Manhattan Lockdown (14 page)

Still holding Oliver's increasingly heavy, blood-soaked body, Gabriel turned to the five steps that led to the door of the brown-stone. Just as he pulled the heavy door shut, he heard the question, “Can you tell us why you were thrown out of the Army?”

***

Raj Gandhi watched the handsome, stricken, angry doctor on the screen of one of the big monitors suspended throughout the newsroom at the
Times
. He had been placing calls to every possible source to get more details, any details, about the phantom detention center on the East River. He was still wary of the information the weird caller had given him. But he was also certain that the Ford that had tailed him, which was so much like those eight-cylinder cars in decades-old movies such as
Bullitt
and
The French Connection,
meant something. The tailing scared him; it had also made him angry. He prized the old-fashioned detachment he brought to his work as a journalist, and he wanted to embrace it now. But he understood the meaning of that tough-guy bluster:
This isn't business, it's personal
.

Raj was standing as he watched the flat screen television. He was intrigued by what he saw in Gabriel Hauser. The man was striking. He had that slender muscularity of a professional soccer player. He was intense, he was well-spoken, and he was vengeful.

Raj Gandhi wanted to speak to Gabriel Hauser.

Raj was resourceful. He had not only his own instincts and training as a reporter, he also had the resources of a fading and uncertain but still potent newspaper that, for the most part, was not afraid of letting its reporters loose to do investigative journalism.

Using his computer, Raj learned several things about Gabriel Hauser. He was thirty-eight. He was the son of a failed concert performer, once a briefly rising star for the New York Philharmonic who had committed suicide when Gabriel was twenty-seven. After several years in the Army, Gabriel was dismissed, in the midst of service in Afghanistan and Iraq, under the
don't ask, don't tell
rules which were then still in place and rigidly enforced. He had sent an angry, bitter letter to the editors at the
Times
, which declined to publish it. Like all other letters submitted to the editors, it had been lodged in the infinite ether of the
Times
archival information.

Checking a database that was even more thorough than census data, Raj located Gabriel Hauser living at 17 East 82
^nd
Street. There was no telephone number. Roaming through other data, Raj found that Cameron Kennedy Dewar lived at the same address and in the same apartment. Again, no telephone number or e-mail address. But a ten second Google search revealed Cameron Kennedy Dewar worked at a public relations firm on West 23
^rd
Street, the area around the wedge-shaped Flatiron Building that had attracted PR firms, publishing houses, and literary agents over the last ten years. They had migrated there from the overpriced office space in midtown Manhattan. The only object on the walls of Raj's sparsely
furnished, undecorated apartment was a reproduction of Alfred Stieglitz's photograph of the Flatiron Building, in the rain at dusk more than a hundred years earlier. He loved that strange, rain-drenched photograph.

Almost from the day more than six months earlier when his byline first appeared in the
Times
as a writer covering the city, Raj started receiving calls from PR people representing companies, executives, lawyers, actors, and sports stars, all that vast array of people who wanted favorable coverage for every jerk in the world in the
New York Times
. One of the cardinal rules Raj had learned when he was in journalism school at Columbia was that you never relied on PR people for information.

Raj was familiar with the firm where Cameron Kennedy Dewar worked. Raj also knew that, if he placed a call there asking for Cameron Kennedy Dewar and identifying himself as a reporter for the
Times
, he would get instant attention. This was his conduit to Gabriel Hauser. For any PR agency, a call from a reporter for the
Times
was like a summons from royalty.

“Can I ask you to hold?” a perky young woman who answered the phone said.

Sixty seconds later, an older woman with a crisp corporate style came on the line. “Mr. Gandhi? This is Jessica Brown. So good to hear from you. What can we do to help you?”

“I'm trying to reach Cameron Dewar.”

“Cameron's not in the office today. Can I help you?”

“I'd like his cell phone number.”

“We haven't heard from him since the attack. His cell may not be working. He lives right next to the museum. Are you sure I can't help you?”

