by Andrew Case
Mulino waited for the pair to quiet down. “Okay, detectives. You call TARU. You ask them what I told you to ask them. You get specific information. How often they pinged the phone. Activity on the email. And then you get back to me. You let me deal with McArthur Hill. Stay away from that place. If you are going to go to a church, a church where they feed on dressing down the NYPD, you have to play it very slowly. So don’t try that again.”
“Okay.”
“Now get out there and get TARU to track down our only suspect.”
The two of them stood and pivoted out of Mulino’s office. They weren’t rocket scientists, but they would have to do. Mulino would have to get Bruder off of his cell phone. He kept his own cell phone inside a desk drawer when he had a meeting. Old habit. He pulled open the drawer and saw that, while he’d been grilling the detectives, he had received a two-word text message of his own. It was from Leonard Mitchell, and it made him smile.
I’m in.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Leonard walked along Empire Boulevard, the subway behind him and the glum tower of Ebbets Field ahead of him. It had almost been too easy with Eleanor Hill. He had the job, but he didn’t know anything yet. And he wasn’t sure how he could find anything out. Showing townhouses wasn’t going to help him discover what secrets Hill and Associates had to hide. But he wouldn’t get any further into the organization if he didn’t show the house. So he jingled the keys and thought about what he might tell the prospective buyers on Sunday. Sure, the place is a shithole, but it’s right around the corner from that new Korean place everyone is talking about.
At Washington Avenue, he stopped. He was two blocks from home, but a block and a half in the other direction stood a house he’d been meaning to visit for a while. Last year, while he had been investigating Ralph Mulino, his old boss, Christine Davenport, had been murdered. It turns out she had found out just enough about the dirty cops to get killed, and had left behind just enough information so Leonard could crack the case. Her husband and son had left for New Jersey. Once he got out of Moriah Shock, Leonard had tried to find them, but there was no trace. Their names didn’t show up in any databases—not the public ones and not the ones you can get access to through the city. Leonard figured they had changed their names, stayed in New Jersey or gone even further afield. They had every right to be afraid. Christine had been killed, and her husband had never learned the whole story. Anyone would worry that someone dangerous was still out there.
Leonard eventually gave up looking for Adam and his son. But he still periodically searched for the name, and just two weeks ago he found a hit. Adam had bought a house not four blocks from Ebbets Field. He had switched jobs and joined the community board. The same community board where Eleanor Hill had tried to pitch her latest project. Adam likely would have been there, would have seen her and the protesters, both. Now he taught at Brooklyn College, only a short subway ride away. He was living on Guilder Street, a tidy row of townhouses where the lawns all backed up to Empire Boulevard. Leonard had been meaning to go by every night for the last two weeks. Now was as good a time as any.
Leonard rang the doorbell. There was still contractor’s paper over the small window in the door. The house was nice, a pretty little limestone with bay windows. Those still had contractor’s paper on them too. He hadn’t even bought blinds yet. After a moment, Leonard could hear movement, and the paper over the window jiggled aside. Behind the window was a face Leonard had seen only a few times, at a company party and maybe once in the office. Adam Davenport looked a little heavier now, and as though much more than a year had passed.
Adam opened the door. Leonard still couldn’t tell if the man recognized him. He could hear shuffling in the background, someone coming down a flight of stairs, maybe.
Adam looked tired. “Yes.”
“Mr. Davenport.”
“Yes.”
“My name is Leonard Mitchell. I worked with Christine.”
Adam looked over his shoulder, as though maybe he would say something to whoever was inside. Then he turned back to Leonard.
“You’re the one that got arrested.”
So Adam knew that part. Someone had told him something. Leonard wondered how much he knew. He wondered if Adam knew how much the city owed Christine. How much she had found out. And how she had stashed away the fruits of her investigation on a flash drive posing as a refrigerator magnet, hiding a trove of data in plain sight.
