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in the car and asked for it to be shipped home.” Freddie
rummaged under the desk, pulled out a large file box. He
opened the lid, began to sift through alphabetical orders.
“Reed…Reed…Reed…here we go. Elaine and Bob
Reed.”
“Can you give us the address?”
“No problem. That package was shipped to 482
Huntley Terrace.”
My jaw dropped.
Amanda said, “Henry, that’s the house…”
“That burned down yesterday.”
29
I needed to learn more about the house on Huntley
Terrace. If Robert and Elaine Reed had bought it, there
would have to be sale records. I could look them up on
streeteasy.com. Even if they didn’t have contact info for
the Reeds, there would surely be a brokerage firm that
would. It made sense. There was a dollhouse in the room
Amanda was held in, and the place looked like the perfect
abode for a family with young children. But what I didn’t
understand was how the two men who held us that night
were connected to the Reeds. Or how the Reeds were connected by proxy to Dmitri Petrovsky.
We drove around the streets looking for an Internet
café. I didn’t want to have to go all the way back to the
city to use the computers at work. We were getting close
to something. Many different spools, but I couldn’t figure
out the common thread that attached them.
“Look, there.” Amanda was pointing to a small pizza
parlor. A sign posted outside read “Internet Access.”
“You up for a slice and a socket?”
“I am a little hungry.”
“Cool. Eat first, search later,” I said.
We parked, walked in and scarfed down two slices and
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a Coke apiece in less than ten minutes. When we finished,
we took two seats in front of a lonely computer in the back
of the restaurant. The keyboard was dusty, and I imagined
it didn’t get much use. The counterman eyed us suspiciously, as though we were as likely to rip the computer
from the wall as use it properly.
When I clicked the computer off sleep mode, I entered
in my credit card number for access. Once we were in, I
directed the browser to streeteasy.com.
“What is this?” Amanda asked.
“Streeteasy.com is a pretty useful tool. It’s an online
database that records any property transactions, along with
the buyer, seller, asking price and brokerage firm who
handled the deal. I have a log-in.”
I plugged in my log-in information and entered the name
Robert Reed in the search field. Several listings came up,
with records dating back to 1989, and in five different states.
“This can’t be right,” Amanda said. “How could he live
in three different states at the same time?”
“It’s probably not all the same Robert Reed. Hold on,
I’ll narrow the search.”
I narrowed the parameters to Hobbs County. The search
came up empty. I tried it again, only this time plugging in
Elaine Reed instead. Again the search came up empty.
“Maybe someone else bought it for them? Or Elaine
bought it under her maiden name?” Amanda asked.
“That’s possible,” I said. “We might have better luck
searching for the exact house.” We had enough information to narrow the search range.
According to Freddie at Toyz, the Reeds’ son, Patrick,
was currently somewhere between three and five years old.
Which meant the Reeds had probably moved into the
house on Huntley within the past seven years, either when
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they decided to try to start a family or when Patrick was
on the way and space was essential. I entered the date
range in the past eight years just to be sure.
The list came back with two thousand, seven hundred
and eighty-three hits.
“I think we can narrow it down more,” Amanda said.
“We know there were at least three bedrooms in that house
on Huntley. That should help, right?”
“Definitely, one sec.”
I refined the search to only include houses that had a
minimum of three bedrooms. The search came back with
three hundred and sixty-seven hits. We were making
progress.
“Now we just sift through these and look for anything
on Huntley. Anything that looks familiar.”
We scrolled through page after page of home sales and
purchases through the past eight years. It was fascinating
to see the range of prices at which houses had been bought,
but it also gave an accurate overview of what the most expensive areas in the state were. Unsurprisingly, Hobbs
County homes were ridiculously cheap. Until a few years
ago at least, when I noticed they began to trend upward
by a large margin.
We’d been sitting at the computer for nearly two hours.
The computer had charged thirty-six bucks for the access.
I hoped Wallace wouldn’t spent too much time scrutinizing my expense account.
Finally on the two hundred and twenty-fourth listing,
we found it.
“There we go,” I said. “Four-eighty-two Huntley Terrace.”
“Bingo,” Amanda added.
According to the database, the house had been pur-234
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chased in 2001 for three hundred and forty thousand
dollars. There was a picture of the property on the Web
site. I clicked to enlarge it.
The house was easily recognizable. As was the driveway and garage we’d seen the other night. We clicked
through various photographs of the interior and exterior,
looking for anything familiar. The rooms were different;
obviously these shots had been taken before any renovations.
