The First Victim
Page 32
One lone figure scrambled up the stack and went at the huge door with a bolt cutter as the rain fell harder.
‘‘He’s letting ’em out!’’ the technician exclaimed.
‘‘We’ve got to do something,’’ Stevie cried helplessly.
‘‘What’s done is done,’’ the pilot said.
Far below, the huge container doors swung open. Massive bundles of fabric sealed in plastic cascaded down to the ship’s deck. Dark figures fled from that container, the first two falling forty feet to the deck below. A woman jumped into the dark water.
‘‘Follow her!’’ Stevie said. ‘‘Call the Coast Guard! Goddamn it, if only they hadn’t . . .’’ She caught herself about to chastise the press as she and her team had so often been chastised. That mirror was not one she wanted to look into. Several more illegals scurried down the walls of the containers, wild with their escape. Frightened. Terrified. The outnumbered crew was helpless to stop them. The Live-7 chopper dove toward the black water and hovered over the ship. Stevie and her crew remained behind, staying with the woman who had gone overboard. The radio came alive with requests for the Coast Guard. The Hana would never make port, would never lead the police anywhere. Not to the sweatshop, not to Melissa. The press had ruined everything.
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Reports from the covert surveillance teams established at both construction sites identified by LaMoia’s visit to City Hall had already suggested that Delancy Avenue Wharf was the container delivery’s backup location. For the last hour, three cars of Asian males had been observed driving the area, circling like hungry buzzards. Fifteen minutes earlier, two of those men had jumped the fence at the site and had hot-wired and fired up the crane, breaking any number of laws in the process. Boldt allowed himself the faint hope that his team still had a chance.
Boldt had been inside the Port Authority radar facility when LaMoia had called with word of the live news story and how the illegals had fled the container. Not only was the idea of following the SS Hana a bust, but there had been not a twitch of action at the naval yard. Despite these glaring setbacks, Delancy Avenue Wharf seemed their best bet to stay with the importers—the coyotes. One final chance for Boldt and his team.
Boldt ordered LaMoia to abandon the naval yard and to head downtown. ‘‘Get hold of someone at the INS,’’ he instructed. ‘‘Call Talmadge at home if you have to. Tell him we’re making arrests at Delancy Avenue and that we’d like someone from the INS present at the interrogations so there’s no perceived conflict of interest.’’
‘‘Where?’’
Boldt repeated the location and said, ‘‘This isn’t an invitation.’’
‘‘Coughlie?’’ LaMoia asked.
‘‘You can’t fish without bait,’’ Boldt said. ‘‘You don’t expect Talmadge to come downtown this time of night, do you?’’
‘‘You never know,’’ LaMoia said.
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‘‘And if Coughlie shows up, stay glued to him, John.’’
t
As he drove the Chevy toward Delancy Avenue, Boldt remained in radio contact with detectives Heiman and Brown. Sometime in his years of service he had come to visualize the radio traffic—he actually saw the operation in his mind’s eye as officers spoke back and forth. Heiman was watching the construction site crane. Brown was a loose tail on one of the three suspect vehicles. When Brown reported his mark had just executed a U-turn, Boldt understood intuitively that these guys had been tipped to the live news report. With his car five blocks and closing to Delancy Avenue, Boldt issued the order to arrest while driving at breakneck speeds to join them as backup. The two guys who had hot-wired the crane topped his list of desirable arrests and he made this clear to Heiman. These two had trespassed and compromised machinery. A laundry list of possible criminal charges filled Boldt’s head with delight. Cop work: There was nothing quite like it.
He wanted those two in an interrogation room. Despite the fact that Asian gang members were notorious for refusing to talk, if they were faced with the threat of multiple murder charges that carried the death penalty, Boldt believed tongues might wag. The radio traffic won back Boldt’s attention. As Brown’s mark sped back toward Delancy Avenue, Heiman reported the two crane operators abandoning the machinery and heading for the fence. At the same time, a radio car recruited as further backup reported itself engaged in a high-speed chase and in need of assistance. The gang members had been smart enough to disperse in different directions, weakening the police. A block from Delancy Avenue Wharf, as Boldt rounded the last corner, a dark figure blurred through his headlights, and he reacted instinctively by slamming on the brakes and yanking the key from the ignition. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Heiman on foot heading the opposite direction. He heard the slowing siren of the remaining patrol car, and the distinctive pop of gunfire. He hated that sound.
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Boldt jumped out of the Chevy and took off after that blur. The kid ran fast, turning down an alley into which Boldt followed. Behind him, a patrol car had pinned one of the vehicles, its officers engaged in a firefight. The adrenaline rush warped his sense of time. His gun was out, carried in his right hand. That blur up ahead, just rounding another corner, was all that mattered. Sirens wailed in the distance as additional backup made its way into the area. Boldt didn’t have legs, or lungs, only adrenaline-induced purpose. He shouted a warning. It echoed off the brick and asphalt.
