Devil's Bridge (21 page)

“Where’d you learn to drive a boat?” the man said, stripping off the seat covers and rolling down the isinglass cover that kept the cockpit dry.

“Martha’s Vineyard. Out of Menemsha,” I said. “Mostly fish off Devil’s Bridge in Aquinnah.”

“If you can navigate those waters without breaking up, you’ll be fine in the Hudson,” he said, stepping back onto the dock and handing me the keys. “That’s your chart-plotter screen on the left. Tells you where you are and operates the radar.”

“Check.”

Mercer and Jimmy were scoping the river as they settled in, one on the white leather seats in the bow and the other in the stern.

“Your depth finder there, and this here’s the VHF radio. Keep it on channel sixteen unless the coast guard tells you otherwise.”

“Check, boss. What does she draw?”

“Three feet, no more than that. Keep her off the shoals.”

“Won’t be a problem.” The Liberty Island perimeter had been dredged to receive ferries and large boats. This little speedster wouldn’t present an issue getting right up to a dockage.

“Don’t forget this baby has all the latest Furuno navigational systems. All you have to do is steer it,” he said. “It’s even got AIS.”

“What’s that?” Mercer asked.

“Automatic identification system,” I said. “We pop up on the radar screen of other boats in our range. It tells them who we are. It names our vessel.”

“What
is
the name of this boat?” Mercer said.

I hadn’t even paid attention to what was painted on the hull.

“She’s the
Dolly Mama.
”

I leaned over and looked at the stern, where the name was painted in bold gold letters. “Not named for a monk, is it?”

“Nope. Owned by a woman named Dolly Dan, with eight grandkids,” he said. “She winters in Palm Beach. Good people. Keep it clean and she’ll never know.”

I walked to the console and put the key in to turn on the engines.

“Keep in mind, Mr. Chapman, there are no channel markers in this part of the Hudson.”

“Check.”

“As you pull out and enter the channel, give it one long blast of your horn,” he said.

“Aye, aye.”

He had untied the ropes from the cleats that held the boat against the dock and I was more than ready to kick off.

“Nice and slow in the river, okay?” he said, calling out his final instructions. “No need to rough it up by making a big wake. Everybody’s polite.”

“Thanks for the loaner. See you later.”

I put my hand on the throttle to get the boat in gear, honked the horn, and moved out onto the river, plowing straight across to the Jersey side to then turn left and head downriver with the flow of the traffic.

“Here’s a pair of binoculars,” I said to Jimmy, removing them from beneath the driver’s seat. “You scan the shoreline.”

“Looking for—?”

“You’ll know it when you see it, pal. Best I can do.”

“Do you really know how to drive this thing?” Mercer asked, coming around behind the windshield to stand beside me.

“We’ll soon find out,” I said. “Kind of think it’s like riding a bike. It’ll come back to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell Peterson the truth?”

“About our outing?”

The wind picked up once I powered the engines to fifteen knots. My hair was blowing and the cool air lifted my wilting shirt, which had felt as though it was glued to my body.

“Yeah.”

“Then he’d feel obliged to take it up the chain of command and we’d be called down to Scully’s office and I’d be trying to make sense to those guys about the way these clues and the geography of the boat basin and Liberty Island feel right in my solar plexus,” I said. “And by then it’d be close to midnight and we’d have lost the whole day to bureaucratic bullshit. You worried about hanging with me? You want me out here alone?”

“I have one worry, Mike. Just like you,” Mercer said. “I want to find Alex.”

The channel was full of activity—everyone taking advantage of being out on the Hudson on this spectacular day. I pulled back a bit on the throttle, happy to let others maneuver around me.

The buildings on the New Jersey side of the riverbank were a mix of new condos, old warehouses, and a variety of large and small boat moorings.

We went past West New York and Union City off to my right, slowing even more so that Mercer could scour the shoreline action. Jimmy had his binoculars focused on the Manhattan side of the water as we passed through the West Sixties and Fifties.

