Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  “Of course, Mr. Pike. Someone will be right up.”

  Nicky put the phone down, shook his head. This was lunacy. How the hell had he gotten tangled up in this kind of cowboy crap? Then he saw the forest clearing again, and Condotti’s belly opened up, and the blonde girl’s eyes—Julia Maria Gianetto—twenty years old, for Christ’s sake—she’s staring up at the underside of a coffin lid for the rest of eternity—and he figured, what the hell. If Pike was the guy, it was worth some chances.

  He paced the silent halls until he heard the elevator rising, then padded quickly to the alcove where the ice machine was running. He heard the door opening and watched as a maid in a green uniform walked down toward Suite 2990. She used a code card, opened the door, and stepped inside, leaving the door slightly open.

  Nicky sprinted on his toes down the hall and looked inside the room. The maid was setting the ironing board up in the living room, next to the green leather couch. Her back was turned. He stepped lightly into the suite and moved down the hall toward the kitchen. Two minutes afterward, he heard the door closing again. His right knee was shaking and his face felt hot.

  The main room was empty, the view out the windows just as impressive as it had been an hour ago. Pike’s scent was in the air, some sort of cologne that reminded Nicky of margaritas. He checked his watch. He’d been in the room for sixty seconds.

  Moving as fast as he could, and touching nothing with his bare hands, Nicky looked for bloody bandages in any wastebasket he could find. He used a kitchen towel to open the cupboard under the sink. Coffee grounds, orange peels, wrappers from a deli, a Nat Sherman cigarette box, empty. A match book from Parnell’s.

  No bloody bandages.

  The bedroom was all that was left. Two minutes in. He walked across the deep emerald-green carpet and went up the landing steps to the closed bedroom door, pushed it with his left shoulder, holding his hands up like a surgeon walking into an operating room. The large room held a king-sized bed, the sheet turned down, two mints on the golden pillows. The view out the window was south along First Avenue, the street full of cars now, the rain coming down harder. It seemed to Nicky that there was a storm building across the river. He turned away from the window. The bathroom door was open. He stepped in, looked around at the huge green marble tub, the mirrored walls.

  The cabinet held a few items, a can of Barbasol shave cream, a Gillette Excel razor, some spares, a tube of Colgate, a stick of English Leather deodorant, a small leather case zipped shut. He lifted it out, opened it. A manicure set. He set it back on the shelf, opened the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Nothing unusual. The rest was standard. Listerine. Bandages. A new Tensor still in the wrapping.

  Everything was lined up in a row, as if Pike were waiting for a military inspection. All of the items were so ordinary it was weird. No pill bottles, no needles, nothing with a name on it, or any kind of identifying mark. He looked down at the wastebasket beside the counter. Nothing. No bandages, not even a bloody Kleenex.

  That was it. Time to get the hell out. Jimmy Rock was a nitwit and Nicky was thinking it was time to go home. He began to close the cabinet door, and then he froze. The razor. Maybe the razor.

  He picked up the Excel, looked at the blade. It had been used recently. Nicky could see specks of skin and beard hair, some soap residue, and tiny ribbons and flecks of red.

  Was it enough? It would have to be enough.

  He popped the blade off, made a move to put the razor back, and then picked up the plastic pack of spares. Would Pike notice?

  He’d have to take the chance. He put a new blade into the Excel razor head, set the razor back where he had found it, replaced the pack of spares, closed the cabinet door with his elbow, and looked around the bathroom. Nothing looked different. He had been careful to touch as little of it as possible. He checked the deep carpet and saw no shoe marks, no sign that he’d been in the bedroom at all.

  As he was going back out through the bedroom, he saw a long brushed-steel case on the floor beside the bed. Five feet long, two feet wide, a foot high, it looked solid and heavy. The lock was a combination, built into the handle.

  Nicky thought about it for about seven seconds, made a move toward it, and then heard an electric whine through the walls. The elevator. He was through the living room and out the door in five seconds, moving quietly, feeling his muscles tightening in his back and around his belly. As he was closing the main door he remembered. The damn ironing board. Pike would see it, want to know why it was there. As soon as he called room service he’d know something was up. The whole point of the stunt was to get in and get out without letting Pike know anything had happened.

