part0020

I sat for a long time, thinking. Then I spent twenty minutes on Google Earth, examining the Bronx, and in particular Castle Hill Avenue. After that I climbed in my car and drove over to the Church of the Holy Family, and Claire Carter’s house. The house was still sealed with police tape, which hung listless and oddly sad in the dull light, and gave desultory slaps on the wooden door, like a beaten fighter who hasn’t the strength to surrender.

I didn’t go to Claire’s house. I went instead to Edna Brown’s place and rang on the bell. She appeared at the door after a couple of minutes, dabbing her mouth with a napkin.

I smiled an apology at her which she took cautiously. “I am sorry to intrude, Edna. I just need to ask you a question, maybe two.”

“So long as you don’t mind asking while I’m eating.”

“Not at all. And I won’t keep you more than a minute.”

I followed her through to the dining area beside her open plan kitchen, where she was eating a steak with mashed potatoes. She gestured me to the seat opposite her own and sat.

“If I was twenty years younger I’d offer you food and drink. But one of the pleasures of growing old is you don’t have to pretend anymore. What did you forget to ask me last time you were here?”

I leaned back and crossed one leg over the other.

“You said that you were expecting Claire at around eleven that morning, you remember.”

She nodded with her mouth full. “I do.”

“And you said you didn’t remember seeing any men going in.”

She smiled and shrugged, spreading her hands, still holding the knife and fork. “If I had, I would have known not to expect her.”

“Sure. I was just wondering about women, though. Did you see any women arrive that morning?”

She frowned and set down her knife and fork.

“I hope you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting...”

I shook my head. “I’m not suggesting anything, Edna. I’m investigating a murder, and I need to know whether you noticed a woman arrive that morning, before eleven.”

She looked past me, gazing at the window, outside at the dull street in the gray light.

“Well, now that you mention it, there was. I think she was a Jehovah’s Witness or one of those crazy sects. She was a little frumpy in her dress, with a felt hat and a handful of leaflets.”

“Black or white?”

“Um...” She hesitated and gave an embarrassed laugh. “You know, I’m not sure. The hat and the coat and the collar, and she was wearing glasses… I think she was white, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

“You spoke to her?”

“No! When I saw the threat of somebody telling me the good news I legged it into the kitchen.”

“Now, how about the white Ford SUV? Was it already there?”

She sank back in her chair. “Well, my goodness. Do you know, I think it was...”

“And what time would that have been?”

“Well, I had gone out to get the post. So it must have been about nine thirty. I have a very fixed routine, Detective Stone. Certainly it was between nine fifteen and nine thirty-five.”

“So, would you describe this woman as being basically nondescript?”

She was amused by that and chuckled.

“Yes, I suppose I would. Late twenties to mid-thirties, average height, build...” She shrugged. “Yes, nondescript.”

I thanked her and stepped outside. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, and it had started to spit with rain. I pulled up my collar and shoved my hands in my pockets, and walked the two hundred yards over the Castle Hill overpass, with the Cross Bronx Expressway humming under my feet.

On the other side of the bridge was the Sunoco gas station. I strolled in past the pumps and pushed into the store. There was a guy behind the counter counting coins. He looked like it was the most important thing he was ever likely to do in his life. I let him get to ten before I showed him my badge.

“Detective Stone, NYPD.”

He glanced at me and made it to twenty before he said, “I didn’t call the cops.”

“Well I guess it’s your lucky day, they came anyway. You the manager?”

“You here every day midweek?”

Now he was making stacks of ten. “Yeah.”

“Keep counting those coins and I might sneeze and blow the whole damn lot all over the floor. And by the way, you got a license for cockroaches? I think I saw five over by the sandwiches there.”

He looked at me the way a man might look at the pain in his ass.

“Were you here Tuesday morning?”

“Yeah, I’m here every morning, ’cept Sunday. Sunday I don’t work.”

“I need to see the CCTV for Tuesday morning.”

“You got a warrant?”

“No, but I can come back with one when I come back with the sanitary inspection officer and Vice. Or, if I’m lucky, you’ll turn out to be a citizen with a civic conscience.”

He sighed heavily and gazed at his coins. He looked like Napoleon about to tell Josephine, “Not tonight.”

He called his employee to tend shop and I followed him to his office in back. There he pulled the video footage on his PC and said, “What time you want to look at?”

I jabbed my thumb at the door like I was hitchhiking.

“Scram. I’ll call you if I need a cup of coffee.”

