I Kill Rich People: New Edition Released 11/27/14

by Mike Bogin

  Pulling down from the timeframe menu, Owen searched ten minutes after the 911 report of the shootings and played with the system until he was able to run a reverse review backward from that time.

  Where is the fucking tech, he wondered? Finding cameras and time frames was easy, but he had nothing in the way of inputting body-type, height and weight ranges, or searching out the backpack or satchel that the shooter had to be carrying with him.

  Owen increased the running speed to 8X, with cars on York moving backwards. He almost missed catching it, because the clock atop the screen continued to run in reverse, but for at least twenty seconds, the picture remained exactly unchanged. At 8X, that meant there was nearly a three minute gap. The movement resumed with scenes of clusters of pedestrians moving backward, running in reverse away from the corner. Owen slowed it down to 2X, scanning carefully for anyone who appeared to be covered in construction dust. Anybody carrying a heavy bag or satchel. One man, the correct build and height, moved away from the camera, deliberately pressing through the crowd and away from 72nd. The scene froze a second time, while the clock continued running on the screen. When it resumed, the figure was gone.

  “Somebody got to the footage first,” Owen growled. He texted directly to Dansk. All camera footage is missing. Somebody is interfering w DID investigation. NSA?

  She didn’t reply.

  After waiting ten minutes, Owen phoned her admin, who pulled up her schedule.

  “Commander Dansk is speaking tonight. It’s either a fundraiser or Americans for Political Action. Sorry, I’m not sure which.”

  * * * * *

  Tremaine drove the major to his doorstep, a trim newer townhouse about a mile from Tremaine’s place in a yuppie neighborhood near Prospect Park. Glossy black door, brass kick plate, a modern light fixture showing through the glass transom above the entry. The major was obviously doing all right—full retirement and regular consulting arrangements working with the Bureau.

  Owen ran Al uptown to the pre-war apartment Al shared with his mother. Owen’s fingers gripped white around the steering wheel. Outsiders had come into his house and pushed his nose into the dirt. A ugly circular bruise had thickened at the crown of his head above the right eyebrow. He didn’t know why he had agreed to take Al halfway across Manhattan.

  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” Al told him. None of this surprised Al one bit, and if he had been momentarily doubtful, it was only force of habit. He didn’t blame Owen for the machinations of Intel Division or the NSA, either.

  “Remember how after 9/11 we were all supposed to see more money, more resources, and mandated interagency cooperation so nineteen Saudi Arabian young men would never again be able to tell flight instructors that takeoffs and landings don’t matter, that they only wanted to learn to fly planes already up in the air?” Al griped. He had witnessed the politics in action a thousand times; he talked a good talk, but his gut was never serene; the realities remained disgusting.

  “We got the money; money to run nationwide telephone surveillance and money for special agents going round-the-clock surveillance on animal rights activists and greenies putting urban farms into their front yards. We got more resources than we could think of ways to use them, but real integration, no way.

  “Owen, in the private sector the whole point of a merger is to cut overhead by getting rid of extra people and machines that are doing the same thing twice. You get lean, you save money, you move forward. Not in government. Here, we merge departments and then spend twice as much. That’s Intelligence for you.”

  Owen caught Al staring. Their eyes met for an instant before Owen looked away.

  Owen slammed his fist into the steering wheel. “How does evidence disappear right under our noses! Fuck!”

  “So far, I’ve seen you mad at the National Security Agency and mad at the Bureau. Now you’re mad at whoever edited your files. You know what I haven’t seen? I haven’t seen you mad at the guy who killed all those people.”

  The wind went out from Owen. Even the car slowed down. Al had hit it right on the head. Fifteen people dead in his city and Owen felt like he was chasing a ghost. It still didn’t make those NSA bastards any more right, but the point was well taken.

  “Tell me something,” Owen said. “I just don’t get it. Your card says ‘Data Analyst,’ you don’t carry a firearm, but it seems like you run that office at least as much as Special Agent Turner. What is your story?”

