Bad Blood (9 page)

“I’ve been meaning to find the time — the right time — to ask, you know, how you’ve been doing lately,” I said. Mike’s strong profile was outlined against the car window, backlit by the overhead lights as we sped along the drive. “You want to talk?”

“Not now.” His eyes never left the road.

“I worry that you’re—”

“Worry about yourself. Worry about your case for the next few weeks. You got creatures imploding on you inside and out of the courtroom. Me? I’ll still be on the last stool at the end of the bar at Forlini’s when the verdict comes in, win or lose. We needed someone sticking Marley Dionne like you need another pair of shoes.”

Mike still wasn’t letting me any closer on the personal side. He was telling me something, though, by the way he snapped at me and refused to engage. We were back to the business of the trial, and I trusted he knew I was available for him to lean on whenever he was ready.

“You going to try to talk to Marley tomorrow?” I asked.

“I’ll be bedside in the intensive care unit before I start down to your office, pinching that IV tube from time to time to jog his memory. I’m hoping we got a Samson effect going on.”

“You mean—”

“Someone cut off his dreads and maybe his balls shrunk in the process,” Mike said, wheeling the car off the drive and onto York Avenue, circling the blocks to get to Second.

We parked across the street from the restaurant and walked over, making our way through the crowd at the bar to get to Mercer and Giuliano, the owner, who were sitting together at a table against the front windows.

“Ciao, Alessandra,” Giuliano said, rising to greet us. “Detectivo,
come stai
?”

“
Benissimo,
now that I’m here,” Mike said, slapping the taller man’s back.

“Fenton,
subito,
” the owner called out to the bartender, snapping his fingers to get his attention. Giuliano winked at me as he pulled out my chair. “I think Signorina Cooper needs a double tonight, from what Mr. Mercer has been telling me.”

Our cocktail preferences were so well-known here that we had only to enter the restaurant before the good-natured waiters — Adolfo, Tony, and Dominick — delivered them to our places.

“Give us some fried zucchini to nibble on with our drinks,” Mike said to Giuliano, who offered to take our order himself. “The princess here has been giving me a hard time about eating all day. Do up a vat of ziti, with some of that tomato-basil sauce. She’s been working too hard to consider cutting her food or even chewing it. This’ll just slide down her throat, no effort at all.”

“I’ve got some delicious striped bass tonight, gentlemen.”

Mercer nodded and Mike continued ordering. “Two of those, and give us some prosciutto and figs. Blondie’ll just watch.”

“Nice job of getting Kate Meade home without paparazzi,” I said to Mercer as I lifted my glass of Dewar’s to click against each of their drinks.

“I’m not sure she’d ever seen the service entrance of her apartment building or even knew there were handymen who work in the basement, but I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t tip them well come Christmas.”

“How was the ride uptown?”

“Human tear ducts must hold a lot more fluid than I imagined. She never stopped crying.”

“Did she have time to talk before her husband got home?” I asked.

“Alex, that woman was so damned distracted, thinking about what was going to happen to her marriage and her kids and her life, there wasn’t any way to do a serious interrogation.”

“Did you get anything at all?”

“Seems like Preston Meade had been caught with his pants down a few months earlier. They’d been in marriage counseling for a while, but both of them were too uptight to talk their problems out in front of a therapist.”

“So Kate took the more direct route,” Mike said as he moved the ice around in his vodka glass. “Payback, don’t you think? One shot with the guy she’s probably had the hots for since high school. You got to look out for those mousy little ones, I’m telling you. Bad-tempered ballbreakers like Coop let it out now and then, but think about how long all this has been seething inside the very proper Mrs. Meade. Some of those nuns who taught her math, manners, and morals must be doing overtime on their rosary beads tonight.”

“What happened when Preston arrived?” I asked.

Mercer started to answer and I cupped my hand, leaning over the table to try to hear his answer. The chattering customers standing at the bar behind me were competing with the group of eight over my other shoulder that had just come in to wait for a table, and from the street outside came the sudden screeching noise of sirens passing by.

Mike pulled back the white voile café curtain. “Fire engines.”

“What did you say?” I repeated to Mercer.