“Yeah. They arrested me. I was trying to find out who killed Christine, you know.”
Adam considered. Maybe he would open the door and let Leonard in. But instead, he spoke. Quietly, flat, as though he were accepting a delayed apology. “Okay.” Maybe Adam was angry at Leonard. Maybe he thought Leonard should have done more. Or maybe he was afraid of him. Or maybe, at some point, there stops being a difference between anger and fear.
“It’s cold out here.”
“Maybe you should have worn an overcoat.”
Noise again. Another look over the shoulder. It would be the son. Henry. He wouldn’t be used to a house yet. Leonard had been to Davenport’s apartment in Manhattan once. The boy had slept in what was essentially an oversized closet. But he had been only five then. Or maybe six.
“Mr. Davenport, I did everything I could. I don’t know how much Christine told you. She found out some very bad things. She wasn’t afraid.”
“And look where that got her.”
“I just mean when you think of her, you should be proud of what she did.”
Adam nodded. There was puzzlement now, in addition to anger and fear. They wouldn’t have wanted to tell him everything, whichever detectives had briefed him after the case. They would have said that her killers had been killed, which was true. They would have said she had uncovered some dirty cops, which was also true. But they would never have told him the scope of the conspiracy. It would only have frightened him.
“I’m very proud of her. Thank you.”
“You just moved to the neighborhood?”
“I got a new job. I was with my family, for a while.”
“I couldn’t find you. And I spent a good part of my life finding people for a living.”
“We didn’t want to be found. I figured after a year, if no one had found us, they weren’t looking anymore.” So it was true. They had been hiding. Using fake names, maybe, or staying with friends, never using a credit card. Never signing a lease. It gets hard, after a while. Leonard could understand why Adam was back.
Leonard held out his hand. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Adam. I live in Ebbets Field. You can probably see it out your window.”
Again, there was a quiet distance in Adam’s answer. Just the facts. Don’t think we are friends now or anything. “Okay. Yes, I can.”
Leonard thought to go. He had made his introduction. But there was something still he could learn from this man. “Adam. If you don’t mind. I want to talk to you about the community board. About the meeting this week.”
“Yeah. I was there. I just wanted to do my part. I’m new in the neighborhood. I want to help.”
There was more clamor back in the house. Leonard saw a flash of movement. Behind Adam was another door into the house that was only half open. Someone had run past it at full speed. And now was coming closer.
Leonard figured he might as well try to learn something. Adam hadn’t exactly kicked him out yet. “Were you there for the protests? For Eleanor Hill?”
Adam waited to answer again. Measuring what Leonard might really be asking, what he was driving at. “She never gave her presentation. The protesters shut down the meeting. I read her packet online. She had emailed us all. It looked . . . well, I’m sure you can find a copy to read. Are you investigating real estate developers nowadays instead of cops?”
The door behind him opened, and there was the boy. Short, dark hair, with his mother’s narrow features, and a devious child’s smile. He was wearing plain blue pajamas. Seven, Leonard guessed. Just old enough to have
decided that pajamas with stars or dinosaurs or race cars were for babies. He looked up at his father.
“Dad? Can I have some screen time?”
Adam looked like he had aged another five years since answering the door. He turned and spoke to the boy.
“Ten minutes of screen time, Henry. Then brush your teeth, then read and go to bed.”
“Only ten?”
And a look came over Adam. The look that every parent has now and again. I could keep this up, but what is the point, really? He relented. “Okay. Twenty minutes.”
And the boy scurried back up the stairs. Leonard took out his personal card. No office. Just his name and phone number.
“You know there was an accident on the construction site, Adam. I’m just trying to figure a few things out.”
Adam took the card, looked at it. Leonard could see him wonder. Trying to figure if Leonard was a cop now. Or looking for a lawsuit. And then feeling too tired to try to figure it out.
“Okay.”
“You go ahead and put your son to bed.”
