I must have been in the neighborhood of the New York County Courthouse dozens of times when I was a kid, when I only had eyes for skyscrapers. It must have been one of the buildings I passed on my way to meet ADA Dixon the other day, but I didn’t pay much attention because I was hurrying to get out of the rain. That was a shame, because it’s a magnificent structure. The kind of building that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the center of Rome.
It looked like an ancient temple with a flight of solid stone steps, maybe a dozen feet high, stretched across its whole width. Above them, a parallel row of ten massive Corinthian columns rose up to support a symmetrical triangular pediment, complete with classical sculptures and a neatly carved inscription. Taken altogether, it could be the Pantheon’s younger, smarter brother. But when I paused in the center of Foley Square for a moment and closed my eyes and listened, I knew the only place in the world I could be was Manhattan.
I was surrounded by the urgent drumming of footsteps on the sidewalk. The pulsing of car engines as the morning traffic stuttered and surged through the clogged arterial streets. The angry, blaring horns. Taxi doors slamming closed. Tires squealing as drivers vied for the smallest gaps between other vehicles. Sharp staccato outbursts from commuters who got blocked off as they rushed to work. Softer, part elated, part exhausted exclamations from tourists who were desperate to tick off one more landmark before their vacations came to an end. The rhythm was unique, like a manic, hyperactive heartbeat. And even after all the time that had passed since I was last there, it still sounded like home.
Behind me a TV crew was setting up to record an episode of a cop show. Fraught twenty-somethings were bustling around in black clothes, barking questions and commands into handheld radios. Bored security guards were scanning the area for unruly fans to hold back. A pair of real cops looked on, unimpressed. A lawyer with a wheeled briefcase that was almost as big as my army duffel was struggling across the uneven stone surface.
Everywhere I looked people were rushing and hustling, except for one other guy. He was standing on the other side of Centre Street, right in front of the courthouse, gazing up at the statues. He was leaning on a cane. It was made of aluminum, and was adjustable like the temporary kind people borrow from the hospital. The guy turned and shuffled away. Then he stopped, turned back, and paused again. It was like he wanted to start up the steps but an invisible force was preventing him. I watched him for another few moments, then crossed the street and almost got hit by a guy on a bicycle. There were way more of them in the city than I remembered. Maybe the rash of bike lanes that had appeared since my last visit was encouraging them.
“That one’s Truth.” I paused on the sidewalk next to the old guy.
“What?” He shook his head and squinted at me, as if coming out of a dream.
“The statue.” I point up to the tip of the pediment. “The one you were staring at. I read about it, once. He’s Truth, and his friends are Law and Equity. I guess they put them up there so you know what you can expect, inside.”
“Are you going inside?” He sounded suspicious.
“I have to. I work here.”
“What’s it like?” His eyes narrowed. “I’ve never been in a place like this.”
“I’m not totally sure.” I shrugged. “It’s my first day, actually. But I doubt there’s anything to worry about.”
“So what are you?” He took a step away from me, like he’d detected a foul smell. “A lawyer or something?”
“Me?” I smiled. “No. I’m just a janitor.”
I helped the old guy up the steps and along to the main door, then left him to join the security line and made my way around to the back of the courthouse. If you could strip away the ornamentation, you’d see the building was really a series of geometric shapes. The front was a rectangle with a triangle on top, and the main section was a hollow hexagon with a circle in the center, joined by six narrow rectangles like the spokes of a wheel. The entrance I’d been told to use was at the rear of the hexagon. I had to go down a flight of steps to reach it, not up, and then head through a pair of glass doors. One of the doors was boarded up with a sheet of coarse plywood. I wondered what had happened to it. Had there been a break-in? Had someone been fired and then taken out their anger on the glass? Or maybe a prisoner had escaped? I asked the guy manning the security station about it, but he just shrugged.
I passed through a metal detector, retrieved my wallet and keys, and headed down a short dark corridor that led into the basement of the main hexagonal section of the building. The circular central core was walled off, but I could see through a door that it was used as a filing room. A woman was sitting at a desk near the entrance, nimbly sliding her computer mouse across a copy of last month’s New Yorker. Behind her, the space was filled with row after row of gray metal shelves. All but one were crammed with white cardboard files, their pink edges showing varying degrees of fade.
