by Andrew Case
“But what if it’s just some random stranger? What if some madman just whisked him off the street? He could be anywhere. He could be doing anything to him.”
Mulino set his hand on the man’s knee. Leonard had never seen this side of the detective: slow, calm, building confidence. Offering support and comfort. And at the same time, building trust. It was a good way to get the attention of a victim, to get him to feel comfortable enough to open up. But it was probably a good way to talk to suspects too. You don’t bring them into the precinct and smack them over the head with the radio anymore. You put them at ease. You let them talk. Because then they tell you something. And after all, Leonard knew, in a situation like this, there is no such thing as a surprise. Anyone can turn out to have done something horrible. And Adam himself was a white grownup with dark clothes and a jacket. And clean-shaven too.
“Adam, we are going to do our best. There are guys hitting the apartments of anyone in Brooklyn who could be a suspect for this. We keep lists nowadays and there are people out looking as we speak. But most of these are not random. Most of the time when a kid is taken, it’s by someone they know. That’s why they go with them. Your son probably wouldn’t walk away with someone he had never met, would he?”
Adam started to bite his lip. He was looking at the floor. He set the phone on the table and grabbed his knees. He was going to have trouble talking. But Mulino had opened him up and he was, at least, going to talk.
“We just moved. With the money from the insurance, we bought a place. The house hasn’t come together. We let the contractor go. Maybe he’s mad at us. I joined the community board. I thought I was going to do my part, was going to help out. Everyone yells at each other all the time. People come into the meeting with signs and pickets. They clear the hall. Maybe one of them is mad at me. Maybe I said something at the community board. There haven’t been any fights at work. I’m a professor. I just go in and teach my classes and leave. Students complain about grades. Someone on the faculty might think I’m not pulling my weight. But I couldn’t imagine anyone who would do this.”
The community board. So he had been there when Eleanor Hill had given her presentation. From a few blocks north in the Ebbets Field Apartments, how could he not? The whole stretch of Empire was filled with a gas station, fast food joints, storage units, a methadone clinic. A big, valuable chunk of real estate was being frittered away on low-end commerce. It was close to the park, it was close to the subway, and there were plenty of people who wanted a piece of it. Eleanor Hill had a big piece already, and was trying to cash in. Leonard had seen the plans for the condos that would go up on Empire once they bought, rezoned, and knocked down a block and a half of buildings. The people on Guilder Street didn’t want their own views blocked, their privacy compromised by new arrivals, Juliet balconies, and cigarette butts tossed from fifteen stories up. But the people on Guilder Street owned their houses. They weren’t renters fighting off displacement like Margaret. It was one set of rich people fighting with another.
“Have you been working on the zoning, on the community board?”
“We only had one vote. There were people who came in and protested the vote.”
“Anyone threaten you at the board meeting? Anyone say anything they would do?”
For the first time Adam reached for the cup of coffee. It was probably cold by now.
“I knew some of the people in the protest. I just thought I had moved to the neighborhood and I should do my share. But it’s very . . .”
He didn’t have to say it. Leonard’s mind was already turning. If you get Adam Davenport to move out of the neighborhood, if you get news of a kidnapping or a murder even, then who is going to want to build a block of condos? Stomping around inside a community board meeting can slow the process down. But if you really want to stop people from building housing in your neighborhood, the best way to do it is to make sure that new arrivals don’t want to live there. And new arrivals want to live everywhere in Brooklyn, except where it isn’t safe. If you really want to kill the value of a plot of land, put the precinct at the top of the crime stats. Talk about a falling knife.
Leonard was already thinking ahead. The kidnapping was sure to make the papers. Someone from PD was crafting a short, meaningless statement and putting out a tip line. Leonard knew that as soon as he was done talking to Adam Davenport, he was going to make a call himself. To his old friend, Tony Licata. He had information once again, and that meant that Tony would be willing to talk to him. If there was a neighborhood angle on the kidnapping, Tony would be able to dig into it too. Leonard spoke.
“Adam. We’d like the names of whoever is on the community board. And the people behind the protests.”
Mulino looked up at Leonard. Leonard could see just a twinge from the detective, just a sense that he was muscling in on Mulino’s investigation. Not showing the proper deference. He stepped back a bit and looked at Mulino as he spoke to Adam. “The detective and I will look into it. I’ll be taking direction from him. It’s Detective Mulino’s case.”
Mulino seemed placated. He turned back toward Adam. “And that contractor, too. You never know.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“And we need to get you a place to stay. Your home isn’t safe.”
“I thought you said you had police there.”
“We do. But in case anyone comes there. Tries to do anything. We don’t want you around to be in the middle of it. It could get dangerous.”
“Okay. Where will I stay?”
Leonard already had an idea on that front. But he would wait until he could run it by Mulino. Instead he stepped back and let Mulino offer his consolation as he pulled out his own notebook.
“We’ll find somewhere. Now why don’t you start giving me those names?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
She always got lost in here. Detective Peralta had figured her way around the meaner parts of Brooklyn and the suspiciously quiet corners of Queens. She had even tagged along with enough of her fellow cops on nights out after long tours to tell the difference between Tottenville and St. George on Staten Island. But Manhattan, aside from the blocks around the old academy on East 14th Street, was still something of a mystery. And the depths of One Police Plaza were a deeper mystery still.
