If You Were Here (24 page)

“Did Susan tell you she was pregnant?” she asked.

“No. Obviously not. I would have told the police.”

If Getty knew more than he was letting on, she hadn’t caught him. “So, you need to get back to the courthouse?”

“After the big interrogation, that’s all you have to say?”

“I figured you were busy, that’s all. I really appreciate the time, Will.”

She could tell he wanted to say something, but he pushed the tray in her direction, shook his head, and left without a word. He let the bakery door slam behind him. So much for her last remaining ADA friend.

The meeting hadn’t been a complete bust. She had been thinking so much about the gun next to Marcus Jones’s body that she’d completely glossed over the reason Scott Macklin had been at the pier in the first place. She remembered the bits and pieces of the argument that Susan’s neighbor had overheard. “Smack” and “important.” Smack was Mac. Important? Could have been “import.” If Macklin had been involved in a smuggling operation at the piers, that would explain how Marcus Jones and Pamela Morris had become a threat.

McKenna found the business card she was looking for in her purse.

“Agent Mercado, this is McKenna Jordan. I want to propose a deal.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

I
want to propose a deal.
McKenna thought the line was pretty good bait. The promise of a swap. A quid pro quo. She thought it would draw the FBI agent in.

Once again, Mercado wasn’t like other FBI agents. She hung up.

At least she picked up the phone on the second try. McKenna forewent the cool pitch, trying an earnest approach. She actually said, “Cross my heart, you’ll want to hear this.” Combined with the desperate tone, it probably amounted to groveling. But it worked. She was back at the Federal Building and had Mercado’s attention.

“I have information for you.”

“Good. Let’s hear it.”

“Because I’m a lawyer,” McKenna said, “I know I’m not obligated to turn over information out of the goodness of my heart.”

“I can subpoena you to testify in front of the grand jury.”

“You can. But then I’ll move to quash that subpoena, and you won’t be able to tell a judge what you even want to ask me. Even if you do haul me before the grand jury, once again, you don’t know what to ask me.”

“So, just like some scumbag codefendant invoking the Fifth Amendment, you want a deal.”

“Call me what you want, Mercado, but I’ve seen the look of an investigator who’s hot on the trail, with every piece falling into place, and it’s only a matter of time before the entire thing comes together. I’ve also seen the opposite, where every road is a dead end, every promising tip a brick wall. You look like you’ve been hitting dead ends and brick walls.”

Mercado held her gaze for a few seconds, then gave her a grudging smile. “What do you want? ”

“The morning after the bombing in Brentwood, you asked me about four names. I know that two of them are already in custody. I assume the other two were cohorts?”

“Again, not sure why I’d tell you anything. I’ve heard about your brand of journalism. Not real interested.”

“Fine. Just listen. I know that Greg Larson is the de facto leader of the P3s. That leaves one other name on your list—Pamela Morris. It sounded like you didn’t know where Larson and Morris were or whether they died in the bombing. I have information about Pamela Morris. And I mean rock-solid information.”

“Is she with Larson?”

Mercado’s question meant she had not yet received confirmation that Larson or Morris had died in the explosion.

“I don’t know, but—” McKenna stopped when Mercado got up to leave the conference room. “Hold on, hear me out. I know
who
she is, and her real name’s not Pamela Morris. And because I know who she is, I know a context to her work with the P3s that, frankly, you’re clueless about.”

Finally, McKenna had gotten her interest. Jamie Mercado was not used to being called clueless.

“What do you need from me?”

“I need your word that you’ll do me a favor.”

Another smile, this one condescending. “You’ve got to understand something.
My
word? In
my
world? It actually means something. I can’t give you my word when you ask for something that amorphous.”

