The Graving Dock (29 page)
The reunion ferry arrived at 10
A.M.,
bearing sixty adults and thirty kids. Jack stood on the landing watching the excited families pour off the boat in their down jackets and knitted caps, with their fanny packs and comfortable sneakers. They were already holding up cameras and clicking away. As they tromped en mass up the road toward Pershing Hall, he heard them exclaim about how little the island had changed. (For some, this was their first visit back in almost fifty years.)
Jack found Gene Hoffer in the middle of the crowd. The man did not look happy.
“I need to talk to you.” He pulled Jack aside, but waited until the crowd had moved on past the fort’s heavy earthen embankment before he spoke. “Since I retired, I don’t read the newspapers anymore. But I happened to mention Robert Sperry to some of the folks on the boat just now, and a couple of them informed me that he’s been in the news recently.” He frowned. “Which is more than
you
took the trouble to do.”
Jack scratched his cheek. “As I remember, our conversation at your house ended rather abruptly.”
Hoffer, forced to concede the truth of the remark, stared sourly out at the harbor. “I’ve already apologized for that. Let’s focus on the issue here. Unless you people have already taken Sperry into custody, I don’t imagine anyone knows where he is. I’d like to know if you can guarantee the safety of our group.”
Jack did his best to keep a poker face. “We haven’t caught up with him yet, but I can give you some good news. Since September, the government has headquartered a special anti-terrorist task force here. They’re actually in the same building you’re meeting in. Their job is to watch the harbor, but I’ve instructed them to keep a special eye out for Sperry.” He patted Hoffer reassuringly on the shoulder. “I would say that Governors Island is probably the safest place your group could be right now.”
Hoffer looked somewhat mollified. “And you’ll be here?”
Jack nodded. “I’ll be with you the whole time.” Hoffer moved to rejoin his group, but Jack called him back. “Mister Hoffer—I want your people to be able to relax and enjoy themselves, so let’s just keep this information to ourselves.”
THE LIFE OF A
rookie cop was 2 percent terror and 90 percent boredom. Most of the time, you stood around on corners trying not to think about how tired your feet were. You looked forward to meal breaks, kept an eye out for unexpected visits from your superiors, tried not to drink too much coffee. On rare occasions, you might suddenly find yourself chasing some perp down an alley and then everything narrowed into a jagged, adrenaline-fueled rush, but much of the job was pretty dull.
Today, the potential for sudden mayhem meant that Jack could never relax, but his time on the island still offered a heaping helping of banality. He was not much of a social animal. He had avoided his high school reunion, and had to force himself to get through parties and other social occasions. Now he was dropped into a crowd of complete strangers, all busy reliving memories he didn’t share.
First they had filed up a staircase in front of Pershing Hall. Jack glanced to the right: The channel between the island and Red Hook was just a stone’s throw away, its water reflecting back the dull silver of the winter sky.
Inside the Hall, everyone crowded into a Colonial foyer lined with time-darkened murals of scenes from various American wars. The adults proceeded to a registration table while their children ran around underfoot, excited by this unfamiliar new place. Then everybody filed into a mustard-colored lecture hall and sat under brass chandeliers while the organizers of the event welcomed them. They made speeches of reminiscence, packed with local references that meant nothing to Jack but got big laughs from the crowd. The group was middle-aged, gray-haired, bespectacled, but someone dimmed the lights and a slide show began; suddenly they were all kids again, riding ponies and bowling strikes, marching in parades and doing swing dances. Jack scanned the old photos for Robert Dietrich Sperry. He thought he saw that hawkish little face in a couple of group photos, but it was hard to be sure.
More recollections followed. He wandered back out into the foyer and flipped through a guestbook. Almost all of the alumni lived out of town; time had scattered them to Haverton, Pennsylvania, and Colorado Springs; Corvallis, Oregon, and South Bend, Indiana. He pulled out his cell phone and checked in with the team upstairs: no sign of Sperry. Behind him, the door to the outside opened and he swung around, instinctively reaching for his service weapon.
“Don’t shoot,” Ray Hillhouse said calmly. “It’s only me.”
