One Police Plaza

by William Caunitz

  “No problem. We got everything we came for and we left a receipt.”

  “Hang loose in the Squad. I will get back to you,” Malone said.

  He depressed the open-line button. “Jack, what is happening?”

  A high-pitched voice. “We lost them in traffic.”

  “Get on the air! Have the drive blocked,” Malone ordered. All eyes were on the lieutenant. Malone could hear the urgent transmissions. Radio cars would be speeding toward the drive. Would they be in time? Where was Stanislaus going? The frustration of not being there tore at him. Things would be different if he were on the scene. He should have been there. Harrigan was yelling orders, giving directions. “Harrigan, what the hell is going on?” he shouted. He could hear a great commotion. A short time later Harrigan came on the line.

  “We lost them. They sped into the East Side Heliport. Our people were crashing through the gate as their chopper was lifting off the pad.”

  “Call Aviation and the Coast Guard. I want choppers in the air and …”

  “No need. I talked to the heliport manager. They had a helicopter waiting to take them to Rabbits Island. A four-minute flight. I have cars from the One-fourteen and One-oh-eight converging on the island.”

  “I’ll hold,” Malone said, his gaze darting from face to face. Anderman looked glum, deeply worried. Heinemann and Johnson were anxious to get into the fray, waiting for the word to go. McQuade rubbed the side of his nose, examining contingencies, searching for some way to make it all deniable again. The wait seemed endless. Eight minutes later Harrigan came back onto the line. “They’re gone. A car was waiting to pick them up. I’ve transmitted a description over the citywide band.”

  Malone said, “Stay on it.” He slammed down the phone and quickly redialed. The operator at SOD informed him that Chief Zangline was on vacation for a week.

  Anderman said, “What are we going to do?”

  “Stop them,” Malone said, motioning his detectives to follow as he hurried from the room.

  “Where are you going?” McQuade yelled after him.

  “To the source,” Malone shot back.

  22

  MONDAY, July 6 … Late Afternoon

  The Stuyvesant Club was on Park Avenue in the Sixties, one of the last of the great old mansions. It was a quiet, conservative place filled with somber rooms and heavy furniture that glowed from years of polish and care. The first four floors had the clean, slightly sweet and musty smell of old books and older money.

  Malone had left One Police Plaza and rushed to the executive offices of Moorehouse International at 81 Wall Street. He presented himself to Moorehouse’s secretary and told the blue-haired spinster that it was urgent that he see Moorehouse immediately. He was in possession of confidential information that an attempt was going to be made on Moorehouse’s life. The secretary had gasped and clutched her meager breast. He was at his club—the Stuyvesant.

  The club’s hall porter was an old man who had spent his life serving the rich and powerful. When Malone told him about the threat to Carter Moorehouse he immediately told the policeman that the man he had come to see was in the sauna. He led Malone down to the basement and into the locker room, a place that was full of the faint sourness of sweat and the sharper, more pleasant odor of wintergreen.

  The porter left him in the empty locker room. Malone undressed and put his clothes in an empty locker. He took a towel from the pile on the wooden table next to the shower and wrapped it around his waist. He removed another one from the stack and slid his gun inside the fold and carried it with him into the sauna.

  A single light glowed down from through the swirling gray mist. He was struck by the tangy aroma of dry, hot wood. He made out the outline of a shadowy figure sitting alone on the top row. “Moorehouse?”

  “Who is it?”

  Carter Moorehouse appeared to be in his late forties, but he was actually closer to three score. He had an interesting face and a muscular body. His lips were thin and he had a cleft chin. His eyes were black and cold and he used them to intimidate others. The hair was silver gray and formed thick ringlets. He seemed smaller than the man Malone had seen on the TV tapes.

  “Police,” he said, climbing up onto the first rung.

  When Malone reached the uppermost row he sat down next to Moorehouse, who growled, “What do you want?”

  Malone looked sideways and made out the eyes peering at him through the steam, searching out his eyes. “I want you to tell me where to locate Zangline, Stanislaus, Kelly, and Bramson.”

