Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  The office of the CEO and president, at the back of the 1,700-square-foot suite, had been taken over by the boss himself, who had formed the unit three years back. It was lined in solid teak, had indigo wall-to-wall carpet, and the big picture window behind the rosewood desk had bulletproof glass, through which you got a narrow westward view of the Brooklyn Law School, the redbrick Borough Hall, the bell tower of Saint Ann’s Church, and in the haze beyond them, the twin towers of the World Trade Center and most of lower Manhattan, looking like the backdrop of a Broadway play.

  It was a hell of an office, she figured, and seeing it yesterday evening had convinced her that the Jay Rats unit was higher up the food chain than the CO of the Two Five had led her to believe.

  Jimmy Rock, the street boss of the Jay Rats unit, had ordered a special doorplate engraved for the boss when the unit took over the Boston Bar offices. It was on the door right now, under a framed black-and-white photo of Primo Carnera, the old pug fighter, who Casey had decided really did look a bit like the boss.

  DETECTIVE VINCENT G. ZARAGOSA

  NYPD GOLD SHIELD 3179

  “Il Padrone”

  There was a note for Casey, from Zaragosa, pinned to the door:

  Casey:

  Gone to One Police. There’s a bunk in the gun room; get some sleep. Dexie and Jimmy Rock and Carlo will be gone until two. You have the duty desk. Be on it by 1300 hours. Nothing much is on, so you should have a slack day.

  Welcome to the Jay Rats!

  Vince Zaragosa

  Casey dropped her briefcase beside her desk and found the bunk. It was clean and neat, the sheets crisp and white, folded down in a military style. She sat down on it, inhaled the scent of gun oil and cigarette smoke, and rubbed her face with her hands. She lay down on the cot, shifted her hips twice, let out a long ragged sigh, and was asleep in seven seconds. At noon, the phone rang in the main office. She woke with a jolt of adrenaline, remembered where she was, got to her feet, staggered, and crossed the floor to her desk.

  “Joint Task Force.”

  “Hello. This is Officer Nick Cicero. I’m with the New York State Police. Badge five-five-seven-eight-one. I need to talk to somebody at the Joint Task Force.”

  “This is Officer Spandau. What can I do for you?”

  “Okay. I’m working on a double homicide here. We got two dead, and the story is, we figure there was some kind of road-rage thing involved.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m in a unit last night, on Highway Eighty-two, off the Taconic there, near Blue Stores? You know it?”

  “I was born in Carthage. I’ve been up and down the Taconic all my life.”

  “I know Carthage. Up there near Fort Drum, right?”

  His voice was deep, even silky. There was Italian in the accent, Casey figured, maybe Queens.

  “Yeah. What can I do for you, Officer Cicero?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name, Miss …?”

  Not Queens. Maybe Brooklyn.

  “Spandau. Officer Spandau.”

  “Hi. I’m Nicky. They call me Nicky.”

  “Hi, Nicky.”

  “Can I get your first name?” Christ. How old was this kid?

  “It’s Casey.”

  “Okay, Casey. I can call you Casey?”

  “You seem to be.”

  “Okay … where was I?”

  “You were in a unit, patrolling Highway Eighty-two in the region of Blue Stores.”

  “Right. I see this black Jimmy in a stand of trees. Long story short, there’s two dead citizens. You need the details?”

  How long had this guy been a cop? Three days?

  “No. What can we do for you?”

  “After CID arrived, I went back south on Eighty-two, looking for whatever I could see. About three miles from the Taconic exit for Gallatinville, I pick up broken glass in the middle of the road. Headlight glass. I bagged it.”

  “Why?”

  “At the crime scene, the Jimmy had a brand-new scrape on the right rear tail section. We got some paint off it. Navy-blue paint.”

  “So you figure there was contact up the road, then a secondary confrontation where you found the Jimmy?”

  “Yeah. We also have a witness, a flatbed driver, says he saw two cars, a big blue one and a black Jimmy, they were parked by the side of the road there. Says the blue car had passed him a while back, doing a flat ninety. Now he’s off the road beside the black truck.”

