by Andrew Grant
“Maybe. But I have one other problem. When I talked to Jonny, he said Norman Davies—the guy who attacked your nice old lady tenant—worked for you.”
“He did.” Carrick bounced on the balls of his feet. “Davies worked for me. As in, past tense. I fired him when I found out what he did. Scratch that—what the Russians obviously paid him to do to make me look bad.”
“Jonny said you were behind the attack.”
“He’s a lying asshole. You believed him? How would a slug like Jonny know anything about my business? And were you there when he talked to Norman? How do you know what he really said?”
“Those are fair points, but here’s something else I don’t understand. If you’re so innocent, and so determined not to sell, why did you agree to meet me?”
“I figured it was another Russian trick. I thought maybe they were trying to get Norman to lie. If he accused me, and I got convicted, I couldn’t run my business. I’d be out of the way. And even if I wasn’t convicted, the mud would stick and the tenants would likely leave. Either way, there’d be more pressure to sell. Which I won’t do. I’m just trying to get that message across.”
“How about this, then. If I can convince you I’m not working for the Russians, will you sell to me? I’ll guarantee to fix the place up. Make it a fit home for the tenants again. I’ll sign legal papers committing to it.”
“No dice. I’m sorry. You just don’t understand these guys. If I sell to you, they’ll pressure you. They’ll keep going after the tenants. Sooner or later someone will wind up dead. And that would be on me. This is the only way. But if you’re really determined to buy a building, I have others. Good ones. I could show you what’s available.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m only interested in this specific building. It’s a sentimental thing, like I said. Just promise me this. If you change your mind, call me. No one will beat my offer.”
“I’ll bear it in mind. But don’t get your hopes up. I’m not going to sell.”
“OK.” I got to my feet. “I understand. And it was nice to meet you. There’s just one last thing.” I took Jonny’s phone out of my pocket and set it on the table. “I’m sorry for that little subterfuge. It seemed like the only way to reach you. I hope Jonny’s feathers aren’t too ruffled. Please apologize to him for me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Frank Carrodus was alone in the janitors’ room when I got back from the Empire State. He was sitting on one of the couches, unpacking some books from a box.
“Anonymous delivery.” He held one up. It was called Small Pig. “For the kids, I guess.”
“I guess.” I paused on my way to the locker room. “And it’s a good idea, I’d say. I didn’t see too many books when I was down there.”
“I wonder who sent them?” He pulled out another one. Little House on the Prairie. “I hate this anonymous bullshit.”
“What do you think? Maybe someone whose kid used to get looked after down there?”
“Who knows. That would be a nice gesture, I guess.” He closed the box and moved it to the floor. “Hey, have you heard the latest? My sister got a real kick from that janitor story, so she put word out to her friends at other police precincts around the city in case he showed up again anywhere else. One of them called her this morning. She said two of their officers pulled a guy out of a hole at a construction site in Hell’s Kitchen, Friday night. And get this. The guy said he’d been thrown in there by a dude calling himself The Janitor. Said he was on some kind of a mission to clean up the city’s dirty streets. Or some shtick like that.”
“That doesn’t sound quite right.” I shrugged. “Anyway, did they charge the guy?”
“I don’t think so. They probably just locked him up overnight. He was most likely drunk or stoned or something. But hey, don’t knock it. A story where a guy like you or me could be the hero for once? You’ve got to love that.”
* * *
—
Carrodus left to take the box of books downstairs. I changed into my coveralls and restocked my cart as quickly as I could, then headed up to the third floor. I was making a late start, I had to leave early to get to another meeting, and I didn’t want to lose momentum with my search for Pardew’s file. But if I let my second plate drop—looking out for the Masons—people could lose their homes. Maybe even their lives. I’d spent most of my life believing that my father disapproved of the choices I made. That he resented me for turning my back on my family. But in this situation, for the first time, I figured there was a fighting chance he’d have thought I was doing the right thing.
I started by sweeping the hexagonal corridor. I worked fast. The rhythm was satisfying. I could see the progress I was making. And it was good for thinking. My conversation with Carrick was not what I’d been expecting. If he was telling the truth, it would be a big step forward. The tenants were getting rehoused. That was a massive item ticked off my list. If Carrick was telling the truth. I needed more information before I could relax, though. And I still had to come up with a way to flush out Norman Davies. And whoever trashed the evidence against him.
* * *
—
When I need the inside track on finance or real estate, there’s only one person I go to. Ro Lebedow. I first met her years ago, during a particularly difficult case I was embroiled in. I’d been assigned to keep tabs on a guy who was trying to portray himself in certain circles as a kind of revolutionary messiah. The vision he was peddling involved the humbling of the United States through a set of simultaneous, devastating attacks on seven major cities, each carried out by a terror cell from a different enemy nation. It was a sound plan in many ways, not least because it required us to apprehend seven separate groups, in diverse locations, each with different methods and practices, all at the same time. In the end we figured that if we could locate the safe houses he was using to accommodate the various groups, we could coordinate raids across the country, swoop in, and sweep up the terrorists before they could do any harm. The key would be to trace the relevant property transactions. All of them. If we missed even one, people would wind up dead. Ro helped us, making sure that every place was correctly identified, and in the process she uncovered a massive stock fraud that the guy was trying to pull off under cover of the attacks. She’s helped me a couple times since then, on an informal basis, and we’ve kept in touch.
