by Robert Pobi
Lucas watched the train continuing on to Montauk, where his family would be waiting. “I made a mistake,” he said as the last car was swallowed by the snow. “Kirby Clibbon isn’t our shooter.”
81
The Time Warner Center, New York City
Dashon Jenkins had been polishing the floors of the shops at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle since the day it opened, and in all that time, he had seen hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of people walk by. Very few of them ever noticed the floors, but that was fine by him. He didn’t do this for them; he did it for himself. He took pride in his work—otherwise, what was the point? It was one of the few things his father had taught him before taking off to Baltimore. This dedication served him well outside of work, too. He got his GED five years ago and was halfway through earning a college degree. He owned a triplex on Staten Island that was almost paid off, which was more than most of the people out there. Nope, he didn’t give a shit that those motherfuckers never noticed him.
The building attracted tourists by the busload, from well-dressed Italians to the inflated folks from Florida; there were Chinese tourists who followed the guides with the signs; and the chubby schoolkids in yoga pants who couldn’t take a single photo without their own fat faces in it. In all that time, he had become an expert in reading people. From the slick lawyer assholes who charged through, to the famous news folks from upstairs at CNN, he could tell who would nod a hello and who would walk by like he wasn’t there. And from the instant he saw him, Dashon knew the guy with the red face and all the bodyguards who plowed through earlier wouldn’t so much as look at him.
But it wasn’t until he saw that same red face on the television screens around the building that he understood why. The dude was on CNN, going on about how everyone in the United States should carry a bazooka.
While he ran the polisher, Dashon read a few of the comments that ran across the bottom of the screen. The guy was really getting into it with one of the hosts. He believed that law-abiding citizens should own any gun they wanted. Apparently, he had statistics that showed the country would be a lot safer if every man, woman, and child carried a gun. Without knowing anything about him—the subtitles said his name was Dwayne Laroche—Dashon could tell he wasn’t being 100 percent truthful. Dashon knew that what he really meant was that all the white people should own guns. Those white assholes who loved their guns usually had a pretty standard set of feelings for the black man. Not that Dashon was a racist—it was just that in his experience, any honky who believed in guns tended to also believe that black people shouldn’t be allowed to have them. Not the ones who said they believed in law and order. And especially not the cops. Googling Philando Castile would show you how the Man felt about brothers carrying guns—even legal ones.
He could tell by looking at the man’s face that he wasn’t really an activist or true believer. Nope, this guy was just another salesman trying to make a buck. They had called it branding in the marketing course he took last semester. The guy wasn’t selling a product, he was selling an idea, and Dashon knew that could be a dangerous thing. All you had to do was look at those rednecks down South who screamed about believing in the Lord just before throwing a noose over a branch. Or those Muslim brothers who weren’t happy unless they took a whole city block with them on their trip to the sky. As far as Dashon was concerned, the selling of ideas should be illegal.
As he read the subtitles on the big screen beside the Hugo Boss store, he had to give Mr. Laroche credit for sticking to his guns … ha ha. He wasn’t going to be swayed by the news anchor. And certainly not by anything as ridiculous as logic. No, the transcript showed the thinking of a man welded to his ideas.
… and if we were all armed, we’d be much safer. I carry at least one firearm on my person at all times, and I guarantee that I will not be a victim of firearm violence because, as the facts clearly demonstrate, the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun. Furthermore, my training and belief in the use of firearms for personal protection ensure a safe environment for those around me. I become, in a way, a guardian angel to those who need …
When Dashon swung back, Mr. Laroche was off the screen and the blonde with the big eyes and small brain had moved on to another guest.
He put a lot of square feet under his polisher, gradually forgetting about Mr. Grand Dragon until he came ripping through the lobby again, this time angrier than before, which was some kind of a motherfucking miracle.
Laroche stormed by, walking straight through Dashon’s path, his bodyguards clearing the way as if he were the quarterback for the Giants. Not a single one of them acknowledged him, not even when he had to skid to a halt and dropped the coffee he was carrying.
Honkaloid assholes.
But he had been through this enough times to know that getting angry wouldn’t help no one, so he simply cleaned up his coffee with some paper towels and went back to work.
He was swinging the big Koblenz polisher around a garbage can by the entrance when one of the front doors shattered and something zipped by his head, whistling into the ATM in a bloom of sparks.
Dashon jumped and looked up. What the fu—?
Outside, the Grand Dragon stumbled back.
The sound of the shot rolled in. The screams began. And the Klansmen started running around like it was Black Friday and white cotton sheets were 90 percent off. People stomped on one another in their race for the doors, and a crowd spilled onto his polished floor, scrambling for cover.
Laroche’s men muscled in, half carrying and half dragging him. They held the body with one hand each, free hands waving pistols around. Dashon tried to step out of the way, but they headed straight for him, leaving a dark red smear on his freshly cleaned floor.
He put his hands up.
They dumped their man on the floor, and Dashon saw that his head was pretty much not there anymore. There were two ears and a flap of hair. But nothing in between. No face. No forehead. No chin. And no more fucking ideas to sell. The dude was canceled.
