Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  “And your argument?” asked Judge Bethune.

  “The foundation of the state’s case against Mr. Pike is the DNA evidence found upon the body, is it not?”

  “Not the foundation,” said McCarthy. “We have also seized Mr. Pike’s Mercedes-Benz and are subjecting it to a very close forensic analysis, which has proved, I might say, very fruitful.”

  Kendall showed her a gnome’s rueful smile.

  “Perhaps, but according to Elstad and other rulings with which I will not burden you, since you are quite aware of them, whatever you find that can be shown to have been what we call the fruits of a poisoned tree cannot be offered to the court.”

  McCarthy was getting jumpy. Nicky was having a hard time staying in his seat. Every instinct he had was on full alert.

  “Everyone here understands Elstad and the Fourth Amendment. We’re all professionals. Perhaps Professor Kendall can be more specific?”

  “I’d be delighted. As I understand the chain of evidence, the DNA that seems to implicate Mr. Pike came from a razor blade extracted from Mr. Pike’s hotel room at the United Nations Plaza Hotel on Forty-fourth Street. Correct me if I misstate the facts.”

  “No. That’s right.”

  “DNA, it is stated in the information filed by your office, that was legally and properly collected by our handsome young policeman over here. DNA that was a product of a fortuitously cooperative maid at the UN Plaza Hotel, who was no doubt beguiled by Officer Cicero’s striking good looks and irresistible charm.”

  McCarthy nodded, looking at Nicky and raising an eyebrow. Kendall grinned at Nicky and then winked at him.

  “Yes, I thought I recognized him.”

  “Recognized him?” said McCarthy. “Have you met?”

  “Not personally, no. Although I am delighted to make his acquaintance today, I admit that I know the young man only by his memorable work on the silver screen.”

  It wasn’t hard for Nicky to see what was coming at him. What was hard was to get out of the way. He swallowed with difficulty and hoped for a miracle. He didn’t get it. Professor Kendall was rooting around in a baggy leather satchel on his knees. He fumbled around in the interior and lifted out a small Sony camcorder.

  McCarthy jumped in.

  “Your Honor, if my colleague has evidence he wishes to introduce, this is not the venue—”

  “Your Honor, this is not evidence. Not evidence in this case, at any rate. Let’s call this an exculpatory demonstration.”

  “This was why I said I was intrigued,” said Judge Bethune, smiling at Bridget McCarthy. “Go ahead, Walter. Get on with it. You’ve dragged this performance out long enough.”

  Kendall placed the camcorder on the desk where they could all see it. He reached out, popped open the tiny LCD screen, and carefully pressed a button. The screen lit up with the word play and a date/time marker. The screen stayed black for about ten seconds, and then burst into light. Nicky watched as his own face appeared on the screen, huge, distorted by the camera lens, but very recognizable. He looked at McCarthy, who was staring at the screen as if she had found a freshly severed finger in her Cobb salad.

  “Oh jeez,” said Dexter in a hoarse whisper.

  The video ran for less than forty seconds. In it they could clearly see Nicky’s face, his fingers looming large as tree trunks in the foreshortened image, picking his way through the contents of Earl Pike’s medicine cabinet until he settled on the razor blade.

  “I draw your attention to that,” said Kendall.

  The video image showed Nicky considering the blade, holding it up to the light over the cabinet, and then plucking the blade off the handle, replacing it with a new one, and then putting the razor back in position on the shelf. He reached out for the door then, and blackness came down on the image. The tiny recorder showed the word end and then shut off. The silence in the room was fairly complete, other than the rustle of the old man’s breathing and the sound of a guard walking the halls and whistling the theme from Dr. Zhivago. Finally McCarthy got to her feet.

  “Your Honor, I think I need to consult with my superiors.”

  “Of course,” said Judge Bethune, inclining her Sphinx-like head.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Professor Kendall.

  “Thank you,” McCarthy said, and walked out of the room. The two police officers followed behind, Dexter closing the door after him as softly as he could manage. Judge Bethune could not hear all of the conversation that took place immediately outside her door. The best way to characterize it would be to call it vigorous. Earl Pike was back on the street two hours later.