“Fine. You want specifics? Part one—I show you a photograph of the woman you’ve been looking for, the woman you know as Pamela Morris. You take that to the two P3s you have in custody. They’ll confirm it’s her. That should earn me enough goodwill for part two: you promise to answer two questions for me—one having to do with a cargo inspection ten years ago, and one about a search of my office this week. Since I trust that you’re a person of her word, once you promise me that, I’ll fill in the connections. Is that specific enough for you?”

“Jesus, Jordan, you’re a piece of work. Just give me the picture already.”

McKenna handed her a photograph of Susan. “See if they recognize her. But tell them the picture’s ten years old.”

Mercado took a quick glance and dropped the print on the table. “What are you trying to pull? This is that missing woman you’ve been Tweeting about—Susan Hopman or whatever.”

“Hauptmann. We had a deal, Agent Mercado. Show the two prisoners the picture. You’ll get a match. And then I’ll explain. I promise. My word means something, too.”

“One of them lawyered up, but I still have the younger one hanging on by a thread. We’re about to go in for another round with her, in fact.”

“It’ll be worth your time. I promise.”

Ten minutes later, Mercado confirmed it: the woman who’d been living as Pamela Morris was Susan Hauptmann.

“Enough with all the game playing,” Mercado said. “What’s your angle?”

M
cKenna told Mercado everything with the linear precision of a lawyer’s narrative. Susan’s disappearance. The pregnancy. The elderly neighbor hearing an argument with repeated mentions of “smack” (Mac) and “important” (import). Susan’s reappearance on the subway platform, wearing a backpack tying her to the P3s, and everything that had happened since: McKenna losing her job; Scott Macklin’s supposed suicide a day after Susan visited his house; the Cleaner who wiped out the subway footage of Susan; the shooting at Grand Central Station; her suspicions about Will Getty.

“Look,” Mercado said, “I’m sorry about your husband, but you’ve mistaken me for someone who cares about your friend’s disappearance or whatever the fuck happened ten years ago between a dead kid and a former—and now dead—cop.”

“Very sensitive, Agent.”

“It’s not my job to be sensitive. You came here with a promise of information. Tell me how this jumble of data helps me get to the bottom of a nationwide ecoterrorism organization.”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“Yes, and patiently, I might add.”

McKenna resisted the temptation to use a condescending tone herself. “I didn’t see it at first, either. But there’s only one explanation for Susan Hauptmann living in that house in Brentwood. She was strictly law-and-order. A hard-core, chain-of-command, work-within-the-system type. The complete antithesis of a group like the P3s.”

“So why was she there?”

“Because for ten years, she has somehow managed to support herself. I know Susan. She’s industrious. She could take her military experience and talk her way into a decade of work with private security firms without revealing her true identity—the kind of firm that might not ask too many questions if an operative proved she was talented enough. The kind of outfit that might engage in the domestic surveillance you’re not allowed to conduct as an agent of the government.”

She saw a flicker of recognition in Mercado’s face, part excitement, part frustration that she hadn’t seen it earlier.

“She was hired to be there,” Mercado said.

“I’d bet everything on it. No one’s more motivated to bring down a gang of activists than the corporations left paying the bills from their handiwork. And those corporations can afford to hire the best. Once you know who her clients were, you can subpoena them for information. It would be illegal surveillance if it originated with the FBI, but if a private party gathered it—”

Mercado finished the thought. “It’s fair game. We’re regulated, but they’re not. They can pose as sympathizers. Snoop in e-mails. Bug phones.”

“They’ll have names, locations, dates, target information. The starting point is finding Susan Hauptmann, which is where my questions come in. On October 16, 2003, NYPD Officer Scott Macklin was working on some kind of container inspection at the West Harlem piers. I’m trying to figure out the specifics. If we can tie Will Getty to it, we might have enough evidence for a wiretap. Catch his connection to Susan.”

Without a word, Mercado left the conference room. She returned twenty minutes later. “Remember how, after 9/11, we figured out that however high we ramped up security at airports, we still had these gaping holes in our border because of cargo inspection? The newly formed Homeland Security Department cranked up the search requirements but didn’t have the systems to keep pace. Containers were getting so backed up at the Port Authority that they literally ran out of storage space. Fancy imported food was going bad. Just a big backlog.”

