“518-664-7878. An upstate number. Called the place once, this afternoon, at twenty minutes after three. Number comes back as Black Water Transit up in Troy. Mean anything to you?”
“What were you saying there?” said Jimmy Rock.
Casey started to go back up the list.
Jimmy Rock shook his head.
“No, that Troy number. The last one.”
“518-664-7878 … Black Water Transit Systems.”
Jimmy Rock considered it for a moment, shook his head.
“Any other reference to Black Water Transit in the list?”
Casey scanned the page.
“Yeah. He called … no, that’s a Brooklyn number.”
“What is it?”
“718-555-2391 … but it says Black Water Transit. I see, they have a branch in Red Hook.”
“What. The container docks there?”
“Yeah. He called the Red Hook location at four-seventeen today. A six-minute call. Then again …”
“The Red Hook number for Black Water?”
“Yeah. He called them again just before we got to his room. Does the name Black Water Transit Systems mean anything to you?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. I’ve never seen the name on any of our intel sheets. What else is there?”
Casey and Jimmy Rock worked their way through the rest of the numbers. It took about a half hour, and when they were finished they were no better off. None of the numbers were crime-related or suggested anything hinky about Earl Pike or his associates. When they got to the bottom of the list, Jimmy Rock sighed.
“Okay. Nothing else to do but wait until Dexie gets here.”
“And where’s he?” asked Nicky.
“He’ll be here,” said Jimmy Rock. “He’s coming. We wait.”
Which they did, most of it in a strained silence, everybody thinking something different about Earl Pike. All around them midtown churned and pumped away like a neon circus wagon. Diplomats from the UN sauntered into the lobby surrounded by a phalanx of security people, floating on clouds of self-esteem. An FBI unit in a black Jimmy parked outside the hotel and the driver glared across at them for fifteen minutes. Jimmy Rock stared back for fifteen minutes and eleven seconds. A guy in a three-piece suit made out of green garbage bags pushed a shopping cart filled with running shoes eastward down the street. He was barefoot and wore his hair in two stiff yellow braids like Pippi Longstocking. The garbage-bag suit was very well cut. If he’d done it himself, he was good. A light rain came and went, salting the windows of the 511 unit with tiny glittering diamonds.
Jimmy listened to a swing station play a Voodoo Daddy CD all the way through, keeping time by drumming lightly on the steering wheel. Casey thought about calling her mother and put it off again. Nicky tried to imagine how he would have done with the guy who beat the male vic—Donald Albert Condotti—to death in that clearing. Wondered if it was Earl V. Pike. Wondered if he’d have done better against Pike. Better, he decided, finally. At least he’d have lived.
Fifteen minutes later, across the street, a white Lincoln Continental pulled up to the doors of the UN Plaza. It stopped and a hotel bellman climbed out, holding a parking stub and some keys. He handed them to a big man in an olive-drab jacket and blue jeans, who seemed to materialize out of the dark.
The man was wearing a woolen watch cap. His back was turned to the street. He got into the car and rolled up the window. It was heavily tinted, so the rising line of the window was blocking their view of the driver. Nicky, who had been watching the door of the hotel so hard his eyes were burning, leaned forward over the dash.
“That’s him. That’s Pike.”
Now the man was in the car. It rocked as the guy gunned the engine a couple of times, then jerked as he put it in gear and started to move off, going east. As the car made a left turn and went northbound on First Avenue, Casey wrote down the marker.
“You’re right, Nicky,” said Jimmy Rock. “That’s his car.”
Seconds later they were accelerating out of the loading lane. They missed the light change at First and had to sit through the cycle. Casey asked Jimmy Rock a question. She asked it twice.
“I said, are we gonna wait for the backup?”
“When I want tactical advice from you, Spandau, I’ll make a point of asking for it. Otherwise do me a favor and zip it, hah?”
Casey started to form a phrase, thought it over, said nothing. Two can play. Nicky just cranked his seat belt tight and braced himself on the front of the dashboard.
