by Andrew Case
The detective shook his head. “We just needed a few days to search the house. Everything would have been fine. But you had to let him in here. Now if I don’t take the boy with me, you’re going to lock me up.”
The house. The detective had taken the boy so that Davenport’s house would be secure. He had known that the father would be sequestered. That police would guard the place. And if the police were in Armstrong’s pocket, looking for what Davenport left behind, Bruder could scour the place at their leisure.
The detective went on. “You get your ambulance for the dad once I’m on the road. He’s going to be fine.”
Adam squeezed his knee again but the blood kept gurgling through. The puddle on the floor grew. The boy looked at his wounded father. The detective took a step back. One of the cops on the ground, one of the armed ones, looked to the captain. The captain shook his head. Detective Bruder took another step back.
If Bruder had searched the house and taken the boy, it meant he didn’t know what the wristband meant. Otherwise, they would have just taken it to begin with. Bruder had spent two days with the boy and hadn’t taken the wristband. That meant the boy likely didn’t know either. Leonard slid to his right, so he could have a clearer view of the pair.
“Detective, you don’t need the boy.”
At once, half the heads in the precinct turned toward Leonard. The captain’s eyes opened and a vein on the left side of his neck started throbbing. Cops hate it when things do not go according to protocol. And a civilian stepping into this kind of negotiation was not protocol. Bruder stared back at him. Leonard could tell that the detective didn’t remember him.
“You don’t know what I need.”
“You’re looking for the rest of the information Christine Davenport left behind. It’s all in that wristband. The wristband has a flash drive in it. Just take it and leave the boy. Just walk away. They’ll let you go. Won’t you, Captain?”
The captain looked slowly from Leonard to Bruder. “Sure. Sure, Timmy. Take the wristband and you can go. We’ll call an ambulance for the father.”
“Like hell I can.”
Bruder stepped back another yard, dragging the boy with him now. The child swung his arm behind his back. He didn’t want the wristband taken off. They were almost out of the precinct when Bruder looked back at Leonard.
“Remember what I said. You guys follow me and there is no boy. But thanks for telling me about the wristband. It’s going to save me a lot of trouble.”
And they were out, around the corner and into the darkness. Two cops stood up to chase them. They stood at the door, weapons drawn. Leonard couldn’t see what they saw, but he could see their eyes. And their eyes told him that they were afraid that if they chased down Bruder, the boy would be gone. One of them spoke.
“Captain, should we close in?”
But Leonard could tell that even the officer was afraid to tempt Bruder. He had seen the detective holding a gun to the child just like the rest of them.
“No. We’ll have to try to track him somehow. Someone call for a bus for the father.”
The disappointed uniforms turned back. One daggered a look at Leonard. If they were alone, Leonard thought maybe the guy would have shot him. He eased back toward the stairway leading back to the precinct.
Timmy Bruder. A detective working for Ralph Mulino had taken Adam Davenport’s son. Was likely trying to get information on what Christine had found. If that boy’s wristband even had anything of value. And this detective, or whoever he had been working for, had spent a year looking for Adam and his son, and only just found them when they came back onto the grid in Brooklyn. Mulino would take the news hard. Finally able to run your own squad, and one of your detectives is a psychopath. That kind of thing comes back to haunt you sometimes. Leonard looked up the stairway where the captain had disappeared. The one who had given up. Had said, anyway, that the best they could do was track Bruder. Leonard figured at the least that he could help with that. He turned up toward the precinct lobby, Eleanor following alongside.
Just as he started up the stairway he saw a figure blocking the light into the main floor of the precinct. A big man favoring one leg, his hand on the arm rail and a broad smile on his face.
