Cassidy called the Tombs from his desk in the squad room. A woman named Gail in the records office who thought it was her job to be helpful put him on hold while she went to look up the file. When she came back she reported that Spencer Shaw had been transported to Wallkill, a medium-security facility in Ulster County. She gave him the central number at the prison. The operator at Wallkill passed Cassidy to Deputy Herb Carter in the intake office.
‘What’d you say the name is, Detective?’ Carter’s voice had a country twang.
‘Spencer Shaw. Transported from the Tombs on the fourteenth.’
Cassidy could hear the rustle as Carter turned pages. ‘The fourteenth? He didn’t make it to us. You sure you got the right facility?’
‘Wallkill’s what they told me down here at the Tombs.’
‘I can’t speak for them. All I can do is speak for us. He did not come here.’
‘Are you sure? Maybe the fifteenth.’
‘No, sir. I’ve checked three days both sides of the fourteenth. I’m looking at the receiving ledgers and the blotters. We’ve got no Spencer Shaw on any of our books. I’m looking at cell assignments – no Shaw.’
Cassidy called the Tombs again. Gail in the records office told him, ‘Detective Cassidy, our records show that Shaw, Spencer, left our facility at ten o’clock the morning of the fourteenth for Wallkill.’
‘Did the bus stop at any other prisons?’
‘Yes, sir, it did. It had one other scheduled stop. If you’ll hold on I’ll give you the phone number.’
‘Maybe they put him off somewhere by mistake.’
‘Detective Cassidy, I’m not going to tell you that has never happened, ’cause it has. They usually catch it in a day or two. I’ve never heard of someone staying in the wrong facility for more than two weeks. Could happen, I guess.’
‘Was Shaw sent out in regular Department of Corrections transport?’
‘Let me check.’ She was back in a minute. ‘No. We were swamped that day. Just about every facility in the system was getting intake that day. Shaw went out in one of the private companies we use on occasion.’
‘What’s the company?’
‘Security Transport. It’s over in Queens. I’ll get you the number.’
‘And the address.’
‘Of course.’ She read it to him.
Orso came up the stairs carrying two coffees. ‘Hey, what’s with you? You look like you want to bite someone.’ He shoved one of the coffees to Cassidy.
Cassidy told him about the missing Spencer Shaw.
‘What the fuck, man? He’s got to be someplace.’
They got a list of every prison in the state and called each one. By lunch they knew that Shaw might be someplace, but he wasn’t in any facility operated by the New York Department of Corrections.
They checked a car out of the garage, and drove to Queens. Security Transport, was in a three-story, dirty, yellow-brick building a block back from the river.
The manager wore a blue denim mechanic’s jumpsuit with a brass zipper that closed it to the throat. ‘Rocco Negroponte. What can I do for youse guys?’ A gravelly voice and a Brooklyn accent. He waved them to chairs in front of the desk. When they introduced themselves, Rocco grinned at Orso and said, ‘Paisan.’
‘We need to know if you guys did a run out of the Tombs on the fourteenth,’ Cassidy said.
‘The fourteenth of this month? Let me look.’ He pulled a big ledger from the desk drawer and leafed through the pages. ‘Yeah, here we go. Pick up at ten. Fourteen prisoners, two guards. Up the river to Sing Sing. Then up to Wallkill. What about it?’
‘Did it go on to Wallkill?’
‘The ledger says that was the run. So, yeah, I guess it went up to Wallkill after Sing Sing. This only shows bookings. The driver’s log will show you details of the run.’
‘We need to speak to the driver.’
‘Let me go check, see if he’s here. Be right back.’ He left the room leaving the door open.
Rocco came back trailed by a tall, thin man in a gray uniform that said Security Transport in gold letters over the pocket. ‘This is Howie Kaplan. He drove that run. I told him what youse were looking for.’
Cassidy and Orso stood and shook hands with the driver. ‘Mr Kaplan, the guy we’re after is thirty-six years old, about six one, a hundred-eighty pounds, and has very light blond hair. His eyebrows are much darker, almost red. He was supposed to go up to Wallkill.’
