The Fifth Horseman (59 page)

Angelo strolled over to the man and, as discreetly as possible, gave him the shield. “Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.” The salesman wore horn-rimmed glasses, and his ash-blond hair was retreating back from his forehead with evident rapidity. He was neat and well dressed; almost too neat, it occurred to Angelo, for someone who had to spend his days wandering in and out of grocery stores.

McKinney relaxed when Angelo explained the reason he had looked him up.

Despite their seemingly innocent calling, men like the Procter and Gamble salesman were aware of a lot of things; such as which Italian wholesaler on the West Side was, in fact, a Mafia front running collections and payoffs in the numbers operations the Mob forced small storeowners to conduct as part of their businesses. “Oh yes,” he said, “well, really, I gave them everything I had on that in my accident report at the station house.”

“I understand.” Angelo nodded sympathetically, leaning closer to the salesman as he did, so that no one could eavesdrop on their conversation. “Look, we’ve got a very, very important investigation under way, and it’s possible, just possible, that your accident might provide us with some very important clues. The note they left under your windshield wiper did say a yellow truck, you’re absolutely sure of that?”

“Oh yes.” McKinney’s reply was quick and assured. “I even showed it to the officer at the station house.”

“Right.” Angelo sipped his wine. “Now, I want you to understand what I have here’s got nothing to do with you, but it’s very important I get the exact location of the accident and the exact time frame when it took place.”

“Yes. But it’s all there in the report.”

“Sure. But I just want to be absolutely certain. Now, you’re sure you parked it at one o’clock?”

“Positive. I picked up the one-o’clock news headlines on WCBS just before I got out of the car.”

“Okay. And how long were you gone?”

“Let’s see.” McKinney frowned, trying to recollect. He bent down and took a black order book from the briefcase at his side. “I made three calls,” he said, flipping through its long white sheets. “The last one was the supermarket up on the corner. I don’t sell them, they’re handled by the office, so all I do there is just say hello to the manager, check my shelf facings, see what the competition is doing. In all, I wouldn’t have been away from the car for more than half an hour, forty minutes.”

Angelo made a few hasty jottings on the notepad he had taken from his pocket. “And the place you parked, 149 West Thirty-seventh? You’re sure of that?”

“Oh yes, I wrote it down right away.” The man blushed slightly.

Why is he lying to me? Angelo wondered. He obviously has nothing to do with this. Maybe he’s trying to hide something. Probably was off screwing a biscuit on company time. Let’s come around on him another way. He sat back, smiling. “I understand you live up there in White Plains?”

“Yes. Do you know it?”

“Yeah. Nice place. I used to think when the wife was still alive we ought to move up there. Get the fresh air and all. You married?”

“Yes. I have three children.”

Angelo bestowed his most approving smile on the salesman and leaned toward him again. “Believe me, Mr. McKinney, when I tell you this has nothing to do with you at all. But I got to be sure of that location. You’re sure you parked at 149 West Thirty-seventh?”

The Procter & Gamble salesman bristled with nervous irritation. “Yes, of course. Why are you going on so?”

“Because, Mr. McKinney, there is no way in the world you could have parked your car at 149 West Thirty-seventh Street last Friday, or any other day, for that matter. I drove by there coming up here. It’s a warehouse garage for a courier outfit with three driveways facing on the street, and it’s a very, very busy place. You couldn’t leave a car there for five minutes without starting a riot.”

McKinney went scarlet. His hands shook slightly. Angelo felt sorry for him, but the guy irritated him. Why was he lying, playing games like this? Had to be a biscuit. And when he found the dent in his fender, he got nervous.

Figured when the company saw the address on his insurance declaration, they’d ask him what the hell he was doing there.

“Look, my friend, giving false information to the police is a very serious charge. Get you in a lot of trouble with your company. I don’t want to make no problem for you, because I know you’re a good, law-abiding citizen, but I have got to know where that car was hit.”

McKinney looked up from the Formica tabletop. “Will this go anywhere?”