  He looked untouched and calm in his navy-blue Armani as if he had never been arrested at all. The night was cool, the sky still streaked with the sunset streaming out from the Jersey flatlands. He walked a few blocks north along Centre Street, past the tangled alleyways of Chinatown, along Broome to Mott, where he stopped in at Il Grand Ticino and had a quiet meal of angel-hair pasta and some mussels in a white wine reduction, along with a very nice Soave. Halfway through the meal, his cell phone rang. It was Carmine DaJulia. Carmine sounded tired. Carmine had a tip for him. He knew where Jack Vermillion was going to be later tonight. Did Pike want to know?

  Pike did. He listened to Carmine DaJulia in silence for about three minutes, then he said thanks, said get some rest, Carmine, you sound terrible, said good-bye, Carmine, put the phone away, signaled for his bill, paid it in cash, and left.

  He came back out into the bustle and the sounds and scents of Little Italy and caught a gypsy cab at the corner of Kenmare and the Bowery. He was back at the UN Plaza Hotel before the night had come fully down over midtown. Nicky Cicero was waiting for him in the lobby. He got up and faced him in the middle of the hall.

  “Officer Cicero. More official business?”

  “You made an offer. I accept.”

  “An offer?”

  “Yeah. You said we should go a couple rounds together.”

  Pike felt something feathery tickling his skull. Nicky’s face was pale and bony, his eyes hunted-looking. Pike thought about the boy he had beaten to death in that clearing and what had come of it.

  “Kid, you couldn’t take me on your best day.”

  “This isn’t my best day. Maybe I’ll win. So let’s go.”

  Pike felt the tiny columns marching under the skin of his temples. He managed to avoid looking at his reflection in the mirrored glass walls beside them. Nicky was waiting, his heart hammering, his ears filled with a hissing sound, blood moving. In the thick muscles of his neck, an artery was pulsing. Pike watched it throb for a time, deciding.

  “You’re a brave man, Nicky. I’ll give you that. In the unlikely event that you actually managed to hurt me, and even if I killed you, you’d still have my blood on you. My blood means my DNA. Legally obtained. Ready for court. I think I won’t oblige you this evening.”

  Nicky watched him all the way to the elevator. Pike never looked back. Nicky walked out onto Forty-fourth and caught a cab to Yonkers. He called Casey from his room. They talked for an hour. Then he went to bed and, after some time spent watching the ruby-red numbers on the bedside clock change from 1:30 to 1:31 to 1:32, he fell asleep. In a dream, he saw the faces of Julia Gianetto and Donald Condotti. They were rotting in death. Nicky tried to wake up but he could not move his arms or breathe or cry out. After an eternity, he woke himself with a hoarse scream. He sat up in bed, shaking, chilled, sick. Milky-blue moonlight lay on the bed, cut into slices by the window blinds. The noise from the street was a dull and continuous roar. The red numbers on the clock beside the bed blinked at him. The time was 1:39.

  MONDAY, JUNE 26

  RED HOOK CONTAINER TERMINAL

  VAN BRUNT AND GOWANUS

  0300 HOURS

  Earl Pike had his back up against a second-story ledge on the roof of the parking garage, the Barrett Fifty cradled across his knees, his gloved hands resting on the rifle. He had a fine view across the river. A low ceiling of gauzy cloud and
fog had settled down over Manhattan and the buildings glowed inside the haze as though the city were burning. On the East River the city lights wavered and shimmered. The yard lights were on at the Red Hook Terminal, but since it was Sunday night—early Monday morning—the quays were empty and the warehouses and yards deserted, silent. The guardhouse was dark, the gates open. Razor wire sparkled along the wire fencing, electric-blue under the arc lights that lit up the compound. A black Shelby Cobra was idling inside the cone of yellow light coming down from a lamppost near the main warehouse, its windows tinted black, the sound of its engine a throaty rumble, and the car rocked rhythmically on its springs, taking the weight of the big camshaft turning inside the engine. Pike had been waiting for it. It had arrived, as Carmine had predicted, a few minutes ago, but so far the windows had remained closed and no one had gotten out of the car. Fine. Pike was a patient man. Sooner or later the other cars would arrive, maybe Greco herself, and then the man inside the car was going to have to get out of it, and then Pike would kill him, and perhaps the woman too, and this thing would end.

