Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  “Possibly. We have many guests. Wish I could help you, but—”

  “Does he have a vehicle parked in your valet section?”

  She showed him a lot more of her truly excellent teeth.

  “I’d like to see your ID.”

  Jimmy Rock pulled out his gold shield, held it up in front of him, not showing her his ID card, keeping it hidden as well from the people strolling into and out of the green marble foyer of the hotel.

  The concierge contemplated his shield for a long moment, as if it were something her cat had coughed up onto the rug.

  “We don’t normally—”

  “Also, I need to know his room number.”

  “Now that’s not possible, Detective.”

  She hit the not hard enough to make it ring faintly, a kind of silvery ping. Her smile was still holding. Jimmy decided that he liked her; she had sand. He gave her his best smile, the one he liked to think of as boyish, charming. It wasn’t. Jimmy Rock watched her as she worked out the angles. It took her about thirty seconds.

  “What is the purpose of your visit?”

  “Nothing critical. We’re just following up on an accident report. Mr. Pike showed up on our computers as registered in this hotel. He also owns a type of car we are interested in, in connection with a motor vehicle accident upstate. It’s nothing at all serious. You mind answering my questions?”

  The woman sat back in her leather armchair and thought about the question. Then she smiled and stood up.

  “Wait here one moment.”

  She crossed the marble floor, heading for the main desk. Jimmy Rock watched her go, admiring the way she handled gravity. The foyer was decorated with thousands of tiny white pinpoint lights. Down the long glimmering hallway, a grand piano the size of a Lincoln Town Car was filling the lobby with some sort of concerto, although there was no one sitting in front of it. Maybe the ghost of George Gershwin.

  Jimmy Rock lit up a cigarette and waited for the woman to get back. Three people in a crowd by the elevator were staring at him as if he’d just stuck a dead rat in his ear. He smiled and blew some smoke toward them. They huffed and glared back, and then the door to the elevator opened and they were gone. He grinned at the closing door and took another puff. Damn, it was good to be alive.

  “This is a no-smoking environment,” said a voice.

  He looked back. The concierge was considering him.

  “Damn. Sorry.”

  She picked up a heavy crystal plate and held it in front of him. He toyed with the idea of dropping a quarter into it and decided not to. He butted the cigarette. She set the plate down.

  “The manager is on the phone to our lawyer right now, Detective. I’ll need a card if you have one.”

  Jimmy handed her one of his cards. She took the card and read it, looked up at him again, smiled, and then put it in a leather folder on her desk. She pulled one of her own cards and handed it to him. It had a linen finish and her name was in raised gold letters: MERCEDES GON-SALVA.

  Odd coincidence. He was here looking for a guy with a blue Mercedes-Benz, and that’s this woman’s first name. Maybe it was a sign they were destined to be lovers. Maybe it was a meaningless coincidence. His money was going on meaningless. Jimmy put the card in his breast pocket and patted it once. He gave her his best smile, saw the blank space on her ring finger, and considered his chances. Absolute zero, he decided.

  “The man you’re inquiring about is registered with us as Mr. Earl V. Pike. He’s in room twenty-nine-ninety. He is one of our oldest and most valued clients. He’s in his quarters now. If you wish to speak with him, I can call up and see if he’ll be able to accommodate you.”

  “I’d rather take a look at his vehicle first. Does he have one parked in your garage?”

  “Yes. He does.”

  “Do you know what kind it is?”

  “No. The bellman would have the location.”

  “Okay. Please don’t call Mr. Pike yet. All right?”

  “I feel I should contact … fine, since this is a police matter, I’ll leave it with you. I’d like to remind you he’s a very valued client.”

  Jimmy Rock was already moving away. He was at the door when she called him back.

  “One more thing, Detective Rule. The manager—”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Mr. Siggerssonn.”

  “Siggerssonn?”

  “Yes, he’s Icelandic. Mr. Siggerssonn trusts there’ll be no disturbances in the hotel. I can reassure him, can I?”

  “What’s his first name? Thor?”

  “Gunnar.”

  “Gunnar? What is he, like, one of those GQ models with the cheekbones, got a jawbone you could chip a tooth on, three-day beard? Icy-blue eyes? Whoa, I’m getting all shivery here.”

