In the elevator I take a picture of the info and shoot it with a text message to Valdez, telling him I need everything Taylor has said and done for the last year with a focus on how it relates to Regina Conti, and I need it as of yesterday. I’m out on the street when he responds to give him a few hours. I reply I need it by seven. He promises I’ll have it. I don’t doubt he’ll deliver. Johnny might not have anything he can show Regina, but I’m sure Valdez can give me something I can use.
I consider making an approach on Regina now. Yeah, I know I’m good-looking. I don’t have to work to get pussy—I’ve had women try to crawl on my cock without asking if I was even down to fuck. But those were women who were looking for a fuck, not women convinced they were in love with someone else. I’m not sure what the hell Johnny thought I could do with only a few hours over a dinner. Yet going in blind on who Richard Taylor is as my competition doesn’t work for me.
There isn’t much I can do while I wait. I hate shopping, Pop is the only person I’m willing to do it for, especially when it comes to making up for forgetting his birthday. I make a call. “Patrick, you doing business today?”
“For you, Mr. Sabatini, I’m always open.”
“Good, I’m in midtown now. I’m guessing I’ll be forty-five minutes, to an hour.”
“I’ll be here.”
I hail a cab. The driver’s accent tells me he’s not from the US but I couldn’t even guess from where, typical New York cabbie. I tell him where I want to go and offer him five hundred to turn off the meter and drive me for the day.
He considers it. “Show me the cash.”
When I pull out my money clip he nods. “Get in.”
The drive is just short of an hour. He pulls to a stop out front. “I’m going to be a little while. You want to go grab something to eat?”
“Sounds good.”
“Here’s half the cash. Be back within the hour.”
He nods. “I’ll be here.”
I open the door of a converted barn, and an electronic chime echoes throughout. Books are everywhere, haphazardly shelved—the sign above the closest standing shelf of books says photography, but there are several memoirs as well as cookbooks crammed onto the shelves.
“Mr. Sabatini, it’s been a while.” He’s a small man with big glasses. His hair is graying and when he smiles, which he does often, his teeth are a little crooked. Patrick Gransom is the epitome of a nerd, with two PhDs. He also has the in for rare and hard-to-find books. I’ve purchased a 1492 Chronicle of illustrated Rome and Venice from him and a first edition of a fifteenth-century account of the sack of Rome.
Pop loves to read everything from classical literature to PI mysteries, but he treasures old books. The older and more obscure the better, anything after the seventeenth century is too new.
“How can I help you?”
“I need something to make up for forgetting my Pop’s birthday.”
He chuckles. “Fathers and their birthdays, the shopping never gets easier. Can you believe I got my father the car of my dreams and I thought his, and he says it’s too expensive, he can’t take it?”
“What did you get him?”
“A 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS LS6. It’s gorgeous and it’s sitting in my other barn. I can’t take it home, if my wife finds out I have it she’ll divorce me.”
“You willing to sell it?” My grandfather had one, him and Pop spent hours working on it. I keep my poker face. This would be the best damn gift I’ve ever gotten Pop. I want the car.
“Hell yeah, I’m willing to sell it. I’m serious about my wife divorcing me. She threatened it when I brought it home. I told her it was for my dad and I still had to sleep in the guest room. Come take a look.”
We go a few hundred feet to another barn, this one barely cleaned from its original use. There are three other cars, a Ford Mustang, a Pontiac GTO, and a Ferrari from the ’70s that’s seen better days. And I understand why she’s threatening divorce.
“You weren’t exaggerating, it’s gorgeous.” It’s a deep navy with chrome wheels. “How does it drive?”
“Like a dream. Let me get the keys.”
I open the driver’s door. Pop would love this, he used to talk about how he and my grandfather would drive around the city making collections in this car. How they would spend a weekend changing the oil, tuning up the motor. My grandfather loved his car.
It was the car he was driving in with my grandmother when they were killed. A driver skidded behind them on the icy Chicago streets, pushing them into traffic where another car ran into them. Both my grandmother and grandfather were pronounced dead on the scene. For a minute I wonder if this car would bum Pop out.
“Want to take her for a ride?”
I nod. If I hadn’t known better I would think the car just came off the line—the interior is perfect. The car turns over smoothly, the motor roars to life like a pissed-off bobcat. Damn, the streets aren’t huge in the small town, so I can’t get the speed up past fifty. I’m floating on glass even when I stop short, the brakes catch and hold.