“Wait till they pass,” he said, pointing to the window.

But the noise didn’t abate. I lifted the curtain on my side as a block-long, red hook-and-ladder wailed its urgent noise, stuck behind several cars that were jamming the intersection. It was joined by a backup chorus of whelping vehicles, so Mike stood to walk to the door, attracted by the growing fleet of patrol cars and ambulances.

Mercer’s waistband beeper started to vibrate just as Mike flipped open his cell phone and hit a single button — speed-dialing his office, I assumed.

Mercer unclipped the beeper and frowned as he looked at the illuminated numerical message. “Ten thirty-three.”

I knew too well the numbers of most of the NYPD emergency codes, from the extremely urgent ten thirteen to assist a fellow officer to the familiar ten thirty-four of an assault in progress.

I reached for Mercer’s arm as he pushed away from the table. “What is it?”

“Possible bomb, Alex. Report of an explosive device.”

Mike had covered one ear with his fingers as he listened to someone on the phone before turning back to speak to Mercer, ignoring me altogether. “Big explosion midtown, somewhere in the West Thirties. Get Coop outta here, will you? She has to be sparkling in the morning to make up for today’s fiasco. I gotta go. My whole squad’s been mobilized.”

I thought the day’s events had drained the adrenaline from my system, but somehow it began coursing through me again. “That’s Manhattan South. It’s not even your jurisdiction.”

Dreadful memories of 9/11 were seared in my brain, and I knew Mike was quick to put himself in harm’s way for anything the department asked of him.

“They’re calling in everyone on the terrorist task force. Could be a hit. Take a slug of your Scotch, kid, and head for home.”

I could barely keep up with Mercer’s long strides as we hustled to his unmarked car, parked on Sixty-fourth Street, for the short ride uptown to my apartment.

Pedestrians seemed oblivious to the parade of emergency vehicles heading south, but customers were flowing out of bars, where televisions were undoubtedly flashing the same news alert that we could hear on the radio.

New Yorkers were being urged to stay calm by the all-news-station announcer, who was waiting for specific reports to broadcast. Police helicopters were circling overhead, engines droning and searchlights sweeping the streets below, put in the air almost immediately as if to guard the northern rim of the midtown perimeter.

“What do you think it is?” I asked Mercer.

He glanced over at me and smiled. “You know I don’t like to be critical, girl. Just pretend Mike’s here and imagine what his answer would be.”

“He’d start with a derogatory remark about how stupid my question was, tell me to stop thinking worst-case scenario, and remind me of how much he admired the way the Brits handled themselves during the Blitz, the years of IRA attacks, and the Al Qaeda subway bombs.”

Mercer parked in the far end of the driveway of my high-rise building and stuck his laminated police identification plate in the windshield.

“Aren’t you going home?” I asked. Mercer lived in Queens with his wife, who was also a detective, and their baby son.

“Vickee’s got Logan down in Georgia, visiting her folks for the first week of her vacation. Let’s hang till we hear from Mike.”

The doorman opened up for us as we approached. “Hey, Ms. Cooper. We got a call from the management company. Just thought you’d like to know, the city’s terror alert has been raised to orange. Something happened about an hour ago.”

“Thanks, Vinny.” We walked to the elevator and I hit the button for the twentieth floor.

Mercer went into the den and turned on the television. I followed him, poured us each a drink to replace the ones we’d left behind, and we settled in to watch the news.

“…reporting live to you, this is Julie Kirsch,” the chic young reporter said, with plumes of smoke rising into the night sky from the scene behind her. “We’ll be back in a few minutes with an important message from the mayor of New York City.”

Julie clapped a white plastic mask over her mouth as toxic-looking fumes swirled around her head, and the station went to commercial break to fill the airtime. Mercer flipped the channels, but each network had taken the same opportunity while the politicians readied themselves to speak.

When the live feed resumed, Kirsch shouted into her handheld mike over the commotion of men yelling orders at each other and vehicles continuing to stream into the general area, with revolving red lights flashing on their hoods. “We’re back on West Thirtieth Street, just off Tenth Avenue,” she said, pointing to the phalanx of fire trucks in the distance, “about half a block from the site of this enormous blast.”