  She was fighting it, but the laugh was winning.

  “No, that doesn’t quite catch him. What may I tell him?”

  “Miss Gonsalva, you can tell Mr. Gunnar Siggerssonn that we were never here. This was all a dream. You follow me?”

  “I do. I will. And it was. Bye.”

  The 511 unit was parked in a loading dock halfway up Forty-fourth Street toward Second Avenue. Casey Spandau was waiting behind the wheel. Nicky Cicero was in the backseat, wearing civilian clothes, a black leather jacket over a white tee, blue jeans, and black cowboy boots. He was wearing a Beretta nine-mill in a shoulder holster. He looked tired and rumpled. He’d been on the case since last night. Sleep was low on his list right now but climbing fast.

  Jimmy Rock got into the passenger seat and spoke over the back of the seat to the state cop. He never even looked at Casey.

  She said nothing.

  “Okay. Pike’s here. He has a car down in the valet section.”

  “Should we go look?” asked Nicky.

  “In a minute. Run by me again why you two came up with this guy? I’m getting a bad feeling about this one. The concierge talks about him like he’s Martin Luther King.”

  Casey started to speak and then looked straight ahead. The concept of a complete resignation from the department was developing by the minute. Nicky waited for Casey to speak and then realized she was still not talking to the gold shield. This was getting ridiculous. It was unprofessional.

  His answer was short and had an edge in it.

  “Okay. We had eighty-three matches on the DMV list.”

  “All Benz Six Hundreds?”

  “Yeah. All registered in the five boroughs. We eliminated thirty-six right off because the color was listed incorrectly on the DMV files, either light blue or silver. That left us forty-seven possibles. Casey used some pull and got citywide auto to check out seventeen Mercedes-Benz Six Hundreds from Staten Island, the Bronx, and parts of Queens. They were all eliminated.”

  “Why?”

  “Either the car was clean, no marks of an accident, or the owners were able to provide proof that the vehicle wasn’t anywhere upstate last night or yesterday.”

  “So that leaves you thirty.”

  “That’s right. Fourteen of them are in Manhattan. Casey and I spent the afternoon running down all of them. It was a bitch.”

  “And what did you get?”

  “Mostly nothing. Nine of them were fleet vehicles, and they all checked out negative. Two had been sold to a dealer and were still on the lot. Citywide is still on the ones in Brooklyn.”

  “So you end up with how many?”

  “We have five possibles in Manhattan. This Pike guy, he has one registered in Manhattan, but he lives in Annapolis.”

  “Why does that kick out for you?”

  “Tell him, Casey.”

  “You tell me.”

  Nicky sat back, looked at the two of them.

  “You know, why don’t the two of you just fuck off somewhere, let me go talk to Earl Pike?”

  Jimmy Rock started to say something. Casey cut in.

  “We were wheel-spinning. I cross-referenced the possibles with credit card purchases made yesterday.”
r />   Jimmy Rock was staring at her.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “You’re not the only cop in town with sources.”

  “And what did you get?”

  At least they were talking to each other now. It improved the atmosphere slightly. Now it was merely suffocating.

  “Two of the Benz owners used credit cards to buy gas in midstate New York yesterday. One purchased twenty-seven gallons at an Exxon station in Lake Placid.”

  “Too far north,” said Jimmy Rock.

  “Why?” Casey asked, her throat working, angry at his casual dismissal of her evidence.

  “Just is. And the other?”

  “Earl Pike. He used a Chase credit card to buy gas at a town called Castleton, just outside Albany.”

  “So?”

  “So we called the service station,” said Nicky. “The guy remembered the car.”

  “Why?”

  “It had a broken headlight. Driver’s side. The gas guy noticed it because the car was in mint condition. It looked recent.”

  Jimmy Rock was quiet for a long time.

  “Nice,” he said after a while, looking at Casey. “Very nice.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and gave him a smile sharp enough to open a vein. “Now what?”

  “Now?” said Jimmy Rock. “I’ll go look at the car. You two go have a little chat with Earl V. Pike.”