He grunted and left. I sat in the chair and studied the still on the screen. I could see the gas pumps, the parking lot and Castle Hill Avenue ahead. I scrolled to eight o’clock and watched the traffic pass in a slow, jerky procession, with occasional vehicles filtering off and stopping at the pumps.

At eight o’clock I saw a white or off-white Ford Kuga roll past, headed south. I fast-forwarded to just before noon and let it play. At ten minutes past twelve a cream Ford Kuga rolled into the gas station from the direction of the Church of the Sacred Family and Claire Carter’s house on Watson Avenue. It pulled up at a pump and a man got out. He was wearing a hat and sunglasses. He filled up the car, then disappeared from view.

I froze the image and switched to the indoor cameras. All you could see here was that he was average height, wearing a beige jacket and a cowboy-style hat. He paid cash and left.

The outdoor camera told me that he got back in and drove away. I selected the front view camera and saw the registration plate. It was the same one Susanne had sent me.

I pulled my cell from my pocket and called dispatch.

“I need a BOLO on a cream or off-white Ford Kuga, New York plates...” I gave her the registration, and went on, “Driver might be male or female, of average height and average build, black or white.”

“You kidding me?”

There was no point calling for a forensic team. Too many people had passed through the station and handled the pump, but I stepped out of the office and found Mr. Happy again.

“Have you banked Tuesday morning’s money yet?”

He looked at me slack-jawed for a moment. “No, tomorrow.”

“I need all the footage for Tuesday and I need the cash you took on Tuesday at midday.”

“This is a homicide investigation, and you really don’t want a charge of obstructing justice on this particular case. Now, we can do this nicely, or I can close the station. You choose.”

“OK, OK, I’ll get you the video footage and the parcel of cash. Each day is set aside...”

He hurried off like an urgent mouse, mumbling to himself. I followed and called Joe.

“Stone, how’s it hanging?”

“Perpendicular. I’m going to send over some video footage and a parcel of money.”

“The person who appears in the footage is, I am ninety-nine percent sure, Mommy’s Boy.”

The manager looked up from his desk and goggled at me. I pointed at the computer. He went back to work.

“Holy cow, Batman! You sure?”

“Like I said, ninety-nine percent sure. What I am not sure about is, well, whether it’s a man or a woman, whether he or she is black or white, or anything else for that matter, except that this person is of average height and build and nondescript.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, he-she-it is wearing clothes that mask virtually all features, and the one witness I have says she isn’t sure whether the person she saw was black or white. So what we need is some very serious video enhancement. Now, the good news is, I have a bundle of money, and among that money is the money with which our suspect paid for his or her gas.”

“That is going to be a hell of a job, especially if we don’t have a sample to compare it with, and we can’t eliminate all the other, legitimate prints.”

I nodded, like he could see me. “Yeah, I know. I’ll see what I can do.”

I hung up and left him sounding confused, then stepped over to where the manager was uploading the footage onto a pen drive.

“You remember this guy?”

He stared at the image on the screen for a moment. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“I thought it was a man, the way he was dressed, but now you asked...” He shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

He gave me the USB drive and the parcel of money, stuffed into a plastic groceries bag, and I made my way back to where I had parked my car. I dumped the stuff in the trunk and called Dehan.

I had to ring three times and finally she answered.

“Yeah, what is it. I was in the interrogation.”

“You going to join the Feds now? When you said you were thinking of taking a different job, I didn’t think you meant that.”

“Cut it out, Stone. What do you want?”

“I know who did it and I think I can prove it.”

“What do you think? You think you can pull yourself away from your new friends and come and give me a hand?”

“Are you jealous, Stone?”

“Truthfully, when I saw you climbing in the car with Panayotes, a little.”

“Good, come and get me. I’m all yours, big boy.”

“I’m on my way.”

But I had to go first to the station and have a bike run the evidence over to Joe. So it was another half hour before I set off for Manhattan. I called Dehan again from the car. It rang till her answering service kicked in. I rang again four more times with the same result. So I called Bernie.

“John, you owe me three thousand and fifty-six beers.”

“I’ll buy them all for you today if you find Carmen for me.”

“You’ll have to explain that to me, pal. Last I heard you were married to the poor girl.”

“Yeah, she was kidnapped by some Feds who took her to the field office to sit in on the interrogation of Jose Budia...”

“Oh, you guys are in on that? That’s just upstairs. You want me to go fetch her for you?”

“I’d be grateful, Bernie. She’s not answering her phone.”

He hung up and called back five minutes later as I was crossing the Bronx River and heading south toward Woodstock.

