Red Hook (28 page)

“We’re looking at a double murder, Sergeant. With a conspiracy to commit. If that isn’t a media case, I don’t know what is.”

Tanney’s face tightened. “Are you threatening me, Detective?”

Jack sighed. “No, sir. I would never have kept my shield this long if I was the kind who would talk to the press.”

“Let it go, Jack. I want you to help Santiago with the Cobble Hill thing, full-time.”

“You’re ordering me off the Berrios case?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re just gonna drop it?”

“No, I’ll put Mickey on it. I need you for the more pressing case.”

Jack got in his car and rolled down the window while he waited for the AC to start blowing cold.

Take a minute to make sure you’re doing the right thing, he told himself. As a detective, he knew that he had a lot of power and he was conscientious about not abusing it. He didn’t like Heiser on a personal level—could that be why he was so convinced the real estate man was guilty?

Hell, even if a detective was biased somehow, that didn’t make the suspect innocent.

He pictured the knife wound in Tomas Berrios’s chest. Pictured a terrified Raymond Ortslee holding up his hands as the knife slashed down. And he pictured Red Hook, abandoned, stinking with trash. That filled him with the righteous rage he needed.

“You don’t need to stir up problems unless you have some concrete reason,” Tanney had said. Randall Heiser had told several direct lies to a member of the Homicide Task Force. Any self-respecting cop could see that that was an insult. And reason enough.

Traffic was bad. Going over the Brooklyn Bridge, it slowed until everything was funneled through one tight lane. Then it stopped altogether. Jack sat and watched the temperature gauge rise.

He’d thought of calling Gary Daskivitch, asking him to ride along. (The Berrios case officially belonged to his partner.) But if the shit had to hit the fan, he wanted the young detective safely out of the way.

Finally, the cars began to crawl forward. Near the Manhattan end of the bridge, the reason for the delay became apparent: a dented utility van with tinted windows had slammed into the back of a yellow cab, sending the taxi skidding into a guard rail. Shattered glass glittered on the roadway and paramedics swarmed over the accordioned cab. The right lane was clear and traffic should have been moving, but everyone was slowing down to rubberneck, hoping for a glimpse into the glass-toothed mouth of the cab’s rear window. Hoping for blood.

Sumner International was headquartered in a fancy new skyscraper on Fifty-second Street. Jack emerged from the elevator to find two sleek-looking women with telephone headsets sitting behind a huge circular teak desk in the reception area.

One of them, a beautiful young woman in a canary-yellow suit, held up her forefinger as she finished with a call.

“May I help you?” she said.

“I’m here to see Randall Heiser.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?” She raised her finger again as another call came through the switchboard.

Jack veered around the desk and picked a direction.

“Sir,”
the receptionist called, “you can’t go back there.”

He headed down a hallway full of people in cubicles clacking away at keyboards. Everything was plush, modern, expensive. The computers looked brand-new.

The receptionist called out again, louder this time.

He hurried on. He turned a corner and leaned over a cubicle. “Hey, which way is Heiser’s office?”

A harried secretary was immersed in her computer screen. “Down the hall and to the left. It’s the corner office—you can’t miss it.”

Sensing that she might have been too free with this information, she looked up. “Is he expecting you?”

Jack was already moving. “We’re old friends,” he said.

He pressed on, ignoring the anxious voice of the receptionist who was now following behind.

He found the corner office and wrenched the door open. A floor-to-ceiling tinted window dominated the far wall. Across a huge plush carpet, Randall Heiser looked up from his desk in surprise.

The receptionist burst in behind Jack. “I’m sorry, sir—I asked him to wait, but he just—”

“It’s okay, Helen,” Heiser said. “Perhaps the gentlemuhn is in the market for a little real estate.”

“Not exactly. I’m doing a little follow-up on the murder of your porter, Tomas Berrios.”

Heiser waved a hand and the receptionist withdrew, closing the door behind her.

“You just happened to be in Manhattan? That’s a long way from Coney Island, isn’t it?”

“Was, sir, it certainly is.” He wondered how the man knew that the Brooklyn South Task Force was based near Coney. That wasn’t a secret, but it was hardly common knowledge.

