“Anything, Jason?”
“No. Nothing coming this way, Mike. It’s pretty deserted on this side.”
“OK.” Mike punched the END button and dialed Darren. When the phone connected, Mike didn’t waste any time with small talk. “Any action?”
“Plenty of traffic,” Darren responded. “Just the one group of ladies I told you about before. The rest of the guests are a mixed bag. Mostly men. A few look like businessmen, but a lot of scraggly folks. Nobody has a suitcase, so I doubt there’s much overnight action. I’m starting to see a few people come out who I saw go in; seems like about a thirty-minute turn-around.”
“OK. Stay alert.”
“Mike, you know that she’s on the street for the first time, and this is a kind of hotel. Maybe she’s just found a place to crash for the night.”
“I don’t think so,” Mike replied, then paused. He and Jason had decided to keep the FBI tech they had to themselves. The fewer people who knew that Agent Forrest had made an unauthorized loan of the Bureau’s toys, the less chance there was of him getting called out. But Mike hated holding back from Darren, especially at this point, when it mattered. “Darren, you need to keep this strictly on the QT, but Steph’s phone is wired with some sneaky software that lets us listen in even when the phone is turned off. She activated it forty-five minutes ago. If she was hunkering down to sleep away the night, she would have turned it off and probably would have said something to let us know that she was safe.”
“Any chance she’s just scared and nervous and forgot about it?” Darren suggested.
“She’s pretty smart and pretty calm, so I’d say it’s possible but not likely. We need to work on the assumption that she’s engaged inside. We heard an unidentified male tell her to go upstairs to see the doctor to get a prescription. I never worked narco, but that’s a pretty clear drug buy, which is part of her cover. If she’s smart enough, she’ll make the buy and get the Hell out of there. She left the phone behind when she left the room – probably in her cart of crap – so the phone is transmitting silence, which is not helping us.”
“Well, then I guess there’s nothing to do but wait, unless you want to go in and extract her.”
“Nah,” Mike responded. “This is an unofficial gig. Breaking in on an organized drug dispensary is not likely to be a smart move. There’s no telling how well-armed they are inside.”
“Roger that,” Darren agreed. “I’ll sit tight and let you know if she comes out.” Darren punched the END button on his phone to make sure the call was disconnected. Then he dialed a different number and turned around, facing into the doorway in which he was lurking. When the call connected, he spoke softly and quickly. “Hey, you’re not with TW, are you? . . . Good, listen, I may want to come by tonight, you know, to relax a little . . . Yeah, so maybe I’ll see you later . . . OK.” He disconnected and turned back around to watch the entrance to the Alexander Hamilton Hotel.
Ж Ж Ж
A half-hour later, Mike looked around, trying to develop some kind of plan. He kept coming back to the conclusion that waiting was their only option. There was not much chance that Steph had stumbled into a truly dangerous situation. Drug dispensaries like this one were fairly common and they didn’t have a habit of harming their new customers. They would want her back for more. He knew that Steph had some cash with her, so she would be able to make a buy pretty easily. He had instructed her to let her cash go without a fight if she were robbed. She was not likely to be in any real danger, and they didn’t have any good options. Mike still had an earbud in his left ear that was picking up the transmissions from the stealth phone, but it had been quiet for a long while now.
He stretched his back, reached down toward his toes, and then rolled his neck a few times. He seemed to have more kinks to work out these days. He rotated his left shoulder and raised his arm up to a point parallel to the ground, held it there for five seconds, then slowly lowered it to his side. He repeated this exercise ten times, trying not to groan as the pain grew with each repetition. Terry would be proud of him for remembering to do his exercises. He wanted it to stop hurting just to raise his arm, but he knew that it was just a matter of time and effort. He turned up his wrist to look at his watch, and that sent a twinge of pain down his arm. He grunted and let out a soft, “Damn.”