There was a large marina above Weehawken Cove, just opposite the Hudson Rail Yards in Chelsea. “It’s bustling in there,” Mercer said, asking for Jimmy to hand him the binoculars. “Can you do a slow turnaround?”

“Fingers crossed,” I said, waiting for a water taxi to pass before I veered left and made a lazy circle with the boat.

“You know the ways those guys—if those are the guys,” Jimmy said, pointing at the crowded marina, “you know the way they passed off license plates and then one of them ditched the SUV in Queens and the others probably got on some small boat, I’m guessing? Could be these guys had another boat waiting, right? Could have off-loaded their cargo anywhere along here, couldn’t they?”

“Everything’s possible,” Mercer said. “Let’s take each opportunity as she comes.”

“On our way?” I asked.

“Yeah. We can check out Chelsea Piers on the return, if we come up empty.”

“Okay.”

I was familiar with all the landmarks on the Manhattan side, but it was fascinating to see them from an entirely different perspective. There were new parks between the highway and the river just south of the Meatpacking District, which had once been such a rough part of town. The growth of tall buildings in Tribeca was a dramatic change, and the spectacular design of Battery Park City—ninety-three acres of land reclaimed from the Hudson River when the original World Trade Center was constructed for a mix of residential homes, commercial use, and parkland—never ceased to overwhelm me. That was especially true, I think, because it was the brainchild of Coop’s brilliant uncle, a renowned architect and city planner—the Alexander Cooper for whom she was named.

All roads led me back to Alexandra Cooper.

We were closing in on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, where the original colonial settlement had given way to the financial center surrounding Wall Street.

Off to the right was the enormous Colgate Clock, first erected in 1906 and now refurbished—fifty feet tall. The factory it had been built to advertise was long gone, but the bright, bold face of the timepiece reminded me that it was two fifteen in the afternoon.

An armada of container ships seemed to be navigating the harbor in the Upper Bay. Some would make their way past us toward Albany, others were headed to the East River, and still more were on their way to the ocean and points all around the world.

How easy it was to hide a body in a container bound for a third world country. I had seen that movie dozens of times.

I steadied my hand on the throttle, steering the sturdy Intrepid closer to Ellis Island, my back to the sweeping vista of Governors Island, which had so haunted Coop after our encounter there with a crazed killer.

We didn’t have far to go now.

We were off the tip of Ellis Island when I noticed a roadway. There was actually a paved bridge connecting Ellis, through which twelve million immigrants had come to this country, to the New Jersey mainland. Cars and trucks could access the island, which wasn’t the case with Liberty.

“Can you see anything over there with the binoculars, Jimmy?” I asked.

“I don’t remember knowing about any bridge to these islands,” Mercer said.

“Only Ellis.”

“A few cars and some delivery vans crossing back to Jersey,” Jimmy said. “And it looks like there’s a bunch more cars parked at the rear of the island.”

“We ought to put that on our list for the way back, too,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mercer said. “Much easier access with a car.”

“The SUV was abandoned, guys,” I said. “And it appears that three of the four people that were in it when Officer Stern saw it got out of it at or near the boat basin. I’m betting they used a boat to leave Manhattan, and I’m feeling lucky.”

“It’s the great green Lady,” Mercer said, staring up at the gigantic monument as I eased up even more on the throttle and motored into the shadow of Liberty.

“I’m going to circle the island once,” I said, “to see if there are any small craft tied up.”

“Why is she green, anyway?” Jimmy asked.

“When she was set here on Bedloe Island in 1886,” I said, “Lady Liberty was the color of a copper penny.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No joke. But green film verdigris forms naturally on copper from long exposure. It took about twenty years to turn her this color, but that’s what protects her from corrosion.”

I was practically next to the dock that extended out into the Upper Bay to receive tourist ferries. I was crawling along on top of the water, surprised to see that there were no boats anywhere on its long arm.

I picked up speed and stayed close to the shoreline. The magnificent statue towered directly above us, the tip of the torch reaching more than three hundred feet overhead.

“Can you see any workmen?” I asked.

“Negative,” Jimmy said.