  “Kid, I graduated Columbia, double major, computer science and history. Sat the civil service exam in 1979, thinking that I’d work for two years and go back to graduate school to become a teacher or maybe even get my doctorate. In those days, we learned FORTRAN, Basic, COBOL…stuff you probably haven’t even heard about. Mainframe computers the size of whole rooms. Anyway, here I was, this scrawny Jewish kid, but I scored well enough on the exam to get my choice of several assignments. I thought the FBI would be interesting for a while. I probably should have stepped up and tried other pursuits, but I was here and felt like I was useful. Thirty-two years later, I’m still here.”

  “So OK, you’re a data analyst. That still doesn’t explain the kind of pull you have,” Owen said.

  “I was a twenty-six-year-old with arms like toothpicks. You can’t become an agent unless you can pass the physical tests,” Al replied. “Doesn’t matter how strong the brain might be. I didn’t have the biceps. No exceptions. Period.”

  Al reflected upon some of the imbeciles he had been forced to work around in the decades he had been there. “You know, three out of four Bureau employees aren’t Special Agents. We’re accountants and computer scientists and civil engineers and even linguists and historians. Christ, if they had to depend on Special Agents for the gray matter, Al Capone would still be running Chicago. Me, I’m the brains behind the scenes while the Matthew Turners of the world make white-toothed smiles for the cameras. They can call me whatever they want, what do I care? I’m their lead investigator and they know it.”

  Turner did his thing and stayed out of Al’s way. Compared to some of his predecessors, Matthew Turner wasn’t all that bad.

  “It’s mostly a beauty contest, really,” Al explained. “They hardly ever do anything physical, but you didn’t get into Frederick the Great’s Army without being six feet tall and you don’t get to be a Special Agent unless you’re a jock. So we get a field force made up of ex-jocks, boys who played lacrosse and football, and girls who played softball. Hard to buck traditions. Special Agents are pretty because J. Edgar Hoover wanted his elite corps. That, plus he liked to dress up in women’s clothes and flirt with good-looking boys. Kid, two thirds of the adults in this country are obese, but excepting Chris Christie, nobody fat can get elected dogcatcher. Same thing.”

  Owen recognized the bitterness behind Al’s acceptance. The man’s superior intellect was obvious, yet he spent thirty-two years inside a system where he could never get into the inner circle. Not as a Data Analyst.

  “What about you?” Al wanted to know. “Married, two boys, police lieutenant, how did that all come about?”

  Before Owen could respond, Al’s cell started up.

  He answered: “Ma, is everything OK? I know I’m not home. Yes, sometimes I do work past midnight. No, Ma, you’re right. I’m making love to another voluptuous shiksa. Rubenesque. Ma, I have to go. I’ll be home soon. Don’t wait up.”

  Owen gave real thought to Al’s question. No mother. Eamonn doing his best, but wearing himself out with all the effort it took to keep from drinking. He and Callie always together since ninth grade. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Callie and Boy Scouts and baseball, he could easily have gone off the rails.

  They had met in freshman English class. ‘What light from yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.’ Truth or Dare. Callie putting his hand down her pants when th
ey

  were fourteen. Without Callie, who knows if he would have stuck it out through college?

  Liam and Casey were the best things in his life, but Callie had never planned or even discussed either pregnancy with him. She stopped the birth control on her own, both times, and then

  let him know he was going to be a dad. She was still pushing him. Only now it was the house and schools and how they were raising the boys.

  “My dad was a cop,” Owen said finally. “You know that. Callie and I met when we were fourteen years old. We’ve been together ever since.”

  He and Eamonn, Al figured, would have met just about when Owen started pitching baseball, the year he met Callie. Eamonn had talked about his son. Eamonn was the first to acknowledge how high the cards had been stacked against Owen, but the boy had beaten the odds. He was proud. Eamonn should have seen the man Owen had become.