The network anchor spoke. “Who’s in charge of the operation now, Julie?”

“The police commissioner is the top official here, but we’ve also got Fire and Emergency Medical Services. You may recall that after the terrible events of 2001, and the confusion about which agency should be supervising the mission, it’s the NYPD that was given the lead position in these situations.”

“Any word on possible loss of life yet?”

Kirsch pursed her lips and shook her head. “The fire was still raging when the first responders got here. It will only be after they contain the flames that they can get down inside and assess the damage. We’re hoping that the time of night will be in our favor on that issue — not as many workers around the area.”

“Down inside what?” I asked.

Mercer was sitting on the edge of his seat, his glass on the floor between his legs, trying to pick up the background conversation and looking for faces of his colleagues. “Must be the tunnel.”

The cameraman found the public officials setting up on a platform in the middle of the street, which had been blocked off by fire trucks.

“Which tunnel?”

Manhattan sat above a maze of underground connectors. Roadways stretched beneath the Hudson River across to New Jersey in the Holland and Lincoln tunnels; Brooklyn was linked by the Battery Tunnel; Long Island by the Queens Midtown Tunnel; and more than fourteen underwater tubes comprised the network of subway tunnels that were the vital infrastructure of New York City.

“Right there. Thirtieth Street,” Mercer said, hushing me with a finger over his lips.

I didn’t recognize the mayor until Mercer pointed him out to me. He was dressed in a yellow slicker, with a bright green plastic hard hat, and heavy rubber rain boots that covered his trousers up to his knees. The police commissioner mounted the podium next to the mayor, and the fire commissioner, clearly unhappy to be second banana, was grim-faced as he stepped to the rear.

“Good evening, my fellow New Yorkers. The commissioner and I are here together at the mouth of Water Tunnel Number Three. As most of you know, almost two hours ago, shortly before nine o’clock this evening, an explosion was reported inside the underground entrance at this site, a place unknown to many of you, even though it will play an essential part in every one of your lives.

“There is absolutely no cause for panic or alarm,” the mayor said, giving what had become the traditional post-9/11 exhortation for calm and equanimity in the face of the unknown.

Five minutes of reassurance were followed by introductions of all the parties who were playing a role in this crisis. The mayor was clearly stalling for time, for someone to give him a better understanding of the potential danger to the city.

“As of now, there is no reason to believe this event is the result of a terrorist act. The brave men who have worked underground since this project began its development almost forty years ago — in 1969 — have faced death in ways most of us have never contemplated. This subterranean world that provides New York with all the water it uses daily has been created out of sheer bedrock by dynamite. We expect that tonight’s blast and the resultant damage will prove to be simply a terrible accident, not an intentional act — not part of a scheme intended to cripple our city.

“But,” the mayor went on, summoning the man he’d appointed to lead the NYPD to step forward beside him, “but I’d like Commissioner Scully to tell you what precautions we’ve taken to keep you and your families safe.”

“It’s the damn
buts
I hate so much,” Mercer said. “Give us the bad news.”

The commissioner was a head taller than the mayor. He removed his hard hat and handed it to an aide, then leaned over to speak into the mike. I had known Keith Scully when he had been chief of detectives more than five years ago, and I had watched his hair whiten and fine lines become etched in his brow since the time of his appointment two years earlier.

“We have been keenly aware of the vulnerability of our tunnel systems in this city since the tragedies of September eleventh. Our counterterrorism plans have included increased manpower at all entrances and exits, upgraded with video monitors and intercoms,” Scully began, then referenced additional sophisticated techniques adapted and improved after Moscow’s subway explosions in 2004, the Madrid commuter train bombings that same year, and London’s 2005 coordinated Tube attacks.

“One of the repeated threats we’ve picked up from international surveillance and through the Department of Homeland Security,” Scully went on, wiping sweat from both sides of his face, “has been to the aging system providing water to the five boroughs of this city. The original structures — Water Tunnels Number One and Two — have been in service for more than a century. They are” — he paused for emphasis — “they are extremely antiquated and terribly fragile.”