LITMIR.BIZ

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      When we got back to the station I was The Man. Even Bullard stayed quiet. The whole Ridgecliff team, main and peripheral, followed me into the conference room. Cargyle was pulled in by the hubbub, carrying a broken monitor, yammering into a phone, tools slapping at his side. Even two janitors got caught in our forward motion, grinning in the corner and watching the show.

      Folger took the lectern, clapped her hands to get attention.

      “Listen up, people. I want everyone to start showing Ridgecliff’s photo at toney eateries. Other suggestions, Ryder? Your gut’s got the floor.”

      “Ridgecliff has dark hair. Black probably. I’d bet on a mustache, too. He’ll be disguised as a … a …”

       It wasn’t my gut talking. It was years of life with my brother. A brother who had always lamented his pale yellow hair – my father’s hair – calling it the color of phlegm, always wishing he could trade it for my head upholstery, brown almost to black.

      I froze and saw my brother in my mind. Listened to his words over the years. Heard him speaking a few phrases in a foreign language.

      “Aloiso is a good man, Carson … um homem bom. Tem problemas, mas nós todos temos problemas.”

      I went to the window and looked out, yet saw nothing but the movies in my head. I made mental tallies of data, subtracting what didn’t fit. I felt my pulse quicken and sweat prickle on my forehead.

      Everyone stood back and gave me room to pace, afraid of breaking the spell. I painted a picture of my brother in my head, added a shift in eye color via tinted contacts – simple with money – tossed in three bucks’ worth of hair color, and perhaps a couple of visits to a tanning salon or using a skin toner to ameliorate his pale skin.

      “Come on, Ryder,” Cluff prompted. “What?”

      Images whirled, facts aligned. The answer fell into place as perfectly as if whispered in my ear.

      “He’s a Portuguese businessman,” I said.

      “No way,” Bullard spat.

      I said, “One of the patients at the Institute is Aloiso Silviera. He and Ridgecliff were buddies.”

      Aloiso Silviera was a rapist-murderer of Portuguese descent who terrorized Boston for seven years. Jeremy had always spoken of Silviera with a sort of condescending camaraderie.

      “Aloiso’s unhappy in love, Carson. But he has a primitive charm, a love of beauty, um amor da beleza.”

      Cluff winced. “Friends? Silviera?”

      “Less a friendship than an alliance. Ridgecliff forms alliances with people he can take something from. I’ve heard him speak Portuguese. Small phrases.”

      Cluff said, “That’s hardly enough to pass as a –”

      “You don’t understand, Detective. Ridgecliff wouldn’t have used any Portuguese phrases unless he felt fluent in the language.”

      “Why the hell not?”

      “He’d consider it presumptuous.”

      Cluff’s pencil hit the desk. “I’m not buying into –”

      “Shhh,” Folger said. “Keep going, Ryder. If Ridgecliff speaks Portuguese, it makes sense he’d use it in his disguise. Your gut tell you why he’s here?”

      “To kill,” Cluff said. “That’s obvious.”

      “Maybe. Ridgecliff would see the prospect of killing in Manhattan as a supreme challenge. The ultimate high-wire act.”

      Folger gave me a look teetering between belief and doubt. “Bottom line: Jeremy Ridgecliff is a dark-haired, well-dressed Portuguese businessman living in an upscale neighborhood? That’s the way you’re seeing him?”

      “I think it’s a strong assumption.”

      A call came for Cluff and he slipped away to take it. I fended off Devil’s Advocate questions about my conclusion, strengthening my own belief along the way.

      Cluff returned, held up a page of fresh notes. Cleared his throat. “Maybe we should keep looking other directions as well.”

      “Why’s that?” Folger asked.

      Cluff flicked a page. “I finally got some background on the Bernal vic, the one without a history? Looks like she worked at Bridges.”

      “Son of a bitch,” Waltz said. “Bridges.”

      “Bridges?” Cargyle said, looking startled. “She, uh, worked on bridges?”

      “At Bridges, kid,” Cluff said. “Bridges Juvenile Center. Over in the Bronx, medium to high security, tough cases. Bernal was a housekeeper at Bridges for four or five years. It stopped five years back when Bernal got citizenship, started climbing the ladder to better jobs.”

      Waltz looked at me. “Juvie detention. With Dora Anderson working in Child Welfare in Newark back then, there was some overlap. We’ve got a possible connection between Anderson and Bernal. Troubled kids.”

      They were running down the wrong path again. I shook my head, no, no no.

      “Pure coincidence,” I said. “Ridgecliff was in the Institute when the two women worked in the juvie system.”

      Cluff raised an eyebrow at Folger, “Your call, Lieutenant. Should I keep digging on Bernal?”

      Folger shook her head. “Not now, but I reserve the right to change my mind.”

      “Woman’s prerogative,” Bullard said. He could have said it funny or shaded it toward sarcastic. He leaned it the second way. Folger’s eyes narrowed in his direction.

      “What’d I say?” he wheedled. “Jeez, sorry for fucking living.”

      Folger clapped her hands for attention. “Here’s the drill: Suspend background checking of Anderson and Bernal, we don’t have the time. Get Ridgecliff’s pic doctored like Ryder says and start pushing it past maître-ds and rental agents and the like.”

      Everything I suggested was done. The detectives hit the streets with updated photos and new avenues to find their quarry. Waltz had testimony on a case, went out the door practicing his lines. It was past lunch and I hit a Thai restaurant a few blocks down the street.

      When I returned an hour later, Waltz was back at his desk. “How’d the testimony go?” I asked.

      He put his hand high above his head, snapped it down. “Slam dunk.” He was in a good mood like everyone else on the case, the effect of seeing light at the end of the tunnel. It wasn’t much, a half a lumen maybe, but it was supernova bright compared to all the dark we’d seen.

      “Cool. Anything showing up on Ridgecliff?”

      “We may be working our way up court on that one, too. Perlstein dug up a waiter at Chez Pierre, a la-di-da place on 64th. The waiter said the guy’s face resembled the pic of our new Ridgecliff, with the dark hair and eyes. The waiter said the customer barely spoke English. He ordered by poking his finger at the menu, asking, ‘Is this a food?’”

      That fit Jeremy’s sense of humor. “What did the customer order?” I asked.

      Waltz leaned out his door and barked, “Perlstein!”

      The heavy junior detective arrived a minute later, out of breath from his sixty-foot waddle. “Yeah, Shelly?”

      “The customer at Chez Pierre. You ask what he ate?”

      Perlstein puckered liverish lips, pulled a notepad from his pocket, flipping through pages. “Uh, lessee, he drank some kind of white wine, Chateau pauf de dawdle or something. I ain’t good at French. He had the house salad, and dinner was tornadoes Rossalini.”

      Perlstein flapped over another

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