I had made it past five of the points of Fort Wood that faced the waterfront and was circling to the south. There was an area of greenery, like a small park, directly behind Fort Wood and the pedestal of Liberty.

Then came a house, a two-story redbrick building, adjacent to a row of smaller units that looked like work sheds. Next there was the only other dockage, a long one that appeared to be commercial.

There were two gray-hulled boats tied up at the commercial dock. Fewer than I had expected. I ignored them for the moment and continued around the rear of the island, where there were several more work sheds and parkland. Then the remaining stars of the fort, the rear side, came into view.

“How about I try to dock this thing and we go ashore?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jimmy said. “There must be somebody who patrols this place, right?”

“Rangers,” I said. “National park rangers.”

“Federal jurisdiction?” he asked.

“Yeah. Feds.”

“How are you going to get past those guys?”

“Surely you’ve witnessed the Chapman charm,” Mercer said.

Jimmy laughed. “Not so much,” he said. “Not lately.”

“Mike’s got blarney for every occasion.”

“Each of you guys, pay attention,” I said. “Grab one of those bumpers—those navy-blue rubber things—and throw them over the side.”

I watched as they did as I asked.

“Now grab the ropes—you in front, Mercer, and Jimmy in the back. I’m gonna try to slide up nice and easy and one of you can climb onto the dock and tie us up to the cleats.”

I bounced the boat off the end of the dock like a pool ball whacking against the walls of a table. Dolly Dan wouldn’t approve of my parallel-parking technique.

Jimmy was more agile than Mercer. He jumped up on the dock and fastened the ropes to the metal cleats.

I hoisted myself up and put the key in my pocket.

We didn’t get halfway down the dock before a man started coming toward us from land. He wasn’t a ranger. He was dressed in civvies—khaki slacks and a blue sweatshirt.

“Hold it right there,” he called out to us. “Who are you with?”

“NYPD,” I said.

“Show me.”

We each took our shields from our pockets to display them.

“What’s the deal?” he said after looking at them.

“Official business.”

“Funny I didn’t get a call about it.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m in charge of the work crew.”

“If I’d have known that, or your number, I would have called you,” I said. “Instead, my boss called the park service. Head ranger. Bullwinkle or whatever his name is. Wears a big brown hat like Pharrell Williams.”

“Didn’t he tell you the island’s closed?”

“Knew that. But we’re not tourists.”

“It’s even been closed to my workmen the last two days. There’s a private event tomorrow night,” he said. “I just have a skeleton crew cleaning up for it. Then they’re pitching a tent back there for the party.”

“That’s why we’re here. I mean, the private event,” I said. “We’re doing a security sweep.”

“Really?” he said, growing more obviously annoyed. “A rap label pays three and a half million to rent this island for the night to debut a new album by Kanye and you clowns are doing a security sweep the day before? Don’t waste my time.”

“What do you mean, waste it?”

“Their security men have been all over this island. You’re a day late and a dollar short,” he said.

“Did you hear me say we’re an NYPD detail?” I said. “Do you understand that the mayor of the city of New York sent us to do this?”

“The mayor’s coming to this shindig? You serious?”

“Where there’s weed, there’s our top dog,” I said. “Go on, make his day. Call his office, do what you gotta do. But if there’s a leak to the press that he’s going to be here—maybe even with the governor of New Jersey, like a little political love-in—then I will turn the spotlight right back on you.”

I turned as though I was going to lead Mercer and Jimmy back to the boat.

“Hold up,” he said. “And you want to do what?”

“A quick walk-through,” I said. “Just need an hour or two. I’m not inspecting your rivets, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“If I catch hell from the ranger in charge—”

“Not to worry. It’s all cleared through headquarters,” I said. “If you need us to score a few tickets for your kids for the party . . .”

“You can do that?” he asked, lightening up for the first time since our arrival.

“Mercer Wallace can get you whatever you need. He used to bodyguard Kanye when he moonlighted, back in the day.”

“Now we’re talking, Detective,” the man said, wrapping an arm around Mercer and shaking his hand. “Welcome to Liberty Island.”

“Where are the rangers?” Mercer asked as we walked toward land.

