Threat Level Black (29 page)

Three of the apartments listed in the
Gazette
had been rented, one by a woman and the other two by young men. Fisher concentrated on the men first, spending a good deal of Thursday and much of Friday morning ruling them out as Faud Daraghmeh.

This would have been relatively easy had he been able to see them at any point; the first renter turned out to be a six six weight lifter from Wisconsin seeking fame and fortune as an actor in New York. The other was a Buddhist monk, shaved head and all.

Which left, at least as far as this straw was concerned, the woman. The landlord hadn’t given Fisher a name, and in fact had just rudely hung up when Fisher tried to get more details. Fisher went over to the apartment two blocks south of the Fashion Institute and realized that he should have come here first: The name taped on the mailbox was Fama Ahmed Ali. The apartment was on the third floor of a large building; there was no way for one person to watch it without camping directly outside the door, where he could be seen.

“No stakeout,” said Macklin. “We don’t have the personnel.”

“You can’t get NYPD to do it?”

“They have their hands full. Not only do they have the Final Four, but there’s a big session going on at the UN right through the weekend. The President’s coming up Monday. This is huge, even for New York.”

“Get me a search warrant, then.”

“A search warrant?”

“If I go knocking on the door and it is Faud Daraghmeh or his sister or whatever, they’ll start flushing the evidence as soon as I leave.”

“We’re not even close to reasonable grounds here, Andy.”

“You’re telling me in all New York City, there’s not one judge who’d give you a search warrant?”

“Jeez.”

“What if we got an anonymous tip that Fama Ahmed Ali was plotting to kill the President.”

“You can’t do that, Andy! Christ.”

“Just asking a theoretical question.”

“I’ll see if I can get a warrant. Don’t call in a threat. Don’t. Don’t.”

“Now, would I do that?”

A set of stairs sat at the end of the hallway on the third floor. Fisher had propped open one of the heavy glass and wrought-iron doors, which let him hear but not see what was happening in the hallway; he came down the steps a few times as the elevator stopped on the floor, but in the three hours he spent there, no one went in or out of the apartment. Finally, Macklin called: He’d managed to get the search warrant and even two NYPD officers to help in the search.

“Just two?” said Fisher, leaning back on the staircase. The steps were made of marble, though at some point someone had painted them with a very thick paint, then recoated them for good measure. The paint had peeled back to the sides of the steps but was still fairly thick on the risers. This seemed to be some object lesson in fashion, pretension, and perhaps utility, though Fisher couldn’t quite figure what it was.

“Is there someone inside the apartment?” Macklin asked.

“I don’t know,” said Fisher. He glanced at his watch; it was nearly five. “Not much use hanging around, though. Let’s hit the place now.”

Macklin couldn’t get into the city until seven, and so they set up the raid for seven forty-five.

Raid
was a bit of an overstatement. With the two cops guarding the fire escape and Macklin and another Homeland Security agent behind him, Fisher banged on the door and told the occupants to open up. When no one answered, he used the key supplied by the landlord’s rental agent, pushing the door open.

He jumped back just in time: A homemade bomb exploded in the interior of the hallway, sending shrapnel flying through the apartment.

“I need to find a place to live,” Howe told her.

“There are hundreds of real estate agents in this area.”

“Yeah, but you already know what I want.”

“Do I?”

“Yeah.”

She sat back in her seat, then pulled the keys from the corner of her desk.

Howe followed her out to the lot. He pulled his seat belt on, watching her silently.

“There’s a good condo development two miles from the highway. It’s solid, not too fancy.”

“Show me that house again, the one you liked.”

Her faced reddened but she said nothing. As she pulled up near it, he saw there were two cars in the driveway; another Realtor was showing the place.

“So, why did you get mad at me the other night?” he asked as she turned off the car.

“I wasn’t mad. At first. Then I got mad.”

“Because I drink beer with spaghetti.”

“No. Because…I don’t know. You took it for granted.”

“What?”

“Kissing me like that.”

“Kissing you? I thought after what we’d been through that—”

“That what?”

