The Big Fear (21 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

IDLEWILD

Leonard Mitchell, soaked and broken in the tatters of his work uniform, couldn’t help but notice that Roshni appeared pressed and fit, still in her silk suit, long after midnight. She had slept in the suit, or maybe she hadn’t slept at all, instead pacing through her near-empty office waiting for the computers to spew out another faraway tragedy. The cool metal glow from the screens enchanted the office, otherwise dark. Sitting at one of them, looking over his shoulder at her before slipping in the hard drive, Leonard wondered at her poise. Imperial cheekbones, stone-dark eyes, and a twenty-first century indeterminate skin tone. He had always considered Roshni Saal a zealot. But didn’t he need a zealot now? Hadn’t the hour grown desperate? The machine caught the drive and buzzed awake.

Leonard felt slow and sick and hot and tired. “Roshni. Is there anywhere in here I can clean up? Is there a shower?”

“The bathroom is in the hallway. There’s a sink.”

He had seen the sink. It wouldn’t do him any good. He could splash enough water on his face to keep him awake for half an hour, but if he needed to go back out in the world and not stand out like a homeless man, he would need another plan. He thought as he shuffled in his chair. As he did, Roshni stepped away from him disapprovingly.

“Where did you get that?”

“I told you. I went to Davenport’s apartment. I found what she had been working on.”

“No. Not the hard drive. That.”

The gun was still crammed in the back of his pants. He marveled that he had made it on the subway ride and the walk here without it being spotted. Now he was alone with someone who could maybe help him. Would maybe be his ally. And she had spotted it right away.

“I told you that I’m in danger, Roshni.”

“You don’t have the gun because you’re in danger. You are in danger because you have the gun.”

In one sense this was true, but Leonard couldn’t tell her that yet. He still needed her help. And as much as she didn’t like cops, he was pretty sure she didn’t think killing one was the best plan. He could explain that to her too. But he wouldn’t be able to explain away the dozens of officers who would come to arrest them if they knew he was here.

He lifted the gun and set it slowly on the counter, the barrel against the wall. “I’m pretty sure that this belonged to Brian Rowson. The dead detective. The police took it from the scene so that they could frame up Mulino, and they were going to use it to frame me up tonight.”

“Mulino killed that detective on the boat. Whether or not he had a gun, Mulino killed him.”

“Maybe. But if he was set up, don’t you want to know why? Don’t you want to see what they are planning to do next?”

As if on cue, the computer gave birth to the hoard of files on Davenport’s little drive. Some of it they had seen before. Plans for the crane. A schematic showing how to get into the restaurant where the rats had been let out. A series of codes to the security doors of the chemical factory. And e-mails sent to someone at EHA, explaining all of it. Now decoded, except for the recipient. Brian Rowson had been writing EHA to give a quick little heads-up to the money people that the job was about to be done.

But there was more. Davenport had added to the trove of documents she’d been given by the bank. She had tapped in or broken into the NYPD computers herself. Leonard had seen the scraps of the IAB investigations, but this was new. A digital dossier on all the Harbor Patrol cops and a few more, showing what they’d been accused of, how they had been cleared, and their new assignment. Del Rio had been busted for working at a card game. Rowson had stolen the earrings. Davies had shot a man’s dog when executing a search warrant. Each investigation had started honest enough, but each had been dropped before it was done. And at the end of each file was the same neat signature closing the case and reassigning the officer. A signature that Leonard couldn’t believe that he recognized. The officers had mostly been reassigned to Harbor, under Sparks’s command. The few that hadn’t—Officer Davies and another—were assigned to the Seven-Oh, just like they said. Only they too had special notes regarding an assignment to Sergeant Sparks.

“Sparks has a small army of officers. A whole command that will do whatever he says.”

Roshni was standing just close enough to see, but far enough to show her disdain, for the gun if not for Leonard.

“I see.”

He turned to the next file. Payment records. Wire deposits. Every two weeks, ten days sometimes. Tens of thousands at a time. The next page showing the account holder: James Sparks. So the sergeant was at the center, after all. Not just sending his officers out to bust heads. But getting paid for sabotage. There was nothing on where the money was coming from. Nothing to show that EHA was bribing the officers, that it was dictating what buildings to wreck and which businesses to destroy. Another page. The e-mails they’d seen before. These to EHA, telling them that jobs had been completed. Davenport had cracked the code that had been used. The e-mails where short and plain and had been sent just hours before each of the little disasters. One had been sent the night that Mulino had shot Rowson on the container ship. The last one.

“How did she get all this?”

The room was quiet, and even this late, it was sufferingly hot. The open windows offered feeble hope of a breeze, not enough to counter the glow coming off the computers. Never mind that there wasn’t any wind, the streets outside were slowly piling up with garbage, and the wet, heavy air from the outside injected just as much misery as the wet, heavy air inside.

“I don’t know how she got it. But we have it now.”

And the last set of documents came onto the screen. Something new. Blueprints, designs. A path into a basement. A computer-generated lobby design, maybe from a real estate firm. Except this one was highlighted with red arrows and cross-signs, pointing out sight lines and emergency exits. The next page, a map of the basement. Six markings on it, each noting “structural support” and “carrying capacity twenty-six tons.” Each marking followed by a bright-red
X
.

