Black Water Transit (16 page)

Before Casey could say anything, the radio clicked and popped.

“
Five-zero-zero to five-one-one, K?
”

Jimmy Rock snagged the handset.

“Vince, Jimmy here.”

“
Yeah. We got your comeback on that tag. Registered owner is a Hertz leasing company in Jersey. No help.
”

“Ten-four, Vince. Thanks.”

“
Stay on him, Jimmy Rock. I’ll be here.
”

“You heard that?”

“I did. Watch it. You’re gonna come right up behind him.”

The white Lincoln had gotten tangled up in traffic and had come to a stop at the intersection of First and Fifty-seventh. Through the tinted rear window they could see the driver’s head, twisting this way and that. The light changed, and the Lincoln pulled through, made a sharp left, and came to a stop on the north side of Fifty-seventh.

Jimmy Rock cursed and drove on by, not looking at the driver. As he passed the Lincoln he picked up the handset.

“Five-one-one to five-zero-nine, K?”

“
Five-zero-nine. Jimmy, this is Dexter. Where are you?
”

“We’re westbound on Fifty-seventh Street, at First. Our player’s parked at the curb about a hundred feet west of the intersection. I had to overrun him. Where are you right now?”

“
We’re northbound on Sutton Place. We’re turning onto Fifty-seventh right now. White Lincoln, Robert Victor Robert triple eight
 … 
wait one …
”

There was a long silence during which they could hear the two cops talking softly over the open mike, the rumble of the car engine, traffic noises.

Then, “
Yes
—
that’s him, Carlo! Jimmy, we got him here, about a half block up, on the north side.
”

“Okay … stay on him. I’ll drop back and come around. What’re you driving?”

“
We’ve got the gypsy cab. Big Bird?
”

“I know it. Stay
on
that player.”

“
Ten-four, five-one-one. Out.
”

“Now what?” said Casey.

Jimmy Rock was rounding the block on Fifty-sixth and coming back east. He made the hard left again and stopped a few hundred feet back of the intersection of First and Fifty-seventh. He breathed out, sighed, and frowned across at Casey Spandau. He opened his mouth to answer, and the radio burst into life.

“
Five-zero-nine to five-one-one, K?
”

“Five-one-one. Go.”

“
Five-one-one, we’re westbound on Fifty-seventh
—
he’s pulling away
—
okay, we’re making a right onto the upper level
—
he’s moving out fast now. You coming?
”

“We’re right behind you, five-zero-nine. Let’s keep off the air as much as we can, hah? He might have a scanner.”

“
Ten-four. Out.
”

“Should we run Earl Pike on NCIC?”

Jimmy Rock thought it over.

“I’d say no. Not right now. Every time we make an NCIC request, it gets flagged all over the place. I don’t want a lot of feds looking at our NCIC hits and wondering if we’re onto something they can steal.”

The engine noise filled the car as Jimmy Rock accelerated around a wandering fruit truck. Far ahead, the gypsy cab and the white Lincoln were two red sparks in the glittering field of the bridge lights, the planes and
angles, squares and rooftops of Long Island City. Six minutes later they were a hundred feet back from the lopsided and badly dented gypsy Checker with the greasy windows. A hundred feet ahead of the Checker cab, moving in and out of heavy traffic, was the white Lincoln, eastbound on the Queensboro Bridge.

To their right, as they climbed up the rise, the towers and lights of midtown were wrapped in a cloud of swirling rain. Under their tires the broken plates of the Queensboro Bridge hammered. Roosevelt Island loomed up and passed and then they were coming down a steep incline and Long Island City was all around them.

In the north there seemed to be something wrong with the Bronx. No lights showed on the bluffs and the sky looked like smoked glass. The thunderstorm hit three minutes later.

Down at the exits from the bridge, and higher up in the north, a rain squall, a huge mass of gray-black haze, rolled southward out of the Bronx, sliding across the skyline of Long Island City, blotting out the lights, and all the bridge traffic was driving down into it—into a wall of rain that reduced visibility to twenty feet.