Dashon fell back on the only thing left to say when faced by a bunch of white men with guns. “I didn’t do it!”
“Call an ambulance!” ordered one.
“Get us a first aid kit!” yelled another.
Dashon dropped his hands. Did that guy just ask for an ambulance? An ambulance wasn’t going to save that motherfucker. No one could unscramble that cracker’s head without a magic Rewind button.
Dashon held up a roll of duct tape. “How about this?” he asked.
82
Columbus Circle
Lucas stood in the middle of Columbus Circle waiting for Whitaker to finish up inside. The shot that killed one Dwayne Laroche—former president of the NRA and current gun crime statistic—had not come from the roof of one of the nearby buildings. It had come from under a parked car—a pickup truck, to be specific. From a little more than four hundred yards away.
The first rule of evolutionary mechanics was adaptability, something their shooter had in abundance.
There were still two ambulances parked in front of the building, but Laroche had been wheeled down to the morgue. After the forensics guys finished their trickery, the coroner’s Tupperware canopic jars—plastic bins containing brains, hair, and some skin—were carted away. But it was all a formality. No one doubted what had killed Mr. Laroche: his own principles.
The bureau boys found the spot where the shot came from long before Lucas rolled up in the back of the Babylon sheriff’s cruiser. The two-hour trip in from Long Island had been a sullen experience since the officer—one Deputy McKinnley—resented being delegated the status of Uber driver.
The pickup the shooter hid under was registered to a man named Leo Grabinsky, who owned a tourist shop on Broadway that sold everything from bobbleheads of Joey Ramone to New York Yankees merchandise. The bureau impounded his truck to go over the undercarriage in search of trace evidence, but Lucas knew they wouldn’t find anything.
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The pickup had been parked down Broadway, on the east side. A perfect vantage point to see the entrance to the Time Warner Center. They had pulled the CCTV video, and Lucas watched it a handful of times.
Two of Laroche’s bodyguards had exited the towers via the southernmost door; a third held it open. Laroche stepped out, followed by three more bodyguards. He then took a step toward the back door of the limousine, and that was the last intentional movement his body ever performed.
For a man who espoused the use of firearms for personal protection, the more than eighteen handguns found on his party didn’t lend much credence to his argument. Someone wanted him dead, and now he was. And there had been plenty of good guys with guns on the scene.
Lucas watched Whitaker cross Broadway, weaving between the emergency vehicles. As she approached, she held up her phone. “I love Patton Oswalt. Listen to this tweet. Irony: Being shot by a nut with a rifle minutes after going on TV to defend the right of nuts to own rifles.”
Columbus Circle was closed to traffic, and the NYPD had the place on lockdown. And there seemed to be hundreds of emergency response vehicles on-site—everything from police cruisers to the bureau’s submarine-sized command vehicle.
Lucas kept staring at the building across Broadway. People make mistakes; it is hardwired into our evolutionary past as a way to learn. And people with guns make mistakes with guns. There wasn’t really much of an argument in arming all the citizens, but the people who sold death worked very hard to make Americans believe the line, regardless of what the numbers showed. After all, it wasn’t about anyone’s safety; it was about making money. They weren’t buying protection—they were being sold fear.
Inside the television-like glow of the lobby, they were drilling the slug out of the ATM, raining sparks down on the marble tiles.
Whitaker turned to look back at the scene in the lobby. The unmistakable figure of Kehoe was there, stage left, watching over his people. With Graves dead, Kehoe would act as interim head honcho until he appointed another SAC—which he would do by morning.
“Why would a gun nut kill the president of the NRA?” she asked.
Lucas didn’t have to think about that one. “She’s not a gun nut. She was making the same point as when she nailed that cleric—denying allegiance. And I think she knows that it was the bullshit that these idiots sell that killed her family.”
“So what do we do?”
“We go talk to Kirby Clibbon and see if he’ll help us out.”
“You think he’ll say anything?”
Again, Lucas didn’t have to think about the answer. “Nope.”
“Then why bother?”
“So when this is all over, I can tell myself I did everything I could.”
83
26 Federal Plaza
Lucas had met men like Kirby over the years, and he always wondered how they kept it all under lock and key. It never won them a lot of friends, but they very rarely got pushed into corners not of their own choosing.
Kirby was doing a good job of hiding what was going on behind his eyes. “I’m not talking to anyone without my lawyer,” he repeated. “This conversation is over.”
Lucas leaned forward, meshing his flesh fingers with his green anodized ones. “I need your help.”
“No shit.”
“You want her to die? Because that’s how this ends—with her in a box.” Lucas hoped the kid would do the smart thing. “She’s going to make a mistake.”
