harlan says. As she walks away, he whispers, ‘See that? That woulda been impossible for me three months ago.’

  We plan to start talking about those three months – and a lot of what led up to them – in our next meeting. Right now, Harlan has to get back to the shelter where he’s been staying – hiding, truth be told. A place, he told me, his family will never think to look for him.

  ‘It’s like the United Nations in there. And they got a curfew,’ he explains. ‘For everybody.’

  I put some money down on the table and we exit the diner. Harlan takes a deep breath as if the air a few blocks from the Brooklyn/Queens Expressway were refreshing. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans in an Aw-Shucks kind of way.