“You can, Miss Brown. I'd like his cell number.”

“Are you working on a story?”

Raj Gandhi was always unnervingly polite. “I'm really not sure. I'm just making calls that I need to make. I'd very much appreciate his number.”

“It's 917-631-0011.” She paused, and in that pause Raj thought about how indifferent this woman was to the fate of someone she knew well. She clearly had no idea whether he was alive or dead, injured or not. She was all business. “Do you want me to repeat that?”

“No, I have it, thank you.”

“I hope I can take you to lunch when the dust settles.”

Raj, who never went to lunch with anyone, said, “That would be nice, Miss Brown.”

***

Three hours later Raj sat on a bench near the merry-go-round in the heart of the southern expanse of Central Park. The afternoon was limpid, as clear as the day before. Incredibly, the merry-go-round was operating. Gleeful-sounding kids sat on the big shiny horses while, less than a mile away, smoke still rose from the shattered museum. Most of the plaster horses reared up, forelegs in the air, perpetually ready to gallop. Raj, who had never seen a merry-go-round while growing up in India, was struck by how terrifying the frozen, brightly painted animals looked.

He recognized Gabriel Hauser. Dressed in a blue blazer and white shirt open at the neck, Gabriel walked toward Raj although he'd never seen him before. It wasn't difficult to recognize an emaciated, intelligent-looking Indian man sitting in the area where they had agreed to meet.

Raj stood up. “Dr. Hauser, thanks for coming.”

Gabriel, who was at least a head taller than Raj Gandhi, said, “Not a problem.”

They sat next to each other. Raj let five seconds pass before he spoke. “I heard what you said on television.”

“That's good. I said it because I wanted people to hear it.”

Gabriel was a man who had learned to hesitate before trusting anyone. He had never before dealt with journalists. He was still stung by that question he had heard two hours earlier as he walked through the door of the brownstone:
Why were you thrown out of the Army?
He realized that he shouldn't have been taken aback by the question. There were hostile people in the world who were quickly searching Google and Yahoo for and finding negative, private information about him. Gabriel said, “Cam told me about your conversation with him.”

“I'm developing a story about the government's reaction to the bombings. More precisely, about violations of people's civil rights.”

“So Cam told me. Now I want to hear you tell me.”

Raj knew that sometimes he needed to give information before he got it. Often the information he let out was not completely accurate, just as many times information he got in exchange wasn't accurate either. With his usual precise diction, an accent that he knew put some people off, he said, “I have sources who tell me secret arrests are taking place.”

Gabriel for the first time managed to get Raj to look into his eyes. He wondered whether the frail-looking man was shy or evasive. Or even a closeted gay man. Gabriel said nothing.

“I have reason to believe there are secret detention centers, black prisons, in Manhattan where these men have been brought.”

Between Gabriel and the frail-looking man was a silver commemorative plaque embedded in the bench's green-painted wood. The engraved lettering read:
To J.C. Lover of the park and of life. Gone too soon. C.T.

Who
, Gabriel wondered,
were these people? Did C.T. still grieve?

“So tell me,” Gabriel said, “why you wanted to see me.”

“I'm looking into more than the violation of their rights, if, in fact, these arrests and detentions have happened.”

“Draw the connection for me.”

“Your rights. Someone has tried to terrorize you.”

“No one is going to terrorize me, Mr. Gandhi. Do you know who's doing all this?”

“I'm not sure, Dr. Hauser. The mayor? The police commissioner? Rogue agents? Homeland Security? I was hoping you'd have some information.”

“Do you?”

There was no trace of bitterness or sarcasm in Gabriel's voice. His eyes were almost blue despite his black and lustrous eyebrows that, set in the perfect symmetry of his face, had attracted so many men and women since Jerome Fletcher first embraced him years ago as he emerged at age fifteen, naked, from the shower in the apartment on West End Avenue.