Jimmy Rock was leaning forward in the seat, hands tight on the wheel, straining to see the cars immediately ahead. Casey was struggling to see the turn sign for Queens Boulevard and stay in touch with 509, somewhere up ahead. They listened to the cross talk from the other surveillance car. You could hear the tension over the radio. Casey picked up the mike and keyed it on.

“Five-one-one to five-zero-nine, K?”

“
Five-zero-nine.
”

“Where the hell are you?”

“
Who’s that?
”

“Officer Spandau. What’s your twenty?”

“
We
 … 
we think we’re on our guy, got him up ahead maybe fifty feet, far end of a dump truck there
.
He’s making
 … 
shit
 … 
sorry
 … 
he’s making a left onto Queens Boulevard. Where are you guys?
”

“Maybe a block back.”

“
Well, you better move up, ’cause things are getting hinky here. We gotta stay on his ass and
—
there he goes!
”

They heard the sound of tires spinning on wet pavement, and then the roar of the cab engine.

“
He’s evading. I don’t know if he burned us but he made a snaky move there, cut by a truck on the left side, signaling a turn onto Northern, then made a right onto
 … 
Van Dam! He’s gone southbound toward Van Dam!
”

Jimmy Rock hit the pedal, powered the car around a line of cars, and ran straight down the median strip, driving through oncoming vehicles. Casey braced herself on the seat back and tried to keep from swearing at this crazy white cop.

Two cars ended up swerving right out of their path—another rose up out of the haze like a barge out of a fog bank—Casey got a brief glance sideways as they slid by the 509 car, caught in a line of cars following a tractor-trailer—a fleeting image of the pale, blurred outline of Dexter Zarnas behind the windshield—then Jimmy had the Crown Victoria bouncing over a curb and was making a hard left onto Van Dam.

Now they were ahead of 509 and Jimmy pushed the car hard, sliding out again, fishtailing, searching the huddled blurry outlines of the cars ahead, trying to see a white Lincoln, trying to pick it out of the clutter of cars and trucks inching along in the squall. He had the car up to thirty in a clear stretch … forty … they could feel the car floating and sliding on the slippery surface … a car was coming up on the right … was it the white Lincoln?

Was it? Thirty yards … twenty … ten.

It wasn’t.

“Nice play,” said Casey into the following silence. “A really professional play. Golly. I’m so fucking dazzled.”

Jimmy Rock had nothing to say, so he said it.

Casey felt better than she had in a long time. But the white Lincoln was still gone.

It took Nicky seventeen minutes to work his way through the garage and up the maintenance halls of the hotel and another ten to reach the room service elevator for the tower residences. A few people saw him, mainly Hispanic cleaners and a maintenance worker, but Nicky worked hard at looking like an immigration officer—what the Chicanos called
la migre
—and was convincing enough to be invisible. Now he was in the hall outside Pike’s suite, with his blood pounding so hard in his neck it was moving his jacket collar. He exhaled and studied the electronic lock. Okay, Wonder Boy. How the hell do you get around that?

He walked back to the elevator banks and saw a house phone on a pearl-inlaid table, next to a vase of roses. He picked it up, hit the icon for maid service. A Hispanic-sounding voice answered immediately.

“This is Mr. Pike, in 2990.”

“You are not in your room, Mr. Pike?”

Christ. Of course. Room phones showed the ID.

“No, I’m just at the elevator. I’m in a rush. I need an iron and a board. Can you bring me one right now? I’m
going to be downstairs for about ten minutes. I’ll need it when I get back.”

“Of course, Mr. Pike. Someone will be right up.”

Nicky put the phone down, shook his head. This was lunacy. How the hell had he gotten tangled up in this kind of cowboy crap? Then he saw the forest clearing again, and Condotti’s belly opened up, and the blonde girl’s eyes—Julia Maria Gianetto—twenty years old, for Christ’s sake—she’s staring up at the underside of a coffin lid for the rest of eternity—and he figured, what the hell. If Pike was the guy, it was worth some chances.

He paced the silent halls until he heard the elevator rising, then padded quickly to the alcove where the ice machine was running. He heard the door opening and watched as a maid in a green uniform walked down toward Suite 2990. She used a code card, opened the door, and stepped inside, leaving the door slightly open.