Chapter 42 – Revelations
EDDIE SWIPED HIS KEY CARD and walked into room 108, closing the door quietly behind him. He went directly into the bathroom for a piss. He knew that the sounds of the flush and of washing his hands would get Magnan’s attention. The lieutenant didn’t like being startled, and he worked with earphones blasting opera most of the time. Getting his attention without making him jumpy was an art form that Eddie had been forced to master. He was starting to wonder if the profits of the operation were worth the aggravation of working for Magnan, and dealing with his domineering attitude. When Eddie emerged from the bathroom, he closed the door loudly behind him and called out “Hey,” as he walked into the light of the desk lamp.
Magnan pulled the buds out of his ears, allowing the piercing high note of a singer to leak out into the otherwise silent room. “What?” he growled. “I’m working on the books. You want your cut, let me work in peace.”
“Yeah, I got that, but I just came in and Bruno asked me what I thought about the new girl and I had no idea what he was talking about. What’s the story, Warren? I thought I was in charge of the girls?”
“Tina picked up a stray over by Barclays tonight. Said she looked strung out and asked where she could get some product. I gave her a look and she had some potential, so I sent her up to see the doc. There’s her shit over there,” Magnan said, gesturing to the wire cart still resting on the dull carpet next to the dresser and the flat-screen TV.
Eddie walked casually over to the pile of blankets and plastic bags and pawed through the top layer and down to the hidden stores. He pulled out a sweatshirt and gave it a sniff. “This has been washed, so the girl’s not complete trash.” He tossed the gray blob back on the pile and kept digging, when he felt something hard inside a coat pocket. He pulled out a cell phone, holding it up so Magnan could see it.
Magnan frowned and pulled his finger silently across his neck, indicating that Eddie should not say anything in case the phone was hot. Eddie examined the phone, then pushed and held the power button so that the unit fired up. Its screen showed a happy selfie of a cute girl-next-door making an exaggerated duck face, with the ocean in the background across a rocky beach. He pressed the button again until the “power off” option appeared. He pressed the off button and watched the screen go dark again as the phone emitted a sad bleep and a brief buzz of vibration. “It’s fine,” he said, “it was off when I picked it up. It wasn’t recording anything.”
“It wouldn’t matter; I never say anything I might regret when the customers are in the room. I’m more careful than you.”
Eddie bristled. “Fuck you, Warren. I’m plenty careful, but I’m startin’ to get tired of all this bullshit. I’m tired of vetting the whores and worrying about which one will make friends with some cop we don’t have on the team and try to rat on us. And I’m tired of keeping tabs on fucking Stoneman, who won’t just give up on that stupid bitch they fished out of the river. Jeez, you’d think he and his partner, Shaft, would just let it fucking go.”
“Shut up, Idiot. I told you to always assume there’s a bug in the room.” Magnan turned back to his desk, then spoke without looking at his companion. “Keep it together for another month and we’ll both have seven figures in the Merrill Lynch accounts, on top of the pensions waiting for us. Now go find the new girl – I think Tina said her name was Dani. She probably snorted the whole bag and passed out somewhere. She can’t get out the front door unless Bruno lets her, and Don is on the back door. You check her out and send her on her way. If she comes back tomorrow looking for more, we’ll see how much she wants it. Take that fucking cart of shit out of here and don’t bother me again unless th
e place is on fire.”
Eddie scowled and flipped his middle finger at Magnan’s back, then reached out and dragged Steph’s cart, its wheels squeaking loudly, out into the hallway. He cursed under his breath and started walking the hallways, looking in each doorway and around every corner for the missing girl.
Ж Ж Ж
Mike took the earbud out of his left ear and pulled out his phone, punching the speed dial button. Seconds later, Jason answered. “Are you listening to this?”
“Yeah. I heard. Are we fucked here?”
“We are unless we can get her out.”