‘We didn’t go up to Wallkill that day, ’cause the guy never showed. I go back to dispatch, tell them I’m ready to roll. They check the paperwork and tell me to go. The guy’s gone, been transported another way. Good for me. That’s a long day, Sing Sing, then Wallkill and back.’
‘You’re sure? Maybe he got off at Sing Sing.’
‘Absolutely sure. Only three white guys in the load. Two wops like Rocco, and an old guy about sixty, killed his wife. Mean-looking fucker, bald as a cue ball. The rest were schwartzes. No blonds in the group.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘You ever been down there when they’re moving guys out?’ Kaplan asked. ‘On one of the real busy days it looks like someone kicked over an anthill. If you had the balls, you could probably walk in there in some sort of uniform and walk a guy out. Hey Rocco, remember that guy a few years ago wanted to pay me a hundred bucks to use the uniform for a day? A guy like that, who the hell knows what he was going to do?’
They drove back into Manhattan against the rush hour traffic.
‘What do you think?’ Orso asked. ‘You think they were lying?’
‘No.’
‘Weird, huh, first Shaw’s wallet disappears from the evidence locker. Then he disappears on moving day.’
‘Shaw told me a couple of times, the agency takes care of its own. It was like the Code, no bodies left on the battlefield.’
‘They’d do that? Bust a guy out?’
‘I don’t know. They seem to do pretty much what they want.’
‘So Shaw’s in the wind. And that’s that.’
‘Uh-uh. I think he’s here in New York,’ Cassidy said.
‘Why the hell would he come back here?’ Orso asked.
‘So he can kill me.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Cassidy and Orso dropped the car back at the garage and walked to the Shamrock on Eighth Avenue and ordered drinks. Orso scooped a bowl of popcorn from the machine near the bar and carried it to a booth. ‘Why would he take the chance?’ he asked. ‘He already got away with murder. It’s too much risk.’
‘What risk? We think he’s in prison upstate. That’s what he’s counting on. Nobody’s looking for him.’
‘He’s free. He can do anything he wants. Why go after you?’
‘He could have killed me any time a couple of months ago. The night he shot up the front of my building, he could have put a bullet in my head. But he wanted me to know. He wanted to make me sweat, make me wait for it. It’s still what he wants.’
‘That’s nuts.’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s say you’re right. What are we going to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Bullshit. We get Bonner and Newly and a few other guys, and we put a detail on you. He shows up, and we grab him.’
‘He’s a trained spook. If you put a tight guard on me, he’ll spot it immediately. If you run a loose cover, he’ll be through it before you know it, and you’ll be too far away to do any good.’
‘So we’ll run it tight. Once he sees he can’t get to you, he’ll give it up.’
‘For how long? If he sees I’m covered, he’ll go away for a while, maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe two. Then when we’ve forgotten about him, he’ll come back.’
‘Call the agency. Tell them what you suspect. Put them on notice that we know what’s going on.’
‘The same thing happens. They ship him off to Italy, or someplace. I begin to forget he exists. He takes a week of leave, comes back here, and hits me. Right now I know he’s out the
re. He doesn’t know I know. That’s my edge.’
‘You’re using yourself as bait.’
‘What are my choices? If this doesn’t end now, I’ll spend the rest of my life waiting for him.’
‘There’s got to be something we can do. Let me talk to Bonner and Newly. We’ll come up with something.’
‘No.’
‘Mike.’
‘Tony, no.’
‘So why’d you tell me?’
‘In case I’m not as good as I think I am. If he gets me, you’ll know who to look for.’
‘This is fucked.’
‘Yeah, I know. We better have another martini. I want to be nice and relaxed when the bullet hits.’
‘You’re an asshole, you know that?’ Orso raised a hand for the waitress.