With Ro you don’t just benefit from her knowledge and insight. There’s also an advantage in how fast she moves. Other people, if you called them for help one morning, they might have something for you the next day. If you were lucky. Ro asked if I was free after lunch.
I arrived at her office at 2:30 as agreed and found Ro on an exercise bike in the corner by the window, overlooking Bryant Park. She was wearing a sky blue tracksuit, her long silver hair was tied up in a ponytail, and she had a towel from The Peninsula hotel spa wrapped around her neck. She grabbed the remote when she saw my reflection in the glass, turned down the ’70s rock music that was pounding out of a CD player on her bookcase, and kept on pedaling.
“Paul, hi!” She eased off the pace very slightly. “Are you well? Good. So, let’s get started. First, the facts. The demolition permit Carrick showed you? It’s for real. Unless it’s part of an elaborate bluff, which you can never totally rule out with this guy, the building’s toast. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Not for me.” I crossed to the window. “Maybe for the tenants. Why’s he doing it?”
“I have no idea. He hasn’t filed any replacement permits. There’s nothing on the grapevine about new projects or developments. I’m sure something’s going on, but he must be playing some kind of extremely long game.”
“Could he be doing it to take a tax loss? That was my first thought.”
“You don’t know much about tax avoidance, do you, Paul?” Ro shook her head. “But this guy does. You can bet your ass he’s got every ang
le covered. Every loophole jumped through. Every cent of every allowance taken. This year, the big thing’s low-cost housing, because of the governor. There’s a huge incentive for investors. And Carrick’s invested big. Right up to the limit.”
“OK. But something else must be going on. I really need to figure out what he’s up to with this building.”
“Good luck with that. The guy’s about as straight as a corkscrew.”
“What do you know about him?”
“You know me. I’m all about character. The way I understand the guy, it’s like this. Imagine you were determined to make it as an actor. Hollywood is your dream. You work your ass off. Establish yourself. Make a certain kind of role your own. Would you feel good?”
“I guess.”
“OK. But what if the only role you could make your own was the ugly loser who everyone laughs at, and who never gets to sleep with the leading lady?”
“I guess I wouldn’t feel quite so good. But how is that relevant to real estate?”
“George Carrick had a tough start. He was born in ’58, in Alphabet City. So he was in his teens during the seventies. That was a terrible time to be on the fringes of New York City, specially if you had no money. He fell in with a bad crowd. Got busted for some protection racket thing, and wound up in jail. He came out again in the Reagan years. Suddenly greed was good and rules weren’t so important. He got a job as a rental agent. He was great at it. There were some mutterings about race issues, but he turned in the best figures at the company he worked for so no one cared. He made a name for himself, borrowed big, bought property, built a portfolio. Then he tried to make the move into development.”
“He got his fingers burned?”
“Not at all. The odd one of his deals went south, sure, but overall his record was outstanding.”
“So what was his problem?”
“Property development is a world of its own. Immense amounts of cash are involved. Carrick has a lot by regular standards, but he’s no Saudi prince. He knew he had to bring something else to the table. So he made his name as a fixer. If there was a permit problem? A zoning issue? Yuppies protesting because they didn’t want some new skyscraper so close to their condo? Carrick knew who to talk to. He got so good that nothing big happened without him. But then he could never break out of that role. He could never call the shots, because despite trying—and getting mighty close—he could never control the money. He wanted so desperately to be a mover and a shaker. To be part of the big-time Manhattan set. He worked for them. He worked with them. He greased their wheels. They couldn’t succeed without him. But he always felt like a servant. Never one of them.”
“If you can’t join them, beat them. Or something like that.” I stepped back and leaned against Ro’s desk. “Were there ever any rumors about Carrick using strong-arm tactics?”
“Back in the eighties, maybe.” Ro increased speed. “But nothing for a long time.”
“How about the Russians? Any special resentment over them moving in? They’ve been putting serious money into some high-profile projects, from what I hear.”
“That’s true. They have. But Carrick’s been helping them, from what I’ve been told. And making a lot of money in the process. No. The word online is that if he resents anyone, it’s still the old-school Manhattan guys. He’ll work with anyone and do anything, doesn’t matter how shady or how risky, as long as it turns a dollar and brings him a step closer to crashing their party. It’s probably his biggest weakness.”
“So how does that factor into demolishing this building?”
“I have no idea. It makes no sense. Unless he’s discovered oil under there? Or gold?”
“He told me he’s giving the lot to the city. To use as a park.”
“A lot that size is a bit small for a park. It’s possible, I guess. Maybe one of those micro–bird sanctuary type deals? But whatever it is, a guy like Carrick, he’s doing it for a reason. He’s getting something in return, I guarantee.”
