“The bomb squad’s commanding officer sent a written request to the Livermore facility and was rebuffed with a verbal over the phone.”
“Son of a bitch!” Richie punched his desktop. “So there’s no record of the government facility’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation.”
“The CO made a second written request demanding an explanation.”
“It will be ignored too, I’m sure.” He slumped in his chair and sighed.
Mel sat up straight and shook her head. “The legal department drafted the letter and made it clear that the matter is not going away. The facility has to respond.” She wrinkled her nose. “Just a matter of when.”
“Can’t Art Henderson obtain thermite through an operative on the black market?”
“A suitcase nuke is easier to get than thermite.” Mel frowned and grabbed a pile of mail from the basket on her desk. She dropped a stack of manila department envelopes onto her desk blotter but held onto a white envelope. She flipped it over and glanced at Richie. “It doesn’t have a postmark. It must have been messengered over early this morning.”
A few quiet seconds passed as she shifted her gaze from Richie back to the white envelope.
“Who is it from?” he asked.
She puffed her cheeks and rattled out air.
Rushing to her side, he took the envelope, and whistled. “It’s from the private lab that analyzed Newman’s paint. They rushed it just like we asked!” He said and tore it open.
Mel swiveled her chair around and looked up at him. Waiting. She tapped her fingertips on the armrest, but he didn’t unfold the letter. Now that he had the results in his hands, he hesitated. If they were right and the paint contained thermite then it’s true. The true enemy was living the life of luxury in New York instead of planning destruction from far away.
“Read it, already.” More fingernail tapping.
He slowly opened the trifold and lowered the paper. They read it together. He gasped and pointed at the conclusion, typed in a crisp black font, on the bottom of the analysis report:
0 % paint present
100% nano-thermate present
Richie sat on the edge of the desk and the paper fell from his hand. He exhaled and tucked his chin onto his chest. Undeniable proof that Islamic extremists had been framed for the twin towers attacks when all along, it had been planned and executed by the Council.
Mel reached down and retrieved the paper. “What the heck is nano-thermate?”
“Whatever it is, it’s beyond al Qaeda’s capabilities. They’d have to get it from the Livermore facility.”
She dropped her pen on the desk and put her face in her hands. When she looked up her eyes were watery. “The attacks really were an inside job, Rich. Deep down, I hoped we were wrong and bin Laden had somehow pulled off the attacks.” She blinked and wiped away a tear.
“I know, Mel, I know.” He looked directly at her. “We got enough proof now,” he whispered and unsnapped his handcuff case.
“No,” she said. “We can’t waltz into Dewer Rock’s office and snap on the bracelets, not yet. And we’d just give Moen Pindar a chance to flee.” She shook her head back and forth.
Richie stood over her and gripped the edge of the desk so hard it lifted from the carpet. “We have Dewer Rock’s call log to John Snow of Simon Demolition on September 11, before Building 7 collapsed. We have Moen Pindar’s connection to the Council with the damn logbooks Eva sneaked out yesterday. And now we have this—nano-thermate sprayed onto support beams from elevator shafts!” He grabbed the analysis report and the desk legs hit the floor.
Mel looked down and gasped. She took the report that he was grasping so tightly and flung it onto the desk. “Calm down and listen. We don’t have proof that they are the ones who purchased the thermate.” She rubbed his fingers and spoke softly. “Dewer Rock is the most powerful man in the country. And Moen Pindar is Mossad and only God knows what else.”
“That entitles them to special treatment?” Richie pounded the desk with his fist. The framed photo of Hope wobbled. He righted it before it tipped. “No one is above the law!”
“We have to be smart about it. Dewer Rock has the best attorneys, and most politicians, in his pocket.” She grabbed his wrist and shook it. “We need a solid thermite connection before we make arrests.”
“But he’s a mass murderer.” Richie sat on the desk and lowered his head, trying to hide his trembling lips.
“All I’m asking is that we be careful. Wait a little while, that’s all.”
