Banquo's Ghosts

by Richard Lowry

  She chuckled at the rodent and crossed the street and knew right where she wanted to enter the lot. She took a pair of metal bolt cutters from a gym bag and started in on the chain-link fence. No way she’d climb that thing, topped with barbed wire angled out toward the street. No, she’d get in down low, forcing her way through the hole barely big enough for a kid. And damning all through her teeth as she caught her jacket on a bit of wire.

  But two minutes later she was making her way through the hulks of cars in various states of disrepair, squeezing between the fender of one, almost touching the side of another, as if it were some particularly chaotic New York traffic jam in a state of suspended animation.

  She arrived at the Nogales Livery Lincoln, and she went around to the trunk. From the gym bag, she fished out her Banquo & Duncan-issue Geiger counter and got a low-static reading. A little bump. She began to feel urgency now. The gym bag gave up a hammer and pry bar. She slipped them out and with her sweaty hands began to jimmy the back lock. She was good at this, but she needed to keep her hands from shaking in order to pop the trunk.

  She closed her eyes and breathed for calm, and felt for that little snickety hitch within the car and finally got it. With a deep click the trunk bounced all the way open, the trunk latch hanging by a sliver of broken metal. She stuck the counter inside and began to get readings that crackled like a car radio in the middle of a thunderstorm with nonstop lightening. Off the scale. Hot as hell, very hot.

  Then she heard a bark. It sent a jolt through her. She put her counter back in the bag, slammed the trunk closed, but it bounced open again. Barks mixed with snarls raced toward her through the car graveyard until they were all one long stream of canine malice, and she could hear an animal’s body clambering over cars, claws against the metal adding to the mayhem. She had her back against the trunk and looked to see if she could see it coming—when it rushed right up to her. She got the trunk down and jumped on it, then up on the roof, losing an Annie Sez two-inch pump.

  The junkyard dog crashed into the back of the car and jumped up, its teeth bared in an evil smile. She couldn’t even tell its breed, just angry, mean, and ready to rip. The dog tried to climb onto the back again and slid off, its body twisting, all insistent muscle. Smith didn’t know whether to try to make a run for it or stay put. The beast finally got up on the car and was lunging toward her again, paws slipping on the back window, when she pulled the .32 Beretta, the sissy girly gun, the one with no stopping power, and shot the mutt straight in the skull, the sound of the shot trailing off in the distance for a long time. It was the loudest shot she’d ever heard.

  The dog had slipped down to the trunk, limp, its head smoking. Smith heard a voice shouting and then a siren.

  O’Hanlon looked at the green numbers of his digital clock when the phone next to his bed rang. 1:43 AM. Smith’s voice. “Do you want to hear the bad news or the bad news?”

  “What’s up?” he croaked.

  “The trunk of the Lincoln is as radioactive as Love Canal.” O’Hanlon was impressed. “Shit. And the other bad news?”

  “I’m under arrest.” Her voice faded from the phone. “What the hell precinct is this?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Grunge

  It started innocuously enough on the northwest corner of Manhattan, so quietly almost nobody noticed. Initially the problem surfaced at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center: a dozen modern steel-and-glass buildings and a few older brick ones that competed with the towering silver spans of the George Washington Bridge for the New York skyline. A small city of nearly twenty thousand medical personnel devoted to the care of its inner-city community and the science of higher medicine, where, miraculously, neither was shortchanged.

  The first to show symptoms were a sixty-four-year-old granny, Mrs. Ebert Jones of Washington Heights, and a kid from a pickup basketball game, James Thomas, known on the street as Spinner. Both victims appeared at “Pres Emergency”—what the neighborhood called the emergency room of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center—arriving as walk-ins on a late Sunday afternoon.

  Granny Jones came directly from work as a security matron at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park half a mile north. The reassembled European hermitage was packed to the Gothic arches with medieval treasures and owned by the Metropolitan Museum. On her feet all day in the galleries, Matron Jones was feeling faint.