What was more surprising was that there was no sign
of the metal gates, nor the brick wall surrounding the
property. Whoever purchased the house in 2001 had built
them custom-made.
“That’s odd,” I said, clicking onto the “buyer/seller”
link. “According to this, the buyer wasn’t Bob or Elaine
Reed, or anyone named Reed at all.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Someone named Raymond Benjamin,” I said. “Does
that name sound familiar at all?” Amanda shook her head.
Then her eyes opened wide.
“Wait a minute,” she said, pointing at the name on the
screen. “When we were in that house, when you came
into the room where I was held, didn’t one of the guys
call for a Ray?”
I thought hard, vaguely remembered hearing that, but
between the cigarette burn and my state of panic I couldn’t
be sure. “You think this Raymond Benjamin might have
been the same guy from the other night?”
“Be a heck of a coincidence, a guy who obviously
knows the place well enough to set us up shares the same
first name as the man on the property deed.”
“Yes, that would be a mighty coincidence. It would
also mean that Raymond Benjamin knows Dmitri Petrov- The
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sky.” I tapped my fingers on the keyboard. “The guy who
had me, he’d been in prison before. Attica. He was there
during the riot, and that was in ’71. If he was telling the
truth, he’ll have a criminal record.”
“I think it’s time to leave the pizza place,” Amanda
said.
“It sure is. Let’s see what we can find out about
Raymond Benjamin. It’s been at least twenty-four hours
since I asked Curt Sheffield for a favor. Let’s give him a
ring.”
30
The diner smelled of cooking grease and burned coffee.
A plate of eggs sat in front of him, untouched. Raymond
Benjamin rubbed his aching jaw, then took another smoke
from his pocket, lit it and inhaled deeply. It was all he could
do to relax after the events of the past few days. Everything
had been going just the way he’d planned, in that there
were no disruptions, no mass hysterics. Everything cool,
calm and quiet. And then all of a sudden the newshound
Parker shows up at Petrovsky’s office and everything goes
to shit.
He hadn’t wanted to torch the house. Benjamin actually
had some fond memories of that place. But once Parker
decided to follow Petrovsky, it was only a matter of time
before somebody came knocking. Burning it down was a
necessary evil. There was too much inside for him and
Vince to get rid of in the little time they had, not to mention
having to dispose of the doctor and that beat-up car Parker
drove. Better to torch the whole thing and wipe their hands
than risk one little thing turning up and screwing up the
whole operation. Ray couldn’t afford that. There was too
much at stake.
Raymond Benjamin smoked his cigarette, eased back
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into the booth and took out his wallet. He looked at the
pictures inside. The first one was of a beautiful young
couple. Ray barely remembered what life had been like
back then. He’d been so impetuous, so violent. He was
amazed a woman had actually had the temerity to marry
him. The first photo had been a year or so before Ray Jr.
was born. The boy had Ray’s nose, but got the rest of his
features from Ray’s wife. Becca. Becca, who’d died
while he was holed up in that shithole prison. Ray Jr.,
born in 1970, the year before the riots changed everything.
Every person was born with a specific skill set. Ray’s
son was born a technogeek, the kind of guy who could
build computer systems out of thin air, could design corporate Web sites and security systems as easily as he
buttered a bagel. The last Ray heard, his boy was making
nearly a hundred grand a year. He was married with two
kids. Ray hadn’t seen them in a decade.
Ray himself was born with a different set of skills.
And in a cruel irony, it was that skill set that led Ray to
spend the majority of his twenties shuffling from prison
to prison. He was a born criminal. Burglar, fighter. Age
had sapped much of his brawn. No way that Parker kid
would have had the upper hand when Ray had his juices
flowing, when his fists were like unstoppable pistons.
Now, in his late fifties, Ray was holding on to his fighting
memories the way a jilted lover holds on to his, afraid of
what would become of him when he realized the man he
used to be was slipping away. Lives like Ray’s didn’t
have second acts.
He thought about his time in Attica. Somehow the worst
and best years of his life. They’d made him what he had
become, but he wasn’t sure if the pain and sacrifice were
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worth it. He thought about that day back in ’71, when his
fellow prisoners had finally risen up against the guards,
who’d tortured them for so long. Ray remembered watching Dog Day Afternoon as a young man, just a few years
after he got loose. He remembered the feeling of pride in
his gut when Pacino delivered that electrifying speech. It
was simply incredible, like a candle being lit in his
stomach, working its way through him until his whole
body was warm. He’d seen that in person. He’d been there.
