Ramses was waiting in the golden glow of the Fifty-eighth Street entrance to the Plaza Hotel when Mason pulled up behind the wheel of Gunnar’s rented Cadillac Escalade. He rolled down the tinted window and gestured for his old friend to climb into the seat behind him, which he did, but only after leaning halfway through the window to see why he’d been relegated to the rear. He opened the door and slid in beside Gunnar, whose laptop sat open on his thighs while he simultaneously searched for a match to the unknown government installation in the background of the picture of the men with their eyes scratched out, researched Rand Marchment, Ichiro Nakamura, and Charles Raymond, and imported the list of personnel Layne had received from the army.
“They have the park sealed off behind portable barricades between Terrace Drive and the Seventy-ninth Street Transverse,” Ramses said. He closed the door behind him and elbowed Gunnar to make more room. “There’s no sign of the DHS, though. The whole operation is staffed by men wearing hard hats and reflective vests.”
“Which agency?” Mason asked.
“State Department of Environmental Protection.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Layne said.
If Ramses was surprised she was there, he did a good job of hiding it, although not so well that Mason couldn’t see him in the rearview mirror, carefully studying her from the corner of his eye.
“They didn’t think so, either. They were told the penthouse explosion might have damaged some of the underground power lines, but the guy I talked to figured they must have been talking about the old water lines, because he didn’t think any electrical cables had been run underneath the Ramble or so close to the lake.”
“So what did he think?” Mason asked. He pulled away from the curb and entered the heavy evening traffic.
“That he was making twenty-eight bucks an hour to stand there doing nothing.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“He did say he heard that the explosion at the Mayfair was caused by a ruptured gas line, which apparently made some amount of sense to him. Something about these skyscrapers being built before the dawn of time.”
“I guess that explains why the apartment complex isn’t still locked down.”
“And why the traffic’s moving at all.”
“They can’t afford panic,” Layne said. “If everyone tried to leave the island at once, it would be chaos.”
“And Homeland’s movements would be restricted,” Mason said. “They’d never find the Scarecrow with eight million people all trying to get out of here at the same time.”
“So they’re using the unsuspecting population of one of the most crowded cities on the entire planet as bait to try to draw him out?” Gunnar said. “That’s a big gamble.”
“Why do you sound surprised?” Ramses said. “You think any of our lives are worth shit to these people?”
“I would have thought at least their own were.”
“Where am I going?” Mason asked.
“Keep going straight,” Ramses said. “You’ll cross the Queensboro Bridge and turn right on Van Dam Street.”
“I take it you were able to arrange a meeting?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to here?”
“Why do I feel as though there’s something you’re not telling me?”
“Because there is.”
“As long as we cleared that up,” Mason said. “Where are we going?”
“Are you going to introduce me to your partner, or are we sticking with the whole male prostitute story?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Don’t worry,” Ramses said. “I’ll let you know when we get there.”
Layne turned around in her seat and thrust out her hand.
“Special Agent Jessica Layne, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
He smirked and shook her hand. If she’d been attempting to intimidate him, it obviously had the opposite effect on him.
“Ramses Donovan, entrepreneur.” He released her hand and winked at Mason in the rearview mirror. “So I take it you’re confident this one’s not going to try to kill you?”
“I’m leaving that option open,” Layne said.
Mason’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He grabbed it and tossed it to Layne.
“Six oh nine area code,” she said.
“Where’s that?” he asked.
“New Jersey,” Gunnar said without looking up from his laptop.
“Put it on speaker.” The buzzing ceased and the car filled with the crackle of an open line. “Special Agent Mason.”
“This is Officer Saul Barrie, calling from the NJSP impound lot here in Port Norris. Remember that thing you asked me to look into for you?”
“You found out who gave the order to dispose of the flatbeds?”
“I need your word that this won’t come back to bite me or my CO in the butt.”
“You understand I can’t make any guarantees if this is actionable intel, but I’ll do everything in my power to make sure no one ever knows the source.”
“I knew this was a mistake.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Barrie. You realized from the start that something was wrong and trusted your gut when it told you to preserve the evidence. What’s it telling you now?”
There was a long silence. Mason glanced at the screen from the corner of his eye to make sure the call hadn’t been disconnected.
“Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t press the issue,” Mason said. “I totally get your loyalty to your department and your commanding officer. I do. But those trucks were hauling something far worse than drugs, Barrie. A lot of people could die.”
Still, the other end remained quiet. When Barrie finally replied, it was in a tone of resignation.
“Major Delvin Roybal. Commanding officer of the Special Operations Section.”
“The New Jersey State Police have special ops?” Layne said.
“Not in the sense you’re thinking. More like specialized operations.”
“What does that mean?”
“The organization is divided into four branches: Administration, Investigations, Operations, and Homeland Security.”
Mason glanced at Layne.
“Let me guess, we’re dealing with Homeland Security.”
“Right, but the branch is further broken down into sections: Emergency Management and Special Operations. So Major Roybal’s on the third tier of the pyramid, with the commanding officers of five bureaus directly underneath him: Aviation, Deployment Services, Marine Services, Technical Response, and my bureau, Transportation Safety.”
While the mention of Homeland Security and special ops had initially piqued Mason’s curiosity, the entire branch sounded like a standard bureaucratic entity that dealt more with customs and commerce than the actual process of physically securing the homeland.
“It doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that someone in charge of transportation safety would be in a position of determining how best to handle the disposal of abandoned commercial vehicles,” Mason said.