  Spinner came directly from his neighborhood hoops games with two of his dawgs to keep him company. Spinner’s $200 Nike Air Force 1 Scarface Edition basketball shoes were melting off his feet. One of his friends was wearing the Adidas Intelligent Basketball Shoe that retailed for $500. These weren’t looking so hot either, and all three boys were wondering loudly about where to get satisfaction in the matter of defective merchandise. But only Spinner needed medical attention. His toes were burned. He sat near the large Plexiglas window by the nurses’ station in his stocking feet, his semi-melted Nikes hanging around his neck by the laces.

  Unfortunately for them, that same Sunday afternoon some gang-bangers had shot two innocent children in a drive-by, while ten people from a three-car pileup on the West Side Highway had been routed to Columbia-Presbyterian. So it took two hours before either Spinner or Granny Jones received attention. By the time the attending physician came out for Granny Jones, Granddaughter Alisha had arrived, cell phone earplug in her ear. Granny felt better just to see her. The two left without the matron being treated, hand in hand, wrinkled paw in young palm, talking about the new Avon catalogue.

  Spinner was given some aloe-based antibiotic topical cream and walked home in a pair of mauve hospital booties, his ruined Nikes slung over his shoulder. The attending physician cracked, “Don’t step in the acid puddles.”

  Both were dead before midnight.

  Still, in the first forty-eight hours, Homeland Security, the NYCDC, Centers for Disease Control, and the NYC Office of the Medical Examiner down on 26th Street didn’t come close to connecting the dots. How could they? Granny Jones was listed at a Harlem funeral parlor as “heart attack,” the family talking to lawyers about “suing the shit out of Pres Emergency,” while Spinner’s case was listed in the coroner’s office as “undetermined cause of death,” scheduled for an autopsy later in the week. Nobody bothered to check his closet, where he threw the Nike Air Force sneaks. If they had, they might have noticed all his other shoes were melting too.

  Elizabeth Richards had been talking to Peter more since he’d come back—nothing like a hostage ordeal to bring estranged adults closer together. Nothing too deep, just checking in periodically. Like an old married couple, even if she was his third try. And it was that increased communication between the two, along with Peter’s newfound intense amateur interest in strange doings in the city that prompted her to telephone him right away about a weird call she had gotten at the museum. She had picked up the phone and had to hold the traditional-style handset away from her ear because the voice on the other end was so loud:

  “This is Alisha Jones.” And irate as hell. “That’s Grandmother Jones’ granddaughter. She worked for you!” At first Elizabeth was confused; the only thing clear was that this Alisha was steaming at some bureaucratic runaround. “I’m calling you because the people at Personnel stopped payment of her insurance due to investigation by Equifax. I know Grandma had a heart condition, but they say they saw burns at the funeral. These people, these snoops from the insurance company, came to the funeral home and looked at her—right in her coffin! Right before the wake. And none of us knew!”

  To her credit Elizabeth tried to get to the bottom of it. “I don’t recognize the name Grandma Jones, Alisha, I’m sorry. Is it possible she worked at another department? You say she had burns on her feet?”

  “Yes, on her feet. They said burns on her feet. And now the insurance detectives are trying to weasel out of paying the insurance.”

  “Which department did your grandmother work for?”

  “Security. She worked in the security depart
ment. She was a gallery matron up at The Cloisters. Up at Fort Tryon Park.”

  “I’m sorry, Alisha, I think you’ve got the wrong department. We’re the Curator’s Office of the Ancient Middle East. I still think you need Personnel.”

  “No, you’re what I wanted. A curator—curators decide things. I know you guys decide. Now curate this situation for Granny Jones!”

  Elizabeth didn’t lose her temper. She made a call to Personnel on Alisha’s behalf and, just as importantly, the shop boss of the security guard’s union, and everyone promised to look into the situation and get back to Alisha. The irate Alisha seemed mollified for the moment.

  After Breuer’s sudden exit and Anton’s all-night train ride, it didn’t take much to spook Peter Johnson these days. A hooded sweatshirt from the corner of his eyes was almost enough. So, excited and alarmed by Elizabeth’s account of her conversation, he called the first member of the B & D crew he could get, who happened to be Bryce, who lost no time getting to Wallets. Tinker to Evers to Chance, and they started to grok the facts.

