by Andrew Case
But then Leonard had a second thought. Because if he wasn’t taking Adam Davenport back to OCCB, that meant he could follow his instincts. And his instincts said that Armstrong hadn’t just killed Valiant. His instincts said that Armstrong was still trying to get something from Christine Davenport. Something she had maybe hidden. Something that would be in the house where Adam had moved all of her possessions, only a few blocks away. Mulino had told him to back off; he wouldn’t be able to say he was there on OCCB business, or NYPD business at all, really. Because he wouldn’t be. The house was being guarded by a police officer, but that wasn’t something that would trouble Leonard. He didn’t have a badge anymore, not like he did at DIMAC, but there were other ways inside a building.
It would mean striking out on his own after Mulino told him not to. It would mean following an investigation that he wasn’t supposed to be involved in at all. But he had followed his hunches once before, last year, and found out a deeper and broader conspiracy than even he had expected. If Christine Davenport had found more, there would be some evidence of it somewhere in her house. He went back out into the hallway, pulled the door to his own apartment shut, and locked it. He turned back toward the elevator. He was going out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When Leonard stole out of the Ebbets Field Apartments, it was early but already dark. The cars turning up Bedford from Empire had their lights on, alert to teenagers who still dashed across the middle of the street. It was a little chilly, but not bad yet. Thanksgiving was around the corner, but there wasn’t any snow. There wasn’t much wind. And with what Leonard was planning, he had to stay nimble.
When he reached Empire, he took in the massive ruined block. Dull, tired businesses. A used tire store on one side, storage units and a carpet wholesaler on the other. Somehow, incredibly, a series of storefronts with a couple of national chains: pizzas, Slurpees. Leonard wondered how they had hung on against the rush of artisan pies and cupcake stores. Other than that, the buildings were boarded up. Commercial storefronts had been sold and shuttered, bought by speculators hoping to flip them to developers. In the meanwhile, padlocks had been picked and wood had been pried off of windows and who knew what was actually going on behind the closed doors.
Leonard crossed Empire. Davenport’s house was on Guilder Street, the next block down. His yard would front one of these buildings. There would be no way in on the Guilder Street side; the row houses were entirely attached. And if Leonard tried to go in the front door, the cop posted there would call Mulino, and that would be the end of that.
But getting into the backyard meant getting through, or over, these buildings. None of them would have a door that just opened into the yards beyond. The last building, at the end of the block, was an enormous grocery store with a massive parking lot. Leonard had been in there once; it had a cold storage room with sides of beef actually hanging from hooks. It stank. There was no way into the yards from there.
He could try scaling fences all the way toward the house. But he had never seen the yards. There could be alarms. The fences could be twelve feet tall. Adam Davenport’s house was the seventh in from the edge. That meant seven fences, seven yards, seven separate acts of trespassing. The smart move was to get in through the commercial side. He would get in a building, hit the roof, and find a way to drop down.
Leonard scanned the traffic up and down Empire. The cars cruised by, oblivious. Around the corner, on Flatbush, the street would be thick with people, walking home from the subway or heading out for a drink. But since all the buildings had closed up on Empire, there was no reason for anyone to walk it. So there was no reason for anyone to stumble onto Leonard as he broke into a storefront. Even the methadone clinic had closed.
Leonard snuck up to an abandoned storefront; hanging on it was a small sign: “Music lessons for all ages.” Once upon a time, kids had swung ’round to learn to play guitar and piano in here. Maybe they had even come down from Ebbets Field. Once upon a time, like six months ago, maybe. The front door was locked, but there was a window to the side that was ajar by about an inch. That meant the lock had been sprung. Another quick peek on to Empire to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Leonard tugged at the window and slipped inside.