Chapter 43 – Storming the Castle
MIKE AND JASON CONVERGED on Darren’s location, across the street from the hotel. They were still worried about being made as cops because they didn’t want the guys inside to take hostages, including Steph. They were standing deep in a shadowed doorway, out of the illumination of the street light that glowed twenty feet farther down.
“Options?” Mike asked his current and former partners.
“I can go around the back and try to find a way inside,” Jason offered. “Then you two can go in the front once I’m in and we’ll meet in the middle.”
“We don’t know what’s in there,” Mike cautioned. “And we’ve got no backup except each other. I don’t want to take any stupid risks here.” Jason and Darren both stared at Mike without speaking. The death of Ray McMillian was fresh in Jason’s mind. Mike figured he knew exactly what Darren was thinking as he glanced down at his old partner’s surgically reconstructed knee. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
Darren nodded. “I’m good, Mike.”
“You both know that if this goes sideways, we’re probably all going to get fired if not prosecuted. This was supposed to be simple surveillance on a dummy assignment, not a raid on a drug dispensary and whorehouse. I’m committed here, but you two can still have plausible deniability. I can go in alone.”
“Shit, Mike. You can hardly lift your arm up and you have no gun!” Jason said dismissively.
“You could loan me your gun,” Mike said, seriously.
“Like Hell! Just what we need, another reason for Sully to bust your ass and mine.”
Darren then suggested that Jason should go in first by himself, because he looked the least like a cop and not because he looked the most like a drug user. Mike would follow in the front, while Darren volunteered to go around to the back of the building to see if he could find a way in. It wasn’t Mike’s first choice for Darren – to be on his own without any cover or backup – but Darren persuasively argued that covering the rear would be the job least likely to encounter any active resistance.
They were truly the walking wounded, between Mike’s shoulder and Darren’s knee. They connected their cell phones on a conference call with an open line and, while Jason attempted to frumpify himself, Darren walked around the block to an alley behind the hotel. After five minutes, Darren confirmed that he was in position and Jason started shuffling across the street, trying to seem as much like a strung-out drug buyer as he could manage while wearing Brooks Brothers khakis. He kept an earbud in his left ear and stuffed the other bud, along with the microphone for his phone, down his shirt. Mike watched as Jason disappeared into the interior of the hotel lobby, listening to the feed from the conference line in his right ear. He had Steph’s stealth phone still in his left, but it had been quiet for some time.
Jason glanced around the lobby as nonchalantly as possible. There were two people sitting in the shabby chairs, neither of whom paid him any attention. He quickly noticed the plexiglass partition near the heavy-looking metal door that presumably led to the interior of the hotel, and the bored-looking man reclining in a desk chair behind the barrier. He hesitated, wondering whether the protocol was to take a seat and wait to be called, or to check in. He opted for the latter, partly so that he could have a conversation that Mike and Darren would hear. “Hey, man,” Jason called into the grouping of small holes drilled through the thick plexiglass.
Bruno Falsetti looked up from something he was watching on a screen that Jason could not see from his angle. He was obviously annoyed at the interruption. His black hair was plastered against his semi-bald dome by his sweat, which beaded up on the exposed skin. He had a thin black moustache and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He frowned at Jason as if trying to recognize him. “What?” he barked.
“Hey, man, I’m lookin’ for a buy.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Joe. One of the bitches over by the Barclays told me I could get some here.” Jason twitched his right eye and tried to make his left hand shake a little bit as he stood, slightly hunched over.
“Let’s see some ID,” Bruno snapped.
“I ain’t got no damned ID!” Jason shot back, indignant. “What do I look like, a fuckin’ investment banker?”
“No ID, no service, my man. I don’t know you, so you gotta get the fuck out of here!” Bruno sat up in his chair and pointed toward the exit door.
“That’s bullshit, man!” Jason shouted. “These dudes ain’t got no damned ID, I bet,” he gestured toward the two disheveled bodies sitting in the tattered lobby chairs. Both of them looked up as he pointed toward them, as if just now noticing the altercation. Jason figured it was unlikely that either of them could produce an ID if their life depended on it.