  In an hour, Bryce and Wallets took it upon themselves to go talk to Alisha Jones. But she wanted nothing to do with them. “Burns?” Wallets wanted to ask her. But Granny was in the ground, and nobody was in the mood to dig her up again. Then Bryce, exhibiting the thoroughness required of an attorney general’s son, suggested they check the Columbia-Presbyterian emergency room records for Sunday. And lo, there was a case of burns. James Thomas, aka Spinner. First to his apartment house; he lived with his cousin, once removed, who wanted nothing of Wallets or Bryce neither. Never mind the late young Spinner.

  “Can we see his sneakers?” Bryce asked him.

  “I threw them out. They’re gone. All his shit.”

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Thomas.”

  “You’re not bothering me. He bothered me. But he’s not bothering nobody no more.”

  “Can we talk to his friends?”

  “I don’t know his friends. And you don’t want to know them either.”

  On the way out of the building Wallets made a call to Jordan, the technician who ran the Hung Fat van; now between assignments, he was spread out on the home couch watching ESPN for the week. “Dig the Sniffer out of your toolkit and stick it in that apartment. Do it when the guy goes out to work tonight. He’s got a beer concession at Madison Square Garden slinging suds. No, I don’t know which game. And yes, I know you’re not on the clock; just bill me.”

  Then down to the Chief Medical Examiner’s on 2nd Avenue and 26th Street. Wallets and Bryce found Spinner just where he was supposed to be: on a sliding stainless-steel slab in a refrigerated case in the New York Medical Examiner’s office. The mortuary attendant on duty pulled the stainless steel latch and slid the long metal tray out for Wallets and Bryce to admire.

  Wallets took a portable Geiger counter out of his coat pocket—the thing about six inches by three in a black leather perforated case. He passed the counter over Spinner’s burned feet. The needle spiked. He noticed other burns on the body. Cracked skin, blood leaking through.

  “When’s he due for autopsy?”

  “Tonight.”

  “And nobody’s seen him since he’s arrived?”

  “You’re the first.”

  Wallets nodded for the attendant to slide the body back into the stainless-steel cold. “I think you want to tell the M.E. to do it in a hazmat suit; otherwise Do Not Pass Go; go direct to Cremation.”

  “Well, I ain’t touching him!” the attendant said.

  “I’d keep this close for now,” Bryce told him. “Until we know what we’re dealing with.” The attendant shrugged. Maybe he would; maybe he wouldn’t.

  “If the Medical Examiner has any questions, he can use this number.” Wallets handed the attendant a card. “I suppose someone will have to tell the Mayor.”

  The attendant shrugged again. “Ain’t my call.”

  As he departed, Wallets remarked, “I don’t know what the Workbench Boys mixed, but whatever it was didn’t just burn his feet—that wouldn’t have killed him. Not that fast. Maybe he ingested some.”

  Actually, the Medical Examiner did call Wallets, but never told the Mayor. Not that night anyway. Yeah, the kid was mildly radioactive, and yes, it had somehow gotten into Spinner’s inner ear or maybe down his throat. But there just wasn’t enough hard evidence. The M.E. also told the Deputy Mayor, who said, “Thank you very much,” hung up, and went back to his dinner guests. Actually, His Honor was nearly the last to find out. And nearly by accident, when a science student from NYU on a field trip to the far north of Manhattan, Inwood Park, went through Christopher Street station carrying the Geology Department’s Geiger counter. The thing went off like the Fourth of July as the Uptown IRT roared through the Christopher Street station, and the student called the New York Post.

  Well, actually before calling the Post the careful geology major immediately switched trains and went back to Christopher Street to verify that, yes, the whole place spiked his counter. Then he called the New York Post.

  When a phone rings in New York bearing bad news, you can be sure more than one person answers the call. They may argue about how to handle the bad news, who to inform, and who to misinform, but nobody wants to be the 911 operator who hangs up on the drowning baby thinking it’s a prank. In this case, Han Lee, the thorough and alert NYU geology major, rang the city’s bell. First by calling the city desk at the New York Post. Wisely, they brought him over to their offices to go over his story and kept him there for a couple of hours.