Nicky sprinted on his toes down the hall and looked inside the room. The maid was setting the ironing board up in the living room, next to the green leather couch. Her back was turned. He stepped lightly into the suite and moved down the hall toward the kitchen. Two minutes afterward, he heard the door closing again. His right knee was shaking and his face felt hot.

The main room was empty, the view out the windows just as impressive as it had been an hour ago. Pike’s scent was in the air, some sort of cologne that reminded Nicky of margaritas. He checked his watch. He’d been in the room for sixty seconds.

Moving as fast as he could, and touching nothing with his bare hands, Nicky looked for bloody bandages in any wastebasket he could find. He used a kitchen towel to open the cupboard under the sink. Coffee grounds, orange peels, wrappers from a deli, a Nat Sherman cigarette box, empty. A match book from Parnell’s.

No bloody bandages.

The bedroom was all that was left. Two minutes in. He walked across the deep emerald-green carpet and went up the landing steps to the closed bedroom door, pushed it with his left shoulder, holding his hands up like a surgeon walking into an operating room. The large room held a king-sized bed, the sheet turned down, two mints on the golden pillows. The view out the window was south along First Avenue, the street full of cars now, the rain coming down harder. It seemed to Nicky that there was a storm building across the river. He turned away from the window. The bathroom door was open. He stepped in, looked around at the huge green marble tub, the mirrored walls.

The cabinet held a few items, a can of Barbasol shave cream, a Gillette Excel razor, some spares, a tube of Colgate, a stick of English Leather deodorant, a small leather case zipped shut. He lifted it out, opened it. A manicure set. He set it back on the shelf, opened the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Nothing unusual. The rest was standard. Listerine. Bandages. A new Tensor still in the wrapping.

Everything was lined up in a row, as if Pike were waiting for a military inspection. All of the items were so ordinary it was weird. No pill bottles, no needles, nothing with a name on it, or any kind of identifying mark. He looked down at the wastebasket beside the counter. Nothing. No bandages, not even a bloody Kleenex.

That was it. Time to get the hell out. Jimmy Rock was a nitwit and Nicky was thinking it was time to go home. He began to close the cabinet door, and then he froze. The razor. Maybe the razor.

He picked up the Excel, looked at the blade. It had been used recently. Nicky could see specks of skin and beard hair, some soap residue, and tiny ribbons and flecks of red.

Was it enough? It would have to be enough.

He popped the blade off, made a move to put the razor back, and then picked up the plastic pack of spares. Would Pike notice?

He’d have to take the chance. He put a new blade into the Excel razor head, set the razor back where he had found it, replaced the pack of spares, closed the cabinet door with his elbow, and looked around the bathroom. Nothing looked different. He had been careful to touch as little of it as possible. He checked the deep carpet and saw no shoe marks, no sign that he’d been in the bedroom at all.

As he was going back out through the bedroom, he saw a long brushed-steel case on the floor beside the bed. Five feet long, two feet wide, a foot high, it looked solid and heavy. The lock was a combination, built into the handle.

Nicky thought about it for about seven seconds, made a move toward it, and then heard an electric whine through the walls. The elevator. He was through the living room and out the door in five seconds, moving quietly, feeling his muscles tightening in his back and around his belly. As he was closing the main door he remembered. The damn ironing board. Pike would see it, want to know why it was there. As soon as he called room service he’d know something was up. The whole point of the stunt was to get in and get out without letting Pike know anything had happened.

Nicky ran back into the room, grabbed the board and the iron, and made it out the door. He crossed in front of the elevator banks just as the car stopped and the doors began to slide open. He was into the ice machine alcove by the time he heard voices in the hall. Two people, a man and a woman. He waited until the voices receded down the hall in the other direction. Then he propped the board up beside the ice machine, left the iron on the floor beside it, and got the hell out of Dodge.

Jimmy Rock and Casey worked the search area for another ten minutes, saw no sign at all of the white Lincoln. Finally they got on the radio and hooked up with the 509 unit, the gypsy cab, in an alleyway off Hunters Point Avenue.