by PT Reade
“Don’t play dumb, Mr. P.I. We both know you have a good reason to want a moment alone with Teach.” Even through the electronic scrambler, the voice was calm, collected, deadly.
I couldn’t help but wonder if the man on the other end also had some of the information I sought, but I wasn’t about to ask directly.
“Ok, sure. I have some very pointed questions for Teach. What do you want with him?”
“I want him dead. This is all you need to know. My reasons are my own.”
“And you want me to kill him? Nice try but I’m a detective, not an assassin.”
“Which is precisely why I’m talking to you and not some thug with a gun. Teach has fled into the city and from what I understand you are skilled at finding people who don’t wish to be found.”
“Sorry pal, my office is closed right now. Maybe give me a call when I get back to—”
“Do you want more people to die today?” the voice snapped, rising an octave or two. “Because if you do not do as I ask, I will detonate another device. Find me Roland Teach by noon tomorrow, and nobody else dies. No involvement from the authorities and do not even think about trying to find me. If you do not follow these guidelines, I can promise the next explosion will be far more … spectacular. And before you try to call my bluff, you should know that I always make good on my promises. So far, the count is sixteen dead, thirty-four injured. And the poor old gentleman near the sidewalk doesn’t look too good. I suspect he won’t make it either.”
Jesus.
My heart leaped, eyes darting to crowds near the cordon, then the emergency crews and finally the rooftops.
He was here, watching me.
A shiver worked its way up my spine. A hundred or so people dotted the street: fire crews, police, paramedics, and pedestrians being herded away. Dozens had a phone to their ear. The bomber could be any one of them. Or none of them. My mouth turned to sandpaper, aching for the familiar relief of a bottle at my lips.
“So, do we have an agreement? I will even let your Latino friend help. He looks like the capable sort,” the ghost on the line pressed.
I took a deep breath, and closed my eyes, picturing the bodies in the smoke.
“Yes,” I sighed. “We have a deal.”
FIVE
As I stood in the concrete alleyway, frozen to the spot, staring at the silent phone in my hand, I wondered what sins I’d committed in a past life to deserve this. Was it fate? Was I destined to keep facing death and destruction at every turn?
My mind threatened to wander, usually a sign my feet would follow … to the nearest bar, but I pulled my thoughts back to the moment as Kinsey and Rey burst from the precinct house’s side entrance.
Kinsey was a stern looking woman at the best of times, a prowling cat with claws only half retracted. Her scowl told me she was ready to go hunting.
“Please tell me this is a joke,” she said tersely.
“No joke,” I replied.
Kinsey was a by-the-book kind of leader, which is why, when I stood there spilling the details of the bomber’s phone call, I knew she could be trusted. She was a pain in the ass, but she was on the level.
“The bomber said he would call me back on this phone tomorrow. No Roland Teach and another bomb goes off,” I said.
“Holy shit,” Rey mumbled under his breath. “The Feds are right inside, let’s get that guy, Lynch. They want to get involved with us; they can deal with this crap too.”
Kinsey said nothing, deep in thought.
“No can do,” I replied. “The bomber said no police involvement. If he sees Feds or uniforms running around, there’s no telling what will happen. Why do you think we’re having this little meeting in the alleyway, out of sight?”
“Shit,” Rey repeated.
Though no one was around, I spoke in a hushed whisper. These two were the only people I could trust. “I have to find Teach; there’s no other way.”
“We do not negotiate with people like that Mr. Blume, and we certainly do not go chasing across the city when there is so much work to do here,” Kinsey finally spoke up, straightening her posture.
Rey piped in with, “But Captain—”
“No detective Sanchez,” she snapped. “This man, this … caller is a terrorist, and we have procedures for dealing with this.”
“Like waiting for Lynch and the suits inside to maybe find a lead and maybe track this guy down? That’s bullshit Captain, you know it,” I said. “We have to act now.”