The room was a mess. Broken glass, mainly. The counter at the front, cash register askew, had been battered with a crowbar. There had once been cases on the walls, probably holding instruments for sale. All of it had been shattered. Someone had come through with a hammer and a crowbar and simply wrecked the place. Funny that they would have locked the door after they left. Most likely whoever did it hadn’t found anything of value. Even in this environment, people get ninety days’ notice before they have to clear out. It’s not like someone would have closed the business and left the register full. Or maybe someone had just visited his rage on whatever was nearby, breakable, and abandoned. Leonard walked through the lobby toward the back of the building.
Through the lobby, there was a hallway leading to six or seven rehearsal rooms. Each was behind a soundproof door; each was about six feet square. Leonard had a momentary vision of the place filled with kids, working on their scales, a patient teacher popping in from one room to the next. It was a vision of another era. The back wall had no door, no window. If it had an opening, it would have gone straight into somebody’s yard. The best bet was going to be the roof.
Leonard had missed the stairway by going in the window. The front door opened straight into it, with the music store actually on the left. That meant apartments above. People would come in the door and hike up the stairs to a couple of floors of two-bedroom units. So there had been a few people living on Empire before the whole thing was shut down after all. Whether it was legal or not, whether there were proper certificates of occupancy or whether the boiler was approved for residential use and hours, that was another story. Maybe if you want to give music lessons in the middle of Brooklyn, the best way to do it is to get a building and rent out a few apartments above your shop. Even if no one comes in to learn the French horn, the tenants above you are paying your nut. Maybe you take one of those apartments yourself. Makes for an awfully short commute.
Leonard reached the landing; there were two doors and another flight up. These would be apartments. There might be windows into the back, but as Leonard had counted, it probably wasn’t the right yard. The best plan would be to get to the roof and cross from there. Somehow he would find a way to get down three stories. He turned up the next flight of stairs.
It was dark. There probably hadn’t been power in the building for months. The ground floor had been fine, still aglow with streetlights. Even upstairs there had still been a hint of light. But now on the third floor, Leonard was feeling his way in near-total blackness. One hand gripped the railing, the other stuck ahead of him, to find whatever he was heading for before he walked into it. There would be one final turn, then either a stairway or a ladder or something to get to the roof.
He reached the top landing. Dark still. He would need a little light to get his bearings, to figure out how to get upstairs. He pulled out his phone and swiped on the flashlight app. It wasn’t great, but it would do. He was on a narrow landing. There were once again two doors on either side. Apartments that had long since been abandoned. And a ladder on the back wall. No stairway. He walked toward it, his phone guiding him.
Something on the floor caught his foot. He slipped and flew forward, landing on his left arm, hoping to protect the phone with his right. There was decades-old carpeting on the landing. Thick, dull, and carrying a faded moldy stench, but good enough to break his fall. He was fine, but it had been loud. He stood up and continued toward the ladder.
“Who’s there?” A man’s voice, not afraid, not worried. But harsh and hostile. Someone who was being invaded and wanted to protect himself.
Leonard froze. There was someone behind one of the doors. A squatter. Someone who makes his home in a completely abandoned apartment might be doing it just to save on rent. But t
here would be no water, no power, no heat; he would really be roughing it. More likely—much more likely—was that whoever was behind that door had his reasons not to be found. Not by the police, not by the building inspectors, not by whoever used to be his landlord. And especially not by Leonard Mitchell, sneaking around to break into one of the houses on Guilder Street. Leonard slipped his phone back into his pocket. He grabbed the ladder. He started up, the cold rungs bearing deep into his hands.
One rung, then another, and then he heard the door to one of the apartments open. The voice again. “Who’s there? What are you doing out there?” It was pitch black. Leonard couldn’t see anything. Maybe that meant the man couldn’t see him either. Slowly, cautiously, he started up the ladder again. He could hear the man pacing back and forth downstairs. Maybe waving his arms, hoping to run into whoever he had heard stumbling around. Leonard reached his hand up and felt a latch. The roof. He fingered the metal grate above him.