He walked across the carpet and gazed out the huge window. Forty-nine stories—the only time he’d seen Manhattan from this high up was when he’d visited the Empire State Building. Down below, tiny pedestrians marched past the red-and-yellow umbrellas of hot dog stands. Strings of taxis flowed up Park Avenue like blood cells pulsing through a vein. The air-conditioning system whispered softly.

Jack pulled out his steno pad. “I don’t want to waste your time. Does Sumner International own a garage on Coffey Street in Red Hook?”

Heiser leaned back in his massive, padded leather chair. “I have no idea.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re the parent company to a number of real estate and development companies. All told, Sumner owns well over a hundred properties. Many of them are significant, but our companies manage all sorts of small buildings. Surely you don’t expect me to have memorized every one.”

Across the river stretched the flat plain of Queens; farther south, Brooklyn disappeared into a haze. From this high up, homes and streets and stores were just part of tracts of land. Sites for development. Like Robert Moses before him, Heiser wouldn’t have to care about what might happen to the people so far below. If Red Hook was buried under thousands of tons of trash, the smell would never waft up here.

“Is there some problem, Detective? Something I can help you with?”

“Maybe. The last time I talked to you, you said you hadn’t been to Red Hook recently. Can you remember the last time you were there?”

“I travel constantly, all over the country. No offense, but a visit to Brooklyn would not constitute the most mem’rable occasion.”

Never the direct answer. Jack decided on a more forceful approach. “Were you in Brooklyn on May eighth of this year?”

“I don’t remember,” Heiser snapped. “And I have no idea why you’ve come barging into my office to ask me such an irrelevant question.”

“You got a traffic ticket in Red Hook on that date. Let’s try another one: were you in Brooklyn on July twelfth of this year?”

The real estate mogul narrowed his eyes. “That was the day that poor man was murdered. I think you’ve gone far beyond the bounds here, Detective. I don’t know what your problem is, but if you have further questions, you’ll need to direct them to my lawyers. Tell me something: do you enjoy working for the city?”

Jack weighed the implied threat. “Yes, sir, as a matter of fact I do. And it would take quite a lot to stop me from doing my job. You can complain all you want.”

“If you keep badgering me, you can be damn certain I
will
complain.” Heiser stood up abruptly. “Goodbye, Detective. I wish you the best of luck. This seems to be a difficult case for you—you might need it.”

The man’s smug manner infuriated Jack. He knew he was going too far, being outrageously unprofessional—he could hear himself saying the words but couldn’t stop them: “I don’t think I’ll need luck. Do you really think you can commit murder and walk away? You screwed up, dirtbag, and I’m gonna nail your rich little ass to the wall.”

Heiser started to sputter something about his lawyers, but Jack turned on his heel and walked out.

On the drive back from Manhattan, his beeper went off. Sergeant Tanney’s number, at the Homicide Task Force office. Urgent code. Jack shook his head: Heiser certainly hadn’t wasted any time.

He thought of turning his beeper off and pretending he hadn’t gotten the page. He thought of staying in his car and driving until he ran out of highway. Canada. Or Key West.

He headed back to Coney Island.

“Close the door behind you,” Tanney said.

From the grim expression on the sergeant’s face, the man might as well have been holding a cane. Jack sat down.

“Do you remember what we discussed the last time we talked?” the shift commander asked. “Just a couple of hours ago?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“I know that I haven’t been here long, that you haven’t gotten a chance to know me very well, but tell me: do I look like an idiot to you?”

Jack didn’t answer.

Tanney sighed. “Look—I’m not here to break anybody’s balls unnecessarily. I try to leave that to One PP.” He stood up, walked around his desk, and looked up at the left wall. An acetate-covered chart ran the length of the office, bearing a list of victims. Each name was written in black if the case was closed, red if it was still open. The primary detective’s initials were attached to the right of each victim’s name. Jack knew what the board told the sergeant: not only was his shift running behind in the ever-continuing race to clear away the red, but Jack’s name was attached to fewer cases than most of his colleagues.