  He shifted the Barrett again and ran a hand down the angular steel flank, savoring the balance and weight of the thing. Down in the big yard the Cobra rocked and rumbled under the yellow light, the canvas roof misted over with dew. It was a beautiful car, and Pike was going to see that no harm came to it. It was a relic of the days—the years—when America knew how to make things like that, and it was as important in its way as his family’s own collection, part of the nation’s heritage, and as worthy of protection.

  He moved again, his belly muscles tugging at the fishhook scars in his gut. Something feathery was moving across his cheek and he had a momentary flash of fear, but when he put his hand up to his cheek he found a small black spider there. He plucked it off his face and held it in his hand, watching the creature scuttle around in his palm. It was real. It was not a hallucination. Some spiders were real. The spiders in that Ecuadorian latrine had been very real.

  Every night and every day for seven weeks he had lived with them, in their thousands, in their columns and phalanxes and battalions. And the guards, of course, who would come in now and then to entertain themselves with the prisoner. When the leftists had finally traded him back to the U.S. Army in return for the release of six politicals, he had been quite insane and had gone back to Bethesda in a Blackhawk without being able to speak at all. But he was recovered now and at peace. He tipped the little black spider out over the edge of the roof, leaning forward to do it, and as he did so a man dropped to the roof next to him and shoved a pistol up against the side of his head. Pike tensed, felt the cold steel on his skull, and froze.

  “Hello, Earl,” said Jack. “Let go of the Barrett.”

  “It will fall,” said Pike, holding himself very still under the muzzle of the gun. “I don’t want it damaged.”

  “It won’t be,” said Jack, and then he slammed Pike across the side of the head with the Glock. Pike reeled back and let go of the Barrett. Jack caught it by the stock and pulled it in, turned it on Pike. Pike shifted and recovered, blood running down the side of his temple. He looked into the muzzle of the Barrett and then back up at Jack Vermillion. Jack was smiling at him.

  “Carmine says hello.”

  Pike nodded, his face blank.

  “Who’s in the car?”

  “Creek Johnson.”

  “Brave man. How did you know I wouldn’t just take the Cobra apart with the Fifty?”

  “I figured you’d want to see the look on my face. And maybe you’d wait for Greco.”

  “How’d you know where I’d be?”

  “I was in the room when Carmine called you.”

  “Carmine working for you now?”

  “Carmine’s working for himself. He has a lot on his mind.”

  “I see. Good for you. You got me. I’m dazzled. Now what?”

  Jack lifted the muzzle of the Barrett, hefted it.

  “This the piece you used on the feds?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m keeping it.”

  “You are? For the government, I guess.”

  “Depends.”

  “Really? On what?”

  “I set you up. I regret it. Now I let you walk away.”

  Pike was silent for almost a minute. A barge sounded out on the river, the huge black shape gliding down toward the bay, a black island against the golden lights moving on the surface of the river, the wake boiling like molten lava behind it. Neither man moved.

  “What is this, Jack? Penitence? Forgiveness?”

  “No. Atonement.”

  “Atonement? Usually the victim determines the atonement.”

  “Not just for you. I did some things, other things I regret. I’m going to have to pay for them. I’m probably going to jail.”

  “Those three boys in Hazleton?”

  “I don’t have to explain it to you.”

  “I doubt you could explain that to anyone.”

  “Blood gets blood, Pike. This thing between us is over.”

  “It’s over when I say it’s over. My collection is still gone. My family’s heritage. I’ll never see it again. Thanks to you.”

  “It’s over. I’m saying it. I want your word. As a soldier.”

  Pike looked out over the river. The city was disappearing behind a veil of golden haze. He breathed and the scars in his belly tugged at him. He felt a delicate tickle in his cheek and idly rubbed at it. Jack waited, his finger inside the trigger guard, the trigger blade cold under his finger, the weapon heavy in his hands.