  Nicky ran back into the room, grabbed the board and the iron, and made it out the door. He crossed in front of the elevator banks just as the car stopped and the doors began to slide open. He was into the ice machine alcove by the time he heard voices in the hall. Two people, a man and a woman. He waited until the voices receded down the hall in the other direction. Then he propped the board up beside the ice machine, left the iron on the floor beside it, and got the hell out of Dodge.

  511 UNIT

  HUNTERS POINT AVENUE

  QUEENS

  2230 HOURS

  Jimmy Rock and Casey worked the search area for another ten minutes, saw no sign at all of the white Lincoln. Finally they got on the radio and hooked up with the 509 unit, the gypsy cab, in an alleyway off Hunters Point Avenue.

  Both cops in the 509 unit were in their late twenties: Dexter Zarnas, a sergeant and second-in-command under Jimmy Rock, a battered-looking thick-necked white guy with pocked cheeks, a shaved head, a severely dented nose, and a neatly trimmed black goatee, and Carlo Suarez, a pale-faced rookie with a wispy mustache and wide-awake eyes, who looked about seventeen. They all agreed that nobody had the slightest clue concerning the current location of the target vehicle, and then there followed a long and very painful silence. Jimmy Rock sighed and picked up the radio.

  “Five-one-one to five-zero-zero, K?”

  “Hey, Jimmy! What’s up?”

  “We lost our player somewhere southbound on Van Dam.”

  “I heard it. Everybody okay?”

  “Yeah. Five-zero-nine’s with us now.”

  “Okay, what’s your move?”

  “Two ways it could go here. One, he made us, we’re burned; if so, maybe the guy goes back to the UN Plaza. I need you to put a local unit down there and see if he comes back. He’ll maybe be on foot or come in a cab. I need to hear if he shows up there. Boss, you got your data online there in front of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get us anything on Black Water Transit Systems?”

  “Why them?”

  “Pike made calls to that company today. It’s the only thing that stands out. It was an Albany number, and he was up in that area yesterday. Then later he calls their branch office at the Red Hook Container Terminal. Now we’re sitting in Queens, fifteen minutes from the docks in Red Hook. It’s thin, but it’s all we got.”

  “Sure. Give it to me.”

  “518-664-7878 and 718-555-2391.”

  “Okay. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Thanks, Vince. K.”

  He put the radio down. Casey was looking at him.

  “What have you got in mind?”

  Jimmy Rock put a finger beside his nose.

  “Listen and learn, Spandau.”

  A silence settled in. Casey just sat there and sucked it up. As far as she was concerned, she was in cop hell, serving an indefinite sentence for thumping out a miserable little PD named Eddie Rubinek. She was, in her own words, up to her hips in self-inflicted shit. Twenty minutes pass, and they all jump as the radio beeped.

  “Five-one-one, K?”

  “Five-one-one.”

  “Jimmy, Black Water Transit is a shipping company, runs out of Troy. CEO is a guy named Vermillion. Jack Vermillion. Nothing against him on NCIC, but I found a recent hit on him. Not a beef, just a background inquiry
from the assistant U.S. attorney’s office in Albany. It was placed by some ATF agent named Luther Campbell. Get this. It was recent. Logged just this morning. What do you think?”

  Jimmy Rock glanced at Casey, not really seeing her. His mind was in overdrive, that she could see. He was an intense little rat.

  “The ATF was asking NCIC about Jack Vermillion?”

  “Today. This morning.”

  “And now Earl Pike is talking to Black Water.”

  “And Pike is what, Detective Rule?” said Casey. Jimmy Rock glanced at her, got it at once.

  “Boss, Spandau says Pike is military.”

  “Retired. He says.”

  “Retired, she says. But that goes with guns, which connects with the ATF and Black Water. I mean, if he’s clean, why try to lose us? If he’s that surveillance-conscious, he’s got something to hide.”

  “We don’t know he burned us, Jimmy Rock,” put in Casey. “Maybe you just blew the surveillance all by yourself.”