  2217 GRANITE VALLEY PARKWAY

  RENSSELAER, NEW YORK

  2015 HOURS

  By eight in the evening, Jack had been home for one hour and had already worked his way through two bottles of Beaujolais. It wasn’t a typical thing with him. He had come in through the front door, setting his Hermès briefcase—which actually was a gift from Frank Torinetti himself—onto the front-hall table, and headed straight down to the cellar, where he snagged two bottles of Beringer. By eight-fifteen he was pacing like a man with a sore tooth through the darkened rooms of his granite-walled townhouse in Rensselaer.

  In the greenhouse dining room, on a broad, polished mahogany table, a single place setting of cold cuts and cheese was sitting relatively untouched since his housekeeper had put it out for him at seven, along with a chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc.

  He hadn’t touched any of it personally, but the stray cat who had gradually become a fixture around the place had tucked into the breast of chicken as soon as he figured out Jack wasn’t going to eat any of it. Jack had named him Smoke, because he came and went like smoke, a gray-and-white six-toed stray with yellow eyes who weighed in around twenty pounds. He had been haunting the edges of Jack’s property for about two months, ragged and matted and covered with burrs. One eye was closed and puffed out, and he was limping badly, but Jack could get no closer to the animal than ten feet before the beast would flatten out and let out a high-pressure hiss like a blown tire.

  It had taken Jack weeks to get him to eat from a plate on the back steps, and although the cat had gotten used to being inside, he was a long way from tame. Jack liked him because he was a cranky loner who reminded him of himself, although he had lately come to the conclusion that Smoke was about the stupidest cat in the eastern United States. But he was company, about all Jack could stand.

  Jack was listening to a soundtrack of the music from Chinatown. The trumpet solos followed him as he walked from room to room, along with the tinny cross talk on the marine radio set he kept in his office in the rear of the main floor, a wood-paneled den overlooking a narrow ravine where a stand of willows hid a tiny river. The marine radio system allowed him to monitor the movement of his container barges and his two freighters up and down the Hudson. The volume was on high, loud enough to carry through the main-floor rooms.

  So far, all he had heard was the usual marine traffic conversations. Now and then he could hear the familiar husky growl of Dinsdale Kerr, the captain of the Agawa Canyon. Kerr was one of his best people, a sixty-two-year-old salt, Scots-Irish in background, completely without humor, as steady as a tombstone.

  Jack had filled his captain in on the details of an operation they were now calling Red Hook around the Albany ATF offices. Kerr had listened in silence, his flushed and weathered face closing up like a fist as he took in the details. When Jack was through, Kerr had blown out a sigh through his trim gray mustache and said only one word: “Foolishness.”

  Around about now, Jack was inclined to agree with the man. He had the cordless phone in the pocket of his jeans, waiting for a call from Luther Campbell as soon as the Red Hook thing was over, but he half expected to hear nothing at all from any of them. He had been pushed right out of the loop from the moment he ended his talk with Earl Pike.

  All he could gather from a hurried phone conversation with Luther was that Greco was running the sting in cooperation with the ATF and the New York Port Authority Police, that the entire Red Hook Container Yard in Brooklyn had been placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance as soon as Pike had called Jack, and that the operation would begin as soon as Pike or someone representing him called at the riverside terminal to collect the container.

  Greco had referred to the final stages as a “takedown,” which sounded as energetic as hell. Although the woman was a mystery to him, and what he did know he didn’t like, it was obvious that she was having a fine time running the show and was already figuring out how to play it to the press gallery when it was all over.

  Jack was in the middle of his fourth circuit through the living room and into the dining room and on his way back to the office to stare out the window again when the cordless phone in his back pocket chirped and he jumped a foot and a half into the air. There was a bark in his voice when he keyed the talk button.

  “Vermillion.”

  “Hey, Jack. How you doing?”

  “Frank?”

  “Yeah. You mind my phoning? I was thinking about you, thought I’d give you a buzz.”

  “I thought you were in Italy—Venice. You and Claire.”

  “Nah. Place is fulla tourists. What’s it that Yogi Berra said? Nobody goes there no more. It’s too crowded. And Tuscany looks like Penn Central. Nips and slopes with their fucking Nikons. Some dinks wrote a book about the place, now it sucks. Never go there.”