The light changed and Jimmy Rock floored it, the Crown Victoria squealing as they pulled out into First. The traffic was light now, mostly cabs and delivery vans, some limos, a few private cars. The wind had picked up, blowing faster, stirring the drifting rain and sending it in little whirlwinds and eddies into the midtown skyline. They watched as the white Lincoln cleared the crest of the hill at Fiftieth, its brake lights flickering as the driver dodged a jaywalker. Then it dropped down out of sight.
He lifted the handset off the hook and thumbed the button.
“Five-one-one to five-zero-zero, K?”
Silence … then a click.
“Five-zero-zero. Who’s this?”
“Jimmy Rock. That you, Vince?”
“Hey, Jimmy. Che cosa?”
“Boss, we’re on that thing with the state guy. We have a good suspect here and I’d like to play him for a while. We’re northbound on First, need a tag, both ways. What’s the tag, Spandau?”
“Robert Victor Robert eight eight eight.”
Jimmy Rock repeated it into the handset. They were coming up on Fifty-first now, and the white Lincoln was about fifty yards up, moving pretty fast.
“Wait one, Jimmy. Did you get a look at his Benz?”
“Yeah. Spandau and the state guy did. It’s been dry-cleaned.”
“New paint?”
“No. Something else. I figure he switched registrations somehow. Can you ask citywide auto to double-check the DMV records for Pike’s Mercedes-Benz? Maybe something will show up.”
“I will. If he’s that good, he’ll have friends. You seen any countersurveillance?”
“None, Vince. He’s alone. I really think we got something going here, and I don’t wanna lose this mutt.”
“I hear that. I’ll do the marker and get back to—”
“Vince, where the hell is Dexie now? It’s been twenty-five minutes since we called them in. We need them now!”
“Five-zero-nine, you on the air?”
“Five-zero-nine, we’re here, boss.”
Casey recognized the voice of Dexter Zarnas, the sergeant she had met very briefly when she got into the Jay Rats HQ the night before. It seemed a year ago right now.
“Dexie, this is Jimmy Rock. Where the hell you been?”
“Stuck behind a broke-down garbage truck on Lafayette. We got clear a coupla minutes ago. We’re on the FDR at Thirty-fourth right now.”
“Can you eighty-five us at Second and Fifty-eighth, by the upper level for the Queensboro Bridge? We’re on a white Lincoln, tag number Robert Victor Robert triple eight. We’ll be on five for this run. Switching now, K?”
“Switching to five, K. Done, Jimmy.”
They let the Lincoln get about a half-block lead on them. The car was holding steady northbound, working through light midtown traffic. Casey was straining her eyes to follow the car. Nicky was thinking that this was a lot of energy to be putting into the wrong guy, but he was just a ride-along in New York. It wasn’t his play.
Jimmy Rock flicked the frequency selector over to channel five and put the handset down. He glanced into the back at Casey.
“Spandau, how much sleep you had today?”
“None. I’m okay.”
“Nicky, you on your game, kid?”
“I’m fine” was all he had to say.
The car was moving north under street lamps. Yellow light from the lamps flashed across Jimmy Rock’s face as he spoke.
“Are you, Nicky
? On your game?”
Nicky had been around this cop long enough to recognize a hidden agenda when he heard one.
“I said I’m on my game, Jimmy. Why?”
Jimmy Rock stopped the car on the north side of East Fifty-third, reached across Nicky, and popped open his door. Nicky looked at him hard, but Jimmy Rock held up a hand.
“You really wanna nail this perp?”
“If he’s the guy, yeah.”
“You were telling me his hand is all wrapped up?”
“Yeah. His right hand. Big Tensor bandage. Looked serious.”
“He’s out of his room, right?”
Nicky got it in an instant.
“Hell no. I toss his place now, no warrant, whatever we get does us no good at all. Kills the case. We get beefed for no-knock-no-warrant. Not happening.”
“Look, kid. It’s fuck-the-rules time. The Benz connection is shot to shit. You got dick. This bug, he beats the life out of your vic, then he guts him with a branch, he screws around with the female, no semen, no marks, but on the male vic, Nicky, on him he leaves his own blood. Had to have. Only thing you got, kid. Be a cop. Let the DA worry about where you got the fucking bandages. You do it right, we’ll say we saw him throw the bandages in a garbage can right on the street. What’s he gonna do about it, we stick together? Fuck him.”