  “Al, why me?” Owen asked. There were dozens of cops who could have worked the case just as well if Al wanted them. Why him?

  “I probably owe my life to your father.”

  Owen stared straight ahead at the road. “So I’m here because you owe a debt to my dad?”

  “Kid, I’m sixty-two years old and I live with my eighty-nine-year-old mother in her apartment. Sometimes I get to solve a crime. That’s my life. Eamonn was my friend. Being around you, I get to be around a part of him.”

  “How did he save your life?”

  “Another time,” Al answered. “Some other time.”

  When Owen was finally at home, after having left Al at the curb of his house, he dropped himself into bed. The windows were open; the electricity remained off. There was a breeze, at least.

  He didn’t believe that Callie really was asleep. He half wanted to fight and get it over with, but it was already passing one a.m. and he intended to be in for the morning briefing at 8 o’clock. Better to leave it alone. Before exhaustion took over completely, Owen swung his feet out of bed. The refrigerator. By morning, the freezer would be thawed out and everything in there would be a ruined mess. There were fuses on the landing below the box. Get the electricity working, then bed.

  The threads on the panel were worn thin and were so delicate that he could see why Callie didn’t want to touch anything. Owen held the flashlight in his teeth and grasped the brass as hard as he could inside his left thumb and forefinger, risking a shock, while his right hand closed around the glass fuse. Without twisting hard, the old fuse wouldn’t come out, but any pressure at all would twist out the brass threads and make everything impossible to fix at all. He sucked in one deep breath, held it, and twisted. The spent fuse turned and came free.

  After the new fuse went in place, electricity came on throughout the house. Fortunately, the light hadn’t been left on in the boy’s room. Owen turned out the downstairs lights, and then made his way up the low, narrow stairwell to the half-story upstairs.

  Their bedroom light was on and Callie was awake atop the bedclothes, considering whether or not to turn on the air conditioning.

  “Three more,” she said. “I heard. Chinese billionaires.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Any leads?”

  Owen thought about the video surveillance and the NSA and felt disgusted again. “Nothing.”

  Callie had been thinking about something and meant to ask Owen. The idea was only half-baked. The other night, while Owen worked late, Callie and the boys had watched a Discover Channel program about endangered snow leopards. The filming team had been watching one particular leopard across three years, seen her find a mate, deliver and rear two cubs, and teach them to hunt and survive. When the team returned to her territory, they looked for a full month without spotting her. Rather than give up, their Indian guide suggested patience. If the leopard was still alive, she would move down into the meadows to hunt marmots, easy springtime prey that would revive her energy. Go to the marmots, Callie was thinking. It sounded silly. Go to the marmots. And it was ten after two.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Thursday, July 19

  Tremaine held out coffees at 7:45. Someone had brought in bear claws. Owen parked himself in the chair beside his partner and waited for Dansk to begin.

  Fifteen dead. What did they know? Three weapons and size-thirteen shoes. JP Morgan Chase was supposedly seeking a permit to construct a bulletproof covered walkway across the sidewalk from the front curb to its entry doors.

  “There is no video,” Owen announced. “Feds took over the crime scene, too.”

  “Thought you were a Fed,” another detective heckled. Asshole.

  “Other Feds. Probably the National Security Agency.”

  “So tell me,” the heckler continued, “did those guys get their vacation dates suspended? This city has had fifteen homicides across two weeks plenty of times. Now that it’s rich guys, they cut our vacation times to three days? Until further notice? So who gets my deposit back? Huh? Now I can’t go to the Bahamas and some rich fuck is going to jump on taking my rooms ’cause they’re all getting out of town. How about that?”

  “Can it, Decker,” Dansk fumed. “The mayor’s office and the Chief want to see additional uniforms along with a detective presence within the crowd at the events I’m putting up on the screen. Now don’t all of you rush for Yankee Stadium and Citi

  Field. You’ll be assigned duties. Anybody who gets to go to the baseball game will also be attending the opera.”

  “Luxury suites?”