Detective Mulino spoke. “Hey, Leonard. Did I miss anything?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Peralta pulled her unmarked car toward the curb of a street lined with small, neat houses. Her headlights lit the porch of one house in particular; this far into Brooklyn there was only a single pair of streetlights every hundred yards. Sheepshead Bay could basically be a Long Island suburb. The cheap kind, with postage-stamp lawns and vinyl fences and a thousand miles from the mansions of the Hamptons, but a suburb nevertheless. The neighborhood had a subway stop, but no one who lived there used it. There are some parts of the city so far away from the bloodstream of the MTA that everyone owns a car. Peralta wasn’t sure what precinct she was in; she had driven with her phone in the passenger seat, directing her farther south and farther east with each turn. She was lucky no one in traffic enforcement had pulled her over. Looking down to get directions from a smartphone wasn’t exactly texting while driving, but it was frowned upon. And she didn’t want to spend the time talking her way out of a ticket with Robert Armstrong waiting for her.
At least she hoped he was waiting. Every building that runs any kind of affordable housing program has to register with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The building has to give an address for the company that owns it. The company has to list its membership, and the name and address of a managing agent. Tenants hoping to compel their landlords to turn on the heat or fix the collapsed ceilings have to file papers in housing court, and those papers have to be sent somewhere for the landlord to ignore. The entity that owned 80 Smithdale was named “80 Smithdale Housing, LLC.” The only member was David Verringer. The address for the company was this house, tucked away in Sheepshead Bay. The trim neighborhood was laid out in crisp streets surrounding a body of water that Detective Peralta, squinting at a map, had never thought looked much like a sheep’s head. Robert Armstrong was listed as the managing agent, and this was his address too. The whole thing smelled. It was better than just a post office box, but not by a whole lot.
Evangeline had vouched that Armstrong was the man in the picture. And Detective Peralta had heard the name Verringer before. But she didn’t have a picture of him, and wasn’t sure Evangeline or any of the other tenants would have been able to identify him if she did. There was no reason to think that the man who actually owned the building had ever set foot in it. That’s what men like Armstrong were for. But this was the address she had, so this was the best place she could look. She stepped out of the car and onto the curb. Her right hand drifted down to her gun. Sometimes even post office boxes fight back.
She walked up the short path to the door. It reminded her of home. There was space between houses and lawns, and every so often a tree. A light was on above the porch, illuminating the door and a patch of lawn and leaving the rest in darkness. Peralta took the last step up to the landing and was reaching for the doorbell when the door opened.
“Yes?”
Through the open doorway there was a heavy screen door blotting out the light. Behind that, Detective Peralta could make out a silhouette, over six feet tall, white, and younger than she had expected. Good posture too; it wasn’t Armstrong. And the open door meant he had been watching her as she made her way up the path. She looked down to where the man’s hands should be. Inside the house was dark; Peralta couldn’t see a thing. She was on an empty street far from her fellow officers with a man who might have orchestrated a murder. And he could be doing anything with his hands. She tugged her own gun out of its holster. This wasn’t a post office box anymore. She could feel her hand start to warm the rough plastic case.
“Are you Robert Armstrong?”
“No.”
“David Verringer?”
No answer to this on
e. Her right hand still on the gun, Peralta reached down to her chrome chain. She moved slowly. She didn’t want to surprise this man any more than she wanted him to surprise her. She held up the blue sunburst shield.
“Mr. Verringer, I’m Detective Peralta from the Organized Crime Control Bureau. I want to ask you a couple of questions about your building.”
“The what?”
That was the thing about OCCB. On the force, it might be something of an inside joke that the bureau had nothing to do with organized crime. But out on the street, someone might be wary of the name. He might think that this detective was coming with a stack of receipts to tie him to the Bonannos. Detective Peralta could always play that kind of misunderstanding to her advantage.
“The Organized Crime Control Bureau, Mr. Verringer. I am investigating a number of suspicious transactions regarding your building at 80 Smithdale Street. You are the owner of the building at 80 Smithdale Street?”
“I was.”
“What do you mean, you were?”
“We sold that building. It was too much of a headache. It should be closing today. Maybe right about now.”
Peralta considered. He could sell the building, but it didn’t mean he was off the hook for anything he had done while he ran it. Crimes are still crimes. Abuse of tenants doesn’t go away with a change of property. She stepped up onto the doorstop and peered inside.