“The NYPD was filling in?”

“To streamline cargo inspection, a federal-state cooperative Homeland Security task force created a preapproval process for shippers and receivers.” When Mercado described the program, McKenna felt a tug at the threads of her long-term memory. “Frequent importers and exporters could get prescreened to receive cargo with less rigorous inspection. Shipments could skip the usual receiving ports for spot-checking at local piers, and then the approved receivers would conduct a full search on their own and certify that they didn’t receive any unauthorized items. Participants were high-volume, high-credibility entities.”

Mercado was blabbing along, living up to her end of the bargain, when McKenna realized that Patrick once told her that the museum was authorized to participate in the preapproved cargo program. She remembered him working nights, inspecting art shipments.

She tried to retain control over her own thoughts. She tried to stop the images of Patrick with Susan. Without McKenna. Talking about McKenna. Enjoying the thrill of getting away with it.

She needed to focus. “Is there any way to find out which preapproved shippers were receiving cargo that night? Maybe we can find a connection to Susan.”

“I’ll have to reach out to Homeland Security, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“One more thing, Agent. I don’t want to push my luck, but why’d you bother searching my office? What did you think you were going to find there?”

Mercado looked amused. “I only
wish
I had the time to care so much about you, Jordan. If someone searched your office, it sure as hell wasn’t the Bureau.”

M
cKenna found Bob Vance on his way to Vic’s Bagels. Her former editor was Rain Man–like in his consistency. Vic’s was known for its multitudinous toppings. Signature menu items included the Tokyo Tel Aviv Express with wasabi and edamame, or the Vermonter with bacon, maple syrup, and cinnamon. You could make your own spread, with mix-ins as diverse as pesto, corn, or potato chips.

Bob Vance? Plain bagel, butter, lox, and tomatoes, untoasted, every day around two-thirty.

On instinct, he smiled when he spotted McKenna, but then he shook his head as reality set in. “Too soon, my dear. Get a lawyer to talk to the magazine’s lawyers. Maybe they’ll work something out.”

“I’m not here to beg for my job, Bob. The FBI agent who searched my office. Was he this man?” She showed him a photograph of the Cleaner. His picture had not yet been released to the press after the shooting.

“Yeah, that’s the one. You’re not stalking an FBI agent, are you? I wouldn’t mess around with that.”

Yesterday she would have savored telling him he’d been duped. That his magazine’s lawyers were idiots who didn’t know enough about criminal law to check out their copy of the warrant, if they’d even been served with one. She would have used the infiltration as proof that someone was trying to discredit her, and she would have insisted on getting her job back.

Now she didn’t really care about any of it.

“So who’s the guy in the picture?” he asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“You should reach out to Dana. She quit in a huff about the magazine letting you go, but I saw her talking to that agent outside the building.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

I
n a strange way, McKenna had always been intimidated by Dana, who was younger, shorter, and less educated, but bold enough to pierce her tongue and stomp through a newsroom in a tank top with her bra straps showing. She dropped the F-bomb without mercy. And she didn’t seem to care that she usually smelled like garlic.

McKenna realized now that all of the brashness was a veil. Dana pretended to place art above real-world concerns like employment, rent, and a retirement account, but she was a phony. She was for sale, no less than the corporate drones she liked to mock.

She wasn’t even worth a subway ride to Brooklyn. McKenna could deal with her in a phone call.

“Hey there, M.”

One night on the girl’s daybed, and Dana was using a nickname that only Patrick called her.

“Do you realize that what you did amounts to wire fraud under the federal criminal code?”

“What are you talking about?”

McKenna gave her a brief tutorial in the law. As an employee, Dana owed the magazine her duty of honest services. By taking a bribe and then using the Internet to delete the magazine’s intellectual property (the video of Susan) and to fabricate a false story about Judge Knight’s supposed e-mails, she had committed wire fraud. The maximum sentence was twenty years.

