The Missing Piece (17 page)

“Fuckin' genius,” said McQueen. The key turned easily, and the door swung open.

“What are you looking for?” said Ivan.

“Let's just say I'm conducting a general search for a specific thing,” said McQueen. “In other words, none of your goddam business.”

“Maybe I have seen this thing.”

“Yeah.” McQueen snorted. “If I need your help, I'll ask.”

He pushed the door fully open and stuck his head inside. The plenum was dark and dry, the air smelling of cement and dust.

“There any light here?”

Ivan reached past McQueen's shoulder and flicked a switch on the inside wall. A line of bare bulbs lit up. Dim and yellow with grime, they curved into the distance, their light diminishing until they went dark. McQueen pulled a flashlight from his belt and switched it on. The beam flickered until he pounded the flashlight with the heel of his hand. He played the beam inside. The plenum was narrow, criss-crossed by metallic ductwork installed during the early 1990s. Tucked close to the wall were piles of old furniture.

“Don't these lights get any brighter?”

“No,” said Ivan.

McQueen let go of the door, and it slowly began to swing shut.

“You stand here,” he said.

Ivan did not move immediately, so McQueen pulled him into place.

“You hold this door all the way open.”

Ivan straddled the raised threshold, his back against the door. McQueen crouched through the doorway and carefully straightened up inside.

“You sure these lights don't get any brighter?”

“They don't.”

“Goddam black hole,” he said. “Don't move. I need all the light I can get.”

Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the dim light, reaching a point where the plenum looked gray and shadowy instead of dark. He took one step forward and felt something crunch beneath his shoes. Glass, maybe, or tiny bits of cement. He took another step and felt the edge of a duct brush the top of his hair.

“Damn,” he said, flinching. He looked back. Ivan stood against the door, staring at him.
You think this is fun?
he wanted to say. But he decided the less he said, the quicker he'd get in and out of here. He took a deep breath, crouched under that duct, scissored over another one, then shuffled between an old wooden desk and a wooden chair missing three legs. He accidentally kicked the chair, and thought he saw something dark scurry out from underneath and disappear into the shadows.

“Hey, Ivan, are there any rats in here?”

“Yes.”

“Shit,” said McQueen. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“You didn't ask,” said Ivan. “Find what you're looking for yet?”

“Don't get funny. You ain't funny.”

McQueen scissored over another duct and reached the last of the lightbulbs. He played the flashlight into the darkness, hoping he wouldn't see something he'd rather not see.

“Hey, are there any more lights here?”

“There is another switch.”

McQueen ran the flashlight beam along the wall. He saw a patch of bubbled plaster and rust stains running down to a puddle on the floor. He thought he saw something furry dart away, but told himself it was just the power of suggestion. Finally, he found the switch, and another set of yellow lights came on, curving away from him until again going dark. More metal ducts caked with dust, more broken pieces of furniture, more rust stains on the walls.

“Hey, how far does the plenum go?” he called back.

“Halfway around.”

Great, thought McQueen. By
around
, Ivan meant the building's circular inner core. McQueen was barely into this semicircle, and he already felt the slow creep of fear, the hair bristling on the back of his neck, the involuntary shudder, the uncomfortable sense that many tiny eyes were watching him.

He swept the beam from wall to wall. There was one duct to climb over, another to crouch under, and then a few feet of clear floor space where several broken chair legs gathered together in a campfire heap. He would take it that far, he decided, because nothing was here. Nothing obvious, anyway. Searching half the plenum was good enough for him. He could tell Gary he'd scoured the place top to bottom and end to end. How would Gary know the difference?

He reached the first duct and carefully swung one leg over so he would not brush against the dust. He shined the flashlight up ahead. That campfire pile looked like the last bits of furniture between him and the patch of darkness. That was good; that definitely meant halfway was all he needed to go. He played the beam on the pile. He thought he saw something glint within, and rather than feel the creep of fear, he felt a surge of something more optimistic. The thrill of discovery.