  “And you have two dead at the scene?” Casey’s interest was rising. “Names?” she said, fumbling for a pen and some paper.

  “The female is Julia Maria Gianetto, DOB 02-14-1980. A resident of Albany. First year at SUNY there. The registered owner is Donald Albert Condotti, DOB 08-28-1978. Unemployed. Lived in Paramus. He rang some bells on NCIC. Assault, weapons, some minor drug beefs. The ME says he was a major steroid user. His liver was already bleeding, and he was what … twenty-two?”

  “How dead were these vics?”

  “Bad dead. The girl had her neck broken. She’d been …”

  “Been what?”

  “Sexually abused. It was postmortem.”

  “Any semen?”

  “Nothing. Maybe he used a condom.”

  “Safe sex even for psychos, hah? And the other body?”

  There was a length of silence. Casey could hear men talking and the sound of a distant elevator. The call display on her desk showed a hospital in Albany. He was probably calling from the morgue. She could see him standing in the hall outside a bright white room, with two bodies laid out under a nasty blue light. She knew whatever he was looking at had affected the cop, and it made her want to know the guy better. Most cops pretended that nothing got to them. It was tiresome. If this stuff didn’t bother you, you should quit.

  “There’d been some kind of stand-up fight in a clearing. The vic was a very big guy. Huge. Like I said, used steroids. A weight lifter. Whoever killed him was either much bigger or much better. I’m going with much better. Basically, the vic was beaten to death.”

  “With what?”

  “Bare hands. Fists. Not even a boot involved.”

  Christ.

  “It gets worse. Then he was … gutted.”

  “Gutted?”

  “We figure a tree branch.”

  Holy Christ.

  “Postmortem?”

  “They think no. There’s a footprint on the guy’s throat. He was held down while it was happening. There was a lot of bleeding, which means he was alive for a while afterward. There had to have been a lot of noise coming from him, but so far no witnesses. It was a long way to the next house, and the people there are retired, spend all day with their TV on and the air-conditioning going.”

  Man, thought Casey. The guy’s a bug. If it was a guy. Had to be. No woman could do that. At least she hoped not.

  “Tell me what we can do for you, Nicky.”

  “Our lab guys have run the glass. It’s headlight glass from a Mercedes-Benz. An older model, likely a mid-eighties saloon car known as a Six Hundred. Here’s the thing. We dug glass slivers out of the male vic’s shoes. Similar type of glass. We figure at the primary contact site, back down Eighty-two near the Taconic exit, there’s some sort of traffic dispute, and it could be the vic kicks out the headlight on the Benz. That’s why the road-rage scenario.”

  “It stands up. The paint do anything for you?”

  “Yeah. Also from a mid-eighties Benz Six Hundred.”

  “Okay. You run this by DMV?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many?”

  “In that color, DMV shows three hundred sixty-one statewide.”

  “And in New York City?”

  Nicky paused, and Casey knew that whatever he said, it was going to mean a hell of a lot of legwork. She was right.

  “Eighty-three Mercedes-Benz vehicles that fit the paint and the glass.”

  “And you want us to help you run the owners down? Why not go to citywide auto?”

  �
�I did. They can’t help us until next week sometime. By then this bug may be somewhere else, or …”

  “Or he’s ditched the vehicle, or had it fixed in a crooked shop, or had it shipped to Dubai in a container. Right?”

  “You got it.”

  “Fax me the list. I’ll run it by my boss.”

  “Can I bring it?”

  “Bring it? I thought you were in patrol!”

  “I’ve been attached to investigations for this case only.”

  “Somebody must like you. When can you be here?”

  “Three hours. Maybe less.”

  “You miss Brooklyn that much?”

  “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”

  “It’s in your voice. You taking a vacation?”

  “No. I want this guy. I want him very bad.”

  “You figure he’s a New York City guy?”

  “I don’t know. HQ has three officers doing the others. I asked for this. That’s my part in this. Is that okay?”