Cassidy wasn’t quite as easy with the situation as he made out to his partner. He left Orso in Times Square and went down into the subway station. He did not go through the turnstiles. He hesitated as if changing his mind about something, and then went across the lobby past the token booth and up the stairs on the other side. He grabbed a cruising cab and watched through the back window to see if any car suddenly pulled out of a parking spot to follow. The cab stopped right in front of his building, and he went up the stoop fast with the key in his hand. He opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it quickly. The muscles in his back clenched against bullet impact until he closed the door.
Cassidy paused in front of his apartment door and examined the two locks. Shaw was trained to get through most doors. Picking a lock left minute scratches. Cassidy saw none. He crouched down and looked at the toothpick he had wedged in the jamb to fall out if someone opened the door. It was still there. Did Shaw know that trick? Probably. He drew his gun before he unlocked the door, and he went in fast, ducked to the side, and flipped the light switch.
The empty apartment mocked him.
He drew the curtains across the living room windows, double locked the door, and drove the heavy steel security bolt into its socket. He made a drink, and carried it to the sink in the bathroom where it was handy for an occasional sip while he was in the shower.
He tried to put himself in Shaw’s mind. If killing Cassidy were his problem, how would he go about it? First he’d have to know Cassidy’s routine. Shaw could not risk being seen, so he would need a place to watch from. Was the routine the same as before, or had Cassidy been moved to a new assignment? Was he still working days, or was he back on night watch? When he was home, was someone else with him? Was Rhonda still in the picture? A good question. Was she?
Rhonda. It was almost eleven. Too late to call her? He wrapped a towel around his waist and used the phone on the bedside table. She answered on the third ring.
‘Hello?’ Her voice was expectant.
‘It’s me.’
‘Oh.’ The tone changed. She may have been expecting someone to call, but it wasn’t him.
‘Too late to call?’
‘No. I was up.’
‘We need to talk.’
‘What about?’ Her tone was flat now.
‘Let’s have breakfast.’
‘We can’t do it on the phone?’
‘It would be better in person.’
She thought about it for a while. ‘All right. It will have to be early. I’ve got an appointment.’
‘Seven thirty. The place on Bleecker.’
‘Fine.’ She hung up.
A cold morning with a sky like gray steel. At seven fifteen the streets near Cassidy’s building were nearly deserted. A few bundled figures hurried, heads down, toward the subway, a bus, a taxi, a coffee shop, someplace warm. Cassidy used the cold as an excuse to push his pace. If someone followed him, he would have to move fast to keep up. Just before Bleecker Street Cassidy stopped to light a cigarette behind cupped hands. He ducked his head to the match and used the movement to check the block. No one on the street slowed or took a sudden interest in a store window. He was not worried about Shaw following him. Shaw would not risk being spotted, but Cassidy did not know if he had helpers. If there was someone, he was not out this morning.
He needed Rhonda to stay away from him until this thing with Shaw was settled. If she were with him, she would be in the blast area for whatever happened. It was going to be hard enough to protect himself. But if he told her that Shaw had escaped and was looking for him, she would not go. She wasn’t a woman who would desert someone in danger. And, of course, there was the story: CIA agent escapes prison to kill arresting officer. She couldn’t resist that.
Rhonda was already in the diner when Cassidy arrived. He could feel the coolness of her look as he approached the booth. ‘Hi. Sorry if I’m late.’ He bent to kiss her, and she moved just enough so he missed her mouth.
Uh-oh.
He shrugged out of his coat, hung it on the hook above the booth, and slid in opposite her. The waitress poured Cassidy a cup of coffee and took his breakfast order.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘I haven’t seen you in over a week.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
‘Have you?’ She examined him over the rim of her coffee cup.
Uh-oh, again.
‘I have,’ he said. ‘But something’s come up on the job, and I think we better not see each other for a little bit.’
‘What’s come up?’
‘I can’t really talk about it.’ He hoped she would not push, because he did not have a plausible lie prepared.
‘Michael, if you want to break it off, break it off. Don’t give me some lame crap about work.’
He wasn’t expecting that. ‘I don’t want to break it off.’ Did he?
Her smile said she knew better. She reached across the table and patted his hand. ‘Let me make it easier for you. I’ve met someone.’