I turned right at the end of the corridor and followed around two faces of the hexagon until I found the Janitorial Services room. It smelled of dust and disinfectant. Metal shelves ran down the whole right-hand side, holding rolls of paper, mop heads, spray bottles, plastic garbage bags, towels, and all kinds of other supplies. A section at the far end was fenced off and locked with a padlock on a chain. Straight ahead, in the center of the room, there were four round tables like the kind you’d expect to find in a staff canteen. These were surrounded by two dozen chairs. They were of varying styles, and several looked like they’d been rescued from a Dumpster. Beyond the tables were two couches, which weren’t quite lined up. They were covered with a threadbare, furry material, with green and yellow stripes that were garish even in the room’s patchy artificial light.
The cleaning carts were stored on the left-hand side. They were lined up between stripes on the floor like cars in a garage. There was a number painted on the wall by each one, which I assumed referred to individual janitors. It reminded me of a parking structure I’d once seen in Chicago. It was underground, beneath Millennium Park. The FBI and the Secret Service had taken the place over for the duration of an international economics conference. I was there to make contact with a potential defector. He’d nominated the garage for our rendezvous, but I struggled to find the guy because the whole space was filled with lines of shiny black Suburbans. Only those were all parked facing out, ready for quick getaways if needed, not shoved in haphazardly like the carts at the end of a shift. And the SUVs had been identical. On closer inspection, I realized the carts were all set up differently. They’d been customized to varying degrees. Someone had strung plaited black trash bags between the handles of the two bins on the cart closest to me, to hold longer items like mops and brooms. The next in line had a yellow cloth bib strung around one bin, with pockets for spray bottles and aerosols. It looked homemade, but effective.
The door opened behind me and a guy came into the room. I guessed he was in his mid-thirties. He was wearing gray coveralls, and had long blond hair tied back in a ponytail and a scruffy goatee. I could see the tips of several multicolored tattoos peeking out from his collar and the ends of his sleeves.
“Can I help you?” The guy sounded suspicious.
“I hope so.” I took a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and studied it for a moment. I could remember the name that was written on it perfectly well, but I’ve found people are always faster to trust you if you seem a little disorganized. “I’m looking for someone. Frank Carrodus.”
“That’s me.” His voice relaxed a notch. “Are you McMahon? If so, you’re early.”
“Sorry about that.” I held out my hand. “I’m keen to get started. And please, call me Paul.”
When ADA Dixon’s version of events had borne out Detective Atkinson’s story, I’d decided that I would spend some time at the courthouse to see what I could find out about Pardew’s missing file. But why stay on the outside, picking up scraps of hearsay, when you could be on the inside, seeing things for yourself? And if a janitor had found a box of lost evidence recently, as Atkinson had told me, I figured a janitor was the thing to be. Faking the credentials for the job application was new—I was used to having that done for me—but it still took less than an afternoon with the public computers at the central library. I wasn’t planning on being there long—it wasn’t going to be my second career—so I didn’t have to worry about blowback from the IRS or anything like that. And I could have used my own name, but old habits die hard. I stuck to the usual formula. You use your real first name, so you’ll reply if someone calls to you. And you pick a different second name. I always liked something else Irish. There was no good reason, but I’d done it so long it had become a superstition.
Carrodus looked me up and down, then crossed to the shelves, took down a new coverall—still in its cellophane wrapper—and handed it to me.
“The locker room’s through there.” He pointed to the back of the room. “Go get changed. Then we can start the tour.”
Carrodus had a cart waiting for me when I came back out in my new uniform. He ran through the basics with the equipment, then led the way to the door.
“Have you had much experience with this kind of work?” Carrodus paused before pushing the handle. “Be honest. You wouldn’t be the first to exaggerate on your application form. And if you need extra training, I need to know, ’cause it’s down to me to get it set up.”
“Don’t worry.” I smiled. “I know what I’m doing. I worked at an army base before this. Over in Germany, actually. You wouldn’t believe the kind of messes I had to clean up in Europe and other places over the years.”