  “I am afraid that I do not know who you are talking about. What made you think that I did?”

  “Look, scummer!”—a knifelike tone that caused Moorehouse’s face to fill with malice—“I’m telling you right from the giddyap that we know all about your hit team for the rich and the ‘Simonson Optical Division of Curaçao.’” He ended his dismal narrative by paraphrasing the transcript of Braxton’s telephone call to his sister. Water hissed over hot stones in the claustrophobic wood-lined room. “We traced the ownership of the Interlude.”

  Moorehouse raised his brow in a look of wary resignation.

  “It was clever the way you set up that one. A cop would never have known how to do it.”

  Moorehouse ignored him, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

  “The property was bought by an attorney for a dummy corporation in Delaware and then the shares in the corporation were transferred to another corporation in Delaware. When you applied for the zoning variance you had to produce the principal owner of the property and the attorney of record. So, you just transferred some stock to Aldridge Braxton, making him the principal owner, and you had him sign undated stocks in blank transferring the corporation back to one of your dummy entities. Aldridge Braxton, the perfect stand-in. All you needed was an attorney whom you could trust. And who was that? Preston Welwyn Moorehouse, your nephew and the legal representative in the United States for the Simonson Optical Division. A little nepotism can sometimes screw things up, can’t it?”

  Moorehouse threw his head back, brushing his hands over his forehead and through his hair as though he were completely at ease. “That is an interesting story. Have you ever considered writing fiction? You have a truly vivid imagination. Too bad that is all you have. There is not one shred of evidence to support that hogwash.”

  Malone watched him closely. “The department and Anderman are no longer team players. It’s down the tubes for you and your friends.” Malone brushed the sweat from his chest. “Help us avert disaster and I’ll see to it that you are left out of it. Otherwise you’ll take the fall with the rest of them.”

  Moorehouse was unconcerned. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

  Malone began to wipe his face with the corner of his towel. “Deadly serious.”

  Moorehouse looked at him and laughed a mocking laugh. “When was the last time you heard of a man of my stature being arrested, tried, and convicted? Not to mention that you would also have to arrest some of the most powerful men in this country.” He stretched out over the bench, luxuriating in the heat.

  Malone measured him with baffled fury. “Do you really expect people like Zangline and Stanislaus to stand up? Policemen do not like the thought of prison. They are not treated well by the rest of the population. And the Braxtons—they’d turn each other in to stay out of jail.”

  Moorehouse raised his head. “Didn’t you tell me that the Braxtons were brother and sister? Isn’t blood thicker than water?”

  “So is shit.”

  Malone realized that he was wasting time. He got up and left the sauna.

  Moorehouse glanced at him as he left. He made no comment, but remained on his back, staring upward.

  Malone quickly showered and dressed. He was sitting on a bench in front of his locker putting on his socks when Moorehouse came out of the sauna, wrapping a towel tight around his waist. He came up to Malone, who looked up at Moorehouse’s wet body and flattened hair.

 
Moorehouse said, “I confess a mild academic interest in your hypothesis. I assume that you realize that there is a major flaw in your conspiracy theory?”

  Malone slipped into his loafers and stood, stamping his feet. His face was inches away from the quarry. “And what would that be?”

  “Motive. Why would I permit myself to be a party to such acts?”

  Malone became taut. “For the oldest motives of them all. Greed and revenge.”

  Moorehouse took a step backward. “You must be joking.”

  “Your election defeat was a little too much for the great Carter Moorehouse to handle. Your first and only rejection in life. You skulked back into your own world and started to brood. Before long all you could think of was getting revenge on the people who had spurned you, the blue-collar slobs who saw through your racist bullshit. And then there was the liberal press, or should I say the Jewish press, who helped sow the seeds of your defeat. You hated them all.”

  Moorehouse’s eyes widened with anger.