Dana continued to deny it.

“I’m not playing with you, Dana. You are in so far over your five-foot-tall head that you can’t begin to understand the rain of hell I will bring down on you. The man who hired you? Bob Vance saw you together. He’s dead now. Maybe you woke up long enough today to hear about the shooting at Grand Central? He was killed, and my husband nearly was, too.”

Dana was making “oh my God” noises on the other end of the line.

“Shut up, Dana. And grow up. I am giving you one chance to do what I’m telling you. After that, I go to the U.S. attorney’s office, and you take your chances with a grand jury.”

“I’ll do anything, McKenna. I didn’t know—I thought it was just one story. Then you got fired. And oh my God, that guy’s
dead
? And Patrick—”

“What did that man want from you?”

“At first I didn’t know. He offered me two hundred bucks to tell him what you were working on. I told him about the Knight story—your search for a smoking gun. He paid me five grand to make it look like you manufactured your own evidence.”

“I got
fired
for that, Dana.” Worse. Because of Dana, McKenna had suspected her own husband of being behind the setup.

“I didn’t think it would be that bad. It was a
lot
of money. That’s like almost three months’ pay. I was supposed to keep him updated. When you got the video of the subway lady, he gave me another grand to delete it.”

“So the temper tantrum you threw about your backup being deleted was bogus.”

“I didn’t know you’d get fired. When I quit, it was my way of trying to make it up to you.”

“Your being out of a job does absolutely nothing to help me, Dana. Nothing about your life is at all relevant to mine.”

“You don’t have to be such a bitch—”

“I’m pretty sure that’s
exactly
what I need to be right now. Because here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to Bob Vance—in person, at
NYC
magazine—and you’re going to tell him what you did. You can make whatever lame excuse you want: alcoholism, bipolar disorder, I’d probably go with a practical joke that got out of hand. You already quit, so I doubt they’ll do anything more to punish you. But you
will
make it clear that you were the one who set me up on the Knight article.

“Alternatively, I will make sure the U.S. attorney’s office knows that you accepted a bribe and forged e-mails under the name of a sitting New York County supreme court judge. Do I need to ask you more than once?”

M
cKenna’s pulse was just returning to normal when her cell phone rang. She recognized the general number for the district attorney’s Office.

“This is McKenna.”

Getty didn’t bother introducing himself. “You know, Wright, I was the one person in the office who defended you when the Macklin case imploded. I felt responsible for your going public. But you know what? You proved today that my initial instincts were right. Every bad word anyone has ever said about you is right. You’ve got no judgment.”

What comes around goes around. She had just gone off on Dana, and now Will Getty was venting at her.

“Will, you have no idea what I’m dealing with right now. I just had a few questions—”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You were basically accusing me of knowing something about Susan’s disappearance and taking perjured testimony from James Low to cover up for a bad cop. It’s ridiculous. But if you want to start throwing accusations at every man who fell into Susan’s bed, there’s another name you should know about.”

Don’t say it, Will. Please don’t say it.

“I told you before that things didn’t work out with Susan and me. I said it was because of the deployment, because I was trying to protect your feelings. But there was something else. She told me she was in love with one of her best friends and wanted to make something work with him.”

No, don’t say it. Don’t say it. No, no, no.

“Guess what, Wright? The friend was none other than your husband, Patrick Jordan. Maybe you better find out what he knows before you weave together your master conspiracy theory.”

The line fell silent. She tasted bile in the back of her throat.

Her phone chirped again in her hand. If Getty was calling to apologize, it was too late. Some things could not be taken back.

The call was from a different number.

“This is McKenna.”

“I’m calling for Dr. Gifford at Lenox Hill Hospital. We thought you’d like to know that your husband is awake. He’s awake, and he’s talking. He made it.”