“Yeah?” His voice relaxed a little. “Why don’t you tell me about it sometime?”
“I’d be happy to.” I nodded. “We could swap war stories. I bet there’s plenty going on around here that people don’t know.”
“Too right.” Carrodus winked. “Let’s get a beer sometime.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“What brought you back to the States?” Carrodus opened the door and held it for me. “And why New York? It’s not the most affordable place to live. Not if you do an honest day’s work. If you were a banker or something, that would be different.”
“The short answer?” I wheeled the cart out carefully, not wanting to cause any damage on my first day with my boss watching. “My father. We’d been on the outs for a while—years, to tell you the truth—and then he got sick. All of a sudden. Anyway, I came back hoping to patch things up.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. How’s it going?”
“Let’s just say I don’t expect us to be getting much closer any time soon. Unless things take a radical change, of course.”
“Well, if you’ve got family issues, this is a good place to work. You’re pretty much free to come and go as you please. You’ll have your own allocated area—I’ll show you yours on the plan of the building—and as long as you clean it thoroughly every day, including the restrooms, how you plan your time’s up to you.”
“Sounds good.”
Carrodus stopped next to a bank of bronze-colored doors. “OK. First thing to learn. See these elevators? They’re not elevators. They’re closets. It’s only every other set that’s real. They made it that way to look balanced or something, with the building being symmetrical. Anyway, remember which is which. You don’t want to be stuck standing outside the wrong ones, looking stupid.”
We continued to the next bank. The shiny brass door opened the moment Carrodus hit Up, and after he helped me steer the cart inside he pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator started moving with a bump, but stopped again almost straightaway. The door opened, and I saw we were on the first floor. A woman with a gigantic stroller started to come in, but she quickly reversed away when she saw my cart.
“Look at that asshole.” Carrodus pointed at a guy who was standing on the blue-gray marble disc in the center of the floor. He was taking pictures of the mural that covered the inside of the rotunda’s domed ceiling, which depicts the evolution of justice from Assyrian times to the foundation of the United States. “Photography’s not allowed in here. You’re supposed to check your camera at the desk, over there.”
“Should we do something about it?” I took hold of the cart, ready to wheel out onto the shiny floor. The guy had moved to the outer circle of the floor design now, and was standing on one of the signs of the zodiac. Taurus. My sign.
“Leave it.” Carrodus put his hand on my arm. “He’s not our problem. Just a jackass with a camera. Not worth losing your job by starting an unnecessary ruckus. Security will deal with him. Eventually.”
The third floor was hexagonal, like the basement, only instead of a solid central core there was a wall lined with tall, old-fashioned leaded windows. They faced the hollow center of the building and overlooked the domed roof of the rotunda. I stopped to scope it out, but Carrodus grabbed the front of my cart and pulled it toward one of the spoke-like corridors that led toward the main part of the building.
The courtroom on the left at the end of the corridor was in use when we arrived, so we turned our attention to the one on the opposite side.
“Brace yourself.” Carrodus pushed the heavy wooden doors and held them open until I’d wheeled the cart inside. “You won’t believe the kind of crap people leave behind. They treat this place worse than a movie theater.”
Back in the janitors’ room four hours later, Carrodus slapped me on the shoulder. “Good job so far today, Paul. I think you’re going to be a good fit here.”
“Thanks.” I lined my cart up in its bay. I’d been given #12. “I enjoyed myself. I hope I’m going to find what I’m looking for.”
“Working here’s not just a job.” Carrodus moved to the door and casually leaned against it, arms crossed. “It’s like being part of a family, too. Which leads me to something they might not have told you at your interview. We look after one another on this job. Kind of like an informal union. To help out, where needed.”
“Sounds interesting.” I pursed my lips as if I was carefully weighing his words. “That’s something I could maybe get behind.”
“It’s not a voluntary situation.” His voice had gained what he probably thought was a harder edge. “I’m the treasurer. Ten percent of your take home kicks back to me. Also, you’ll volunteer to cover extra shifts as needed. Any questions?”
“No, Frank.” I flashed him the friendliest smile I could muster. “That’s OK. It’s perfectly clear what I need to do.”