  Casey could see it. Some state cop, shiny as a new cap pistol, tagging along like your kid brother on a trike.

  “Knock yourself out, Nicky.”

  She gave him the address of the Jay Rats HQ and told him to phone when he was close. She’d see that somebody would be around to work with him. Thinking about it, she hoped it would be her.

  HEAD OFFICE

  BLACK WATER TRANSIT SYSTEMS

  TROY, NEW YORK

  1510 HOURS

  It was a little past three and now they were all sitting around in Jack’s offices in Troy, waiting for a call from Earl Pike or one of his people—for an overt or predicate act, Luther Campbell had called it, and the only one doing anything active right now was the pocket-rocket assistant U.S. attorney, Valeriana Greco.

  She had her head down so her thick black hair was a screen over her face, and she was clacking away on her matte-black laptop computer. So we would know she wasted no taxpayer moments, Jack supposed, or maybe she was just crazy.

  She was wearing a different black suit thingy, tight short skirt and a matching jacket. She had great legs and all the sex appeal of broken glass. Now and then her tiny little cell phone would give a sprightly chirp and she’d flick it open with a practiced move and say something cryptic into the thing.

  Whenever this happened, the three androids she had brought along with her from the Albany office of the ATF would turn their heads and stare at her as if she had just materialized in the room.

  He never bothered to get their names. They were just a three-round burst—each man as much like the others as the rounds in a magazine, the federal suits, the crew cuts, the military mustaches to give authority to faces completely unsmacked by reality, the pricey Glocks—what Jack liked to think of as combat Tupperware—in their shoulder rigs, the weight-lifter physiques, and the obvious belief that anyone not an actual member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was either a hardened criminal or studying on it for the future. Typical feds. Jack, who had seen some things in this world, wasn’t interested enough in the three of them to attempt to change their views. At twenty minutes after three, the phone rang.

  Everybody froze, and now the three-round burst was staring right at Jack. Jack swiveled around in his chair and picked up the receiver. It was Earl Pike.

  “Jack. How are you?”

  “Good, Earl. And you?”

  “Fine. I’ve made the arrangements.”

  “Okay. Let me get a pen … okay. Go.”

  “I have a container truck coming in now. The guy just called. He’s outside Saratoga. Where do you want him?”

  “You sure you don’t want to have your driver take it straight down the Taconic to Red Hook, save you some handling costs?”

  Jack was watching Greco’s face while he said this. She was monitoring the call on a surveillance tap. Her pale face sharpened and her eyes glittered with anger. She shook her head so hard her hair flew out in a ring and slapped the side of her cheekbone. Pike was saying something and Jack had to ask him to repeat it.

  “You got somebody else there, Jack?”

  “I’m in my office. My business is still operating. What do you want me to do, close the door and hang a sheet over my window?”

  “Don’t get testy. No, I don’t want to have my driver take the container to Red Hook himself. There’s lots of routine federal and state surveillance all over the New York and Jersey waterfront. We take the load at your docks, it goes into bond there, by the time it arrives in Red Hook, nobody’s going to pay any attention to it. It’s simpler, and simple is always best. You follow?”

  “I follow. I’ve got a freighter waiting at the river here. The Agawa Canyon. You know the address?”

  “Your docks, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I know them. When can we get the load on?”

  “There’s no special handling. The Canyon’s almost full. She leaves around six tonight. She’ll be at the Red Hook Container Terminal around one in the morning. That work for you?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to have someone meet her there.”

  “Why? The container’s in customs bond by then. You can’t approach it. Technically it’s not in the U.S. anymore. It’s going straight onto a container ship out of Baltimore.”

  Greco’s face was a picture. Jack was looking her right in the eyes, and what was there was cold-blue fury. Two tiny red patches floated on her pale cheekbones. Jack had his hand raised. Quiet.

  “I just want the transfer covered.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you. I trust in Allah too, but I tie up my camel.”