He crouched under the next duct. The campfire was five feet away. Something definitely was inside, something smooth and metallic. Not very shiny, more like something tarnished. He tried to recall what the urn looked like that day in the courtroom, but he hadn't paid it much mind. He remembered it was silver, though, and silver tarnished. He knew that much.

He stood up, took one step, and then another. Then he kicked the campfire. The pieces fell like bowling pins. But the darkly shining object inside was no ancient Roman urn. It was a rat.

“Oh, shit!” said McQueen.

The rat reared on its hind legs, and McQueen swung the flashlight like a baseball bat. He felt the flashlight catch the rat below the neck, lift it into the air, and hurl it into the darkness. The flashlight beam died. Claws scrabbled on the floor, but McQueen couldn't tell if the rat was running at him or away from him. He threw the flashlight at the sound, then scraped over the duct and began to run, ducking and vaulting until he reached the door.

“Outta my way,” he shouted, elbowing Ivan aside. He dove out onto the landing.

“What happened?” said Ivan, pulling the door shut.

“Biggest fuckin' rat I ever saw. Musta been two feet long. Red eyes, red mouth, claws like razors.”

Ivan twisted the doorknob.

“Don't,” said McQueen. “He could be right there.”

But Ivan only smirked, opened the door just enough to reach inside, and switched off the lights.

“Was the rat really two feet?” he said.

“If it was an inch,” said McQueen.

 

CHAPTER 19

Back at his office in midtown, Arthur Braman unhappily reviewed what had transpired in Judge Conover's courtroom. Judges had a way of being unpredictable, but the book on Judge Conover was remarkably consistent. She had a generous idea of what constituted relevant evidence.

The phone buzzed, and Braman picked up.

“I have Lord Leinster on the line,” his secretary said.

“Put him through,” said Braman. The line scratched, then connected. “Hello, my lord. I've been trying to reach you since yesterday morning, our time. I hope everything is all right with you.”

“Everything is most definitely not all right,” said Leinster, his words clipped and his voice weak. “I am in hospital. In bloody Galway City.”

Before Braman could ask even a simple
why
, Leinster dove right into a story that was extremely hard to follow. Words stuck out as if typed in bold and all caps, words like
BURREN
and
PAINTING
and
TOURISTS
and
BROKEN ANKLES.
The story had a beginning, a middle, and an end, but to Braman it made no sense.

“So you were painting,” he said, as if trying to summarize a witness's confusing testimony, “in this place called the Burren and two tourists attacked you.”

“They weren't tourists. They were posing as tourists. They came to deliver a message. From, you know…”

Braman slumped in his chair.
You know
was code for the investors, which itself was code for the people Leinster never mentioned by name and whose existence Leinster never actually admitted, though Braman had sensed them. They were Leinster's dark companions.

“And so?” he said.

“Where are we with the trial?” said Leinster.

Braman sketched it quickly, the Appellate Division ruling, this morning's conference, the evidence that the judge would likely admit. Lots of news, none of it good.

“That can't happen,” said Leinster. “I can't afford it. I won't survive it. I'm going to be hobbled for life, and that life will be a short one if I don't pay them off.”

“Are you suggesting I try to settle this case?”

“I'm suggesting I need twelve to fifteen million dollars to get them off my back.”

“How do I arrange that?” said Braman. “You're the defendant. Defendants usually offer to pay the plaintiffs.”

“You're the lawyer,” said Leinster. “You tell me.”

*   *   *

“Ivan let you in?”

McQueen was on the courthouse portico, close enough to where a pair of clerks stood smoking cigarettes that he thought they might have heard Gary's scream go through his head and out his other ear. He quickly strode off and squeezed through the metal stanchions set up to block off the far south side of the portico.

“Gary, Gary,” he said, less to mollify than to buy time until he reached the wrought-iron railing that overlooked Pearl Street.

Still, Gary seethed.

“I told you not to involve anyone else.”

“He's a fuckin' janitor, Gary.”

“I don't care. You need a key, you get it from the captain's office.”