“Absolutely not. Don’t worry about it. This is just between us. Where were you for real?”

“Down on Christopher Street.”

“The yellow truck on the note? That’s true?”

The dejected salesman nodded.

“And the time? Was it one o’clock?”

“No. I parked at eleven-thirty. I know because I listened to the first stock market report on the radio. I bought a hundred Teltron shares two weeks ago …”

Angelo wasn’t listening. He was making some quick calculations. The Hertz truck leaves the pier at 11:22. If they took the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and came up the West Side it would take twenty, twentyfive minutes to get to Christopher Street.

“How long were you parked?”

The man’s embarrassment was now manifest and intense. “Not long. There’s a bar down there. I had to see the barman and leave a message for someone. Fifteen, twenty minutes at the most.”

“Do you remember the street number where you parked?”

“No.” McKinney shook his head. “But I could find it for you.”

Michael Bannion, the Police Commissioner, paled reading the note an aide passed to him in the underground command post.

“What’s the matter?” Harvey Hudson of the FBI demanded. “Don’t tell me we’ve got some more bad news?”

“About the worse we could get.” Bannion grimaced. “The New York Times is onto the story and I’ve got to find a way to get them off it.”

No wonder this guy didn’t want to let the office know where he got his fender dented, Angelo mused as his stupefied eyes absorbed the scene around his car. I’m really out of touch. I thought he was after a biscuit when it was really a beating he was looking for.

They were in the heart of the “rough trade” area of Greenwich Village, and the detective, sickened and fascinated, couldn’t take his eyes off the scene on the sidewalks: young men in studded black leather Hell’s Angels jackets and boots, chains dangling from their belts or swinging from their wrists, motorcycle caps and aviator glasses on their heads, characters out of a bad fifties movie. He’d heard about the scene at the headquarters.

These guys were cruisers, looking for soft trade from Wall Street or uptown, guys in their Brooks Brothers suits who, for whatever sick reason, came down here at lunchtime to get beaten with chains and whips in the “reception rooms” installed in the abandoned piers across the street.

He glanced at McKinney, not knowing whether to feel contempt or pity for the man. What bizarre urge could drive a nice guy like that from White Plains into this sick jungle of sadism, perversion and violence?

“You’re sure you’re not going to report this to anyone?” The salesman’s voice quavered as he formed the question.

“Don’t worry,” Angelo reassured him. “This is just going to be between you and me.”

“It was right here.” The salesman had turned his face away as he indicated a spot on the sidewalk along Christopher. “I went to have a drink there at the Badlands on the corner.” His finger indicated a bar a few doors away. “I had to leave a message…” The salesman’s voice cracked with shame and embarrassment. “I have a friend-“

“Forget it.” Angelo curtly cut him off. “That doesn’t interest me.”

So they would have turned off West Street and headed up Christopher, the detective pondered. That means, if my theory about the truck is correct, this barrel of gas has got to be around here someplace. Between the river and Fifth-say, Broadway to be sure. Otherwise the Palestinians would have come in by the East Side, over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Angelo studied the cruisers lolling along the sidewalks. Regulars, most of them. There was a good chance one of them put the note under the windshield wiper. Get a dozen guys down here in a big hurry, start asking questions and you just might get the answer you were looking for. And then there was this guy’s car. The dent was low, on the rear fender, probably from a bumper.

“Mr. McKinney, believe me I’ll see your office doesn’t find out about this, but we’re going to have to call them and tell them you won’t be selling any more soap today. We gotta get this fender over to Brooklyn in a big hurry.”

He laughed. “You know, it may turn out to be a lucky thing you didn’t get it fixed right away.”

Michael Bannion’s voice poured from Arthur Gelb’s telephone with the resonance, the imperiousness, of a Wagnerian overture. “Mr. Gelb,” he said, “forgive me for not getting back to you right away, but as you have correctly surmised we have what may be a very serious problem on our hands.”.

“I know,” The New York Timess impatient editor replied, crooking his phone in his elbow so that he was ready to take notes of their conversation.