“With the island shut down to tourists, there’s only one on duty in the daytime through this fall and winter,” the man said. “He actually took a boat into Newark to help the group get a permit for fireworks tomorrow night. You’ll probably meet him later.”

“So who guards the place at night?”

“Nobody lives here, if that’s what you mean. The coasties watch over the island from the water. Otherwise it’s all fenced off, as you can see, and pretty hard to get here or get onto.”

“I saw a small building—looked sort of residential—when we rode around the place,” I said. “Right next to the commercial loading dock.”

“Used to be,” the man said, “that Lady Liberty was a lighthouse. In the early 1900s, she was electrified. There were actually nine lamps in her torch, supposedly to guide boats into the harbor. So the house was built for the lighthouse keeper.”

“I never thought of that beacon as a lighthouse,” I said.

“Well, she wasn’t much good at it. She’s actually too tall to be useful to ships trying to navigate the details of the harbor. The Lady is prettier than she is practical.”

“And that house? Is it occupied?”

“Not now,” he said, shaking his head. “There was a caretaker who lived in it for decades with his family, but it got too expensive for the government to keep up. Just last year they moved him out and shut the place down.”

We were off the dock and passed through the entrance in the heavy wire gate that encircled the island.

“I’ll get one of my men over to—”

“Don’t bother with that,” I said. “We’re totally low maintenance. Just got to stick our heads into enough nooks and crannies to satisfy the mayor. Hey, and how do we get those tickets back to you?”

The man shrugged and smiled. “Whatever’s easiest,” he said. “I’ll be here till late tonight and all day tomorrow. Just ask for Walter.”

“You got it, Walter. Four tickets, compliments of the mayor.”

Walter was whistling as he walked away. He turned around and waved at us. “Take a look inside,” he said. “The Lady’s wide-open.”

I gave Walter an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

“Where are you going to get four tickets to Kanye’s show?” Jimmy asked. “Are you hallucinating?”

“You ought to be more worried about where Walter will be working next week unless we get this done quickly.”

“What first?” Mercer asked.

“The Lady herself.”

“Stay together or split up?”

“Start together. She’s huge,” I said. “Once we sweep through her we can make a plan to split the rest of the island into three parts.”

The pedestal itself was enormous. Like the statue, the proportions of her elaborate base were gigantic. Set within the walls of old Fort Wood, the granite-stepped pyramid was a formidable foundation for the iconic lady.

I picked up speed as I went up the steps to the entrance, both men at my heels. I pushed against the huge, heavy door and it opened for us.

The ground floor of the pedestal was where tourists lined up—one thousand a day—for the elevator to take them to the foot of the statue.

“You good on the stairs, Jimmy?” I asked. “It’s about twenty stories to the top of the pedestal.”

He looked at Mercer and me and laughed. “You guys aren’t that old yet, are you?”

“Start climbing.”

“What exactly am I looking for?” he said, taking in the floor around us. “Looks like it’s been swept clean for the VIPs coming tomorrow.”

“Anything. Anything and nothing,” I said.

“And he means nothing,” Mercer said. “If Alex has any way to communicate with us, she’d be trying. Could be she’d break off a fingernail or . . .”

“Manicured. Really pale pink.”

“Or pull out a few strands of hair. A piece of jewelry.”

“Look for writing on the wall,” I said.

“Graffiti?”

“Not that. But maybe something drawn in the dust with her fingers. Even just her initials.”

The elevator door opened. “See you on top.”

I was examining the interior of the elevator cab for the same kinds of things, or even scuff marks that might suggest a struggle.

I took out my phone.

“Checking in with the lieutenant?” Mercer asked.

“Not quite yet. He’s not looking for me and I’m not looking for him,” I said. “I just thought I’d Google the number of steps up to the crown.”

I entered the search.

“You think I’m entirely off track, don’t you?” I kept my eyes on my phone.

“Not a far-fetched theory, actually. And it’s not a lot of territory for us to cover quickly,” Mercer said. “What I like about it is that this place has been shut down since the end of the workday on Wednesday.”