“True, but he’s also in charge of the Technical Response Bureau, whose CO manages the Arson Unit, which was never called in to investigate.” Mason felt the weight of Layne’s stare upon him. She recognized it, too. It made no sense to bribe the firefighters without disabling the investigative body. “He’s also in charge of the Hazardous Material Transportation Enforcement Unit. They have weigh stations set up on every highway entering the state and inspect every commercial vehicle that passes through. If you’re right and they were hauling shipping containers, then the contents had to pass inspection somewhere along the line.”
“Would there be a record of where the trucks entered the state and what they were carrying?” Layne asked.
“The data’s entered manually.”
Mason knew exactly what that meant. Someone willing to pass two bulk containers loaded with tanks of an unspecified liquid likely wasn’t the kind of guy who’d enter the details into the log.
“Thanks, Barrie,” he said. “You did the right thing.”
“I hope to God you’re right.”
Layne terminated the call and set Mason’s phone on the console.
“So we have a high-ranking official in charge of commercial-vehicle inspection and arson investigation making a unilateral decision to dispose of evidence potentially incriminating the owner in both trafficking and arson,” she said.
“We need to find out more about this Major Roybal.”
“Major Delvin Roybal,” Gunnar said from the backseat. “Fifty-two years old. Twenty-nine years of service with the NJSP. His wife divorced him after twenty years, which means she hit the minimum threshold in New Jersey to receive alimony. Throw in two adult children, both of whom are enrolled at Rutgers, which isn’t exactly cheap, and you have the recipe for financial disaster. Yet, somehow, the good major is not only keeping his head well above water; he just bought himself a new Harley, free and clear.”
“Can you trace his income?” Mason asked.
“He draws a salary of roughly a hundred and fifty grand from the NJSP, which isn’t chump change by any means, but— Here we go … a onetime payment of a quarter of a million dollars for his services as a consultant.” Gunnar whistled appreciatively. “That’s Clinton money and this guy isn’t even in a position to influence policy.”
“Who paid him?”
“A company called East Coast Transportation Services, which is a totally legitimate company based out of Newark. It manages a fleet of five thousand commercial vehicles that it leases to any number of corporations.”
“What’s its involvement?”
“They haven’t filed their quarterly taxes, so the payment hasn’t even been reported yet,” Gunnar said. “I suppose they could have been trying to arrange for preferential treatment. Time is money in the trucking industry and bypassing weigh stations would be a competitive advantage, but they could have easily arranged accommodations through routine channels, and at a fraction of the cost. If I were to wager a guess, I’d say they made the payment on behalf of one of their clients, although they could have collected the funds through any number of aboveboard mechanisms without leaving a paper trail.”
“Do any of its clients stand out?”
“Every major corporation is on the list. East Coast Transportation Services essentially provides subcontracted vehicles for companies with existing fleets when they need additional shipping help in a pinch.”
Mason felt a tug at the back of his brain.
“What about Royal Nautilus Petroleum?”
“They’re here, but so is every other oil company from Anadarko to Valero.”
“Take your next left,” Ramses said.
“You think the payment’s legit?” Layne asked.
“The numbers are way out of line, but the payment itself is completely legitimate. At least on paper.”
“Any payments to officials with similar positions in other states?” Mason asked.
“Not within the previous two quarters, and certainly not on the same scale.”
“We should track down this Roybal and see if we can ruffle his feathers,” Layne said.
“If he accepted a bribe of that magnitude to allow the trucks to pass inspection and then arranged for the destruction of the evidence,” Mason said, “he was in the wind the moment he heard what happened to the men who tried to kill us.”
“I’ll handle that once we’re done here,” Ramses said. “I have a talent for finding people who don’t want to be found.”
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Layne said.
Ramses directed Mason into an industrial district filled with squat, single-story redbrick warehouses. Every available surface was covered with warring graffiti, all vying to be seen. They passed a salvage yard, a sweater mill, a lumberyard, and a wholesale furniture warehouse before turning down a side street defined by cramped apartment complexes on one side and abandoned commercial buildings on the other. Another left and they were on a dark, deserted street with a veritable twenty-foot wall formed by the bricked-over backs of the warehouses on the left and downtrodden shops with roll-up aluminum garages on the right. What wasn’t already condemned looked like it should be.
“Up there on the right,” Ramses said. “The one with the concrete blocks stacked on the roof.”
Mason pulled up onto the curb in front of a building barely wide enough for a slender garage and a steel door, upon which the address had been spray-painted in uneven numbers.
“This isn’t one of those places where they harvest your kidneys, is it?” Mason said.
“Would you just trust me for once?”
The adjacent building showed more recent signs of habitation, if only because someone had made the effort of boarding up the windows on the main level and erecting a chain-link fence around the Dumpster. What was left of the faded white letters painted directly onto the bricks above the third-floor windows hinted at a previous life as some sort of automotive-parts distributor.
Mason killed the engine and watched the still street. He sensed he was being watched the moment he climbed out of the Escalade. Whoever designed the building’s security had done an amazing job. The cameras mounted to the roofline on the opposite side of the road were nearly invisible, while those on the garage and neighboring building were so well disguised, he wouldn’t have seen them had he not been specifically looking for them.
“Leave me the keys,” Gunnar said. “I’ll stay in the car to make sure no one steals it.”
“You just don’t want to go in there,” Mason said.
“There is that.”
Mason tossed him the keys and caught up with Ramses, who stood in front of the steel door beside the garage and stared up into a camera designed to look like a broken light fixture.
“Remember when you asked if there was something I wasn’t telling you?” he said. “Well, I hope you brought your checkbook.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mason asked, but judging by the smile on his old friend’s face, he suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to know.