“What is it?”

“I am going to tell you something in the strictest confidence, Mr. Gelb, because I know you and the Times have the safety and well-being of the people of this city at heart just as I do. Those three Palestinians we’re looking for have hidden a barrel of chlorine gas somewhere in the city. It is, as you know, a deadly substance and they’re threatening to blow it up if certain of their political conditions aren’t met.”

Gelb whistled softly. “Jesus Christl What are they asking for?”

“For the moment their demands have been rather vaguely stated, but they apparently involve those Israeli settlements in what used to be Jordan and the Arab section of Jerusalem.” Gelb was already frantically making notes on a piece of copy paper, nodding excitedly to Grace Knowland as he did.

“I’m sure you can imagine the panic and chaos this would cause if the information got out to the public before we’ve been able to pin down more precisely the location of the barrel.”

“I certainly can, Commissioner, but I also have no trouble imagining the menace this poses to the people of this city.”

“Absolutely. Our problem is it would be sheer, utter madness to order the evacuation of Manhattan Island for one barrel of chlorine gas. That leaves us only one alternative, finding that barrel before the public learns it’s here. And that’s where we need your help, Mr. Gelb. If this leaks to the public before we find it, there’s going to be panic out there. I shudder to think of the hysteria that could overtake New York if this gets out.

“I’m leveling with you, Mr. Gelb, and I’ve got to ask you for your help and cooperation in return. I know how you people feel up there about requests like this, but I’ve got to plead with you to hold off printing this until we can pin down the location of that barrel.”

Gelb interrupted him. “How did that barrel get here, Commissioner?”

“Well, we’re not one hundred percent certain.”

“Christ, you mean there’s a barrel of chlorine gas in this city and your people aren’t sure how the hell it got here?”

“Our suspicion is that it came in through the piers, in a shipment of heavy petroleum products. But, frankly, our concern is not how it got here but where it went.”

“Commissioner.” Gelb was about to address himself to Bannion’s demand when he stopped. “What about all those people up at the Seventh Regiment Armory with their rented vans? What have they got to do with this?”

“They’re a federal unit looking for any telltale gas leakages that could give us an indication of where the barrel is. Now, I want to tell you, Mr. Gelb, we’ll keep you informed on this. You have my word on it. But I beg you, for God’s sake, hold off printing it until we’ve found the barrel.”

“I’m not authorized to make a commitment like that, Commissioner. That’s up to Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Rosenthal.”

“Well, I cannot stress enough just how important this is. I’ll take it up with Mr. Sulzberger myself if you like.”

God help us, Bannion thought as he hung up, when they find out we’ve been lying to them.

Angelo Rocchia held the horn of the salesman’s Pontiac down until its strident blare brought three shirt-sleeved FBI agents scurrying out into the cold from their Hertz garage.

“Open those damn doors,” the detective ordered, waving at the entrance of their improvised forensic laboratory. “I got a present for you.”

His reception was anything but warm. “A yellow truck,” the director who had earlier told him to wait out in the office muttered when Angelo outlined his theory. “That’s all you’re going on? Some guy with a yellow truck scraped his fender?”

“At least you know it wasn’t an Avis truck hit him,” Angelo replied. “You can do a spectrographic analysis to see if you can get a paint matchup.

I’ll get a bunch of guys and go back there to see if we can find the guy who left the note.”

The lab director lapsed into silence studying the barely visible scrape on the Pontiac’s fender. “Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “It’ll take some time.

But I guess it’s probably worth it.”

When Angelo came back into the garage after calling in his request for a dozen plainclothesmen, the Bureau’s experts were already at work. One of them was moving some kind of gray metallic scanner along the fender.

Probably some high-intensity magnetic device, the detective thought. He must be trying to pull out any metallic scraps embedded in there. Curious, he squatted beside the man.

“What’s that you got there?” he asked.

“Geiger counter.”

“Geiger counter!”

“Checking to see if there’s any lingering radiation on here.”