“Who was she with? Special Agent Panayotes and his crew?”

“They said she left right after you called her. I’m going to go down, see if she’s waiting in the lobby. She might have gone to get a sandwich. “

“Sure, thanks, Bernie.”

I hung up with a hot twist of anxiety in my gut. Getting a sandwich didn’t prevent you from answering your phone, and he knew it. I hit the gas and started weaving in and out of the traffic, finding spaces where I could and harvesting a cacophony of horns and klaxons behind me.

He called again as I was peeling off onto East 135th Street.

“Stone, she’s not here. We’ve put out a BOLO and we’re about to track her GPS on her phone. We’ve got guys down in the Plaza trying to find anyone who saw her or what happened.”

“You calling her?”

“No, John. If something’s happened to her and it keeps ringing they might switch it off.”

“You gonna keep a cool head?”

“That’s what I thought. She needs you cool and efficient.”

“I know. I’ll be there in ten.”

I moved down Broadway too fast, closing on the Federal Plaza. As I approached I could see Bernie on his cell waving at me from the sidewalk, stepping into the traffic. I pulled up beside him, leaned over and wound down the window. He leaned in.

“We’ve got her GPS. She’s on the move. The guy at Dunkin’ Donuts says he saw a hot Latina in jeans and a leather jacket waiting on the sidewalk maybe twenty minutes ago. He saw a Chevy van with tinted windows pull up. She spoke to whoever was inside and got in.”

“That was Dehan. Where is she right now?”

He opened the door and climbed in. “Willis Avenue Bridge. Move!”

I swore violently under my breath and as he slammed the door I accelerated south toward Park Row. “It’s going to take us twenty minutes to get there. She could be dead by then.”

The Jag held the road as I cornered and accelerated toward Frankfort Street and the FDR.

Bernie was staring about him. “Haven’t you got a siren in this thing?”

The exclamation might have been for the absence of a siren, or it might have been the surge of power that crushed him back into his seat as I floored the pedal in third, rammed in fourth and engaged the overdrive. I saw the needle inch to a hundred and ten and then crawl up toward a hundred and twenty. Compared to modern supercars it wasn’t much, but compared to the saloons cruising at fifty along the FDR it was enough. The cat snarled and we weaved dangerously among the Toyotas, the Fords, Jeeps and Chevys, hurtling past them and leaving them shrinking in my rearview.

“How old is this damned thing?”

“Sixty. Where is she now?”

Horns blared and made with the Doppler effect as we screamed past them. Bernie checked his cell as we hurtled under the Williamsburg Bridge.

“Joining the Bruckner Boulevard, headed east. We’re gaining on them.”

I growled, “Of course we are.”

“Have you got a plan?”

“You don’t want to hear it.” I grabbed my radio and called dispatch. I gave my name and badge number, then said:

“In pursuit of a dark Chevy van with tinted windows. I believe Detective Carmen Dehan is a hostage in the van. Requesting all vehicles fall back and keep their distance. Detective Dehan’s life could be at risk.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “We never had this conversation. Just don’t make me a witness.”

I didn’t answer. Seven minutes later we thundered over the bridge onto the Bruckner Boulevard. There were no patrol cars visible.

“Where are they?”

“Crossing the Bronx. You’re two or three minutes away and closing. We should see them soon.”

We danced through the traffic, swinging from lane to lane wherever there was an opening. After two minutes Bernie pointed, but I had already seen it.

“That van! Fifteen cars, fourteen cars ahead.”

I slipped past five, six, seven more cars and positioned myself six cars behind the target, slowing as I went.

“What are you going to do, John?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I’m not asking, you’re not telling. This car isn’t bugged and I dream about Dehan leaving you and marrying me. So cut the crap and tell me what you plan to do!”

“See where they take her. That will tell me who they are and what I have to do next.”

They came off at the Bronx River Parkway and turned down Soundview Avenue. I let them get ahead and followed at a discrete distance. At Lafayette they turned east and my cell rang. It was Dehan’s phone calling. I grabbed it.

“Hey pig. You know who this is?”

“It’s Detective Dehan’s phone. Who are you?”

“Oh, you don’t know? I’m your wife’s new man. She’s here with me now in my love mobile. We gonna make some sweet love, Latino style, real soon. She gonna call me papito . She ever call you papito, pig?”

My belly was on fire and I felt sick, but I couldn’t afford to give in to the feelings. I said, “What do you want?”

He laughed. “Right now I want your wife, pig. She is super hot, man. I’ll call you and tell you what I want after I have had my fill.”