The schematics were all marked with the logo of Idlewild Construction. One of the many that had been busy hoisting buildings during the boom, only to slow down during the slump. But Idlewild had been back in the game quicker than most. It had a few new buildings to boast of. Like the one they were looking at the blueprints for. Leonard wouldn’t have to look up the stock price to know it was booming. Or to know how quickly it could drop after the wrong kind of news.

Roshni said it first. “It’s a demolition plan. It’s a map of how to take down a building.”

Leonard nodded. Davenport had found the next target after all.

“Roshni. You’re going to have to help me. I know someone who can put us in touch with the FBI. We can give them the documents. They can investigate. And they can stop this.”

The third computer down the line chimed forth a small cold noise. Roshni walked over to it and peered at the screen. A woman in Moscow had died of diabetic shock on the way to the precinct after being arrested at an anti-government protest. So much unfairness in things to keep track of.

Leonard was scrolling through the pictures. The plan was detailed and precise, the building familiar. It was obvious in retrospect, the perfect target.

“Roshni, look.” She turned from her printout and stared at the plans. Page after page of schematics.

“Oh, Leonard.” Roshni stared at the diagrams. As Leonard scrolled the pages, the whole plan came into view. A final slide: the basement floor. Her walnut eyes open wide, she leaned over his shoulder. “Leonard, you can’t go to the FBI.”

Leave it to the zealot to be rational. Because Leonard was in no position to call this one in. After what he had done that night, he couldn’t walk up to the NYPD, the FBI, and show them what he’d found. He’d be in solitary before they ever looked at the file. But there were places to go other than law enforcement. He tried to sound reassuring when he spoke.

“I have someone who can help. Someone who knows about this all.”

“That isn’t it, Leonard. Look.”

She scrolled to the top of the page. Printed in neat small letters above the schematic was the phrase “Target Schedule.” And a date.

“You see, Leonard, there just isn’t time. That isn’t even tomorrow anymore. That’s today.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

SKETCH

Ralph Mulino kept a chair by his workspace to prop his right knee up. It hurt if it wasn’t elevated, but he couldn’t turn into one of those people that went whole hog and actually put his feet up on the desk. Carving out a private workspace in Property had been challenge enough. He’d had to agree to an early tour, and had been at Gold Street before six. He would lose even this meager perk if anyone thought he looked sloppy. He was piecing together a picture of the cop he was looking for, based on the people he had spoken to on the Ferry. Medium build, curly hair. A couple of people had mentioned that the cop had funny-looking eyes, but no one could quite describe why. It was a picture of an ordinary rookie, like a thousand others who had come out of the academy and got fed into a precinct to figure out for themselves if they were going to be the right or the wrong kind of cop. Most officers know within a year, and most stick with their choice their whole career. If this guy was sneaking off the Staten Island Ferry with people who turned up dead not so long later, though, he was more than the ordinary wrong type of cop. Mulino sipped on his coffee and turned the portrait around on his knee.

“Did you hear?” It was one of the newly reassigned officers. You never ask what they did to get dropped here. Some kind of Russian name. Mansky. They make Russian cops now. Once upon a time, Mulino smiled to himself, they didn’t even have Russian criminals.

“I didn’t hear anything.” Mulino swung his knee down from his chair. Standing in the doorway, Detective Mansky couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two but had a thick neck and shoulders that could lift a truck. He had been at OCCB too. All of twenty-five years old, he already had his detective’s badge and was ready at a moment’s notice to go out on the street and start busting heads. Probably had busted one too many before getting word he was going to the Property Clerk. Mulino remembered what that felt like. Mansky had a copy of the
Daily News
in his hand.

“A cop got killed last night.”

He dropped the paper on Mulino’s desk. The massive typeface screamed out: COP DROPPED SIX STORIES. The obligatory photo of the body in the street, far enough away and covered with a sheet so that it still seemed tasteful. So you couldn’t see the blood or the pieces of tooth and the arms bent the wrong way like it must have looked when they first found him. And an inset picture—the academy graduation photo of the poor sap. Taken just before he threw his cap in the air and set out for that miserable first assignment standing security in Times Square. Fourth of July if you’re the summer academy, New Year’s Eve if you’re the winter. Either way, the Force gets to show you that being a cop means standing around somewhere uncomfortable for hours while other people get to have a good time.

Mulino picked up the paper and stared again. He knew that photo. He had spoken to that cop. The curly hair, the silly grin. The kind of spacey eyes. He should have figured it out to begin with. He nodded to himself; he didn’t want to tip off Mansky that he had seen anything in the story other than what everyone else could find. Mulino looked down and confirmed the officer’s name. Joey Del Rio. The Harbor Patrol. He picked up the paper.

Detective Mansky shrugged at him. “Don’t bother asking or anything. I’ve already read it.”

“Thank you, Detective. I’ll get it right back to you.”

Mulino opened the paper and looked at the inside story. The cop had been thrown out the window of the apartment where Commissioner Davenport used to live. He scanned down the page. They had a sketch here too, based on a description given to them by the guard at the building, who said someone who seemed to be a plainclothes cop had been up at the apartment.

Mulino looked over the sketch. That one looked pretty familiar too. It was a face he’d seen a lot recently. Mulino sprung up from his seat and ran out of his office.