“Tough shit, motherfucker! I know these pieces of shit. I don’t know you from Jack, so take a fucking hike.” Bruno pushed his face up next to the plexiglass in a menacing gesture, but then he backed off and looked to his right, toward the interior of the building. He nodded silently at whomever he was looking at, then reached his right hand under the counter in front of him. Immediately, a loud buzzing sound filled the lobby and the big door burst open with a metallic clang.
“I wanna speak to the boss!” Jason said as he quickly lunged toward the now-open door, pushing it farther open. A startled woman in a tight dress with a slit up one side all the way to her belt line pulled away from the door handle and glared at Jason. She quickly scuttled past him as Jason hurried through the heavy metal door toward the interior. As he moved, he reached into the pocket of his overcoat and extracted the heavy rubber case that normally housed his cell phone. He had removed the case in order to better conceal his phone in the waistband of his pants during the operation. Now, he jammed the case into the crack between the door and one of the heavy hinges, hoping that the obstruction would prevent the door from re-closing. “I’m going through the interior door,” he said into his chest, hoping that the message would get to Darren and Mike without being audible to anyone else.
Ж Ж Ж
Steph huddled in the dark, cursing herself for not keeping the phone in her purse or in her pocket. Mike knew her location because of the GPS tracker, but she couldn’t communicate, and Mike couldn’t get inside because of the security door. She needed to get out to the street. She didn’t need her little cart, she just needed to get through that buzzer door. Maybe she could get the guy behind the plexiglass to open the door for her.
Just then, the jarringly loud buzzer sounded again. Steph reached for the bottom of the little wooden door to pull it up, then heard a voice shouting.
“Hey! Asshole!”
She pulled her hand back, afraid to be seen even cracking the door. She closed her eyes, unable to slow her breathing. Her pulse pounded out a fast beat in her ears. “Keep it together,” Steph whispered to herself. “It’s just like a volleyball game. Score tied, match point. Deep breaths, focus.” She heard the heavy door slam shut with a loud clang. Steph told herself to wait and be ready for the next time.
Ж Ж Ж
When Jason went through the buzzer door without permission, Bruno Falsetti called out, “Hey! Asshole!” Bruno reached out and smashed his hand against a red plunger-button on the counter. Immediately, a high-pitched siren screamed out two short bursts of sound louder than a Rolling Stones concert amp. The two people waiting in the lobby jumped up, h
olding their hands over their ears, and then quickly gathered up their belongings. At that moment, the front door burst open and Mike rushed in. He did not hesitate more than two seconds to assess the configuration of the lobby before darting for the interior door, which had closed only about half way before catching on Jason’s phone case.
“I’m inside!” Mike shouted, trying to make sure Jason and Darren could hear him over the blaring siren. “Darren, what’s your twenty?”
“I’m inside,” came Darren’s short response. “First floor back hallway. I’m going to try to link up with Jason.”
Mike rushed into the inner hallway and crouched against the left-hand wall as he reconnoitered his surroundings. A bead of sweat trickled between his left eye and ear; he could feel the pressure of each heartbeat in his temple. The warning siren was still blaring out two staccato bursts every five seconds. In the interior hallway, strobe lights flashed at five-second intervals. To Mike’s right, a short hallway ended at a dead end with a wooden square situated three feet off the ground. Mike speculated that it might be an old dumbwaiter system, but certainly nothing that presented a threat. Opposite the dumbwaiter, another short hallway without any doors ran into a blank wall. The main hallway stretched out a good hundred feet, with doorways spaced every twenty feet or so, except for two elevator doors. At the far end, there was a window shrouded with thin lace curtains, and it looked like the hallway continued both on the left and the right. Mike wondered what the floorplan of the place must be – it looked like a giant I-beam. There was no movement or activity inside the hallway; just the deafening blare of the warning siren.
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