What had he thought? That he liked her, that he owed her, that he wanted her.

But he seemed unable to say any of those things.

“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing,” Howe told her.

She put her car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

“Where are you going?”

“This isn’t your kind of house. You think it’s too fancy.”

“Yeah, but
you
like it.”

“You’re the one who’s buying. Or renting. Which one is it?”

“I can buy,” said Howe. “They made a ridiculous offer and I took the job yesterday.”

“You don’t think you deserve it, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” he said.

“Well, you do.”

“How do you know?”

“You just do.” She turned the car around the circle at the end of the cul-de-sac. As they started back up the hill, the people were coming out of the house.

“Let’s go take a look again,” said Howe. “What the hell? You like showing it, and I’m not doing anything.”

She didn’t smile, but the way she turned her head told him somehow she would stop.

Fisher sat with the bomb squad people as they sent a small robot rover into the apartment to look for more bombs. The rover looked a bit like a Martian lander, and the photos it sent back to the laptop were every bit as sketchy. The herring-bone-pattern linoleum drove the automated video controls nuts, and the operators had a hard time making sure there were no more trip wires or similar devices in place. But at least the man at the laptop was free with his Camels.

The bomb squad moved in with full-gear even after the rover’s search came up empty. Fisher gave them a few minutes, then went inside.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” said one of the officers in a mattress suit near the door.

“If it hasn’t gone boom yet, it’s not going to,” said Fisher, squatting down to examine the doorway. At the bottom was a set of connectors similar to those used in a simple burglar alarm system. Opening the door had broken the connection and set off the bomb. Fisher followed the wire down the scarred hallway to where the bomb had exploded.

“How did you know there was a bomb in there?” asked the NYPD expert who was taking measurements with a laser ruler in the hall.

“I didn’t. I saw the connector thing and I jumped back,” said Fisher.

“You’re lucky the guy was an amateur: Somebody who knew what they were doing would have set it to explode closer to the door or even out in the lobby. Between the heavy door and the shape of the hall, most of the explosion was channeled away from you. Otherwise you would have been nailed.”

He meant that literally: 10d nails had been packed over the weapon as shrapnel.

“You see this kind of bomb before?” Fisher asked.

“Oh, sure. Amateurs. Or someone trying to convince us they’re amateurs.”

“Most people who are stupid are just stupid,” said Fisher.

“Can’t argue with that. Were they trying to kill you specifically, or just anyone?”

“Don’t know yet,” said Fisher. He squatted down to examine a large piece of the exploded bomb, which lay partly embedded in the wall. “Probably just anyone. How would you turn this off?”

“You mean disarm it? Probably some sort of bypass switch at the door.”

“There isn’t one,” said Fisher, rising.

“Remote control or something. It wouldn’t be hard.”

“Yeah, except that’s not part of a remote control unit, right?” Fisher pointed to the piece. “It’s just a metal piece where the explosives were.”

“Might’ve disintegrated. Crime scene guys will go over it pretty well.”

Fisher walked to the far end of the hallway. The window had been blown out, but the locks in the frame were still secure. The bathroom to the right had an open window, but it was too small for anyone but a thin child to climb through. He went into the room on the left. There was no furniture or clothes, no sign that the room had been occupied. The window had a simple lock at the top, but it was not engaged. Fisher checked the casement for another trip wire, then opened the window. The fire escape was to the right.

He leaned out, got his foot on it, then climbed over.

“Fisher, what the hell are you doing?” shouted Macklin, coming into the room just as he swung out.

The FBI agent leaned back over. “You wouldn’t want to do this every day, would you?” he said, climbing in. He scraped his shoe against the side of the building, but the height was a powerful incentive and he kept his momentum going forward. He got into the building.

“What the hell are you doing?” Macklin asked again.

“Trying to figure out how Faud got in and out. And whether he was planning on coming back.”

“He won’t be coming back now, that’s for sure,” said Macklin.

“Guy’s going to run out of places to stay eventually.” Fisher walked to the bathroom. There was soap and toilet paper but nothing else. Fisher leaned over and sniffed the soap. “Ivory,” he declared.