“That, and getting here at two in the morning, there wouldn’t be a soul to interfere.”

“We just have to find a link, if there is one.”

“Walter has to give us a list of the workers,” I said. “Run that against parolees and perps.”

“Who’s going to run all these lists for us? If you’re doing nothing else, you’re generating lists.”

“Coop’s team at the office. They’ll do whatever it takes. One name is all we need,” I said. “I’m thinking Shipley.”

The elevator doors opened and we stepped out onto the landing.

“Shipley and this place?”

“No, no. Somebody in Community Affairs in the Twenty-Eighth Precinct must be all up into being liaison to Fat Hal,” I said. “Much as he hates cops, Community Affairs can tell his peeps that some local orphans should be comped to see Kanye. You know who the liaison is?”

“I can find out.”

“Make a call. You know the reverend can get tickets for this concert. If we make that deal for Walter, we’ll have a list of workmen’s names before we leave the island.”

“You’re right. I’ll call Vickee. She’ll have a department contact who can suss it out without dropping your name.”

I put my hand on his arm. “Do not be calling your wife, Detective Wallace. Do not be telling her what we are up to, okay? She’s sitting three offices away from Keith Scully and she’s very vulnerable emotionally right now. Get this done another way.”

Jimmy wasn’t even breathing hard when he emerged from the staircase. He shook his head at me. “Not so much as a chewing gum wrapper or a cigarette butt.”

“So maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “This whole trip won’t take long. Mercer, why don’t you make some calls and find out what’s going on while Jimmy and I climb up to the crown. Your feet won’t even fit on the steps.”

I leaned back and looked up, through the glass ceiling that had been installed at the very top of the pedestal, at the massive interior of the statue.

Inside her hollow body was a maze of armature, as far up as I could see. It was a vast honeycomb of steel bars, molded to fit the contours of the copper plates, which expanded and contracted with the weather. They ran horizontally and vertically, joined by steel brackets best known as saddles. In here—no place to hide anything or anyone—were many of the thousands of rivets that had to be resecured.

“You ready, Jimmy?”

He was mesmerized by the intricacy of the statue’s interior, the folds of her long copper robe—Coop said it was a stola, copied from the dresses of Roman deities—that rippled down from her shoulders to the very top of her sandaled feet.

“No elevator to the crown?” he asked.

“I just cheated and looked it up. Three hundred and ninety-three steps—almost thirty stories. And they’re narrow and slippery from wear, so hang on.”

I led the way, winding upward in the staircase, determined to get to the top, which I remembered as having enough space to hold a cocktail party, if not a hostage.

The higher we went, the more claustrophobic the feeling. As hot as the afternoon sun had felt, it was about twenty degrees warmer in the body of the statue. There was no air-conditioning and she was airless inside.

When I reached the top, I was disappointed again. The space was remarkably clean, with three large speakers, the latest in high-tech sound systems that looked as though they had just been installed for tomorrow’s concert.

I walked to one of the windows, leaned my back against it, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and tried to catch my breath.

Jimmy was right behind me. I envied the effects of his daily gym routine.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve never been up here. It ought to be a required visit for every American.”

“Damn right.”

The view of the harbor, of the city, of the piece of the Atlantic Ocean that rubbed up against New York, was the most dazzling sight imaginable.

“Seven rays in Liberty’s crown,” I said. “For the seven continents and seven seas. And twenty-five windows right here.”

I moved along from one side of her head to the other, and then crossed back, looking at every frame as a separate photograph of the city.

Each vista offered so many possibilities for kidnappers to hide out. Our task seemed absolutely hopeless from this vantage point.

“Keep your spirits up, Mike,” Jimmy said. “This was such a long shot.”

“Yeah, but if these guys knew Coop—I mean, if they were really out to torture her—here would be the right place to do it.”

“Her vertigo, you mean?”

“Dead-on. She’d still be waiting for me at the foot of the pedestal,” I said. “Dangle her out one of these windows and she’d give up her own mother.”