“Whether you sold it or not, I have some questions for you. I have spoken to some of the tenants. We’re conducting an ongoing investigation. If you only closed today, our investigation covers your ownership.”
The figure stepped back into the shadow. She had surprised him. Right now she couldn’t go into the house. There hadn’t been time to get a warrant. But most people don’t know how quickly they can accidentally grant a police officer the right to enter. Hot pursuit, plain view, search incident to an arrest—the warrant requirement was shot through with a thousand exceptions, and Detective Peralta had studied them all. This man, with his hands out of view, being told his company was the subject of an investigation, didn’t know the bind he was in. Maybe if he calmly stated that he was calling his lawyer and carefully shut the door, she would have to stay put. But any sudden motion, any dash back into the house, and that would be an exigent circumstance. And exigent circumstances were the very biggest hole in the warrant requirement. He was hovering in half darkness now, and Peralta was ready to toss open the screen door and rush him.
“You’ll have to speak to Mr. Armstrong. He does all the books. He manages all the properties.”
“And where is Mr. Armstrong now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mr. Verringer, he’s registered with HPD at this address. You’ve listed him as the managing agent with this address. If you listed this address fraudulently, that in and of itself is a crime.”
The man turned into the darkened house, just quickly enough that Peralta gave herself the right to pursue him. She whipped open the screen door with her left hand, the right still on her gun. He hadn’t even bothered to close the front door behind him. Peralta burst inside to find a neat little house, maybe the kind of place where a retired English schoolmarm would be at home. An oversized gray couch with colorful knit throws across it. A circular cherry breakfast table, two places set. A single bookcase, no television, no mess at all. As she ran through the pretty little room, she wondered what kind of real estate magnate lives in a museum.
The man had fled straight toward the back. Peralta ran through the house and onto the back porch. The rear yard was as small as the front. Here the neat vinyl fencing in front gave way to ragged chain link, an old rusted fence that was littered with tangles and holes. Straight through the yard, opening into the next property, was a hole in the fencing big enough for a man to slip through. Past that yard, and you could run up the driveway and onto the next block. It was the only way he could have gone.
But there was no reason to follow him. She wasn’t looking for Verringer, only his henchman. If she called in a man in flight, the local precinct would track him down. He would be on foot, since his car was likely one of the ones in front.
She turned back toward the house, but not before noting that the backyard was a mess, filled with a tangle of weeds, brambles, and wildflowers. She thought again for a moment that a man who owned seven apartment buildings throughout Brooklyn probably didn’t live here. They kept the house to have an address to register at HPD.
But then why had the man been there? If Verringer and Armstrong used a deserted house as a mailbox, why had he been sitting in the little living room, peering out the window at Detective Peralta as she came up the path? He hadn’t been waiting for her. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been waiting for someone. He had been planning to meet Armstrong, or the people who had cleaned up the building and scared the residents. She wouldn’t be alone for long. Detective Peralta walked up the steps and onto the rear porch. Somewhere in here she could find some kind of document tying Verringer, or his employee, to the crane collapse. She would have time, but not a lot of time. She had slipped her gun back into the holster while surveying the backyard. Before turning into the house, she took it out again. It looked like she was going to need it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“We can’t put it over the radio. He took the RMP.”
It took a moment for Leonard to realize what the captain was telling him. No New York Police Department officer would ever refer to the blue-and-white marked police car as a cruiser, or a car, or anything at all other than a Radio Mobile Patrol. An RMP. But Leonard didn’t need a lesson in the jargon. What the captain was telling him was that in an RMP, Bruder could hear any call that went out. And he had promised that if that happened, the boy would end up dead.
Adam Davenport was being loaded into an ambulance in the precinct parking lot, Mulino debriefing him. The EMTs had bound up the knee and leaned him back on the stretcher. The wound was ugly, but it would heal. A bullet in the kneecap was not the source of Adam Davenport’s suffering right now.