  She watched with real delight as Jimmy Rock’s cheek bunched up. Jimmy showed her nothing but the side of his face.

  “Boss, here’s what I’m thinking. He was heading down Van Dam the last time we saw him. He phoned Black Water Transit twice today. Now we lose him in the vicinity of a Black Water Transit warehouse in Brooklyn. Maybe we can zip down there to Red Hook, check out the facility, see if we can pick him up again.”

  “Why not just go back to the UN Plaza, wait for him to turn up? What’s Nicky Cicero say?”

  Casey watched Jimmy Rock’s face and was delighted to see him nervous.

  “Boss, the state guy’s … not with us.”

  “Where is he?”

  Jimmy Rock was in a hard place, between his boss and a hostile black PW who was clearly enjoying his troubles. She smiled at him.

  “I left him at the hotel.”

  “Then why ask for a cover car to attend at the hotel? You already had a guy there.”

  “I put him on another thing.”

  They could hear the suspicion in Zaragosa’s voice. There was a long silence.

  “I guess we’ll have to talk about that later, Jimmy.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Okay. Go down to Red Hook. See if you can pick up the Lincoln. Stay on him for a while, see if he does anything hinky. We got nothing else on right now, so I can spare you. But I want you all back here by midnight. That includes the New York State guy, wherever the hell he is. Spandau’s been on the job for thirty-six hours straight. Tell Dexie and Carlo they can split right now if they want. I’ll call you if the unit at the hotel sees anything of your subject or the Lincoln. But you and me, Jimmy Rock, we are gonna have a little chat, you follow? Ten-four, K?”

  “Ten-four, boss. I follow.”

  THE UNITED NATIONS PLAZA HOTEL

  EAST FORTY-FOURTH STREET AND FIRST AVENUE

  2245 HOURS

  Earl Pike arrived back at the UN Plaza Hotel about thirty minutes after Nicky had come up out of the valet parking garage and walked westbound along Forty-fourth Street. He rolled the white Lincoln up to the lobby and tossed the keys to the attendant, who jumped into it and drove it into the basement garage.

  Pike’s arrival back at the hotel should have kicked off a stir in the police unit Vince Zaragosa had asked Midtown South to absolutely be there in case Pike showed up. It did not kick up a stir. That’s because the cover unit didn’t get there for another hour. Zaragosa heard later, from the XO—the executive officer—at Midtown North, they had to pull a big 10-63 first. A 10-63 is a pee break and lunch. Pike was paying no particular attention to the street at that point either. He also had a lot on his mind, but not so much that he didn’t notice the look on the concierge’s face when he pushed in through the heavy glass doors.

  “Mr. Pike,” said Mercedes Gonsalva. “How are you?”

  Her hands were folded on top of the inlaid credenza, her eyes wide and her face a porcelain mask. The cops had gotten to her. How much was a very good question. If he had the time, he’d ask her. He nodded and walked through the hall and punched the elevator button.

  They had a tail on him, that was obvious. Although he had finessed the immediate problem with the Benz by getting it reworked overnight in a CCS-controlled chop shop, it wasn’t enough to get them off his back. He’d confirmed that by his run out the Queensboro Bridge. They had at least two units on him, a blue Crown Vic, three inside, and a rusted yellow gypsy cab, with two more cops. He’d made the blue Crown Vic as they followed him up First. The gypsy cab had picked him up as he crossed the Queensboro Bridge. Two cars. Five people. That was a lot of serious police attention. Expensive attention. He deeply regretted the reason for their interest. It had been a stupid act of self-indulgence, a weakness. Now he would have to deal with the consequences. Starting with these cops.

  They were good, but not great. They’d been relatively easy to lose in Long Island City. The rain had been a stroke of luck. But by the time he got into the elevator and felt the car accelerating into the tower, he had a lot of unanswered questions to consider. When he reached the door to his suite he looked hard at the lock and saw no signs of any entry attempt. He eased his Smith out of his belt holster and kept it low against the side of his right leg and keyed the door open, pushing it wide with his foot, watching the hinge space for someone behind the door. No one.