The kid rounded another corner. Boldt heard his own shoes slap the wet asphalt. More claps of gunfire from far behind him. He rounded that same corner and came to an immediate stop. A dead end. Brick on both sides. Concrete wall of a building at the far end. A Dumpster and some junked furniture to his left. A pile of black trash bags and debris to his right. The alley was perhaps twenty yards long. The wrought iron fire escape was empty. Sirens still approaching. Boldt understood he was going to have to do this alone. He thought of Miles and Sarah and how much time he owed them, how many years they all had yet to go. He thought of how much he and Liz had been through together, how far they’d come. He moved quickly to his left until his shoulder brushed the cool brick wall, his right hand ready with his weapon. He smelled urine and stale beer and garbage and oil. He heard the firefight in the distance like a neighbor’s TV through the wall.
‘‘Police!’’ he announced sharply, very much aware that calling out made him a target, standing at the open end of the alley as he was. The air was suddenly incredibly still. The distant sirens formed an uneasy curtain behind him. All else was silence and the beating of his own heart. Sweat prickled his scalp; his mouth was dry. He’d spent his life in this city; he had no intention of dying here. He saw the open graves at Hilltop. They seemed to call to him. All the petty politics suddenly seemed just that. This was the real police work. This was The Moment, and nothing else, the steady ticking off of seconds, each worth a lifetime. It was raw, visceral terror.
‘‘We’ve got two options,’’ Boldt announced, not wanting anything
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to do with a firefight. ‘‘One is you stand up with your arms high and walk out of here. The other is you come out feet first in a body bag. There’s nothing in between. You hear those sirens? You think a couple hotheaded young uniforms just dying to try out their weapons are going to improve your situation any? Listen to me! I’m the best chance you’ll ever have of walking out of here alive.’’
/>
Silence. Had it been a few grunts, a few complaints, there would have been a dialogue started.
He took a series of deep breaths. He was guessing behind the Dumpster or hidden in the pile of bags and debris to his right. He crept forward, eyes shifting: Dumpster, debris, Dumpster, debris. Every darkened shadow filled with an imaginary shape. He wanted none of this. He wanted to turn and walk away. The kid could be anywhere, most likely in the one place Boldt had not yet considered. He wanted to talk the kid out. He feared it wasn’t going to happen.
His hand sweated against the gun’s knurled stock. The sound of blood pumping clouded his ears. It was too damn dark in this alley. He reached the Dumpster and wedged himself into the corner against the wall. He was in a full sweat. He hadn’t heard the kid jump into the Dumpster but couldn’t discount the possibility. He glanced toward the mouth of the alley, ten yards behind him—
thirty feet, most of it unprotected.
‘‘Do you have any brothers?’’ he called out. ‘‘Sisters? A mother? Anyone who matters to you?’’
That same sickening silence.
‘‘You don’t show yourself, make yourself known to me, I’m likely to shoot you. You understand that? Idon’t want to do that, but Iwill. You’re not coming out of there. You’re not getting past me.’’
‘‘Bullshit.’’
Fast footsteps. A dark blur from the pile of trash bags. He ran low and incredibly fast.
Boldt had only one chance to intercept that blur. He lowered his shoulder, judged the distance and charged behind a loud scream meant to distract the kid. They made contact on the far side of the
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alley, Boldt just getting a small piece of the kid. They both spun like pinwheels and crashed down several feet apart. The kid came to his knees. Boldt lunged toward him and swatted. The kid went down a second time. Boldt scrambled forward, catching a gray glint of a metal blade. He fired a warning shot as he rolled out of the way and the blade came down where his chest had been. Boldt kicked out. The kid fell back. The slash of a flashlight beam painted the opposite brick wall. Backup was close.
The kid stood quickly and cocked his arm back, intending to throw the knife. Boldt fired once and missed. Fired again. Missed. That blade tumbled through the air end-over-end and clattered into the brick somewhere in the narrow space between Boldt’s shoulder and head. The kid ran five paces, saw those flashlight beams paint him with their light and threw himself prostrate into the alley’s urinesoaked litter, hands and legs outstretched.
‘‘You’re under arrest,’’ Boldt called out, making himself known to his own people.
‘‘Inot do nothing,’’ the kid called out.
Boldt checked his right ear to make sure it was still attached to his head as he reached for the handcuffs. This collar was his, no one else’s.
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Whoever had designed the ventilation system for the interrogation rooms had either flunked engineering or had it in for detectives and suspects. The Box, as the largest of the rooms was referred to, smelled vaguely of tobacco smoke and strongly of the acrid, bitter body odor that accompanied panic and a person’s last vestiges of freedom. The room was small nonetheless, impressively bland, and home to a cigarette-scarred table bolted to the floor and, on that night, three black formed-fiberglass chairs, one occupied by the shackled suspect, the other two by Daphne Matthews and Boldt. Boldt understood the time pressures. With police closing in, with the SS Hana in custody of the Coast Guard and under investigation by the INS, with gang members in lockup, the sweatshop would be shut down as soon as physically possible. Boldt had a call into Mama Lu; LaMoia had detectives attempting to make contact with the Asian food distribution warehouse owned by one of the Great Lady’s companies. But ultimately it came down to a bird in the hand: His best chance to locate the sweatshop remained with this one interrogation. LaMoia had contacted Talmadge at home as ordered by Boldt. To everyone’s surprise and disappointment, it was Talmadge himself, not Coughlie, who had come down to Public Safety to view the interrogation. Talmadge looked pale and visibly shaken, though he said nothing to explain his condition. LaMoia stood with the man on the other side of the one-way glass watching Boldt and Matthews work their magic. But LaMoia wasn’t watching the interrogation; his eyes were on the shaky Adam Talmadge.