Raj said, “I have to be honest with you, Dr. Hauser. I have another source who says it was no coincidence that you were near the museum at exactly the same time the bombs went off.”

The automated tin-pan-alley music from the merry-go-round switched from the theme song to
Annie
to the theme of
The Sting
.

“Really? And what genius was that? I live on that block. I was walking the dog I love.”

“The source tells me you were scheduled to work that morning and that you were uncharacteristically insistent on not doing it.”

Gabriel's voice was calm. “Who are we talking about?”

“The source?”

“That word makes him sound like an oracle of truth. Who is he? I need to talk to him. I want to hunt down the people who attacked my partner and my dog this morning. Was he one of them?”

“I wish I could tell you, Dr. Hauser. I promised him anonymity. I can't do my work if I can't keep those promises.”

Suddenly a green Army helicopter, its rotors swirling through the sunlight, passed overhead through the tranquil summer sky. The kids and the parents near the merry-go-round looked up excitedly. Gabriel didn't have to look up because he recognized the unique thudding pulsation of the transport helicopters that had brought wounded men to him.

“The source said you developed contacts in the Middle East.”

“I did. I treated civilians and soldiers, anyone who was brought to the hospitals. It was the most intimate kind of contact you could ever imagine.”

“They say you are bitter.”

“Did they say why?”

“Because you were forced out of the military.”

Gabriel's voice was still calm, the voice of a man who had many times spoken quietly as he was operating on people who were near death and had often died from their irreparable wounds while he did his work. “Who are these people? I became a jihadist because I was forced out of the Army?”

“There are many disturbing things going on right now, Dr. Hauser. Some of them are happening to you.”

Although the last traces of the sound from the Army helicopter were fading, the thuds from the rotors were still almost tangible. The music from the merry-go-round had changed again. It was now a quick, lively version of
God Bless America
.

Gabriel gazed at Raj's absolutely black eyes. “I know that. But what about you, Mr. Gandhi? You're working on troubling things, aren't you? Do you think that being a reporter for the
New York Times
gives you some kind of immunity from harm?”

“I'm not worried about myself, I'm looking for facts.”

“And so am I.”

“Don't you think,” Raj asked, “that we can help each other?”

Gabriel paused. A refreshing breeze, creating glittering green in the leaves, swept over them. “Let me have your iPhone.”

Without asking anything, Raj passed his phone to Gabriel, who added his number to the contact list on Raj's cell phone. “This is a special number for me. No one else has it. Use it when you want to.”

“Do you want mine?”

“I have it. You called me, Mr. Gandhi. As they say in the movies, I've got your number.”

R
OLAND FORTUNE LIKED
people. He loved walking the streets of the city. He often left City Hall to make unexpected appearances in all the boroughs, walking several blocks each time, instantly and always recognizable. He ran almost every weekend in races in Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and Flushing Meadows in Queens. He attended Mass in churches throughout the city and spoke at Baptist churches in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. And he was a regular presence at parties in the houses of the rich on the Upper East Side and in Tribeca. He was a man who loved the joy of living each day.

He was also an unrepentant liberal who knew how to practice an old style of politics. The police and fire department unions, overcoming their initial reluctance about a Puerto Rican mayor, embraced him because he cooperated with them on pay and benefits. This was a sea change. Ever since the Giuliani and Bloomberg years, the unions had expected resistance from City Hall. The leaders of the immense civil service populations, men and women in the sanitation department, the schools, all the myriad government agencies praised him as “cooperative, farsighted, inspirational.”

So when word had spread that Roland was very disturbed that he didn't know where Sarah's body was located, a group of men and women in the medical examiner's office organized themselves to track down her remains. They found her in a temporary morgue that
had been installed at the long-abandoned St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village. The exterior white walls of the increasingly derelict building were graying under the steady accretion of rain and sunlight, soot and time. But even these decaying buildings on this bright afternoon somehow looked fresh.