He saw a light below him. The man had turned on a flashlight and was shining it down the stairway. Leonard couldn’t see the man at all, just the beam as it lit up the stairwell. “You gotta tell me your business, whoever it is down there. You’ve got no business in here, I can tell you that.”
Leonard took a breath and tugged at the latch to the roof. It swung open. He popped open the grate and pulled himself toward the roof. As soon as he did, light streamed into the building. Leonard could hear the man below swinging around but didn’t turn to look. He scrambled out, tugging his legs up onto the flat tar roof, and shut the grate behind him. He looked down at it. There was no way to secure it from the outside. If the man wanted to follow him out, he would be there in a moment.
Leonard stood. He was on one of a row of roofs, all connected, all about twenty to thirty feet over the backyards of Guilder Street. He looked down toward the giant grocery at the end of the block, into the dozen or so yards, each divided from the next by a vinyl fence. He counted seven in from the edge, to Adam Davenport’s house. A broad deck, a brick patio below it, and where the other houses had yards, there was just a thicket of growth. Whatever was growing, it was four, maybe five feet tall. Even this late, even in November, the weeds were nearly as tall as a field of grown men. But it was only a few buildings down. Leonard turned. He ran across the roofs until he was face to face with Adam’s house, the field of weeds below and the lights entirely dark.
Behind him, he heard a creak. The squatter was opening the grate, was following him onto the roof. Leonard scurried to the lip of the building. He slid to the edge, turned onto his belly, and started to slide down. Three stories wouldn’t kill him if he could lower himself far enough before dropping. His whole body was dangling, fingertips on the lip of the building. And those weeds were pretty tall too. He held the ledge with his fingers. The armpits of his suit jacket strained, and he thought he heard some of the seams popping. His shoes bounced against the wall and he could hear a man’s footsteps approaching above. He winced, pushed off from the ledge, and let go.
He flew into the weeds but came down on both feet, stalks crashing around him. He landed and crumpled into a ball. The weeds were thick and hairy, maybe half an inch wide. At least there were no thorns. Leonard stood up. His ankle felt awful. He spun it in a circle and decided it was sprained, not broken. He had made it down safely. He shook himself off and turned around to face the house. There was no longer any noise above him. Whoever it was wasn’t about to follow Leonard into somebody’s yard. Leonard walked out of the weeds and onto the back patio.
Now all he needed to do was figure out how to get inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Of course the door below the deck wouldn’t open. He had been desperate to try it, after slithering through the overgrown yard and stepping down the three steps under the pine deck. Every house Leonard had seen from the yard was basically the same: a deck across the first floor, a few steps to the basement below. Leonard tugged at the door again. It would head straight to the mechanical room, the vent from the furnace piped just above the door. Under the deck there was a small window, but it was too small even for Leonard to squeeze through.
Leonard backed away from the basement door up the short steps onto the patio. He wasn’t safe yet. If either neighbor came out on the porch, there would be a quick call to the police. They all knew that Adam’s son was gone, that Adam wasn’t home, and there was a patrol officer stationed on the front stoop. And Mulino had expressly forbidden him from coming here, so it wasn’t as though Leonard could talk his way out by dropping the detective’s name. He crouched, hoping he wouldn’t be seen if someone came outside.
There was always the chance that the door on the deck was open. Or the windows. Slowly, hoping to keep quiet, Leonard climbed up the wooden steps and onto the deck. It was brand new but had never been painted. The last owner had probably built it to sell the house but hadn’t bothered to treat it, so it was already starting to warp. Someone ought to have told Adam Davenport what he needed to do in order to take care of his property. But the man had other things on his mind. Careful not to let the warping wood creak, Leonard crept to the door and tried it. No dice. Inside he could make out a kitchen, even in the dark. Some kind of construction was underway inside the house. Some kind of construction gone wrong: the kitchen ceiling was propped up with a pair of steel columns.