“The borough chief can verify the arrest.” Richie sucked in his cheeks to keep from yelling.
“And he’ll insist on an arrest warrant,” she said.
Mel was making sense, but he couldn’t let either monster stay free for another day. “Then the police commissioner.” He opened his eyes wide. “He’ll want hands on this one. The attacks happened in his city, for God’s sake.”
Mel stood and sighed, and he watched her face contort as she struggled to keep her own emotions in check. He saw frustration mixed with desperation in her expression, and wondered if she saw the same in his face.
“He’s a politician first, cop second, if even,” she said and slumped against her desk. “I bet he has Dewer Rock on speed dial.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Richie kicked her vacated chair, sending it spinning down the aisle. “Shit!” He watched the chair’s wheels spin.
“It stinks, Rich. I know, but we’ll arrest them when the time is right.”
“Damn.” He hung his head. “Okay, damn it, okay. We’ll handle the mass-murdering bastards with white gloves.”
“We’ll update Lieutenant Jordan right away and bring 2,759 counts of murder against Dewer Rock and Moen Pindar through the District Attorney’s Office.” Mel swept the case folders into a manila file folder. “Then we can start on arrest and search warrants!”
Chapter 31
Richie drove down Linden Boulevard into darkness. He clicked on the Bronco’s brights. Better. The high beams shone on a beverage plant sign. He must be in the right place then. Todd Wilson had said to drive three quarters of a mile past the plant entrance. After checking his odometer he drove a little further, pulled the car to the curb and parked. He looked around, but could discern nothing outside the glow from his high beams. It was freaking dark out there. He glanced at the dashboard clock. 2:00 a.m. Right on time. So where was Todd?
Todd had called his cell earlier, while he and Eva were finishing dessert, and asked to meet on the Jersey City waterfront. Richie had asked Eva if he could return after the meeting. She’d blushed and handed him an extra key to her apartment. They both smiled while he attached it to his keyring—it was so much more than just a key. And then he took her into the bedroom.
Looking down at her asleep in her bed as he dressed and holstered up, he was overcome with an intense emotion for a moment. He had never felt so connected to anyone before. As soon as Todd had filled him in on whatever was getting him out in the middle of the night, he’d head right back to her place. He had no clue what Todd wanted to show him, but it must be real important. Maybe this piece would solve the whole damn puzzle. Then, in the morning, he’d ask Eva to resign from the Council House.
Richie looked around for headlights from an approaching car, but there was nothing. Where the heck was Todd? He cut the lights and the ignition. After a few seconds, the engine stopped pinging and he became engulfed in deep middle-of-the-night silence. He looked through the windshield and peered out the side and rear windows. Still, no headlights.
Deciding to do some exploring while he waited, Richie stretched under the passenger seat for a Maglite and stepped out of the truck. As he walked toward the waterfront, a faint mechanical rumbling gradually broke the quiet. The rumbling became louder as he neared the water. A motor was running somewhere.
He looked toward the inlet opening. A ramshackle wood-framed warehouse blocked the view of the nearby waterfront. He walked around the old building, and the mechanical
sounds grew even louder. When he reached rotting moorings on the channel’s waterfront, the sky brightened. He craned his head to the east. Newly constructed concrete and iron piers were ablaze with light. Bright ballpark lights affixed to the top of twenty-foot poles lit up the pier like daylight. Clearly, this was no fly-by-night operation, but why did Todd want him to see it? He better look closer.
The new pier and the scrap yard adjacent to the channel were full of activity, as if it were midday and not the middle of the night. He peered at a docked blue sanitation barge, piled with iron girders, and counted hard-hatted heads. Ten men worked dockside unloading metal beams from the barge while a four-man crew remained on board. A yellow claw machine on ten-foot-high treads lifted beams from the barge and stacked them on a football-field-sized pile of iron debris.