Kirby locked on Lucas’s good eye for a few seconds. And maybe it was because he saw the logic in Lucas’s pleas, or maybe because he no longer cared, but he stepped out of character and said, “I once hunted her in the mountains to see how good she was. Four days in March. Forty below with no sun or moon for ninety-six straight hours. She didn’t eat or sleep or drink.” He didn’t look like he was trying to make a point. Or win an argument. He looked awed. “Four. Fucking. Days. Man, I know SEALs couldn’t hack that kind of abuse. Your crippy ass certainly ain’t going to find her.” He smiled. There was nothing humorous in it. “She’s been at this her whole life—she was born to do this. A little hate goes a long way.”
Lucas thought back to the night she had taken Atchison out on his front steps—it was all he could come up with in the way of camaraderie. “She saved me.”
Kirby smiled sadly at Lucas, as if he just realized he were dealing with a small child. “You’re the cripple teacher with all the mongrel kids? Sure, she saved you—for last. So you can watch everyone you love die, just like she had to.” Kirby put his head down on the table. “Now, get me my fucking lawyer or get the fuck out of here. I’m through talking to dead men.”
84
Grant Mercer answered the phone in one ring. “Yes?”
“Mr. Mercer, this is Dr. Page of the FBI. I was there with Agent Whitaker—”
“I’m not senile.”
“Of course. Look, I need to know where she is.”
“She?” the old man halfway across the country repeated. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Lucas closed his eyes and pushed the frustration away. “I need your help, Mr. Mercer.”
“You need my help? The FBI is here, Dr. Page. They ripped my house apart and took my dogs.”
“We’re just trying to prevent anyone else from getting killed.”
Grant laughed. It was a slow, rattling sound that could have been generated by a mechanical pump. Then he said, “Good luck with that,” and hung up.
85
Lucas paced the floor of the office at 26 Federal Plaza, cycling through the events of the past few days. The conference table was littered with thousands of pieces of paper, ranging from police reports to old copies of credit card bills to crime-scene photographs.
Between the digital information in Lucas’s head and the massive amount of paper data, there was a significant pile of zeros and ones to wade through.
He had been at this for hours as Whitaker was doing her own mental connect-the-dots. Lucas circled the table counterclockwise. Turning left was easier on his bad leg, and he was tired and distracted and didn’t feel like falling through a window. Every now and then, one of them would have a light bulb moment and they’d go into the pile of paper. So far, all their big ideas had turned out to be snake eyes.
What they had managed to do was piss off Kirby Clibbon and Grant Mercer.
She was supposed to be in D.C., but they couldn’t find an address for her anywhere there. The D.C. bureau was running around, following leads, but their reports were coming in loaded with big fat nothings.
She called her folks twice a month from D.C., and they had tried to track down the cell number, but it was a prepaid deal, and the phone wasn’t showing up on the networks; it had only been used to call that single number. They had traced the purchase of the phone to an AT&T store three years back, but it had been bought with cash, which, after this much time, was a complete dead end.
Which meant that she went to D.C. twice a month to make the calls. The bureau had pulled the logs, and every single call she made home had been traced to within six blocks of Union Station up until October, after which the calls came in from various locations along the Beltway. They tried to pull all the surveillance footage for the New York and D.C. terminals, but they only went back sixty days, which meant they no longer had CCTV video of the dates she had been there.
Like everything else she had done, there were no mistakes in the formula, and Lucas wondered if Kirby was right, and she’d just keep on doing this until she died of old age.
Where was she?
The obvious answer was New York; they had a roomful of bodies to prove that one very important point.
“You hungry?” Whitaker asked.
Lucas didn’t raise his eye from the table. Or answer her.
“You see, us humans need food. Didn’t your alien leaders teach you that before they sent you here?”
Lucas looked at the photos. They didn’t have much. And what was
there was out of date. They had precisely three pictures of her—one old snapshot from when she was six and the two photos from the mantel at the Mercers’, collected and transmitted by the Wyoming branch of the bureau two hours earlier. They couldn’t find a single piece of government identification connected to her name—and she had not been issued either a passport or a driver’s license. No school photos. No social media accounts. So what they really had was nothing more than a very general, and very stale, impression.
One of the bureau artists who specialized in missing children had updated her face, adding enough years to give them a general idea of how she might look now. The media were doing what they did, and the image was already burned into the national consciousness. But even if it were dead-on, which the artist had assured them it wasn’t, all she had to do was change her hair or put on glasses and she would look like a million women across the country.
She was out there, hiding in plain sight.
“Huh?” Whitaker prodded.
Lucas looked up at her. “What?”
“Food?”
“What about it?”
“Do you want some? There are ten diners within a block of here. I can get us anything you want, although I’m partial to tuna melts. Want to see a menu?”
“No. Thanks. I’m—menus?” And the alarm in his head went off.
“Yeah, menus: they’re lists of food items and corresponding prices. You get them at restau—” She stopped when she saw that Lucas wasn’t paying attention again.
He pulled through the mountain of papers until he found the one that he was looking for: the stack of photos from Atchison’s house in Jersey. He flipped through the deck with his green finger, creasing the photos as he went, until he found the one of the contents of the desk in the basement. He taped it up on the whiteboard, over the felt-tipped scribbles he had spent the night generating.
