PM11-The Rule of Nine

by Steve Martini

  “What is it?”

  “You want to come right now, and take it in your office,” she says.

  SEVENTEEN

  Josh Root sat at the committee rostrum, gavel at hand, completely oblivious to the noise and commotion going on around him. This afternoon his mind was on other things. The Old Weatherman had struck again. This morning Root had gotten up and found it on his personal computer at home, another e-mail in the middle of the night, like a bomb blast.

  But this time the fear that had been so palpable in Root following the first two communications was replaced by anger. The Old Weatherman was demanding an additional two million dollars, and he was giving Root only two days to come up with it.

  The prick must have thought he was made of money. The thought of it produced bile in his throat. He coughed a few times and covered his mouth with the back of his hand. He took out a handkerchief and wiped a bit of phlegm from his lip.

  “Are you all right, Senator?” One of his aides was hovering over his shoulder.

  Root took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. We’ll get started in a minute.”

  “Sure. Can I get you anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  The kid sat down again.

  Root was beginning to suspect that someone at the Swiss bank had talked. How else could anyone know that he had that kind of ready cash on hand? Two million dollars. People with that kind of money usually had it tied up in investments. It could take anywhere from a few days to a week to sell stocks and reduce them to cash. But the Old Weatherman seemed to know that it was just sitting there, waiting to be wired from one Swiss bank to another. For the moment, how he knew wasn’t the problem. Getting rid of him was. And by now it was clear that buying him off wasn’t an option. Knowing the man as he did, Root knew that this would only serve as an invitation for him to come back for more.

  The trick was to find him. The key was the Old Weatherman’s e-mail account. Somewhere there had to be a record with an address, some point of physical contact. Ordinarily Root would turn this over to one of his staff members and within a short period they would have an answer for him. But this time Root couldn’t do that. He would have to do it himself, in the same way that he would have to deal with the Old Weatherman.

  He looked up at the clock on the wall at the far end of the room, picked up the gavel, and slapped it hard, twice. “The committee will come to order.” He cleared his throat again, took another quick drink of water, and slapped the gavel once more. “The committee will come to order.”

  The voices in the room began to quiet. “We’re going to pick up where we left off this morning.” Root looked down at his schedule of witnesses. “Next witness is Joselyn Cole. Is Ms. Cole here?”

  A man was sitting at the witness table. “Are you here on behalf of Ms. Cole?”

  “No, sir.”

  The next thing Root knew there was a hand on his shoulder from behind and lips in his ear. “Senator, I think you’re looking at the wrong schedule.” One of his staffers was pushing a piece of paper in front of him. “You’re looking at Tuesday’s schedule.”

  “Ah, sorry,” said Root. “My mistake. Seems I’m getting ahead of myself.” He laughed. A few in the audience laughed with him. But to Root his was a nervous laugh, a small measure of the forces now coming to bear on him. The Old Weatherman’s e-mailed threats, Root’s diminishing physical and mental condition, and all the other pressures and demands were now descending on him.

  Ever since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the authorities had tried to erect a series of impermeable security barriers around the entire southern tip of Manhattan. Probably nowhere on earth was there a piece of hallowed ground more protected than this. Thorn was certain that if the local police and the federal authorities could shrink-wrap the whole area in Kevlar, they would.

  This evening he stood on the pedestrian overpass and surveyed the work spread out below through a small rip in the blue plastic tarp. The overhead pedestrian walkway was bounded on both sides by chain-link fencing, which in turn was wrapped in plastic tarp material to keep prying eyes from seeing what was happening down below.

  Where the twin towers once stood there now existed only a cavernous concrete hole three or four stories deep, housing communications equipment, generators, and the other machinery necessary to run the subway sixty feet down, below the streets. For nearly a decade arguments raged over whether the twin towers should be rebuilt in some manner, or if the site should be transformed into a park or a memorial for those who died on 9/11. In the vacuum of leadership that marked the new century, the concrete cavern remained as a symbol of American indecision.

  It was nearing five in the evening, and the stream of human traffic scurrying across the overpass was beginning to resemble some of the rapids on the Colorado, people running to catch the subway down below or one of the buses on Broadway.

  Thorn waded into the stream and through the escalating rush-hour crush of people to the other side. At one point he had to grab the chain link to keep from being washed along with the masses. He found a short section of the fence where the walkway widened for just a few feet. He settled in and staked out this little nook as if he owned it.

  The plastic tarp blocking his view cracked in the stiff breeze off the Hudson. He looked around to make sure there were no cops on the walkway. Then, using two fingers, he reached up and ripped the tattered tarp just a few inches so that he could claim a clear view out.

  He wasn’t interested in the site of the World Trade Center. Instead his attention was drawn to an area a few blocks to the south and east of where he was now standing. It was the intersection of Fulton and Broadway, almost dead center in the middle of the Financial District. Wall Street was only a stone’s throw away.