  “When you were asked to oversee the money for the Unit you saw your opportunity. Anarchy in the streets, you had warned. You intended to make your prophecy a reality. You knew Zangline and Stanislaus from your election campaign. It was easy for you to have the Unit placed under SOD. Then you made your pact with Zangline and company. They could help themselves to the money, not all of it, but enough to make some middle-class cops happy. All they had to do was gather some Arab types around them and plant a few bombs around the city. The Israeli warehouses were high on your list of things to do. What better way to get even with the Jews than to expose their existence and to force them to remove their arms depots. Violence in the streets. Everything was going according to plan until Stanislaus and Eisinger got the hots for each other.”

  “All right! That is quite enough.” Moorehouse wrapped his towel more firmly around his hips and started to walk away from Malone. “I am going to place a call to the commissioner. Perhaps he can handle this in a compassionate way. You are a sick man, Lieutenant.”

  Malone lunged at Moorehouse and threw him against the locker, bloodying his nose.

  Moorehouse whipped around, staring with disbelief at the blood on his hands. He became enraged. “I’ll see you dead for this, Malone. You hear me! Dead!”

  “You will? Let me tell you something wise-ass. The kind of justice that you and your friends are fond of dishing out knows no distinction between rich and poor. It’s a fucking two-way street, pally.”

  Malone started to leave, hesitated, and spun around, throwing a right cross to Carter Moorehouse’s jaw. Arms thrashing at his side, Moorehouse plunged backward into the locker and then slid to the ground.

  23

  MONDAY, July 6 … Night

  Westy Stanislaus had rented a garage on West Eighty-ninth Street under the name of Frank McMahon as a safe house. From there they would begin the next and crucial move. In the neighborhood surrounding, Latin music blared from tenement windows. The flower boxes on each sill were empty save for soda bottles and cans. On the sidewalk men in T-shirts sat on crates playing checkers while a fire hydrant sprigged a steady stream for children to run through. A patrol car turned in off Columbus Avenue and cruised down West Eighty-ninth Street. One of the players looked up from the board. “Maricon,” he muttered, glancing back down.

  Inside the garage there were two flatbed trucks stacked high with scrapped automobiles, lashed to the beds by steel cables and secured on the sides by long metal slats fitted into the steel edges of the beds. Each of the scrapped cars was full of plastic explosives and the gas tanks had been topped off with gasoline. A pyromaniac’s delight. An Econoline van with tinted plexiglass was parked behind the trucks.

  Under a line of bare lightbulbs that hung from grimy S-chains, Ahmad Marku and Iban Yaziji were sitting cross-legged on a blanket that had been spread out over the floor. Five other Arabs surrounded them. They were cleaning Uzi submachine guns and talking in low tones, oblivious to the large black flies buzzing around them.

  Zangline, Stanislaus, Kelly, and Bramson were sitting around a folding table playing seven-card stud. Aldridge Braxton and his sister were sitting on an army cot between the two groups watching television. Aldridge was busy swatting the flying pests with a folded magazine while Thea reached up to adjust the rabbit ears.

  Chief Zangline had the deal. He shuffled the cards meticulously, his pitiless eyes peering through the veil of smoke, studying the face of each of his colleagues. Stanislaus, Kelly, and Bramson reveled in watching the light dim in other men’s eyes. Zangline had conducted his own private investigation into their use of deadly physical force when they were assigned to the Six-six’s Anticrime Unit. He had located three witnesses who had seen the cops throw the two fleeing muggers off the roof. He was also successful in tracing three of the throw-aways that they had used. All of them had been removed from prisoners at the time of their arrests and never vouchered. The prisoners never complained; it was one less charge. Zangline had decided that if any problems should develop because of the Unit’s excesses or because of today’s forthcoming action, Stanislaus and his pals were going to take the fall. Whitney Zangline was a survivor.

  Each of the players were dealt two hole cards and one facing up. Kelly was high with an ace showing. Zangline anted and began playing by rote, as he contemplated the day’s work which lay ahead of them, searching for a flaw in his carefully conceived plan.