Jack smiled. “If you’re Robert Sperry, I must say that your disguise is very convincing.”
“Sorry I couldn’t make it here till now.” The FBI agent had been down in Baltimore, working an anti-terrorism case. “Anything interesting happen yet?”
Jack sighed. “It’s been slow. If I have to listen to one more story about kids tipping a cannon or throwing snowballs at a general, I’m gonna scream.”
Hillhouse smiled. “I don’t quite see you as the screaming type.”
Jack smiled back. “You should see me when I look at my paychecks.”
The FBI agent perched on a corner of the registration table. “So—you think Sperry’s gonna make an appearance?”
Jack winced. “Just between you and me, I’m not sure. I’m starting to wonder if I might have sounded the alarm a little prematurely.”
Hillhouse shrugged. “Everybody’s been searching for this bastard for weeks now. This is the best chance we’ve had. I would’ve done the same thing.”
Jack scratched his cheek. “I guess. Hey, listen—” He was about to start telling the FBI agent about Tommy Balfa and John Carpsio, but a sudden babble of voices from the lecture hall indicated that the morning’s activities had come to an end.
“I better make myself scarce,” Hillhouse said. “I’ll see you later.”
AFTER A QUICK BOX
lunch, the alumni set off on a walking tour of the island. Jack had worried that they might want to spread out and explore on their own, creating a nightmare for the team assigned to protect them, but he might have guessed that his anxiety was groundless; they set off en masse, like tour groups everywhere.
Despite Jack’s colleagues’ jokes about mysterious strangers wearing priest’s collars or other disguises, Gene Hoffer assured him that all present were well known and accounted for. In fact, the only stranger was Jack himself. He stayed on the fringes of the group, walking with Michael Durkin, the security supervisor.
“How have you been?” Jack asked.
Durkin shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I miss the old man. And it’s been a bit creepy working here since that happened.” He lowered his voice; he had been sworn to secrecy about the current operation. “I’ll feel a lot better if you catch this guy.”
The first stop was Nolan Park and its yellow officers’ quarters. The alumni chatted blithely about old times as they strolled past the house where the security guard had been bludgeoned to death. Jack felt something cold on his forehead and looked up. A few snowflakes were drifting down, but they were hard to see against the dull white background of the winter sky. A chill wind picked up, but the weather did nothing to diminish the enthusiasm of the group. They were relentlessly cheery: Their kids were fantastic, their careers profitable, their retirements fun. It was like reunions everywhere, Jack supposed: These were the valedictorians, the club presidents, the joiners, and the family newsletter senders. The grumpier types like himself simply stayed home.
As the group walked farther south, snow started coming down a little heavier, swirling in the wind, whitening the view. Jack glanced back. A couple members of the team had disguised themselves as part of the island’s grounds crew and were following at a discreet distance. He turned; another member was staying ahead of the alumni, a hundred yards away. The advantage of the island as a setting for this operation was clear: Anyone approaching the group would stand out immediately because there were no random passersby. For the same reason, though, maintaining an inconspicuous presence was difficult. Likewise, the snow made it easier for the team to trail the group, but it could also provide cover for a more sinister follower…
“What years were you here?”
Jack turned to discover a plump white-haired woman in a thick down coat walking at his elbow. “I’m not actually part of the group.”
She looked puzzled.
“It’s a federal regulation,” he said. “Any visitors have to be accompanied by island security.”
She bought this explanation without any trouble. “It must be very quiet, working here without all of the hustle and bustle of the old days. Like a ghost town, I would think.”
“I’m just hired for the weekend,” Jack said quickly. He didn’t want to get caught up in small talk; he needed to stay focused on the bigger picture. He glanced down at his pager and pretended to read its little screen. “I’m sorry, I have to make a call.”
She smiled. “It was nice to meet you.”
He watched her move away in her puffy coat and he suddenly pictured the dead teenager in Prospect Park, the one Linda Vargas had called the Michelin Tire Man. The one with a blood-soaked hole in his down jacket. The image led to disquieting visions of bullets ripping into this friendly woman, and he looked around nervously, imagining Sperry running up one of these empty lanes, or popping up in a window of a long-abandoned barracks, firing wildly at the crowd…
“W
E WERE
HERE
, MAN,
” said the S.W.A.T. to the young FBI agent. “We did our jobs that day. And where were you guys, when that shit was being planned?”