  The Cold War may have been over, but the Russians and Americans were still locked in a death spiral of ever more lethal weapons. When the United States introduced its largest thermobaric device on record, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), and nicknamed it “the Mother of All Bombs,” the Russians responded with the largest vacuum bomb ever constructed. Dubbing it “the Father of All Bombs,” it was used to level an entire block of multi-story steel-reinforced concrete buildings. In testing it, they set off the largest man-made nonnuclear blast in history.

  Now that the Russian cargo plane had been forced down in Thailand, Thorn had to assume that the American government was well aware of the type and size of the device on board. While he hadn’t planned it, the downing of the Russian plane played right into his hands. Like a big, flashing neon sign.

  The feds would be racking their brains looking for high-risk targets. Thorn was already well ahead of them. The solid fuel-air device was much more effective in an oxygen-controlled environment. If you could introduce the device inside, solid concrete walls would serve only to magnify and focus the blast. The stronger the walls, the higher the pressure wave, the farther it would travel. Of course, American military ordnance experts would know all of this. They would be advising the FBI and other law enforcement agencies accordingly.

  Identifying prime targets wouldn’t be too difficult. The problem was there were too many of them. The authorities couldn’t possibly cover them all. Adding to their problems, Thorn was already engaged in devilish games of misdirection, forcing them to look in one place while he was in another.

  He wondered if anyone had ever considered what the blast from a large thermobaric weapon might do to the hardened concrete structure surrounding the reactor of a nuclear power plant. Particularly if the device were delivered from the air in the form of a bunker-busting bomb.

  That reminded Thorn. He was going to have to make a call for more cash. His estimates of the cost to buy the airplane were too low. You would think that with the dismal state of the airline industry and the number of commercial jets now littering boneyards all over the desert, there would be a fire sale. But it wasn’t the case. He had gone online and checked pr
ices.

  The banks that held the mortgages on these planes were now sitting on piles of taxpayer cash. Having been bailed out, they were demanding top dollar for their securitized loan assets, in this case airplanes for which they had vastly overpaid during the boom-boom times before the crash. The politicians and the central banks had stepped in it big time, up to their hips. And why not? They knew that if the banks went under, there wasn’t enough money in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover even a small fraction of the claims filed by depositors. So they ran the presses, printed more cash, and deferred the inevitable to a future date when some other new regime could be left holding the bag. To Thorn it was a rat’s nest of political and financial corruption, with a new generation of liars at every turn. At least for the moment, acquiring more money didn’t seem to be a problem for his employers. What the devil could do if he had cash.

  Even if the feds were able to track each of his moves, as long as he could stay ahead of them, Thorn knew they would have their hands full trying to guess what was coming next.

  He trained his eye through the hole in the tarp toward the Fulton Street project. He could see the boom of a high-rise crane moving slowly, like the neck of some gentle giraffe, over the site. It was the answer to Thorn’s dreams, nearly half a billion dollars in federal stimulus money for a single piece of construction. It was the once abandoned Fulton Street Transit Center. Total cost, 1.4 billion dollars for a transportation palace, complete with a crystal dome that would have shamed the Wizard of Oz.

  Scheduled completion was four years off, but Thorn didn’t care. All that mattered was that they had broken ground. The giant excavators had already ripped a two-hundred-foot wound in the earth directly above one of the busiest subway hubs in New York. According to the project schedule, the hole would be open for at least four months while they worked on foundations. This gave Thorn plenty of time. With the city providing the open aperture above the subway, the method of delivery became simple—gravity. The only question was how? And Thorn already knew the answer to that one.

  EIGHTEEN

  It’s like a nightmare. I want to wake up, but I can’t. I keep thinking she’s going to call me any minute and tell me she’s okay, but she doesn’t. Dad, she can’t, because she’s dead.” She starts to cry all over again.

  Standing in the living room, I hug her in my arms and pat her on one shoulder as she sobs.

  “Who would do this? Jenny never hurt anybody. Why, Dad? Tell me. Why?” She looks up at me, searching for an answer I don’t have. Her eyes are as red as road flares. She has been crying on and off for more than an hour, ever since hearing the news that her friend Jenny Beckfeld was found dead in her house early this afternoon.

  “When she didn’t show up for work, I figured she was sick. I tried to call her but she didn’t answer.”

  “What did the police tell her parents? Do you know?” I ask.

  She eases out of my embrace and reaches for the Kleenex box I had tossed on the coffee table. Tears run down one cheek. My daughter does not cry easily. In fact, I can recall seeing her like this only once before. Sarah was seven when her mother died.

  “They’ve told them nothing!” Sarah gives me a merciless look. She turns her back to wipe her eyes, and begins to pace across the front room once more. Her shoulders are hunched up tight, one hand at her side holding a wad of Kleenex.

  “Why don’t you sit down and relax?”

  “I don’t want to sit. I want to know what happened,” she says.

  “Herman went over to Jenny’s to see what he could find out,” I tell her. “I called him from my cell on the way home and asked him to go by and get whatever information he could.”

  She turns to face me and sniffles into the Kleenex. “And what exactly are they going to tell Herman if they won’t even talk to Jenny’s family?”