“What I know is that my station, the very place I am in charge of, has just been turned into a goddam battlefield and that dozens of my officers, good men with families, are now dead. This is on me. I have a job to do, and I will do it.” Kinsey turned on a heel and began to march back to the doors.
“A bus station,” I called out. “Or an airport … or a school.”
Kinsey paused.
“What if they are next. What if this asshole decides to set off another bomb at a goddamn school? Could you live with that?”
Rey stood silently beside me as Kinsey braced ten feet away, one hand on the doorknob. Her head bowed.
“He really said he was going to set off another bomb if you didn’t find Teach?” she asked over a shoulder.
“Yeah,” my voice shook, “and not cops or criminals this time—innocent civilians.” I could feel the adrenaline charging through my body as I pictured an eviscerated schoolyard or bus station. My nerves still screamed for another calming drink, but this wasn’t the time. The safety of an entire city rested upon my actions.
“Fine,” Kinsey said, quietly. “You two find Roland Teach, and get any intel he might have on out bomber and do it quietly.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“How long do we have left?” Kinsey asked, turning to face Rey and me.
“Roughly eighteen hours from the time of the call,” I said, checking the phone log. It had been precisely seven minutes. Without speaking, I set the timer on my watch for seventeen hours and fifty-three minutes. The digital numbers put an impatient certainty on the horror of my situation. I’d felt the pressure to crack a case before, but nothing like this.
“Okay,” Kinsey said. “One condition, if we don’t have a solid lead on Teach within a reasonable timeframe, we bring in Lynch.”
Rey nodded.
“This has to stay between us, too,” I insisted. “There’s a lot of strangers around, no way of knowing who might be a rat. This guy is watching us, somehow. If word gets back to him that we’ve enlisted the help of the FBI, there’s no telling what he’ll do. Besides, going by the book will slow us down too much, I need to be able to move quickly. No red tape.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Kinsey said, nodding.
Whoever had done this hated Teach as much as I did, maybe more. Though his name left a foul taste in my mouth, I hadn’t yet gotten around to blowing up innocents in order to grab him. I didn’t think I’d needed to. Just over an hour ago I’d been on my way to finally meet with him, face-to-face.
Now all that had gone to hell.
“So where do we start?” Rey quizzed.
She looked surprised by the question, but the truth was, she’d been on the job longer than both of us. I’d hoped she had a plan in mind.
“We don’t start anywhere.”
Rey’s brows knotted and reflected my own confusion.
“Before today I had a stack of cases that demanded my attention,” Kinsey continued. “Biker gangs at war on the East Side, a suspected serial rapist in Battery Park, Russian mafia in Chelsea.” Kinsey’s hard eyes locked on mine. “I had a difficult precinct to run, even before all this shit. Now, look at it. I have search and rescue efforts to supervise, officers to manage, next of kin to notify. I cannot be part of your search, especially given what our caller said about police involvement, but I will pull as many strings as I can from my position. Grease the wheels, if you will.
“Thanks, Captain,” Rey said. “We need all the help w
e can get.”
“Just, get this asshole before he hurts anyone else. Do what you have to do,” Kinsey said, before disappearing back into the station. The alleyway fell silent between Rey and me. The tide of events rolling over us.
I was surprised Kinsey was so willing to go along with the plan at all. Then I remembered her expression when Lynch was passing down orders. Maybe she, like many cops, had a grudge with the Feds. It’s not that their help wasn’t appreciated—they just had a way of rolling in and stepping on toes. Or, maybe she just figured she had a better chance of keeping me out of trouble if she stayed the loop. Whatever the reason, Kinsey was on board, even in a limited way.
“Hey,” Rey startled me from my thoughts. “I’m just gonna get a few things from inside, but what’s our plan?”
I visualized the bodies in the smoke once more, and more corpses at other places in the city. More dead people because of me. My head pounded and I struggled to focus.