The flat, red brick plaza was just big enough to make sure that no one wandered into police headquarters by accident. The mean, burgundy cube was fourteen stories tall, fourteen stories deep, and fourteen stories across. It was almost the opposite of a prison, it seemed to Detective Peralta every time she approached: its very architecture was designed to keep everyone out. Peralta herself, a detective even, had shuddered each of the half-dozen times she had gone inside. No mean and crumbling housing project was half as scary as the monolith that controlled every aspect of her job.
And inside, it was no easier. Everyone knew that the Commissioner was on the fourteenth floor and the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information was on the thirteenth. Other than that you were on your own. There was no directory. There was no concierge. After you flash your badge and get by the metal detector, you can climb up the single broad staircase to the second floor or you can take an elevator. If you don’t know where you’re going and you open the wrong door, you might just lose your job.
No wonder that Bruder had called TARU rather than coming down himself. Peralta didn’t have that luxury. The homicide detectives who had stolen the case told her to go to Frauds in person, probably just to get her out of the way. There were four of them: each white, each older than Detective Mulino. If they could put four detectives on a single case, Peralta thought, maybe the murder rate wasn’t quite going as far through the roof as the tabloids were saying.
The four of them had sat very politely with her in a secure room in the hospital. They had brought PO Shays back to guard the door again. Apparently they didn’t have Detective Mulino’s misgivings about his attentiveness. She went over every memo book, every entry she made in the last four days
. The body in the street. The engineer’s report on the crane. She told them about scouting out Reeves’s car, the visit to 80 Smithdale, and the interview with Evangeline. And finally she told them about Reeves himself waking up, saying he was pushed, asking for a lawyer.
She left out the part about Leonard Mitchell and the real estate company. She figured Mulino wouldn’t want them knowing he was hiring his confidential investigators from DIMAC. She told them Mulino’s theory in broad strokes—Hill and Associates might have screwed over a couple of counterparties, mainly overseas. Mulino had asked her to run down any questionable transactions by those companies. She had been about to call the Frauds unit when they’d been brought to the hospital.
The tall one stopped her at this. “What are you saying exactly? Some pension fund has decided to get back at the developer by taking out a hit on one of its employees?”
“I’m just saying we wanted to look into it. You never know what someone who bears a grudge might do.”
One of the detectives seemed to be chuckling at this. A squat one, with an extra layer of fat around his chin. He looked up to the tall one and shrugged. “You never know. They have a point.”
The tall one looked back at Peralta. “You know what. That’s not a bad idea. But don’t call Frauds. They’ll take forever. You gotta go there in person. You know where they are?”
She had said she didn’t; he had written something down for her. It meant a trip to Manhattan and to One PP. Mulino had already taken the car, so she would be riding the subway in. While the train was cruising over the Manhattan Bridge it occurred to her that the homicide detectives hadn’t believed her. They had one way of solving murders: find each person that knew the victim personally, lock them in an interview room, and shout at them until one of them either confesses or rats out another one. Foreign speculators paying off hit men doesn’t enter into their mindset all that often.
They probably hadn’t asked for her help to begin with; Travis had forced her on them. She felt like such a sucker. Maybe they hadn’t even given her the right room number. It would be just like a pack of old-school detectives to pull a prank on her like that, give her the address of some secret undercover operation where she could get suspended just for seeing an officer’s face.
Seventh floor. She turned down one corridor and crossed another. And then down a long hallway. The room numbers lining the halls had not gone in order. Seven nineteen was followed by seven thirty-four, then seven-oh-six. Par for the course at the PD. At the end of the last corridor, she found the number that the tall detective had given her. And a nameplate on the door: Fraud Investigations Unit. At least it wasn’t a prank.
Peralta knocked at the door. There was no answer. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Monday. She knocked again. She tried the door. It was locked. She wasn’t about to turn back. She pulled back her fist and whaled on the door a couple of times. No harm in really trying to get someone’s attention. She stood back from the door, breathing heavy. She was just about to reach her fist out and pound it again when it opened.
The detective behind the door was under thirty, lean, black, bookish. Hair cut very short and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore civilian slacks and a white button-up shirt but had his shield out on his belt. Detective Peralta held up her fist just before she would have hit him in the face. He spoke calmly and slowly.
“You gotta give us a few minutes to answer the door, Detective. We’ve got things to do back here. You aren’t serving a search warrant.”
“I’m sorry, Detective.”
“Simmons.” He held out his hand and she shook it.
“Aurelia Peralta.” It felt like she was shaking the hand of an accountant. A gentle, indoor hand. Simmons turned and Peralta followed him in, realizing she was talking now with a detective who might not have been on patrol for even a year before getting a job behind a computer. The NYPD needed these guys too, she figured. You can’t outsource everything.
“You’re here to follow up on a request?”
“I’m here to put one in.”