Leonard watched the uniforms as they scuttled back to their desks. He tried to figure how Bruder had kept the boy secret for so long. A precinct is usually secure. The boy had been the source of hourly bulletins and an Amber Alert; his description had been read aloud at every Roll Call in the city. Bruder had had the kid for a day and a half. At his home, maybe even in the precinct. And at some point he had come into the precinct with him without getting arrested or shot. He had taken him somewhere familiar, somewhere secure, somewhere he thought he would be safe. Maybe he had snuck him in a side door without any cop in the precinct noticing. It was hard to believe.
But the alternative was hard to believe as well. Because the alternative was that someone had seen them. Someone did know. And the alternative was that one of these officers, maybe more, maybe all of them, had kept quiet about a kidnapped boy. At least for a little while. Maybe for longer. All to keep from turning on a fellow cop. Sure, they had their guns out when Bruder took his stand. But when the detective shot Davenport in the knee, no one had returned fire. It was almost as though they couldn’t help it; loyalty had been drummed into them above all else. Maybe Bruder had counted on that too. And maybe Bruder had brought the boy to the precinct precisely because it was the one place he could stash the kid safely.
“You’re not going to just let him drive off with the boy, are you?” Eleanor Hill’s outrage was muted by her obvious shock. Leonard could tell she thought the whole precinct was bonkers. They had let the cop walk away. They had let him take the boy. Leonard imagined what Eleanor Hill’s father would say. If that had been a twenty-four-year-old black man holding a gun to the kid in the doorway instead of a white cop, this game would already be over, one way or another.
“We aren’t letting him do anything.” The captain was speaking through his teeth. Leonard could tell he was at a loss. Winding through the last few days. Wondering what had gone wrong. Eleanor didn’t let up.
“Can
’t these cars be tracked? Aren’t they on GPS?”
“We can’t put a call out over the radio. We can’t follow him with another RMP. He will spot us right away.”
Eleanor spoke. “I can drive. You just call us and tell us where it is. He won’t see my car. He won’t notice it. It isn’t marked.”
The captain’s hands were in accidental fists; he was in danger of simply crushing the pencil in his right hand. But wherever he was directing his rage—himself, his men, the culture of his entire department—he was going to have to swallow it.
“You aren’t an officer. Neither one of you. I can’t let you run off after this guy. What if he shoots you? What kind of responsibility do I have then?”
Eleanor was nearly bursting out of her skin. Reluctant an hour ago, now she was furious that she wasn’t going to be allowed to help. Leonard looked across the room at a stout man in the doorway, staring out at the parking lot.
“Captain, we’ll take Mulino with us. It can be his operation. I can vouch for Eleanor. She’ll stay safe. We’ll do what the detective tells us.”
Leonard could tell the captain didn’t like it. He looked back and forth between Eleanor and Leonard, two people whose very lives, very careers, were spent accusing the police. But he had no choice, and two minutes later they were back in the Lexus, headlights flaring, now rolling down Empire past Eleanor Hill’s new development, just as Empire abuts the park and turns into Ocean Avenue. Eleanor was driving cautiously, hewing to the speed limit, signaling as she changed lanes. Mulino, in front, slid the chair back with the electric control just enough to start to cramp Leonard. Leonard slid over from behind the detective to behind Eleanor. No reason to make a thing of it. The captain was giving Leonard directions through his cell phone.
“He went down Ocean and took the parkway. He’s headed south.”
Deeper into Brooklyn. Brighton Beach, maybe Coney Island. Less likely Borough Park, but you never know. Maybe Marine Park or Sheepshead Bay. Or maybe he would stay on Ocean Parkway until it fed into the Belt Parkway and he would cruise all the way out onto Long Island. There were miles of beaches, empty spaces where a carrier couldn’t ping a cell phone for its location. There had been a half-dozen young women found buried on those beaches not so long ago, their killer never found. If you wanted to drop a body where it would stay dropped, the south shore of Long Island was as good a place as any.