“Honestly, I don’t know where to start, but I know one thing. The clock is ticking.”
SIX
Thoughts wouldn’t come, and I felt the familiar numbness of defeat. This day had started poorly, dipped in the middle and the end wasn’t looking good either. Guilt was my friend by now, but even that had its limits. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, I could compartmentalize, organize my thoughts so that the crushing weight of events wouldn’t destroy me. Still, the burning building and the ambulances scattered around the bomb site gave me pause.
Was it really all my fault? Would any of this have happened without my interference or my fumbling investigations? The flask in my pocket felt heavy, calling to me once more. I may have answered if not for a noise behind.
Rey reappeared from the side door, carrying two cups and stepped over to me. The look on my face must have been clear. Not to mention the dried blood, the dust and smoke staining my clothing, and the general way in which I slumped against the wall.
“You ok, man?” he asked.
“About as good as I look,” I replied dryly.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Here, this might help.” He offered me a cup. The steaming Styrofoam container hit a surprising pang within me as I recalled how often I used to drink from those cups, back when I worked in this very station.
Now I was an outsider, cast out from the cops, my family taken from me and being jerked around by a guy with an unhealthy disinterest in human life.
The coffee would work better than the booze, though. Grabbing the cup, I sipped at the bitter brew and winced. The taste hadn’t improved any.
“I managed to get the old coffee machine working on the first floor,” Rey announced proudly. “It probably won’t taste great, but it might help clear a few cobwebs.”
“I nodded, and immediately regretted my choice when a bloom of pain swelled between my temples. “No, it’s good thanks.”
The coffee was clearing my head, although the desire to empty my hip flask into the cup was hard to ignore. Driving down those thoughts, I turned to Rey.
“I have to be honest here Rey. This is beyond me. I was a cop, and I have been a private detective in London, but chasing down terrorists is not my thing. And bombs? Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin.”
Rey cast his eyes down and placed one hand against the wall as if the will of his effort would keep the city standing. “I know man, this is beyond me too, but this guy clearly has a hard-on for Teach, and you know Teach better than anyone. You’ve been tracking him for a year.”
“Wrong. I was tracking whoever killed my family. I didn’t know it was Teach until I found that bullet casing, which led me here. Now someone has freed him, and he’s gone.”
“Well, whatever you did then, you can do it again. And this time, I’m here to help. You and me Blume, just like the old days.”
“I can’t Rey. I just—I don’t know where to start.”
“Come on Blume; we need to get—”
“Goddammit, Rey look!” I cast an arm out at the destruction across the road. The burning building, the fire crews rushing to save lives, the sirens, and the death.
I knew my old partner was just trying to motivate me, but the weight of events was too heavy, too much to crawl out from under. A part of me snapped.
“People are dead; blood is covering the streets! Families have been destroyed. All because I’m here chasing some idea of revenge. Some stupid fool’s errand. And god, what a fool I’ve been.”
Rey stepped over and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Do you remember our first Homicide bust, Tom? Must have been nine, ten years ago. Captain Parks had just assigned me some rookie detective, fresh out of the pool and the last thing I wanted was some greenhorn cramping my style. The first case we had was Marco—”
“Marco Manelli,” I interrupted again. “Mob informant, turning state’s evidence, who wound up with six bullet holes and a cozy little resting place out near Jamaica Bay.”
“Right,” Rey said. “We interviewed the family, the associates and CSU found nothing but the slugs, which didn’t match any gun on record. The wife was distraught, but the boys in organized crime were ready to write it off as just another mob hit by the cleaner they had been tracking for weeks. What was his name? Salieri or Sallone or something?”
“Scaletta,” I said. “Vincent Scaletta. The Italians had been using the guy for hits all across the state. Major Crimes were building a case, so they didn’t want us bringing him in early and ruining the investigation.”
“Exactly. Anyway, Parks was ready to write the case off as just another hit. Everyone figured somehow, he’d been ratted out and the mob had found him. Everyone except you, Blume.”