“Yeah?” asked Macklin.

“Same stuff he used at DeGarmo’s.”

“That’ll close the case.”

“Just what I’m thinking,” said Fisher.

“Want to dust it for prints?”

“You’re starting to get the hang of the sarcasm thing, Macklin. Keep it up and in a couple of years you’ll actually say something biting.”

Fisher decided that the bomb had been left for the same reason some people slid hairs in door cracks and dusted the floor with powder: It would clearly and emphatically demonstrate that the apartment had been discovered. That didn’t mean collateral damage wasn’t welcome, only that it wasn’t first on the priority list.

“I think he’d have some sort of vantage point to watch from, or be nearby when the bomb blew,” Macklin told Fisher. “What if we search every apartment the fire escape connects to?”

“That’s twenty-one apartments,” said Fisher.

“We should at least make sure he’s not living in another one here, and that this is just a decoy.”

The bomb had gotten NYPD somewhat more interested in what was going on, and Macklin now had the manpower to do the interviews. On the other hand, the explosion had alerted the other occupants of the building, and Fisher figured anyone dumb enough be a terrorist or hide one would be smart enough to lie about it or, smarter still, to have fled. Still, there was always the chance that someone might remember something about a cross-dressing neighbor with five o’clock shadow. Besides, they were still mired in the straw-grasping phase of the investigation, and so Fisher didn’t object—as long as he didn’t have to do any of the interviews.

“What are you going to do?” Macklin asked.

“Climb the fire escape.”

“It’s getting pretty dark.”

“It is, isn’t it,” said Fisher, going to the blown-out window and stepping through the frame.

A pair of mangled beach chairs sat folded at one side of the roof, but otherwise it was empty. The small door at the top of the stairway locked from the inside. Fisher jiggled it but it wouldn’t give. Picking the lock was no good; Fisher had to go all the way down and then trudge up the stairs to see if there was a bag or other hideaway.

A simple dead bolt secured the door to the roof; there were no bags or keys hidden anywhere that he could see, and his second search of the roof failed to turn up anything except a fifty-cent coin near the edge of the roof. A ladder led from the back of the building to the adjacent roof. Fisher climbed over it and continued his search, still without results. A third roof sat adjacent to this one, eight feet lower and across a narrow alley.

The sun had gone down quite a while ago, but the lights from a building across the street made it possible to see, though not particularly well.

Which was why he wasn’t sure whether the long narrow object near the front of the roof was a ladder or not.

The easiest way to find out was to jump across. Fisher did so, rolling onto the flat surface and bumping into a large can of roofing tar. Fortunately, its top remained intact; Fisher was already down to his last reasonably clean suit.

The object he’d seen was a long two-by-four with three shorter pieces of wood nailed to it. Fisher took it to the side and hooked it over the brick lip on the adjacent building. The board made it possible to get up to the other side without too much trouble, though it creaked under his weight.

So the guy who used it was a little shorter and at least as skinny, Fisher thought.

The FBI agent picked up the edge of the board and flipped it back to the other roof, then jumped back to examine the roof. There was no stairway down; the roof was accessed through a flat trapdoor that was not only locked but chained.

A small bag was wedged in a crack in the low wall at the front of the roof. Fisher held it up and saw that it was marijuana, or at least something herbal. He stuffed it back in place and continued his search in the shadows. As he did, his stomach began to growl. Wondering if he could hunt up a midnight hot dog vendor, he went back to the ladder board and hooked it into place. He was just reaching across when he saw the tar bucket he’d knocked into earlier.

The thing was, the tar on the roof was dry—very, very dry.

And who tarred a roof in March?

Old can, probably used as a seat.

Or a hiding place. Fisher pried it open.

The remnants of tar had congealed long ago. Newspapers had been stuffed into the top, and in the middle of the newspapers sat a small knapsack. There was a shirt inside, along with a gas mask, an autoinjector similar to the one he’d found at Mrs. DeGarmo’s, and a set of night goggles.