While I am waiting at the airport, a crime is being committed that won’t even make the papers until a day later, when all the pieces fall into place.
A garbage truck driver is assaulted and robbed in the Bronx. He is sprayed with some chemical that completely paralyses him, then locked in an empty warehouse. He will not raise the alarm until the next morning, when the effects of the drug wear off.
His wallet is stolen. In that wallet, apart from a small amount of cash, his bank and credit cards and a photo of his wife and daughter, is his security access card. A card that opens the gates to the East 91 St Street Waste Transfer Station. It is a large facility where garbage from all over Manhattan is loaded onto barges for transport to landfill sites.
By the time I am sitting in a taxi on my way to my hotel room, that card has already been used. A truck has pulled up to the gates and entered the station. It looks just like any of the other garbage trucks that pull in throughout the day.
The masked, armed men who surge from the rear do not look like garbage workers.
The staff at the waste transfer station are bound and locked in storerooms.
At the dock, metal boxes are unloaded from the truck onto an empty trash barge.
Nobody sees.