“Yeah.”
“You just couldn’t accept the easy solution. You kept looking at that evidence bag and knew there was more to it. While everyone else was getting ready to rubber stamp the paperwork and hand the case to MC, you wouldn’t let it go. You made us bring in the wife.”
“I remember. It was her in the end, wasn’t it? Julia, I think her name was. She just snapped one day. Had enough of Marco’s bullshit and took his gun and finished the poor son of a bitch off. In the end, it had nothing to do with the mob, or hitmen or any of that. Just one severely pissed off missus. Hell hath no fury and all that.”
Rey nodded. “You caught that Blume. You. On that day, I knew you had the makings of something big. I saw that day what I see now. A goddam brilliant detective and one determined bastard.”
“Thanks,” I said. “If I need a biographer, I know who to call.”
Rey laughed. “I’m serious Tom. You’re good. You’re a natural at this stuff. So, shake it off, get your shit together and let’s stop more people dying.”
Sometimes, it took anger and the idea of revenge to motivate people. Other times it required a friend. A friend to spark an idea.
Evidence.
I sighed, took a large swig of coffee, stretched a kink out of my back and turned to face Rey fully. I slipped off my leather jacket and passed over. He grabbed it uncertainly.
“You have a plan?” He said, with a raised eyebrow.
“I think I have a plan. But neither of us are gonna like it.”
SEVEN
I finished the last of my coffee and watched as Rey ran towards the fire crew. There were only two men between me and my target. I needed him to create a distraction, and if there was one thing Rey Sanchez was good at, it was being distracting.
He jogged over to the two brightly dressed men and waved his arms around like a maniac, shouting and pointing at some unseen spot on the rubble twenty feet in the opposite direction.
The men looked baffled for a moment, but when Rey started getting louder, the crew immediately responded by trying to calm him down. Rey virtually dragged them across the road and out of sight to whatever imaginary disaster he had concocted.
I took my chance, ran out onto the street and across the rubble, which crunched underfoot. Most of the emergency services were focused on
the other side of the ruined building, so I ducked behind a fire truck and dashed to the darker end of the structure, certain I had arrived unnoticed. With the sun setting and dust clouds filling the air, it was getting harder to see anything, let alone one man.
Considering the chaos on the South side of the building, the fire exit door at the North side, where I stood, looked relatively calm and undamaged. The crumbling brickwork and falling debris must have been entirely concentrated on the other face, where fire crews now battled with a blaze that had broken out, trying their best to evacuate any poor souls still trapped inside.
Only a fool would be stupid enough to go back into a hellhole like that.
Today, I was that fool. I needed what was inside, and I needed it before the fire reduced it to ashes.
The door was locked, only able to be opened from the inside—no surprise there, but I had a special ‘lockpick’ I used for occasions like this.
I stepped forward and slammed my foot against where I guessed the lock would be. The door flew open with a crash. Air whooshed past my ears, feeding the internal flames.
Backdraft!
A wave of heat hit me in the face; I jumped backward just in time, as a massive plume of fire boomed from the doorway and blasted skyward.
“Nice going Tom,” I muttered.
Lucky for me, the sudden change in pressure sucked the flames outside the building, blowing itself out, and as I pushed into the hallway, only a thin pall of smoke hung in the air.
Somewhere, across the way, I heard the shouting of the fire crews and the tell-tale crackling of fire creeping over everything it touched. I glanced at the stairwell climbing in front of me. A sign read G1. I needed to head up a floor and across to the back of the building, where the records were kept.
Ahead of me, out of sight, something heavy fell and caused another crash. I shielded my eyes as a blast of heat once again rushed through the building. Pushing forward, I scrambled up the stairs, past a burning chair. Ashes coated the steps. I reached the door to the second floor and, learning from my previous mistake, pressed a palm against the upper panel. It was cool.