* * *
—
Ro had given me plenty of food for thought, but I felt like I still needed a better handle on Carrick. Was he really an outsider, like me, doing his best in an inhospitable world? Or was he an untrustworthy asshole, ready to trample on anyone who stood between him and his next dollar? It was a tough question and I needed an answer fast, because his word was the only thing that was keeping a roof over the Masons’ heads. And their neighbors’.
I decided to head back to the courthouse. There was time to search a couple more chambers that afternoon, and I was starting to rely on the mopping and sweeping to bring a little clarity. I left Ro’s building and was heading for the subway when my phone rang. But it wasn’t my regular one. It was the clone I’d made of Jonny’s, over the weekend. I hit the answer key and it was like being added to a three-way call, except on listen only. I heard Jonny grunt a greeting, and then the voice of the person who’d called him. It was a voice I recognized. George Carrick’s. He was summoning Jonny to a meeting. That night. At an address on 75th Avenue, in Brooklyn.
If I were Jonny, that would be the last place in the world I’d go. You wouldn’t find me in the same county as anywhere proposed by George Carrick. But luckily for me, Jonny didn’t have my sense of self-preservation. He agreed to be there. Which meant, much as the realization killed me, returning to the courthouse would have to wait. I had preparations to make, and not long to make them. Not if I was going to be ready on time.
Chapter Nineteen
The guy Jonny was supposed to meet arrived ten minutes late. I watched him pull into the small lot next to the designated building in Brooklyn. He was driving a white van. It had no windows at the back, and no markings of any kind. The guy swung it around wide, then reversed and stopped on a patch of weeds near the door.
He climbed out, and I recognized his narrow, pointy face right away. It was Norman Davies. I’d seen his photograph in the court file.
The building only had one story. It was maybe twenty feet tall and was built of brick, with peeling cream exterior paintwork. A straggly creeper was growing up its far corner near the wall separating it from the lot on the next street. There were cleaner patches where signs might once have been, but now there was nothing to identify the place. Or its owner. Davies walked back toward the street, grabbed hold of a rickety wire mesh gate, and started to pull. The gate was also twenty feet high, and half the width of the lot. It was suspended on a girder by three pairs of rusty wheels set into a narrow groove. They squealed in protest, but Davies put his back into it and finally got the thing closed. He secured it with a padlock and crossed to the door of the building. It was metal. Painted yellow. The finish had dulled with time, but it still stood out against the crumbling brickwork. Someone had welded a panel over the letter slot. Davies pulled a handle next to it and disappeared inside.
I dealt with the padlock on the gate—that was quicker and safer than climbing over—crossed to the van, and made sure no one was inside. Then I opened the yellow door as softly as possible and slipped into the building.
The air was heavy with the stink of rusty metal and gasoline. The floor was made of cement. It had been poured in sections, and years of detritus had got caught in the gaps. The surface was covered with dark stains. Some were oil. Some, maybe other things. Yellow lines, now faded, marked out where pieces of unidentified equipment had been. You could see the holes where the anchor bolts had secured them. Steel pillars, painted white, rose up to meet the roof beams. Bright red fire extinguishers were still attached to every other one. The underside of the ceiling had been pulled off at some stage, exposing joists and pipes and cable trays.
There was a roll-up metal vehicle door in the center of the wall that joined the street. It looked new. A control panel was mounted next to it, with red and green buttons on its front and shiny metal conduits running up to its mechanism and down to the ground. So
meone had dropped off a bunch of pallets just inside the entrance. There were seven. Each was still stacked with large cardboard boxes, but no markings were visible despite the loads having been shrink-wrapped in clear plastic.
High in the opposite wall there was a round ventilation port, where a fan’s jammed blades stood firm against the gentle breeze. Below that were rows of metal shelves. There were two sections. One was blue. The other green. Both were empty. Their paint was chipped, and the remains of yellow labels clung to their edges. I couldn’t read what was written on them.
The whole width of the wall opposite the door was taken up with windows. All of them were boarded up except one, in the center of the row. There was a metal stool in front of it, in a pool of yellow light that was spilling inside from a nearby streetlamp. A guy was sitting on it. He was wearing dirty sneakers, mud-stained jeans, and a Mets hoodie. The hood was pulled up, hiding the guy’s face. His arms were crossed defensively.
Norman Davies was standing in the center of the space, looking around. His face was pinched and spiteful. Movement in the far corner caught his eye. He spun around and pulled his gun, searching for a target. As he watched, a rat scampered back under one of the shelves.
“Don’t panic, Norm.” It was Jonny’s voice, and he sounded nervous. “It was just one of your cousins.”
Davies shook his head and stepped toward the figure on the stool.
“That’s close enough.” The nerves in Jonny’s voice were spiraling toward outright panic. “I don’t know what’s going on. Why are you here? Why have you got a gun? George Carrick told me he was coming. He said he had a job for me.”
“Well, there is a job to be done.” Davies stopped ten feet away from the stool. “And you know Carrick doesn’t do these things himself. So that’s why I’m here.” He raised the gun and lined it up on Jonny’s chest.