  “I could move now,” said Pike. “I may be quick enough.”

  “Maybe. Your choice. It’s not what I want.”

  Pike looked at Jack’s face. He believed the man.

  “All right, Jack. I see you’re awake now. Between us, it ends.”

  “Your word? Your word on it?”

  “Yes. My word.”

  MONDAY, JUNE 26

  OFFICES OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

  WATER AND PECK STREETS

  LOWER MANHATTAN

  1015 HOURS

  Valeriana Greco had dressed for this encounter with particular care, since she had scheduled a press briefing immediately afterward, to be held in the conference rooms nearby, in time for the news media to make all the afternoon deadlines. She was perfection today in a Donna Karan suit of raw silk the precise color of the waters off the Cayman Islands, a luminous teal-blue that enhanced the tones of her black hair and her tiny opal earrings. Her pumps were Prada and perfectly matched the suit. The desk was cleared and gleaming, decorated only with an antique pen-and-ink set from Lalique. The conference rooms in the Water Street building were very impressive, lined in teak and decorated with full-color portraits of the more illustrious members of the United States attorney’s office. The huge room featured a set of antique French doors that opened up onto a terrace with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge and a section of the East River. She felt it would be a suitable backdrop for her. At precisely fifteen minutes after the hour one of the assistants in attendance stepped to her open door—Greco had her head down so that her shining bell of black hair could fall across her face as she pretended to be reading a document.

  “Mr. Glazer is here, Ms. Greco.”

  “Show him in,” said Greco.

  Martin Glazer came into the room, crisp and brisk and every inch the Wall Street prince in a hand-stitched dark-gray single-breasted suit and shining black wing tips. He was accompanied by his assistants, Kuhlman and Bern, both shining brightly in excellent suits, their little goatees trimmed, their decorative gold-rimmed glasses glittering in the sunlight that was streaming in through Greco’s east-facing windows, which also featured a panoramic view of the East River and the bridge.

  Glazer carried nothing, but his assistants struggled under the burden of matching black leather briefcases bulging with critical documents. Glazer moved across the Aubusson without making a sound and offered a soft pink hand to Greco, who took it an
d shook it and released it in a firm and manly way.

  “Good of you to come, Mr. Glazer.”

  “Please, call me Martin.”

  “Martin.”

  She didn’t offer the reciprocal familiarity, which Glazer noticed and decided to ignore. He settled into one of the three chairs arranged in a careful symmetry in front of Greco’s desk, and crossed his legs at the ankles, sitting up straight in the antique rail-back, feeling it move underneath him and being careful not to let it creak in an undignified manner. Greco sat back down behind her desk and tabled a sheaf of papers, the first of which was a blue-bound folder bearing the crest of the Department of Justice.

  “These are the preliminary papers that have been filed. You understand that this process is a complex one, and the purpose of today’s meeting is merely to establish an agreement in principle regarding the management of the assets of Black Water Transit et alia, the holdings of which have come under the control of the federal government. The funds to be transferred today will be held in an escrow account until such time as the final resolution of Mr. Vermillion’s prosecution can be …”

  “Resolved?” offered Glazer.

  “Yes. So we’ll begin with the reading of these papers into the record. After which we’ll have the agreement in principle notarized and then it will come back to us to be … yes, Margaret?”

  Her assistant had come back into the room and was now hovering in the doorway, looking less than happy.

  “Ms. Greco … may I have a word?”

  “Now’s not the time, Margaret. Whatever it is …”

  Her voice trailed off as Jack Vermillion came into the room, followed by Flannery Coleman. They were both dressed for legal combat, the full suit-tie-perfect-shirt-and-shoes-like-bathtubs ensemble that makes all the difference on Wall Street. The look on her face was something Jack enjoyed very much, a scalded and cracking mask, like an overboiled egg. Glazer, seeing the look on her face, turned in his chair and let out a tiny peeping bleat. Kuhlman and Bern got up with determined looks on their faces and started to move toward Jack Vermillion. Coleman stepped forward and held up a hand.