His stomach clenched as he recognized the steel girders being offloaded from the sanitation barge. The girders were from ground zero, and before September 11, they had stood tall and strong. Tourists used to crane their necks in wonder of the height of each steel tower. Hell, Richie looked up whenever he passed the towers, even though he was Brooklyn-born and bred. Native New Yorkers hadn’t taken the splendor of the twin towers for granted. But what were the remains of those towers doing here?
Looking across the channel at the butchered Lower Manhattan skyline, Richie’s jaw tensed and he fought a wave of nausea. All that was left of precious lives—fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, lovers, friends—had been transported to a facility named Fresh Kills. He leaned over and got sick. It was too much, too much death. Genocide, and he had the eeriest feeling that September 11 was only the first wave.
All debris from ground zero was supposed to be transported to the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. An NYPD detail operated from the sanitation dump, sifting through every pile of dust and every piece of steel and cement for human remains and evidence.
The NYPD’s primary objective at Fresh Kills was to recover human remains for identification and proper burial. Its secondary objective was to safeguard the steel and debris as evidence. Once the recovery of the victims was complete, an examination of the evidence would begin.
So why was steel from ground zero secretly being brought to this junkyard, bypassing NYPD inspection?
Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Richie took a breath, and began to study the waterfront operation. A crane with a swimming-pool-sized round magnet hanging from three massive chains moved metal from the pile to a dirt work area. Forty men worked with blowtorches searing girders in half. There was no inspection team in place. The salvage crew was destroying human remains and evidence. In the middle of the night, in secret. But the humming noise wasn’t coming from this work area. Another crew deeper in the yard was shearing metal girders with electric guillotines into even smaller pieces. The cut-up girders were tossed on an industrial-sized conveyor belt and into a front-loading dump truck.
After the dump truck was full, it was replaced by an empty loader. The fully loaded truck drove to the east side of the junkyard to a pier where a large seagoing ship was moored. The vessel was too far away for Richie to read the whole name, but he made out the huge initials HN ASIA.
Why the hell would a scrap yard in Jersey City ship World Trade Center steel overseas? Bending over, he heaved again, but there was nothing left in his stomach to purge. He spit out a foul taste and straightened his back. He’d get to the bottom of this right now.
He’d drive right into the junk yard, disrupt operations, and demand to speak to a foreman. Richie marched toward his Bronco and spotted a Jersey City Police Department squad car driving down the street. He stopped mid-stomp and took a deep breath. Calm down, Richie. Todd may already have a plan and he’d almost mucked everything up. From now on, he would force himself to think before he acted. Hot-headedness was never a problem for him before September 11. Or before he met Eva.
He flicked his flashlight and the squad car stopped next to him.
Todd got out. “Sorry I’m late. Got held up on a domestic dispute.”
Richie pointed toward the scrap yard. “Who the hell are they to destroy important evidence?”
“Claremont Salvage,” Todd said. He tapped Richie’s elbow and walked with him back to the bulkhead at the water’s edge. “They were a small-time scrap metal company until a few weeks ago. Now they work around the clock cutting and shipping steel from the World Trade Center to China.”
“But there’s no inspection process. No photo documentation procedure.” Richie shook his head. “From what I could see, they just load ’em up and ship ’em out.”
Todd nodded. “This scrap yard was collecting rusty autos until early August. Then they went under a total renovation. By Labor Day, all the heavy machinery was in place, but then everything sat idle, like it was just waiting for a big job.”
Richie kicked the wooden bulkhead and huffed. “Are you saying this operation got ready before the attacks?”
“Last winter, this waterfront was a lover’s lane with a stunning view of the Manhattan skyline.” Todd pointed back at the street. “Jersey City’s version of ‘watching submarine races.’”
“I guess this operation scared the riffraff away too.”
“I made enough money for the down payment on my house working right here on overtime, busting prostitutes and crack-heads.”
“What changed?”
“The channel was dredged in spring, and the nighttime operation started in August. Sediment from the dredging project was used as filler. The road was extended with blacktop after electric trunks were installed. New piers were built within weeks, and timber pilings supported by concrete and steel bulkheads were built next.”