  Frank’s voice was a whisky growl. Jack could hear music in the background, a jazzy piano number, and people talking.

  “How’s Claire?”

  “Good … she’s good. Great. Look, Jack. You busy?”

  Jack was thinking about Creek’s warning. Any contact with Frank Torinetti could screw up his deal with Galitzine Sheng and Munro. And tonight was no night to be away from the phone.

  “You mean now?”

  “Yeah. I mean now. I was wondering, maybe you’d come by, see the place since we done it over. We got a few people here, friends of yours. Plus Claire’s got a brand-new kitchen put in.”

  “Again?”

  “Again,” he said, laughing. “So I was thinking, maybe I’d send Carmine over for you. I got a new car. A Viper. It’s a pistol. Ask nice, you can drive it back here.”

  “Frank, this is a bad time for me. I got a thing going on.”

  “Give me an hour, Jack. It’s been months since I seen you. Claire’s been asking about you, too. Come on over. You have a drink, coupla canna-pees. Maybe a bowl of vongole. Then you go home.”

  “I’m expecting a call. It’s pretty important.”

  “So? Forward your home number to your cell phone.”

  “Frank, I wish I could.…”

  “Jack, you’re coming. I already sent Carmine. He’ll be there in a coupla minutes. See you inna bit, hah? You take care, paisano.”

  “Frank—”

  The line was dead. Four minutes later the doorbell rang. Jack opened it. Carmine DaJulia was standing there, grinning at him, a wall-sized Calabrese luparo with a smooth tanned face and a bald head and cold black small-caliber eyes, wearing a gray silk Zegna suit over a purple T-shirt. Parked in Jack’s circular drive was a sleek purple Viper. Under the porch
light it glowed like a neon sign. The engine was still running, a muted rumbling like boulders rolling around under the ground. Carmine’s smile had always reminded Jack of broken china. His teeth were too small for his head, and slightly pointed. He was smiling like that now.

  “Jack, how you doing?”

  “Carmine, did you dress to match the car?”

  He looked down at his T-shirt, laughed.

  “Yeah. I like things to be neat. How you been?”

  “Good, Carmine. You want to come in?”

  Carmine shook his head.

  “Frank says you can drive the beast.”

  “Carmine, you’re gonna have to tell—”

  “You tell him yourself. He’s feeling pretty bad tonight. He needs a lift. The chemo’s kicking hell out of him. Claire’s no fucking use. He sent me to get you. I gotta bring you back. You don’t come, you’ll hurt his feelings. You be a friend now, hah?”

  Carmine was still smiling. Jack decided to keep him that way.

  SUITE 2990

  THE UNITED NATIONS PLAZA HOTEL

  MIDTOWN

  2030 HOURS

  Pike was standing at a plate-glass window looking out across the midtown skyline at the cold-chisel roof of the Citicorp building, waiting for the doorbell to ring. The summit looked like the tip of an iceberg, and a plane of hard light shone up from the northern edge, cutting a cold white slice out of the rainy midtown sky. Pike found the building a pleasure to look at, as simple and elegant and perfectly formed to its purpose as the very best kind of weapon.

  He had a glass of bourbon and soda, the weight of the heavy crystal pleasing and solid. Music was coming from the radio, a lilting fugue by Bach. He was barefoot, wearing jeans and a soft plaid shirt in tones of red and blue. The knuckles of his right hand were heavily bandaged and wrapped in a Tensor strip. He could feel the rawness under the bandages, the skin healing and tightening. He flexed his fingers and looked out the window again, this time at his own image in the window. His reflection in the plate glass was shadowed and his face hidden. The narrow angular room behind his reflection was lit by a single lamp standing next to a low green leather sofa and a pair of green leather armchairs. Through an open door, a large king-sized bed could be seen. Pike had his gear laid out on top of the emerald-green satin spread, a Star Lite night-vision scope, his Smith, and four extra magazines. A large brushed-steel case about four feet high stood in the corner of the room, next to the night table. Although it showed signs of wear, the locked case was solid and secure, and the .50-caliber sniper rifle it contained was as perfectly suited to its purpose as the Citicorp tower.