Nicky hesitated another full second.
Casey got twitchy.
“Make a decision! We’re losing him. Nicky, just go!”
That settled it. Nicky bailed at a quick walk. Casey got into the passenger seat and watched his back as he went south on First. Jimmy Rock was accelerating north, paying zero attention to her.
“What if he gets caught?”
“He’s state. He’s JAFO. And he’s not one of ours.”
“What the hell is a JAFO?”
“Just another fucking observer.”
“He’s a cop.”
“Not one of mine. And neither are you. So shut the fuck up.”
Before Casey could say anything, the radio clicked and popped.
“Five-zero-zero to five-one-one, K?”
Jimmy Rock snagged the handset.
“Vince, Jimmy here.”
“Yeah. We got your comeback on that tag. Registered owner is a Hertz leasing company in Jersey. No help.”
“Ten-four, Vince. Thanks.”
“Stay on him, Jimmy Rock. I’ll be here.”
“You heard that?”
“I did. Watch it. You’re gonna come right up behind him.”
The white Lincoln had gotten tangled up in traffic and had come to a stop at the intersection of First and Fifty-seventh. Through the tinted rear window they could see the driver’s head, twisting this way and that. The light changed, and the Lincoln pulled through, made a sharp left, and came to a stop on the north side of Fifty-seventh.
Jimmy Rock cursed and drove on by, not looking at the driver. As he passed the Lincoln he picked up the handset.
“Five-one-one to five-zero-nine, K?”
“Five-zero-nine. Jimmy, this is Dexter. Where are you?”
“We’re westbound on Fifty-seventh Street, at First. Our player’s parked at the curb about a hundred feet west of the intersection. I had to overrun him. Where are you right now?”
“We’re northbound on Sutton Place. We’re turning onto Fifty-seventh right now. White Lincoln, Robert Victor Robert triple eight … wait one …”
There was a long silence during which they could hear the two cops talking softly over the open mike, the rumble of the car engine, traffic noises.
Then, “Yes—that’s him, Carlo! Jimmy, we got him here, about a half block up, on the north side.”
“Okay … stay on him. I’ll drop back and come around. What’re you driving?”
“We’ve got the gypsy cab. Big Bird?”
“I know it. Stay on that player.”
“Ten-four, five-one-one. Out.”
“Now what?” said Casey.
Jimmy Rock was rounding the block on Fifty-sixth and coming back east. He made the hard left again and stopped a few hundred feet back of the intersection of First and Fifty-seventh. He breathed out, sighed, and frowned across at Casey Spandau. He opened his mouth to answer, and the radio burst into life.
“Five-zero-nine to five-one-one, K?”
“Five-one-one. Go.”
“Five-one-one, we’re westbound on Fifty-seventh—he’s pulling away—okay, we’re making a right onto the upper level—he’s moving out fast now. You coming?”
“We’re right behind you, five-zero-nine. Let’s keep off the air as much as we can, hah? He might have a scanner.”
“Ten-four. Out.”
“Should we run Earl Pike on NCIC?”
Jimmy Rock thought it over.
“I’d say no. Not right now. Every time we make an NCIC request, it gets flagged all over the place. I don’t want a lot of feds looking at our NCIC hits and wondering if we’re onto something they can steal.”
The engine noise filled the car as Jimmy Rock accelerated around a wandering fruit truck. Far ahead, the gypsy cab and the white Lincoln were two red sparks in the glittering field of the bridge lights, the planes and angles, squares and rooftops of Long Island City. Six minutes later they were a hundred feet back from the lopsided and badly dented gypsy Checker with the greasy windows. A hundred feet ahead of the Checker cab, moving in and out of heavy traffic, was the white Lincoln, eastbound on the Queensboro Bridge.
To their right, as they climbed up the rise, the towers and lights of midtown were wrapped in a cloud of swirling rain. Under their tires the broken plates of the Queensboro Bridge hammered. Roosevelt Island loomed up and passed and then they were coming down a steep incline and Long Island City was all around them.