“Keep it down,” Jack said for the third time, looking across the dark room at the shapes huddled in front of their third-floor observation post. Having run out of jokes and the desire to tell them, the team was squabbling now, a bitter spat about who had failed on September 11. They were like kids grown cranky on a long car trip. It was inevitable—there was only so long you could keep it together with nerves stretched so tight. It certainly didn’t help that conditions on the island were not conducive to overnight stays: heating provided by crappy generators, no running water…
“I hope one of you is keeping an eye on the harbor,” Jack added. Nobody had expected that they would still be camped here. The reunion group had gone back to Manhattan for the evening, and Jack had arranged for as many security tails as he could, but there was no way to keep track of so many people dispersed all over the larger island, running off to Broadway shows, restaurants, bars. He just had to hope that Sperry’s disturbed mind would seek out revenge on the site of his former humiliation. The group had one more day on Governors Island, and tonight was the last logical time for Sperry to show up.
Jack glanced at the faint glow of his watch. “Okay, let’s start breaking this down into shifts. I’ll go first; you guys get some shut-eye.”
Nobody argued; the others made their way out of the dark office.
Alone, finally, Jack settled down in front of the night vision scope. Looking through its dark eye at ghostly liquid green outlines, it was impossible not to think of TV images of the recent raids on Afghanistan. Everyone was spouting off about the War on Terror, worrying about some massive new attack on New York. In comparison, the past efforts of one deranged individual seemed pretty marginal, but if Sperry succeeded in doing something bad to the whole reunion, even the most shell-shocked, dazed New Yorkers would sit up and take notice.
He did a complete scan of the dark harbor water, then turned toward the east. In contrast to the sleek glass-and-metal skyscrapers lining the southern tip of Manhattan, the Brooklyn skyline was caught in a time warp, most of its buildings still made of stone, their crenellated roofs providing a much lower, more modest line against the night sky. Jack played the scope over their facades, slipping into a bitter fantasy of catching Michelle and her new lover highlighted in green in some bedroom window, moving in unison in the dark.
There was no way for his mind to grasp what she had done. It was crazy. She had stuck with him through his long hospital stay, after he had explicitly told her that he didn’t expect her to, that they hadn’t known each other long enough, that it was okay to go. She had stuck with him through that horrible second Tuesday in September, when it had seemed that the whole world was falling apart. Why remain through those hard times, then bail out when everything was going well? What was she thinking? Her refusal to answer her phone, much less call him back, left him feeling as if he were dropping stones into a bottomless well; he couldn’t even hear a distant splash. Maybe she simply didn’t love him; maybe she was frightened of commitment; maybe she was having better sex with her new lover; maybe, the whole time he had known her, she had hidden a malicious streak; maybe it was his fault—maybe
he
had let
her
down…Without any response from her, there was no way for him to know.
He realized that all of the stress and tension of the past forty-eight hours had been a blessing, allowing him to escape from these tormenting questions. Now everything was quiet, and here he was again, running them over and over, like a mouse on a treadmill. He thought of the little Buddhist nun, and tried to share in her sense of acceptance and calm.
When his shift was over, he retired exhausted to a cot in the other room, but it still took him a while to find his way into sleep, made restless not by Robert Sperry, but the mystery of one woman’s distant heart.
HOURS LATER, THE BUZZ
of his cell phone jerked him out of sleep. (He had stuck the thing in his breast pocket so he wouldn’t miss any emergency calls.) He raised his head, disoriented at first in the unfamiliar dark room, and then he pulled out the phone. An unfamiliar number scrolled across its bright blue face. He flipped it open.
“Leightner? How ya doin’?”
He frowned. “Who is this?”
“A friend from the old neighborhood.”
Jack’s heart rate picked up. In his sleepy state, it had taken him a moment to recognize John Carpsio Jr.’s gritty voice.