  Dansk nodded. Luxury suites. If that was where the targets were, that was where they would be. SWAT snipers would be

  situated at key points throughout the stadiums to spot out and cover locations where the shooter could position.

  Dansk pulled Cullen aside, her high heels putting her on eye-level with him before her whisper hissed at him. “That pass on your hip is laminated plastic, Lieutenant. The one you carry next to your heart is an NYPD gold shield. I expect your report on everything that is said and done with the FBI uploaded to me daily. Clear?”

  “Clear,” Owen responded automatically. What the fuck did she think, that he’d ever be anything but true Blue? Christ.

  “Are we even getting overtime for these extra duty details?” Decker demanded.

  “TBD,” Dansk answered succinctly. The Department was looking at tapping its Special Funds, which took an official designation of terrorism, which remained pending.

  “What the fuck?” Decker wasn’t taking it lying down. “As Union Rep, let me get this straight. We’re gonna all have to work overtime, with maybe no pay, to protect all the rich fucks who think their shit don’t stink. Well that does fucking stink. We seem to be getting funding for everything else around here, how about we take a billion or so of that money and spread it around?”

  “Decker,” Dansk called behind her. “Another F-bomb from you and your time off will be unpaid suspension. I don’t give a crap what stink you make. We’re not the only ones taking a hit. Charity functions are shut down. Restaurants are empty. Every shop that serves the well-to-do is losing sales. This impacts the airlines, the hotels. We’re all feeling it.”

  * * * * *

  Not all were feeling it. Most of the city was functioning as normally as it had functioned throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; if there were changes, most people were not feeling them. The impacts were in limited pockets.

  Following 9/11 and the terror of Washington D.C.’s Beltway Sniper, each city had virtually shut down. Now, in an unusual twist, most New Yorkers, although aware of the ongoing murders, weren’t worried at all. In sidewalk surveys, the most popular refrain was definitely “fuck ’em.” All the big outpouring of sympathy for the victims was on the networks; the city was tuned in to Emerson Elliot.

  Amongst the Michelin-starred restaurants, business had ground nearly to a halt, yet the Apple Store was pack
ed. There were the usual lines out for The Treats Truck. Every street vendor was fine. Impacts were specific, not generalized.

  From Newport, Rhode Island, to the Chesapeake Bay, private watercraft over thirty-two feet were tied to the docks. That business was being crushed just at the height of its short season.

  Booking prices for summer rentals on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket were doubled as droves of summer renters tossed away their deposits on $30,000-a-week homes in the Hamptons. There wasn’t a family in the Hamptons who didn’t have someone putting his or her foot down and refusing to take the risk; how could they have any fun while a maniac was out shooting people?

  Rooftop terraces and outside decks emptied, even as the usual crowds enjoyed summer plays and outdoor concerts in the Park and at the zoo.

  For the rich, the killings and police response were proof that the system was falling apart. The level-headed critics were calling for Emerson Elliot’s arrest. Many more voices thought he deserved to be shot. Rich people had built the country. Building the greatest nation on Earth had taken hundreds of years. That foul-mouthed communist was tearing it down. Revolution, Armageddon, were just around the corner. The signs were everywhere.

  That fear had crept outward, far beyond the Tri-State Area. Bidding wars revived moribund housing prices within gated, seemingly secure communities, as those with the funds ceased to quibble while their lives could be on the line. More bidding wars had erupted as wealthy areas and even individuals went on a hiring binge to secure experienced personal security staff.

  The entire police force of the town of Visalia, Mississippi, had simultaneously resigned and accepted positions to become the private police force for a single family in El Dorado, Arkansas. Visalia had employed them at will, and was cutting public employment in response to the recession. Their new employer offered a higher salary, a two-year guarantee, 100 percent medical and dental, plus housing in brand-new manufactured homes set right there on the property, sixteen hundred acres of some of the prettiest land you’ll ever see. The concept of free agency was moving into police forces.