“So you don't want me to involve Ivan, but you want me to involve Kearney.”

“You don't involve Kearney, you eejit.” Gary paused to take a deep breath, obviously trying to calm himself, maybe also recognizing that McQueen wasn't only his legs but his eyes, his ears, his hands. His man on the ground. “What did you tell Ivan?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? He just let you in because you're a nice guy?”

“I can be very persuasive,” said McQueen.

“Did he ask why you, a court officer, wanted to get into the plenum?”

“Oh yeah. I told him I was conducting a general search for a specific thing.”

Gary went silent for a long moment.

“So what did you find?” he finally said.

“Dust, lots of broken furniture, a rat.”

“Did you get through the whole place?”

“Yeah,” said McQueen. “What do you think?”

“I think if you saw a rat you'd run like hell.”

“I didn't see the rat until I reached the far end. And, yeah, I did run like hell. Practically knocked Ivan on his ass.”

“He was in the plenum with you?”

“Nah. I had him hold the door open. For extra light.”

“Okay, listen,” said Gary. “From now on you work alone. You don't tell Kearney, you don't tell anyone. If you meet anyone while you're searching, you don't give them this bullshit about a general search for a specific thing. You tell them you're looking for a laptop, or an engagement ring, or a necklace. Got that?”

“Yeah,” said McQueen.

“And did Foxx tell you why he's been reassigned to Linda's part?”

“I didn't ask him.”

“Good. Don't. And stay out of the courtroom,” said Gary. “Here is where I want you to look next.”

*   *   *

Mark needed two laps around the outside of the courthouse to calm himself, and now that he was calm he tried to fashion a credible explanation for why Bernadette Symanski sat beside the judge during the pretrial conference. He could tell Braman there were lots of motions in chambers. He could tell Braman he needed to work on the big motion involving the homeless shelter stipends. Braman certainly would have seen the protestors outside and Braman certainly would believe that Judge Conover would want her own law clerk, not a court attorney in the pool, to draft such a politically and socially important decision. It wasn't true, of course. The motion had gone directly to the law department and was assigned to Bernadette.

But whether Braman bought these bogus explanations was beside the point. What worried Mark was the possibility, actually the probability, that Braman intended to observe him during the trial and read the judge's rulings and decisions as evidence of his legal skills. But now, with Bernadette riding shotgun in the courtroom, there would be nothing for Braman to read.

Mark took another lap. At the start of his fourth, his cell phone vibrated. “Restricted” showed on the screen. Mark quickly answered.

“Mark?”

“Hi, Mr. Braman, let me explain that the woman you saw on the bench with the judge, she—”

“Never mind that,” said Braman. “I need your help with something else. Are you with me?”

“Yes,” said Mark.

“The judge told us to come back Friday,” said Braman, “when she will rule on several evidentiary issues.”

“I know,” Mark lied. He didn't know a goddam thing of what happened in the courtroom this morning.

“I have a problem that can't wait till then. Now, I understand that you have the authority to schedule a conference if the situation dictates.”

“I do,” said Mark. He cleared his throat and deepened his voice. “What is your exact problem?”

“It's a client relations problem,” said Braman, “directly connected to the trial.”

Mark stayed silent for a few seconds, pretending to mull this over.

“Well,” he said, “a client relations problem on the eve of trial is one of those situations.”

“So I take it I have permission to phone opposing counsel and say that chambers has scheduled a conference for, say, ten o'clock tomorrow?”

“You do,” said Mark.

 

CHAPTER 20

Grotzky sat in a chair while Pinter paced behind him, holding a legal pad with pages of questions and answers. Pinter had located the old man back in June, shortly after his contact in the Hungarian mission informed him of the untimely death of Anton Fleiss. He had flown to Budapest and rented a car to drive to Polgardi. Grotzky showed him the letter, the remains of the draft cart decaying in the tall grass behind the toolshed, the roof of the old Szabo house just visible over the brow of the hill. Pinter read the letter carefully, then constructed a series of questions on that same legal pad and wrote down Grotzky's answers.