  The apartment was empty. Untouched. He inhaled deeply. No new scents … wait. Yes. Something floral, something cheap. It was vaguely familiar. He recognized it from somewhere. But he couldn’t place it. It had not been in his room an hour ago.

  He walked through the living area and opened the bedroom doors. The room looked exactly as he had left it. The steel case with the .50-caliber sniper rifle was untouched, right where he left it. The new scent was not in here. Whoever had come in—if someone had come in—they had stayed in the living room. He walked back out to the living room and went over it carefully. He saw nothing in the deep pile rug other than his own tracks and the scuffed imprints of the two cops who had called on him earlier.

  Okay, now wait. What about this?

  Two deep lines, about three feet apart, impressed into the pile next to the leather couch. Parallel indentations, each about an inch wide. They were brand-new. Pike thought about them for a minute and decided they were the marks left by one of those folding ironing boards. He walked over to the phone, punched up room service.

  “Room Service. How may we help you, Mr. Pike?”

  “Has a maid been in my room lately?”

  He listened calmly as the man asked a question in Spanish, and heard a muffled answer.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Pike. You ask for an iron and a board. You wish for us to come now and pick it up?”

  He made the scent then. It was the kind of roses-and-lavender scent the maid left in his bedroom when she came to turn down the sheets at night and arrange those stupid chocolate mints on his pillow.

  “No. No, thanks. I forgot. Thank you.”

  “You’re most welcome, Mr. Pike. Good night.”

  He searched the suite carefully then and saw no sign of the ironing board. He went out in the hall and walked the length of it. He found it in the ice machine alcove, leaning against the machine, the iron on the floor beside it. He picked the board up by the cloth ring and used a pen to lift up the iron by the handle, took them back to his room, and double-locked the door. He went into the bedroom again, opened a dresser drawer, and lifted out a small forensic field kit. He went back to the living room, where it took him less than six minutes to lift a number of separate prints off the iron and the ironing board.

  He put each imprint in a separate plastic bag and marked them with a pen. Then he went back through the bedroom doors and reexamined the brushed-steel rifle case on the floor beside his bed. There wasn’t a mark on it, he was certain. No smudges by the combination dial set into the handle. Pike was confident it hadn’t been moved. The carpet had shoe marks, but nothing that couldn’t have been made by himself or the ma
id turning the bed down.

  Pike went into the bathroom, inhaled deeply. No scent in here other than bleach and shampoo. He popped open the cabinet and picked up the can of Barbasol shaving cream, unscrewed the base, and extracted the mini camcorder inside it. A red LED indicated that it was on. It was light-activated, so someone had opened the cabinet door after he had set the camera to ready. He flipped open the tiny LED screen in the side of the camera, and pressed rewind. The tape whirred and the numbers on the LED indicator ran backward to zero.

  Pike walked back into the living room with the video camera and sat down on the couch. He let out a long breath to calm himself. Then he pressed play. The little screen was only two inches square, but the color image was excellent. It showed a clear unwavering picture, slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens.

  The cop in the black leather jacket, the one who looked like a movie star, curly black hair, the scars around his eyes, he was holding the cabinet door open, studying the interior. The pinhole lens had caught him head-on. Pike watched his face as the cop looked up and down at the items in the cabinet, picked up the manicure set, put it back on the shelf. What was his name again? Cicero. The black cop had called him what? Nicky? Yeah. Nicky Cicero.

  In the tiny video image, he watched as the cop looked down at something on the floor of the bathroom—probably the wastepaper basket. Then he looked almost directly into the lens, started to close the cabinet door again, and hesitated. Cicero was staring intently at something on the shelf next to the video camera. His hand enlarged and darkened the digital screen and then withdrew, holding Pike’s Gillette Excel razor. He held the blade up in the light over the cabinet, did nothing for a few seconds, looking a little conflicted, and then he extracted the blade and replaced it with a new one from the dispenser.

  Pike watched as the cop carefully set the razor and the extra blades back into position, and then the door closed like a lid on a coffin and the screen went black. The drive motor shut off and the red LED on the side of the camera showed pause. Pike put the camera down and stared out the window of the hotel room at the misted skyline of New York. DNA. They had his DNA.