  They were to leave the garage at four-thirty in the morning and drive by a prearranged route to Anderman’s warehouse in Queens. Detonators primed, six of the wrecked autos would be quickly off-loaded by means of the hoist in the rear of each flatbed and placed up against the walls of the arms depot. After a seven-minute time lapse, the explosion and mushrooming fireball would turn the warehouse into a smoldering hole in the ground. They would then leave Queens and drive into Harlem and El Barrio where the rest of the junk would be randomly detonated, precipitating riots. Thing about those people, he thought, was that they can always be counted on to burn and pillage; all you have to do is give them a little incentive. The arms depots would then be exposed and the Israelis would be forced by an outraged public to leave the country. Moorehouse had even suggested to Zangline that one or perhaps two dead Arabs left at the scene of one of the explosions would add authenticity and also lay a false trail of responsibility. Zangline thought that that was an excellent idea. The Moslem Brotherhood and Black September made perfect scapegoats.

  The prophecies of Carter Moorehouse’s failed campaign were about to come to pass. And, in a certain way, Zangline, too, was about to have his revenge on those who had stymied his drive to become PC. He saw an irony in it all. He was the catalyst for Moorehouse’s revenge. And as the commanding officer of SOD he would be called upon to squelch the riots that he was about to start.

  Moorehouse had promised each of them a payday of two hundred thousand dollars for today’s action. A cop’s dream—the big score. He had heard about this small country in Europe—Liechtenstein—where they had numbered accounts and, unlike the Swiss, asked no questions and kept their mouths shut.

  The plan called for Bramson and two of the Arabs to ride in one truck, and Kelly and two other Arabs to ride in the other. Zangline, Stanislaus, and the remainder would ride shotgun in the van, ready to take out any interference. He could see no flaws in the plan. But just in case, he had made escape contingencies. Whitney Zangline was indeed a cautious man.

  Tossing each player their last card down, Zangline’s eyes darted over to the Braxtons and then flashed back to meet Stanislaus’s waiting stare. “Now is a good time,” Zangline said in a low voice, picking up his hole cards, studying them.

  Stanislaus acknowledged his direction with a fitful flicker of his eyes and an evil little smile. He gathered up his hand and tossed it into the center of the pot. “I’m out.”

  Westy Stanislaus pushed away from the table and got up. Walking over to the van, he slouched against it and lit a cigarette. He had not been
home and therefore was not aware that his apartment had been the subject of a search warrant. After leaving the SOD compound the three policemen had driven to Manhattan and waited while Marku and Yaziji gathered up the Braxtons. During the ride to the heliport he kept checking for a tail. He had that feeling that people were onto them. But the traffic was too damn heavy and he could never be sure.

  One of Marku’s men had been waiting for them on Rabbits Island. He wondered suddenly why the hell it was called an Island. There was no water. Just a large tract of land that was shaped into a pair of rabbit’s ears by the railroad tracks of the L.I.R.R. yards in the valley between Skillman Avenue and Northern Boulevard and connected to the outside world by the Honeywell Viaduct in Long Island City.

  He thought of Sara and became angry at himself for still missing her. He had never known a woman like Sara. He had been used to the bimbos that he picked up in the singles’ bars. Sara was different, so different. She always smelled nice, and her face was always made up to look natural, like she wasn’t wearing anything on it. And there was that special way that she had of looking at him, that gleam that told him that she wanted him, that he was her special man. He could never fathom what an elegant lady like her saw in him. One day when they were alone in his apartment he asked her. “Because you’re so cute. You’re my own big goy,” she had teased.

  They had been together only three times when she had asked him playfully if he enjoyed doing certain things to women. “No real man does that,” he had said. She pushed her naked body close, running her tongue over his lips and a hand through his hair. “I would love if you did it to me,” she said, taking his head into her hands and guiding it down her body. “I’ll teach you how.”

  He had given up everything for her and she had betrayed him. He began to vent his sudden rage by heeling the van’s tire. She had used him. She had stolen the list, never really left Anderman, and laughed when he asked her to marry him. How could he have been so fucking stupid? He was glad that she was dead, glad that he had done it. It had given him pleasure. He would always remember the horrified look in her eyes, her painful moans as Bramson and Kelly held her and he slowly, methodically pushed the curtain rod into her battered body. And she still didn’t talk, he thought, with grudging admiration.