  The city desk called the Deputy Mayor’s Office to see if they knew anything about it. And the Deputy Mayor, slightly hung over from his dinner party, seemed to recall something about burns the night before. But not in the subway, on a slab down at the M.E.’s office. So the Deputy Mayor called the Medical Examiner for more details, and the M.E., alarmed, called Banquo & Duncan again, with the message “There’s a kid sitting in the editor’s officer over at—”

  Within thirty minutes of Han Lee’s first telephone call, Wallets was on his way to the midtown offices of the Post, and Bryce and O’Hanlon were headed there too. The Chief of Police and the Deputy Mayor were sitting in the Mayor’s Office. The Mayor was still uptown near Gracie Mansion, talking to his press secretary, but en route in the limo. Smith and Wesson called the Assistant Director in charge of the greater New York field office, and somebody finally thought it a good idea to notify the Office of Homeland Security.

  Nobody claimed to be in charge; nobody directed affairs from Captain America’s City Command Post. And nobody called the president of the United States. Yes, the city had some sort of Crisis Center in the Homeland Security office on Third Avenue, but the place was the loneliest office in New York, as the last one had been in the late World Trade Center. Still a gaping seven-acre hole at the bottom of the city. And yes, there was some sort of “secret” Command Center off Wall Street with proposed link-ups reaching into every corner of officialdom—with any luck it would cover the city sometime before the end of the century.

  Later, the authorities could tell the press all about their superbly coordinated response, but right now the only thing they could do was talk on cell phones or on speaker phones in conference rooms. No real-time video links or real-time web cams. Not in a dozen different city offices, not in the Mayor’s limo, or the Medical Examiner’s Office—so they relied on the city’s cell coverage, and you might just understand some of what they said if they talked slowly, didn’t mumble, and didn’t all speak at once from a secure lead-lined subbasement.

  The city had a hierarchy of responses. In the best-case scenario: a prank call over public payphones claiming some sort of attack, anything from a trash fire in a rubbish barrel to the threat of an Ebola outbreak at Carnegie Hall. These calls were usually ignored. At most, the institutional security at the museum, theater, or sports arena informed. You couldn’t shut the city down for every jerk who dialed the phone for cheap thrills.

  In the worst-cas
e scenario: warning of imminent mass destruction from reliable intel—a bomb detonation, a mustard gas attack, the dispersal of smallpox/anthrax/botox—there’d be nothing to do, just hope you were out of town. Hope they didn’t nuke Jersey too, and pray the bomb squad or the hazmat team didn’t get stuck in traffic.

  And then there was the in-between. Rumors of a dirty bomb, galloping plague, the loss of electricity or water to the city, a random sniper—and whatever this shit was in the morgue and down in the Christopher Street subway station. The time arrived to misinform. Sit on the story. Run it down. Shut it up.

  Did you think they had a plan? Federally Managed Mass Evacuation?

  No, sorry.

  No evacuation plan for the city of New York existed, never would. How could it? The place is an island of millions with a dozen 1920s-era jammed choke points: six vehicular bridges, one railroad bridge, a couple of underground railways, three traffic tunnels—maybe a grand total of fourteen outbound lanes. While the whole fortress of Manhattan blocked off a very populated Long Island with millions more trapped. Three ways traversing that spit of land: the Northern State Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, the Southern State Parkway, all three roads jammed most of the day—and no way out. The whole mess ending at Montauk Point.

  Sure, you could go west, young man. Steal a rowboat from the lake in Central Park; lug it to the Hudson River, and row to New Jersey. Whoops sorry, the currents in the Hudson would drag you out to sea, and the East River was worse.

  Back in the real world, the initial phone calls were about three things. The first: to make sure somebody was going to sit on Han Lee. Second: that all the moving mouths of government knew what to say, saying the same thing for the press. And third: to find a convenient location, like a hotel, where all the principals could meet for an hour. Unnoticed, by ABCCBSNBCMSNBC et al. That was the hard part in a city of nine million people: somebody was always paying attention.