In the north there seemed to be something wrong with the Bronx. No lights showed on the bluffs and the sky looked like smoked glass. The thunderstorm hit three minutes later.
Down at the exits from the bridge, and higher up in the north, a rain squall, a huge mass of gray-black haze, rolled southward out of the Bronx, sliding across the skyline of Long Island City, blotting out the lights, and all the bridge traffic was driving down into it—into a wall of rain that reduced visibility to twenty feet.
Jimmy Rock was leaning forward in the seat, hands tight on the wheel, straining to see the cars immediately ahead. Casey was struggling to see the turn sign for Queens Boulevard and stay in touch with 509, somewhere up ahead. They listened to the cross talk from the other surveillance car. You could hear the tension over the radio. Casey picked up the mike and keyed it on.
“Five-one-one to five-zero-nine, K?”
“Five-zero-nine.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Who’s that?”
“Officer Spandau. What’s your twenty?”
“We … we think we’re on our guy, got him up ahead maybe fifty feet, far end of a dump truck there. He’s making … shit … sorry … he’s making a left onto Queens Boulevard. Where are you guys?”
“Maybe a block back.”
“Well, you better move up, ’cause things are getting hinky here. We gotta stay on his ass and—there he goes!”
They heard the sound of tires spinning on wet pavement, and then the roar of the cab engine.
“He’s evading. I don’t know if he burned us but he made a snaky move there, cut by a truck on the left side, signaling a turn onto Northern, then made a right onto … Van Dam! He’s gone southbound toward Van Dam!”
Jimmy Rock hit the pedal, powered the car around a line of cars, and ran straight down the median strip, driving through oncoming vehicles. Casey braced herself on the seat back and tried to keep from swearing at this crazy white cop.
Two cars ended up swerving right out of their path—another rose up out of the haze like a barge out of a fog bank—Casey got a brief glance sideways as they slid by the 509 car, caught in a line of cars following a tractor-trailer—a fleeting image of the pale, blurred
outline of Dexter Zarnas behind the windshield—then Jimmy had the Crown Victoria bouncing over a curb and was making a hard left onto Van Dam.
Now they were ahead of 509 and Jimmy pushed the car hard, sliding out again, fishtailing, searching the huddled blurry outlines of the cars ahead, trying to see a white Lincoln, trying to pick it out of the clutter of cars and trucks inching along in the squall. He had the car up to thirty in a clear stretch … forty … they could feel the car floating and sliding on the slippery surface … a car was coming up on the right … was it the white Lincoln?
Was it? Thirty yards … twenty … ten.
It wasn’t.
“Nice play,” said Casey into the following silence. “A really professional play. Golly. I’m so fucking dazzled.”
Jimmy Rock had nothing to say, so he said it.
Casey felt better than she had in a long time. But the white Lincoln was still gone.
SUITE 2990
THE UNITED NATIONS PLAZA HOTEL
2200 HOURS
It took Nicky seventeen minutes to work his way through the garage and up the maintenance halls of the hotel and another ten to reach the room service elevator for the tower residences. A few people saw him, mainly Hispanic cleaners and a maintenance worker, but Nicky worked hard at looking like an immigration officer—what the Chicanos called la migre—and was convincing enough to be invisible. Now he was in the hall outside Pike’s suite, with his blood pounding so hard in his neck it was moving his jacket collar. He exhaled and studied the electronic lock. Okay, Wonder Boy. How the hell do you get around that?
He walked back to the elevator banks and saw a house phone on a pearl-inlaid table, next to a vase of roses. He picked it up, hit the icon for maid service. A Hispanic-sounding voice answered immediately.
“This is Mr. Pike, in 2990.”
“You are not in your room, Mr. Pike?”
Christ. Of course. Room phones showed the ID.
“No, I’m just at the elevator. I’m in a rush. I need an iron and a board. Can you bring me one right now? I’m going to be downstairs for about ten minutes. I’ll need it when I get back.”
Black Water Transit Page 13