  “Okay. Your call. No problem. Give me the name of your driver. I’ll see the yard man has dock space cleared. We’ll get your container on as soon as it arrives. After that, you know where it will be. Send whoever you want to Red Hook. My guys will do whatever it takes to make your man happy. I’ll see to it. Okay?”

  “Works for me. Where’ll you be?”

  “Where do you want me? You want me there too?”

  “No. Once again, why flag the shipment that way? Your guys would wonder why the hell the boss is there at two in the morning. Somebody would talk. How about you stay where I can reach you?”

  “I’ll be right here. At my desk. Or at home, by the phone.”

  “Done. We’ll talk again.”

  Pike rang off. Greco stood up, still in a frozen rage.

  “That was extremely stupid, Mr. Vermillion.”

  “No it wasn’t, lady. I acted like any shipper would. His container is in bond—had to be for your predicate act, anyway—and there’s no reason to follow it around the system. It was a reasonable response to a client. You heard him.”

  Greco’s face was hard and cold, but she worked at a sudden chirpy smile and managed to show a lot of teeth to Jack.

  “I see. Good. Very good.”

  “Now what?” asked Jack. “You have a tail on him? You follow him to Red Hook?”

  She smiled.

  “There’s no tail on him. Too risky. He’s too good for that. If he spotted any surveillance, he’d just ditch the whole operation. Anyway, we don’t need to track him from his hotel to the terminal. All we need to nail the case is Pike’s arrival at the dock, claiming the cargo. All you do, when the container comes in, you see that it’s loaded. We’ll have someone videotape the loading operation. For continuity, chain of evidence. When it gets down to Red Hook, we’ll be waiting. We’re going to take it down right there. Luther advises me that an oceanic interception is tactically questionable and would involve too many other agencies. I agree. We’re going to keep this an ATF operation. Even if Pike doesn’t show up, it doesn’t really matter, because we still have him on the audiotape here, setting it all up, which constitutes a predicate act in furtherance. We’d like him to be there, but it’s not necessary. Whatever happens, he’s all ours.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You told Pike you’d be available. That’s what
he’ll be expecting. Stay by your phone. When it’s over, we’ll call you.”

  Greco walked over to Jack’s desk and put out her hand. It was cold. Perhaps it was the air-conditioning. She pumped his hand once, her green eyes hard on his face. The three-round burst stood up and looked right through him. Long after they had left, Jack felt her chill in his hand. It troubled him, made him feel that he didn’t really know what was going on. And further down, buried deep but not deep enough, he felt a pang of guilt about betraying Earl Pike. Pike had done him no harm, had seemed to be a good man at the core, was even a veteran of the same stupid war. And here was Jack Vermillion, feeding him to a woman like Valeriana Greco.

  Please, Dad.

  No. He was into it now and would have to see the thing through to the end. If they were keeping something from him, well, that was just the way of all cops. Whatever it was, he’d find out sooner or later. Jack had that part right, anyway. It was sooner.

  THE UNITED NATIONS PLAZA HOTEL

  FIRST AVENUE AND FORTY-FOURTH STREET

  MIDTOWN

  1930 HOURS

  At seven-thirty that same evening, with a heavy rain pelting the windows outside, the concierge in the tower lobby of the United Nations Plaza Hotel looked up from her copy of The New Yorker and saw a white male, late twenties, his lips thin and dry-looking, standing in the at-ease position in front of her bronze desk, wearing a tan trench coat over a dark-gray wool single-breasted suit.

  He was rumpled, windblown, and slightly damp. The scent coming off him was part rain-damp and part lime-scented cologne. His close-cut hair was a shiny blue-black. The suit jacket was open and she could see the dark-gray butt of a semiauto pistol in his belt. This did not surprise her, since the UN Plaza Hotel was ground zero for all sorts of federal agencies. Lean sharp-faced cops in nicely cut suits were a buck a basket around here.

  The cop—he had to be a cop—smiled at her, showing her how charming and nonthreatening and cuddly he was. His eyes were the palest blue she’d ever seen, so clear and colorless they struck her as slightly inhuman. She smiled back.

  “You have a guest in the hotel, Earl Pike?”