‘What?’
‘I was going to tell you.’
‘Who is he?’ What? What?
‘It’s nobody you know. He’s really nice. I really like him, and he likes me. You and I were great for a while, but we both knew it wasn’t going anywhere. The last few weeks … I mean how many times have we even had dinner together? Twice? I should have said something before. I’m sorry.’ She stood, picked up her coat, touched him on the shoulder, and left.
The waitress put down Cassidy’s eggs and bacon. ‘You all right, honey?’
‘Yes. Sure. I’m fine.’
‘She’ll be back.’
‘I don’t think so.’
She patted his hand, and went away.
Cassidy stood behind a wooden fence on Bethune Street. He stamped his feet against the cold and pulled his coat collar high. His breath smoked. A new building was going up behind him. The foundation excavation had been dug, and pilings had been driven, but no one was working the site today. He could see through the fence slats to the building on the south side of the street. It had been abandoned more than a year ago. Demolition work began. Then it stopped. Development money dried up, and the owners struggled to find new loans. At least that was the word in the neighborhood. The first-floor windows were boarded shut. Like a lot of light manufacturing businesses the first floor had been built big enough to allow trucks to enter so loading could be done out of the weather. A padlock secured the big double front door. The lock looked too new to have been on the door long. It could mean that the demolition was about to begin again and that the owners were storing equipment. Maybe a couple of bums were camping out in there and had invested in a good lock to keep their place secure. Maybe local scavengers were stripping the place of copper pipe and scrap metal and wanted to preserve the site from other lowlifes with the same good idea.
Or maybe Spencer Shaw had set up again in the room on the fifth floor where he had fired the rifle that blew out the fanlights above Cassidy’s entry door.
Right now the padlock meant there was no one in the building.
Cassidy crossed Bethune and went
down the alley between the abandoned building and the warehouse next to it. All the first-floor windows along the alley were heavily boarded, and someone had taken the trouble to gouge the screw heads so they could not be unscrewed. It was the same at the back of the building.
He returned to the alley. Halfway back to the street, metal doors slanted out from low on the brick wall. They closed the chute that delivered coal to the basement furnace. The doors were bolted and the bolt was rusted shut, but no one had bothered to attach a lock. Cassidy crossed to the construction site and found a three-foot-long piece of rebar in a pile of scrap. He used the rebar to hammer the bolt that held the two halves of the coal chute door. Flakes of rust flew off it from the blows. He hammered the end of the bolt and slowly it began to work its way back through the staples. One more smash, and the bolt moved an inch back and no longer held the doors shut. Cassidy grabbed one of the door handles and pulled. It did not move. One of the doors had a metal lip that fit over the other. Rust sealed its length.
Cassidy found a place where he could get the end of the rebar under the lip. He leaned hard on the rebar. The door suddenly ripped free of the rust seal. Cassidy, unprepared for it, found himself on his hands and knees on the alley concrete. ‘Shit!’ He stood up. His right knee burned. His pants were torn, and the knee was scraped raw. ‘Goddamn it.’ That was a good pair of pants.
He went back to the door, gripped the handle, and pulled. The hinges squealed in protest as the door opened. A wave of cold, damp air came up from the cellar carrying the mingled smells of coal dust and mold. He could see the coal chute on the cellar floor ten feet down. Its upper end had rusted free, letting the chute fall. An iron ladder was fixed to the concrete wall at one side of the cellar opening. The top rung was rusted thin. Cassidy looked down into the gloom of the cellar. Some light fell through the door opening, but the rest of the cellar would be dark, and so would the first floor of the building where the windows were blocked. He wasn’t dressed for this. He was dressed for the office, not for exploration through a crapped-out building. He needed a flashlight. How the hell was he going to see anything down there? It had been a spur of the moment idea to go into the building, and now that he was there, he was going in before whoever put the padlock on the front came back. Clothes could be cleaned and mended. He had matches in his pocket. He needed to know if he was right about Shaw.
Night Watch Page 31