Ted shook his head. “It’s my problem. My decision. Whatever I end up doing is entirely on me.”

The Preacher smiled his approval. “I’ll put two questions to you: What do you regret right now? And what will you regret a year from now?”

Ted didn’t have to think long or hard about the first question. The answer was Cheryl. He needed to see her and extricate himself from whatever game she was playing. Give her the money back and sever any further communication.

The second question was the tough one.

-29-

-29-

The file would have to sit in the judge’s inbox until the next morning. There was nothing Ted could do to change that. Meanwhile, he had to tender his resignation with Cheryl and give her back the thousand dollars. It was time for a sit-down. Ted didn’t know whether or not he owed her an explanation for walking away from the affair, but she owed him some straight answers.

Richie had lived in Sunnyside, but Ted had never bothered to ask the address. He wanted Cheryl surprised and on the defensive, so he couldn’t call first and ask. New York State voter rolls made it too easy. Though there was no listing for a Richard, it took Ted about a minute on his smartphone to come up with an address for Cheryl Rubiano. He was on his way.

Sunnyside was squeezed between the new skyscrapers in Long Island City and the vast expanses of the Calvary Cemetery. It was a tall town for Queens, packed with apartment buildings and industrial space rather than single-family homes. Cheryl had a fifth-floor apartment near Greenpoint Avenue.

A coffee shop on the corner, diagonally across from the entrance of her building, gave Ted a vantage point from which to watch and prepare for this ordeal. The morning rush was long over, so for a five-dollar tip, the waitress let him sip coffee by the window.

Cheryl had her secrets. Their first meeting had been an odd mix of high emotion and irrational demands that had left him both confused and dismissive. He had gone along with her mostly as a way of getting rid of her. The second session had been entirely different. She had been pharaonic in giving him orders—right up to the moment when he had revealed to her the properties involved in the case. Suddenly she had wanted him to drop the pursuit of the money and focus only on the murder of her husband. Had she finally realized that the case Richie had chosen to pursue could be tied to La Bella Casa, Reisner, and Pak? There had been no tears for Richie, only a seething anger that Ted had felt was the most real emotion he had yet seen in her. This made her meeting with Councilman Pak and entourage doubly suspicious.

And then there was the giant. How could something that big remain a mystery?