Everyone watched that flick and got that vicarious thrill
of what it was like to make a stand. Ray had been there.
He’d made that stand.
When Vince came back from the bathroom, the red
welt above his eye was shining like a Christmas bulb. The
younger man slid into the booth across from Ray, went
right back to work on his ham, eggs and sausage links. Ray
watched Vince eat for a bit, the man shoveling food into
his yawning mouth like it was Thanksgiving and he didn’t
have a care in the world.
“Eat enough of that, it’ll kill you before a bullet does.”
Vince smiled as he gnawed on a link. “Best to go out
having fun,” he said.
“You know, as dumb as we were,” Ray said, “things
could have gone worse the other night. Much worse.”
“Sure could have,” Vince said, a forkful of dripping egg
sliding back onto his plate. “What d’you think would have
happened if the cops had come before we’d taken care of
the place?”
Vince stopped chewing. Put the fork down. “We would
have been in a world of shit. Years wasted,” Ray said.
Vince nodded as if he’d figured out the right answer on a
multiple-choice test.
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“Not really wasted. I mean, it’s been fun, right? We’ve
made money.”
“You know we’re not doing this for money, for our
health,” Ray said. “This isn’t some two-bit scam we’re
pulling. There are lives at stake.”
Vince laughed. “You mean like Petrovsky,” he said with
a goofy smile.
“No,” Ray seethed. “Not fucking Petrovsky. Lives that
matter. Petrovsky was a degenerate. He was a means to an
end. And we have to protect that end, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
Ray lowered his voice. “I’ll be talking to our friend
later. We need to make sure everything is sealed up on our
end. No doubt they’ll find out that house was registered
in my name. I’ll play the ‘woe is me’ card, but let it end
there. There isn’t enough evidence in that house of
anything. I gave it a once-through before we lit the match.
Now I’m not too worried about the Hobbs police. If
anything they’re doing a good job protecting what we’ve
created. But that Parker reporter, we can’t give him
anything more to latch onto. The New York media gets
hold of this, it goes national. Nobody gives two shits about
a poor kid in a poor city.”
“I hear you, Ray. Geez, it’s not like I don’t know this
already.”
“Fucking Parker,” Ray said. “Never been so stupid in
my life. Ten years ago, no way that kid gets the jump on
me. Never used to underestimate folks. All of a sudden
Parker can ID me and probably you. His word against
mine, and I’ve already spoken to our friend who’s good
with tools who’ll claim I was working late that night. So
here’s what happens. If it even looks like this guy might
throw a wrench into things, we don’t wait for him to fall
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into our lap. We take him out. And the girl if necessary.
No more cigarettes, no more nicey-nice. Quick, simple,
and they disappear.”
“Like those kids we nabbed,” Vince said, satisfied.
“No. Not like those kids. Parker and Davies have to stay
gone.”
31
Manhattan’s 19th Precinct was located on Sixty-Seventh
Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. I’d only been
there once, just a month or so after I’d arrived in New York.
It was to report a lost or possibly stolen cell phone. I’d
filled out a form with my information, handed it to the cop
behind the front desk, and that was the last I ever heard
about it. Probably for the best. The NYPD has more
important crimes to worry about than who took my Nokia.
Curt had worked at the 19th going on three years. I
knew he was well respected within the department, one of
those up-and-comers that are a rare breed in that they’re
both clean-cut enough to stick on a recruiting poster, but
hardworking and intuitive enough to gain the respect of the
rank and file.
It was this respect that I was counting on as Amanda
and I entered the precinct. The majority of cops had no
love lost for me, and despite being vindicated many still
considered me responsible for the death of one of their
own. The irony was that even though the department loved
Curt’s image, he couldn’t have cared less. That’s the only
reason he agreed to bring me into his precinct. It wouldn’t
win him any friends, but it would help uncover the truth.
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The precinct was up a short flight of stairs. It had a red
brick facade and an arched entryway, bracketed by two
green lamps, above which hung a yellow banner that read
“Thank you for your support.” The banner was bookended
by two images: the American flag and the badge of the
NYPD.
Curt led Amanda and me through the precinct, though
not nearly as fast as I would have liked. I could feel
eyeballs boring holes through me as we snaked through the
corridors, and knew that many of these men had worked
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