Simmons looked her over. She could tell he was calculating how long she’d been on the force. How much she already knew and how much she had left to learn. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he had the smug look of a man who was about to tell you how little you understood. Or maybe, she thought, it was just this guy’s way of checking her out.
“Detective, you have to put in a request by phone, by fax, or by email. We have to get it in the queue. You can’t just come on in here and burst your way in line. We have a lot of research to do here.”
“It’s urgent.”
“What is it, someone in Brooklyn Heights had her credit card stolen? Worried that the nanny is going to start running up charges at Barneys?”
Peralta took out the sheet of paper that Leonard Mitchell had handed Mulino. She had folded it into quarters. She didn’t want it to look crumpled. After how it had gone with the homicide guys, she was going to have to play it extra-cool to convince this guy to do much of anything for her.
“This is a list of overseas investment companies. Each of these companies bought a plot of land from Hill and Associates, a Brooklyn development firm. Each of those plots of land had been bid up to well above market value before the sale. We are trying to see if any of these companies has made any recent significant payouts in the United States. Or if their principals or officers have recently traveled to the United States.” Peralta could tell that she had Simmons’s attention. She wasn’t just some larceny detective hunting down credit card thieves after all.
“Detective Peralta, what bureau are you with?”
“I’m with OCCB.”
“And why is OCCB requesting these records?”
“I’m working on a homicide. This request should be treated as though it’s coming from Homicide. I’d really hate to have to walk downstairs and fax it to you. Seeing as I am standing right here.”
Simmons held out his hand and Peralta handed him the paper. For the first time since Thursday morning she felt the rush of authority, the glow of real power. First Mulino had been telling her what to do, and then the homicide detectives. The fact that she could play Bruder didn’t count for much. But now, in a dim little office with a tinted window offering a view into the empty plaza, she was the one in charge.
Simmons sat down at his terminal. “There are a dozen companies on here. It’s not going to be done right away.”
Peralta could feel she was still in charge; she might as well press her advantage. “That’s why you have to start it right away. Here’s my card. Call me when you find anything out. Anything at all.”
And Simmons nodded as he buried himself in the computer. Peralta felt her whole posture change as she turned back out into the hallway. Her shoulders were relaxed and rolled back, just as they had been after a fierce high school soccer game against West Morris or Verona. She turned down the corridor and toward the elevator. The place didn’t feel like a maze at all to her anymore. She felt like she was at home for the first time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I don’t know, Len. I’ve got a clean statement from the DCPI on this. I’m not sure I want to muddy the relationship.”
Tony Licata leaned back in his swivel chair. Leonard waited for him to tilt forward. What he had to say, he wanted to say up close. Licata almost lost his balance, then swung forward to catch himself. Leonard, planted in a folding chair, now had his face inches away from his old friend’s.
“There is more to this one than the DCPI is letting on, Tony.” The Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, the NYPD’s chief spokesman, was famous for doling out just enough information at just the right times to keep the daily print reporters totally dependent on him. He was famous for being vindictive, too. Use a source that wasn’t approved, and you’d get a call that one of the dogs from the Westminster Kennel Club show had been electrocuted by a live manhole cover on Rector Street. Just to make you run downtown and wander around a construction
site looking for a dead animal that didn’t exist. Report too aggressively on a police shooting, and you would be locked out of the room when the officers give a press conference celebrating their inevitable acquittal.
The press needed the DCPI to give it the daily river of blood, fires, and betrayal that made up the bulk of a tabloid paper. But get too close, try too hard to get the story underneath, and the DCPI would turn on you in a heartbeat. It was like an abusive marriage, and the tabloid guys were every day on the wrong end of it.
Tony Licata closed his eyes. Leonard was sitting across from him in the tiny sheet-rock office the Daily News got to use inside One Police Plaza. One of a dozen identical cubes connected by a hallway so narrow you couldn’t squeeze two people past each other in it. The Shack, they called it—a tiny warren where each paper and a couple of radio stations got a desk, a computer, and a phone in thirty-six square feet. So that they could already be in the building when the DCPI wanted to give an announcement on the thirteenth floor. Or so they could be close to a subway to the outer boroughs if there was new mayhem to report.
But the NYPD wasn’t so generous as to give reporters easy access just for kicks. Housing all the police reporters essentially in one room together was a good way to keep tabs on them. The department could make sure that no detective could come tip them off. There was a good reason that, even though the department gave each office in the Shack a dedicated phone line, all the reporters made all of their calls on their cell phones.
Leonard didn’t have to worry about being seen walking into the Shack. When he had worked at DIMAC, he had been in here every week, dropping a story to Tony at the Daily News or one of the guys at the Post, or the Times if he could interest them, about some piece of petty corruption or another. And as far as the guys watching the comings and goings knew, Leonard worked for the Parks Department now. Maybe he was just catching up with an old friend. There was no way he could be coming in suggesting that the afternoon’s kidnapping—sure to be on the cover of both tabloids and the front of the Metro section to boot—might not be the work of a random stranger. Random-stranger kidnappings sell papers because they feed fear. If the kidnapping was the work of angry protesters, or maybe the work of a developer trying to scare people off of serving on the community board. . . .