For Boldt and Matthews, teaming up on a suspect was like two singers joining in on a duet. They had done this enough times to com331
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municate with only body language and voice inflection. As a psychologist, Matthews tended to humanize the event while Boldt used the existence of physical evidence to maintain pressure.
‘‘You’re in some kind of trouble,’’ Boldt said to the kid. He was a Chinese youth in his late teens, early twenties, with a neck like a water buffalo and pinprick eyes. His teeth were bad and he’d been in too many fights: Angry scars beaded from the edge of his lips, the turn of his nose and the slant of his eyes. He attempted a game face but the shine on his upper lip and the tinge of scarlet below his ears gave away his anxiety.
Daphne said, ‘‘You’re alone in this room, and you’ll be alone in a jail cell, but we know you’re not alone in this.’’
‘‘Ino do nothing, bitch.’’
Boldt shifted in his chair as if to smack the guy, a fine performance. Daphne reached out and blocked him. Good cop, bad cop—
‘‘sweet and sour,’’ as they called it. Boldt ran off a list of offenses including assault and attempted murder of a police officer, the last of which set the suspect to a vigorous blinking, a kind of tic that continued to manifest itself well into the interrogation. Boldt said, ‘‘Your priors occupy two and a half pages. Your name appears on a roster compiled by our Gang Squad. You are in violation of your parole. Any judge gets one look at these charges and you’re gone for good.’’
‘‘So let’s just see about that,’’ the kid said. ‘‘You got the sheet, Butch,’’ he said to Boldt. ‘‘How much hard time Idone?’’ He grinned,
‘‘Butch and Bitch. What a pair you are!’’
‘‘You think you can duck this? You think anyone gives a rat’s ass about stepping in and standing up for you?’’ Boldt said. The kid smirked.
Boldt dropped the bomb early so that Daphne could get to work on him. ‘‘We’re turning you over to the feds, my friend: transportation of illegals, three counts of murder—depraved indifference to life; two counts of rape; numerous RICO racketeering charges. This isn’t staying in state courts.’’
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one like him, had shielded the gang from prosecution in the past. With some money spread around to big-name attorneys or even under the table to the local judges, they ducked the heavy sentences and the hard time. That wasn’t going to happen this time; Boldt had taken great pains to ensure SPD kept this one for themselves.
‘‘After the federal trial, after you’ve been sentenced to who knows how many consecutive life terms,’’ Boldt continued, ‘‘then you’ll be remanded to state custody and tried well away from King County on the assault and attempted murder of a police officer.’’
Daphne cut in like a limber dancer tapping Boldt on the shoulder.
‘‘The latter of which carries the death penalty.’’
‘‘Lethal injection,’’ Boldt said, ‘‘although there’s a lot of talk about bringing back hangi
ng.’’
The kid’s shiny black eyes tracked between them like a spectator at a tennis match. ‘‘No way you do this.’’
‘‘Yes, way,’’ Boldt replied. ‘‘You see that mirror? There’s a federal agent on the other side of it. Federal prosecutors are on their way over. This is political, you see? Nothing worse to get screwed up in than a political case. I’m telling you—nothing worse. Everybody’s got to look good, and the only way that happens is if someone pays the big price, and right now that someone is you, Mr. Tan.’’
‘‘What we’re offering,’’ Daphne interrupted, ‘‘is to work with you on this. You didn’t attack the lieutenant in that alley, you ran. That’s in your favor here.’’
‘‘Iran!’’ the kid pointed out to Boldt, who remained impassive. Daphne said, ‘‘You did produce a knife and you did throw that knife, but maybe you were off balance to begin with, maybe that knife just kind of fell out of your hand on the way down. You see where I’m going?’’
He didn’t see much. While Mr. Tan listened to Daphne he concentrated on Boldt, well aware of where the trouble was coming from. ‘‘I dropped the knife,’’ he spurted out, a well-trained mynah bird. ‘‘Off balance.’’
She said, ‘‘Which may indeed explain a lot and, it’s conceivable, might help you present a defense, but it won’t touch the federal
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charges, and that’s really where your problems lie. You and Mr. Wong are our only two suspects at the moment. One of you was the leader, one the follower. Once we determine where that responsibility lies, then the breaking-and-entering, the trespassing charges will be filed along with the rest, all of which unfortunately suggest you intended to smuggle illegals into this country.’’