“Back up a minute, Todd.” Richie looked at the channel and then at the shore in front of the junk yard, trying to visualize it before the renovations. “What dredging project?”
“Two miles of Claremont Channel was deepened to accommodate seagoing vessels. The channel was only ten feet deep—now, it’s over thirty feet deep!”
Richie continued to study the waterfront. “Now Claremont Channel has direct access to the Hudson River piers near ground zero and the Lower Bay that goes directly out to sea, right?”
“The owner of Claremont Salvage must have known a big scrap-metal project was coming his way or he never would have beefed up operating capacity in August.”
Richie was so caught up in trying to understand the implications that he was missing important details. “What’s the name of this junkyard again?”
“Claremont Salvage.”
Richie rubbed his chin and shook his head. “Damn! Moen Pindar owns this business, too.”
Todd gasped. “So this operation is connected to Moving Systems!”
Richie leaned against the bulkhead and grunted. “The Muslim impersonators from Moving Systems and this operation were ready before the planes hit the towers.”
“Not only did they know planes would strike the buildings, Richie”—Todd fisted his hands—“they also knew the towers would collapse.”
“I’ve found evidence that the towers where planted with explosives months before the attacks.”
Todd stiffened. “So Moen Pindar knew about the attacks and also planned them, didn’t he?”
“Looks that way.” Richie dug his foot in the ground. “Along with Dewer Rock.”
“How the hell did they do it?” Todd asked in a low voice. “Why did they do it?”
“I don’t know why. Not yet.” Richie said. “And I’m just getting a handle on how. It’s hard to believe.”
“Try me.”
“I think CIA operatives prepped for the attacks and Mossad operatives are cleaning up. They’re following an orchestrated playbook that tricks us to focus on a false enemy.”
“Let’s lock them up,” Todd said with clenched fists. He turned and faced the new Manhattan skyline. “Before they get a chance to pull off another attack.”
“I’m real close to arresting Dewer Rock and you have to apprehend
Moen Pindar before he flees to Israel.”
Todd’s eyes lit up. “I’ve got the jurisdiction to arrest Moen Pindar, but no evidence. How can we turn foreknowledge into probable cause?”
“We can’t,” Richie said. “But we can prove destruction of evidence.” He pointed at the iron-loaded vessel as it sailed out of the channel toward open sea. “Before it’s all shipped out.”
“I’ll have anti-crime conduct a formal surveillance here. Photographical evidence, officer testimony. And we’ll approach the workers.”
“What about the gag order the feds made you sign?”
“That was for Moving Systems.” Todd grinned and held out his fist. “I’m diving back in and I’m not coming up for air until it’s done.”
Richie waved away Todd’s fist and chest bumped him instead. Working together, they’d take back their cities from the diabolical bastards. “They’re not getting away with this, Todd. We’re not gonna let them.”
Todd edged closer to the waterfront, and faced the crippled Lower Manhattan skyline again. “I still can’t believe the towers are gone.”
Richie stepped up, planted his feet in the ground and stood shoulder to shoulder with Todd. “Never again.”
Chapter 32
Richie sat at the visitor’s table resisting the urge to pace around the room. He should be exhausted having driven straight from Jersey City to the penitentiary in just ten hours. Instead, he was superhyped to get this meeting over with. Once he got Rashid’s cooperation, he’d head back home with another solid piece of evidence to take to the District Attorney’s Office. He glanced at the metal door every couple of seconds willing it to open. Time was a wasting and he couldn’t stand it.
He caught an orange blur through the thick glass inlaid with diamond-shaped wire. The door opened. Rashid followed a guard to the table and slumped into the prisoner’s chair across from Richie. “What do you want now?” he asked.
Richie plopped a thick paperback novel on the table. The book had been stuffed under his driver’s seat, in case he got stuck guarding a crime scene or something. He’d never gotten the chance to crack the cover. “I brought you something to pass the time.”
The Council House (The Impoverished Book 3) Page 14