  “Herman has his ways,” I tell her. “Relax. We’ll find out when he gets here.”

  According to Sarah, Jenny’s older brother, a CPA with one of the big firms downtown, went to her house and they wouldn’t let him in. They held him on the front lawn and refused to answer any of his questions. When he got angry, they threatened to arrest him unless he calmed down.

  “So much for your police,” she says. The gulf between sorrow and anger in Sarah at this moment is narrow, and increasingly tapered toward fury. She wants answers, and if I know my daughter, at this moment she wants revenge.

  “All they would tell him is that Jenny was dead and they were treating it as a homicide. Nothing more.” She turns to face me again. “So somebody killed her, right? It couldn’t be suicide, right? What am I saying?” She throws her hands up and tosses the Kleenex in the air. “Jenny would never kill herself.”

  “If it’s homicide, it’s death at the hands of another,” I tell her.

  “I can’t believe it. Damn it!” She stamps one foot on the carpeted floor hard enough that it rattles the glassware on the shelf behind me. “It makes me so mad. They wouldn’t even tell her brother or her mom and dad how she died.”

  “They’re just doing their job,” I tell her. “Is anyone with her parents? Do they have family in the area?”

  She nods. “And a minister from their church.”

  “That’s good.”

  Sarah starts to tear up once more.

  I walk over to her and try to comfort her.

  “No.” This time she feebly pushes me away and steps back. “You know what I’ve been thinking? Why would someone want to kill Jenny?” She looks directly at me.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her.

  “I think maybe you have an idea.” She looks at me with bloodshot eyes. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Jenny and I went out, you didn’t want me to go. Why?”

  “It had nothing to do with Jenny,” I tell her.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” she says. “But you didn’t want me to go out and it wasn’t because you wanted me to stay home and visit. I want the truth.”

  I turn my palms up and begin to launch an expression of denial. “What—”

  “Don’t you dare treat me like a child. I want to know what’s going on and I want to know now.”

  “It had nothing to do with Jenny.”

  “What had nothing to do with Jenny?” She reads me like a book, and snaps it closed before I can turn the page. “So there is something?”

  The same question has been plaguing me ever since Sarah’s phone call to the office telling me that Jenny was dead. My own private nightmare, the thought that Herman and I may have screwed up and missed something when we followed them. It’s a selfish notion, one I can’t help but harbor. If it must be that Jenny is gone, I hope and pray that the cops have a clear suspect or at least an evident motive for why she was killed, something unrelated to me or my daughter. Call it guilt.

  “What is it that you’re not telling me?” says Sarah. “I want to know.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll get it out of Uncle Harry. You know I will. Harry can’t keep a secret. Not from me.”

  “I was just worried because of everything that’s happened. That’s it. That’s all.”

  She looks at me askance. “Then you won’t mind if I go out this weekend,” she says. “On a date.”

  I hesitate for only a second as I think about this. “Sure. No problem.” I call her bluff.

  “Sure, because you know I won’t. Like I’m going to go out dancing on Jenny’s grave. I want you to tell me what’s going on. Tell me or you won’t be able to leave this house.”

  “What are you going to do, ground me?” I laugh.

  “No. But if you leave, I won’t be here when you get back,” she says.

  I take a long, hard look at her. Sarah has me in a box and she knows it. “I was just worried that, well…that what happened out at the base might not have been entirely over.”

  “What do you mean?”

 
; I’m saved by the front doorbell, followed by a sharp rap on the door.

  “That’ll be Herman.” I can see him through the glass sidelight in the entryway. I head toward the door.

  “Don’t think for a moment that you’re off the hook,” she says.

  I open the door and Herman steps inside, all six foot six of him. He’s wearing a nervous smile and whispers, “You guys all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  When he hears her voice, Herman looks toward the front room and sees Sarah standing there.

  “Hello, Herman.”

  “There’s my girl. How you doin’?” One look at her and he knows the answer. “Stupid question,” he says. “Sorry to hear about your friend.”

  He turns back to me. “I stopped by out there like you said, and made a couple of phone calls.” He glances toward Sarah. “Maybe you and I should talk privately.”

  “You can talk right here,” she says. “Dad was just about to tell me what’s going on when you rang the bell.”

  Herman gives me one of those uncomfortable looks reserved for an untimely entry into a family feud.

  “What did you find out?” I ask.

  “The house is cordoned off. Cops all over the place. Homicide dicks, one of ’em I recognized.”

  “Was he helpful?” I ask.

  Herman shakes his head. “Not that friendly. Brant Detrick.”

  Herman and I went toe-to-toe with Detrick on a case two years ago. He is not likely to help us out. If Herman started posing questions, Detrick would assume that we already had a principal suspect lined up as a client.

  “Told you he wouldn’t get anything,” says Sarah.

  “Had to go a different way,” says Herman.

  “How’s that?”

  “Paramedics,” he says.

  “I would have thought they’d be long gone,” I tell him.

  “They woulda been, except two of ’em were held over to do shoe impressions for forensics,” says Herman.