“Thanks. I will.” Adam Davenport shut the door and retreated to his lonely house. Leonard turned down the three front steps and onto the lovely manicured street. As he walked back toward his own apartment, he figured that the encounter with Adam went about as well as he could have expected.
CHAPTER NINE
Detective Peralta thought the houses were doing their best to look like one another. The same red vinyl awnings. The same white window sashes. The same shape: boxy brick below to make you think the place was bigger than it was, and a peaked roof to make you think you were anywhere but Queens. Detective Peralta looked down the uniform block. The homes of white people who have lived in the city for fifty years. Instead of running off to Ronkonkoma or Baldwin, they just tried to make Elmhurst look as suburban as possible. Even the street names were subtle reminders of an older, settled power: Hampton, Ithaca, Judge. As though no one in Elmhurst wanted to be reminded that they lived in New York City at all.
Peralta herself had grown up in Nutley, New Jersey, raised by parents who never had to flee the city because they had never gone there to begin with. Solid Victorian houses dotted a neatly trimmed town square, all of it close enough to Manhattan for the occasional daring teenage excursion. Her parents had been as afraid of the city as all the white parents, and she had been just as eager to get out of the suburbs and hit New York as all the other kids. But instead of moving to the Lower East Side and sharing an apartment with six kids who all thought they would be discovered as dancers or sculptors or fashion designers, she had taken the NYPD exam, moved to Hoboken, and hit patrol with glee.
Her parents had threatened to disown her. They hadn’t put her through Rutgers so she could walk the slums and maybe get shot. She didn’t care what they thought. She had the bug. The city, to Aurelia Peralta, did not mean the latest kimchi shop or the most inscrutable piece of performance art or the doughnut you had to wait in the longest line to buy. It meant the street deals and the knives and now and again the guns, the vicious pulse of never-ending action, most of which was action that was not strictly permitted under the law. The only way to get in on that action was to become a criminal, a cop, or a social worker. Peralta’s parents hadn’t raised her to be a criminal. But she was no social worker.
The fact that the other cops made boneheaded assumptions based on her name and complexion didn’t bother her. They asked if she was from Washington Heights or from Highbridge, expected her to speak Spanish to the guy behind the counter of every bodega, to walk the streets with an extra swagger. Good thing they didn’t notice, as the guy behind the bodega counter always did, that her Spanish was of the suburban-high-school variety. And good thing she had never lacked in swagger. Finding out that other recruits couldn’t tell the difference between someone from the barrio and someone from Essex County was a worthwhile lesson in and of itself. Playing like she was from the street at least kept guys from grabbing her ass. Sometimes.
Detective Bruder was the kind of cop she could control. Convinced of his own merit, insulated from the world by friends and family who had always been cops, and dumber than a sack of hair, he couldn’t even tell when she was playing him. The first thing he asked her when they got assigned together was what her score had been on the entry exam. This after six years on the force and a promotion to detective. She’d made up a number that sounded low enough so that he would think she was a charity case. She liked being underestimated.
So when Detective Bruder was driving her down a quiet street in Elmhurst, looking for a blue, late-model Impala with the license plate number she had scribbled on an index card, Peralta knew she would be doing all the legwork. Bruder thought that driving made him a big shot, but the truth was that it took every ounce of his brainpower to keep from running over a pedestrian. Aside from checking out the houses, she checked the models and license plates of every parked car, front and back.
That’s all they had, after all. Manny Reeves hadn’t driven to the job site that day. Wade Valiant had picked him up on the way into the city. And TARU hadn’t come through with any pings from the cell phone. Bruder hadn’t pressed them, like Detective Mulino asked him to. He’d just nodded to Peralta after putting in another call. “I guess they’ll get to it.”