Tanney turned. “I told you to give this case a rest. Next thing I know, you’re running in to Manhattan to flog it.”

“That prick complained again, did he?”

“Why do you have such a hard-on for this guy, Leightner? If there was some sort of tangible evidence, maybe I could understand your behavior.”

“The man lied. Don’t you want to know why?”

“One thing you should know about me, Detective, is that I don’t talk just to feel my lips flap. We don’t need to discuss this any more. I want you to take some time off. To rest up and think about the priorities of the squad.”

“No, thank you.
Sir.
”

“I’m not asking you—I’m telling you.”

“You’re suspending me?”

“That’s right. For ‘willful disobedience of a lawful order.’ Until further notice.”

“But you can’t—”

“I can’t afford to have a loose cannon rolling around these decks. If you want, you can appeal through the union. That’s all, Detective. Put your gun and your shield on my desk, and leave the door open on your way out.”

“So don’t say hello,” called out Mary Gaffney from behind the desk downstairs.

Jack thought he detected a look of pity on her face, even though he knew that was impossible; the news could not have spread through the building that fast. He ducked his head and jogged past her, just as he had avoided his comrades in the task force squad room.

He missed the weight of his detective’s shield in his pocket. For almost twenty years he’d carried it off duty and on. It was his armor, his flag, his totem of power.

A blast of heat met him as he pushed through the back door of the building. He was used to striding through that door with a sense of purpose, but now he didn’t have anywhere to go. He stood still, heart twisted with anger and shame.

His son’s voice echoed in his head:
loser.

Out in the street beyond the parking lot, a couple of kids were having a contest, seeing who could ride his bike the farthest on a wheelie. The air was so humid that already Jack could feel sweat soaking his chest. He took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. One of the kids came down hard on his front wheel and swerved, narrowly missing a car. The other kids hooted and laughed.

Jack took a deep breath and set out across the sweltering blacktop toward his car.

D
OWN BENEATH THE SEAWALL
, the waves slapped green-stained, mossy rocks. Jack sat on a bench on the Red Hook Garden Pier, drinking from a pint of Jim Beam and watching the late afternoon sun hit the bay in fierce jangly diamonds of silver. Rusty old tankers plodded past the Statue of Liberty, out to sea. To the left a rocky promontory stretched a hundred yards out into the water; big wall-size slabs of concrete from an abandoned Red Hook construction project lay jumbled on it, someone’s well-ordered plan knocked down like a house of cards. In the harbor, a distant buoy rang a mournful note.

The distant shorelines of Staten Island and Jersey were half smothered by a hot white haze, but Jack could still make out a forest of loading cranes over the busy Jersey ports. And he could see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge arcing across the water to the far south. Why had Tomas Berrios cared about that bridge? Maybe it seemed like a promise: of escape, of life going on somewhere besides these crappy streets. The kid’s bicycle hadn’t carried him far enough.

Berrios was beyond all cares—it was himself Jack needed to be concerned about now. He frowned. After all these years, he hadn’t managed to make a much better job of life than his old man. Another father who wasn’t ready for the job. Maybe it was bad blood.

His father hadn’t been all bad, though. He got mean mostly on paydays, when the booze took hold. Other times, he showed a different side. One Fourth of July Jack and his brother had bought some cheap fire-works out of someone’s trunk. Their mother and father stood on the sidewalk in front of the Red Hook Houses to watch as they crouched down in the street to light them. One of the little fountains tipped over as soon as the fuse reached the cone and it spun out across the street like a crazy whizzing top, chasing an ornery neighbor halfway down the block. Jack expected another explosion from his father, but instead the old man laughed so hard he sank down onto the sidewalk and lay gasping on his back.

Another memory, this one a photo, his father’s pride and joy, a yellowed clipping from
Life
magazine. The photographer had climbed a lamp post to snap a crowd of World War II soldiers packed into a European square, grinning as they waved newspapers with a huge one-word headline: “PEACE.” As a boy, Jack had loved to scan the faces in the photo until he found his father looking up at the camera with a small, enigmatic smile. His father, the victor, staring across time and space.