There were two broad windows going into the dining room. Leonard stood back on the deck and looked up and down the block. Every house had the same two windows, the same door. But every other house had iron bars, painted black, protecting those windows. Maybe Adam hadn’t gotten to it yet. Or maybe he was a new arrival in Brooklyn, thinking he could live free from fear, that he didn’t need to shower his windows in security grates because New York was safe now. But if you are trying to jump fences and break into living rooms, and there is only one house on the block without any metal grates over the windows, well, that’s the one you’re going to target. Leonard was lucky—the easy mark was the house he was trying to break into anyway.
He stood back from the window, lowered his center of gravity, and hurled his foot at the window. Immediately his hip hurt. He had twisted something in his midsection. His foot bounced harmlessly off the window. He crumpled in a ball in pain on the deck. After a moment, there was nothing but quiet. He stood up and looked around. He wasn’t strong enough to kick in windows.
He stepped back down to the patio. It was laid out with interlocking hexagonal paving stones. Small ones, the size of a brick. Leonard crept down the stairs and tugged at one. It held fast; they were sunk deep into the mud of the backyard, stifling the growth of the monster weeds. But under the wooden stairway, he saw that there was a small stack of leftovers. Gifts from the seller again. Leonard took one of the bricks and hauled himself back up onto the deck.
He took off his jacket and wrapped it around the brick. It held tight and he tied it up, his sleeve the handle of a slingshot. Leonard spun the rock and hurled it at the window. The brick flew through the window and deep into the dining room, noisier than Leonard would have liked. He reached through the shattered window and tugged until it gave way. Avoiding the splintered glass, he climbed inside.
The house was dark. And a mess. A pile of boxes in the living room had been overturned and rummaged through. Books, clothes, and toys for the boy spilled out of them. There was no order to it. Leonard walked through the parlor and onto the stairs. It was a hundred years old, this house. Every time Leonard took a step it sounded like someone trying to bust out of a coffin.
What was he looking for, anyway? It could be anywhere. The house was a disaster, as though someone else had already torn through it. Upstairs, the dressers were open and the clothes were on the floor and the desk was a riot of paper. It was too much of a risk, being here. He turned back toward the grand and noisy staircase, started down, and froze.
At the bottom of the stairway, feet shoulder-length apart in a ready stance, was a uniform officer. He had both arms in the air and was holdin
g a canister of pepper spray at Leonard. That was what it had come to. They had drilled it into the NYPD: don’t lead with your gun. So here was a guy thinking he was doing the right thing by confronting an unknown intruder in a crime scene with a canister of pepper spray. The ACLU would have been proud of the guy. It was Leonard’s only chance.
“Hello, Officer.”
“Stay where you are and put your hands up.”
Leonard put his hands up, but he kept walking slowly down the stairs. He was half-obeying, after all. He kept talking, too, calmly, slowly. And telling the truth, to the extent that that mattered.
“My name is Leonard Mitchell. I work with Ralph Mulino from OCCB. We investigated Christine Davenport’s murder. I’m looking to see if there is anything linking the people who did that to the boy’s kidnapping.”
“You on the job?”
“I’m a civilian investigator. I’m not NYPD.”
“Just stay where you are.”
One more step. Maybe two, and he’d be in the clear.
“Why don’t you call OCCB on the radio? Why don’t you ask for Detective Mulino?”
The cop hesitated. He lowered the pepper spray a few inches, thinking about whether he should call. How many criminals even knew what OCCB stands for, he must have been thinking. The officer’s moment of hesitation was enough for Leonard. He put his left hand on the bannister and leapt into the parlor room below. It was eight feet maybe, and his ankle stung again, but it was easier than coming off the back wall into the garden of weeds.
The officer wasn’t blocking his way anymore. He had been guarding the front door, and now Leonard was running back toward the kitchen. He leapt forward and trucked full speed. If the cop had his gun out, he wouldn’t have been able to fire. Not legally anyway. Not that that might have stopped him. But without his gun, with only his pepper spray, what did it matter? The pepper spray only affects the soft tissue of the nose, mouth, and eyes.