So they had Reeves’s address. But the uniforms had been in there already. Nothing unusual. The guy hadn’t been back after Valiant had died. And they had his plate number. So Detective Peralta was sitting shotgun on a Sunday morning casing the license plates in Elmhurst. The car would have to be parked close enough to the residence that Reeves could walk home. Elmhurst wasn’t like downtown Brooklyn. You could still usually find a parking spot on your own street, or at worst the next one. But it turns out there are a lot of Impalas in Elmhurst. Either that or everything looks like an Impala nowadays.
Bruder was cruising down the street too quickly for Peralta to catch every car. She tapped his shoulder as she spoke. “Slow down.”
Bruder pulled their Crown Vic up to another parked car. This one was boxed in so Peralta had to lean out to look at the plate. She checked her index card. Not a match.
“Okay, keep going.”
Bruder started the car back up. “You know, if we just wait till tomorrow, traffic might find it when they give out the alternate side tickets.”
That had been their first hope, that the car would have been cited on Thursday when the traffic division came down the street to give a citation to every car parked on the left shoulder so the street sweepers could come through. But Thursday morning was when it had all happened. So most likely, Reeves had parked his car where it wouldn’t get a ticket until Monday. And that was tomorrow.
Peralta kept watching the plates as they went by. “Yeah, no hurry or anything tracking the guy down. It isn’t as though someone’s dead or anything.”
“I’m only saying.”
Peralta thought of the TARU guys. Either they really were sitting around playing pinochle instead of running the numbers, or Manny Reeves had not used his phone in three days. Or logged on to his email. Posted a picture of his breakfast on Twitter. That was a sign that he knew people were looking for him and he didn’t want to be found.
Or maybe that he was dead too.
It was dull work, making your way up and down the street. Looking for a car that might not tell you anything about who killed Wade Valiant, even if you find it. But Peralta was working a homicide. Her first one. There was no way on to the Homicide Division itself; there hadn’t been for years. There simply weren’t enough people getting killed. The department had decided to shut down any new hires or transfers into the Division until it shrank to a reasonable size. There had been lots of detectives sitting around as murders had gone below eight hundred a year, five hundred, down to three hundred and eighteen. But when they started back up again, the department had not been ready. They didn’t even have an exam to dust off. With Homicide suddenly understaffed, investigations of merely-somewhat-sus
picious deaths were getting picked up by other bureaus. So Detective Aurelia Peralta, technically in OCCB, suddenly had the chance to work what looked like a murder to her.
She saw another car, the last one on the block before Elmhurst Avenue. “That one, Timmy.”
Bruder stopped the car and Peralta leaned out. She double-checked the index card. “Detective,” she smiled, “we have a match.”
Bruder turned off the car and stepped out. Peralta circled the Impala. It wasn’t as though she thought she was going to find a bloody handprint on it. But hopefully there would be something. It was locked, of course. If it hadn’t been, it would have already been gone. Inside, it was a mess. Fast food wrappers. Coffee cups. Maybe underneath the piles of garbage there would be an address book. A name of a friend. A piece of mail. Something to help them keep looking.
“You ready?” Bruder had brought his heavy-duty knife, a tiny hexagonal stud at the hilt. The window punch could spiderweb a car window in an instant. They already had the warrant ready, if Mr. Reeves were to do anything so dumb as come back. They were in plainclothes but both had their shields out on chains around their necks. It wasn’t like anyone would think they were stealing the car. And at least Bruder had the right tool. Peralta wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d simply shot the window out.
He heaved back and smacked the window punch into the driver’s side with a powerful thwack. The window splintered but held its shape. Bruder pressed with his hand and the pebbles dribbled away. He reached in and opened the door. Within minutes the two of them had emptied the car of trash. But other than trash—candy wrappers, used Kleenex, a week-old Daily News, a box from White Castle—there was really nothing else. An ATM receipt was the closest thing to evidence in the car.
Bruder was kneeling by the front passenger seat; he leaned over to his partner. “You want I should pop open the glove compartment?”
“Sure.” Peralta stood back from the car. Bruder was probably going to do this with his knife, and could easily cut his thumb off in the process.