“So be glad there’s no sign of her here,” Jimmy said, hesitating for a few seconds. “How about the torch? That’s much higher still.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s another forty feet or so. And the only way up there is a ladder.”

“I’ll do it for you. I know you’re not going to quit till you’ve seen this whole place.”

“The torch was replaced thirty years ago. Other than that, it’s been shut down for one hundred years,” I said. “I mean, totally shut down.”

“Accidents on the ladder?”

“Much worse than that.”

“How?”

“Ever hear of the Black Tom explosion? In 1916?”

“Can’t say as I have, Mike.”

I looked out to our right and pointed off to a spot in the harbor, almost adjacent to Liberty Island. “There used to be a spit of land out there called Black Tom. Not much bigger than a sandbar.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Nothing to see now, Jimmy. But back then, the government covered the whole little island with munitions, meant to eventually help the Allies in World War I. In the middle of one hot night in July that year, some saboteurs set fire to the stash, causing a deadly explosion and an inferno that consumed all the ammo as well as the island itself.”

“And hit the statue?”

“Struck right on the torch. It’s never been open to the public since then.”

“How do I get there?”

“I’m going myself. Let’s walk back downstairs a bit. You’ll see a door off to the side, to the left, when we get to the statue’s neck.”

“This Black Tom thing,” Jimmy said, “did they ever catch the guys responsible?”

“You’re a lot like me, always looking for the police angle, aren’t you?”

“You could say worse things.”

“They rounded up some Germans, if I remember right. They were the ones who had the most to gain for the munitions not getting to Europe, but the thinking was that our boys had something to do with it.”

“No kidding. The Irish?”

“In 1916 we were a bit wound up in our own fight for independence,” I said. “Would be just like some thickheaded relative of mine to want to keep the goods out of British hands. You know Clan na Gael?”

“Heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.”

“A powerful group fighting for Irish independence, and their greatest ally during World War I was the Germans. Anything to defeat the Brits. Took hold big-time in America, the clan did. So they were believed to be the driving force behind Black Tom. Besides, there was no question that the Irish controlled the waterfront. Ran the longshoremen’s union. Very little happened in this harbor that wasn’t under their watch.”

I reached the unmarked door first. I turned the knob, but it was locked. I turned the knob again, both ways, and added the weight of my shoulder against it, but it didn’t budge.

“Locked,” I said. “We may need Walter after all.”

“Let me try it,” Jimmy said.

But his effort was no better than mine.

“Let’s go,” I said, and continued on down to the pedestal landing, where Mercer was waiting for us.

“Ready to call it a day?” Mercer asked.

“Why?”

“It’s written all over your face. There’s no trace of Alex here.”

“Who’d you talk to?” I said. “What do you know?”

“Nobody back in command central is doing any better than we are, Mike.”

“No leads? No legit tips? No ransom demands?”

“Nothing,” Mercer said. “Way too quiet for my taste. And yes, the ask is in for tickets for Walter. Why don’t you tell him—somebody will have to pick them up in Manhattan since nobody knows we’re here—and then we’ll go back to 79th Street and you can power down for a few hours.”

I didn’t want to argue with Mercer. We were both running on fumes. “I want to see the inside of that caretaker’s old house before we go. And I need some water or something. I’m really parched.”

I pressed the elevator button and we rode to the pedestal base.

We walked back out into the sunlight and down the steps. We circled the great monument in silence and started walking along the path that cut through the very center of the small island, making our way to the center of the workmen’s sheds.

Halfway there, as we refreshed ourselves by the shade of the trees that lined the path, two young men, not much more than twenty-five years old, passed us going in the other direction. They were headed toward the statue.

“Hey,” Jimmy said to them. “What’s happening?”

They walked on past us without answering. One looked up and acknowledged us with a nod while the other just kept going.

“You want me to check them out, Mike?” he asked.

I took a glance over my shoulder at the two young men, both dressed in work clothes: white T-shirts, jeans, and boots. “No reason to,” I said.

One of them, the taller one—well muscled and tattooed on both arms with colorful art stretching from his shirtsleeves to his wrists—had stopped in his tracks to stare back at us.