Clawback (29 page)

For a long moment I could only stand motionless, shocked into immobility.

A hum from HVAC in the building, but no other noise in the garage. I looked back across the floor. All the cars seemed empty and still. And why would the attackers wait around? They had no reason to expect anyone—say, me. They were long gone.

No surveillance video. I’d asked about cameras, the first time I talked to Ernie and negotiated my own parking space. Building management was too cheap, and couldn’t see a reason for it anyway. Not in a small mid-income, mixed-use facility.

Keeping my hands in my pockets, I stepped carefully into the room. Just to be sure, I leaned over Ernie, but there was nothing I could do. He was beyond help. It looked like a shooting—small entry wounds, big mess in back of his head and chest—and a sting of propellant hung in the dank air, over the smell of blood and death.

But he had his guns out. One in each hand. And they’d been fired, too. I glanced backward, guessing at trajectories, and saw bullet holes in the wall, along with two obvious dents inside the door. There was some chance that not all of the blood was his.

He’d gone down like the OG he’d always wanted to be.

The rubbish of his small life lay strewn everywhere. I pushed at a torn cardboard box on the floor, uncovering a splayed paperback and a crumpled takeout sack. At the desk I saw a cordless telephone and an answering machine, both broken open. It looked like their chips had been pulled.

This was pointless. Whatever his attackers had been after, either they’d found it or they hadn’t, but I certainly wouldn’t learn anything by picking through the wreckage. And if it was a setup—unlikely, but always possible—then I needed to vanish.

Enough.

I couldn’t take my car—the risk that it was connected, or that the killers had booby-trapped or marked it somehow, was too great. I ran, pulling a phone out as I went.

The emergency dispatcher must have just come on shift. She listened to the details, alert and no-nonsense, and I could hear a keyboard clacking as she started asking who I was. Of course I hung up, but hopefully she’d have the police on scene in a few minutes. It was the least Ernie deserved.

I wished I had more to give him.

I
t had to have been Saxon.

Somehow he’d known when his military records had been accessed. Not too hard, now that it was all computerized in St. Louis—he’d have had no trouble bribing a GS-3 clerk to keep an eye out. Or just asking for a favor. Civilians were always happy to help out a bona fide war hero.

And if the records request was connected to the IAFIS search, well, where else would Saxon’s fingerprints have come from but the baton? Which is what Ernie’s killers must have been after. Saxon was eliminating all possible leads that might point in his direction.

A light misting rain had begun to fall, making the weary dawn even gloomier. Streetlights were half on, half off down the block. At the far corner I saw a street sweeper turn left and disappear, its clatter and roar fading.

I didn’t want to go back to Clara’s. Rondo was there keeping watch, but more important, my primary objective now had to be Saxon and his kill team. I could find them, or they could find me—either way, I wanted it to happen as far away from Clara as possible.

I had no leads, of course. But as I walked along, leaving the neighborhood, wondering where I could get a car, a realization hit.

My name wasn’t the only one connected to every one of the dead Wall Streeters. There was another person, right at the center—and he’d been there all along.

I didn’t stop walking. Too much undirected anger not to keep moving. But I found the right phone and hit redial.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Silas.”

Ganderson didn’t sound surprised, or sleepy, or annoyed, or anything else I might have expected at five-thirty in the morning. Some kind of background noise—banging, voices—made the line a little unclear. But if anything, he sounded…distracted.

“What do you want?”

“We need to talk,” I said. “Now.”

“I’m in the middle of something here.”

“
Right
now.”

“Sorry, this isn’t a good—”

“Are you at home?”

“No.” He barked, not a laugh, but more than a grunt. “No, I’m at the fucking Eighth Precinct.”

That
brought my pace to a halt.

“Are you—did they arrest you?”

“Arrest me?” Angry. “What are you talking about? No, it’s Brandon.”

“Brandon. Your
son
?”

“Lawyer’s on the way. Listen, do you know anyone here? Anyone in the cops at all? I just want him out!”

I was on 79th, almost at Second Avenue. A taxi waited at the light, going the other way. I waved to the driver, and he cut a U-turn against the red.

“The Eighth?” I said. “Lower East Side?”

“Yeah. You know it?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” The cabbie coasted to the curb in front of me. I grabbed its door handle. “Don’t go anywhere.”

The Eighth Precinct is headquartered in the East Village, west of Tompkins Square Park, a four-story bunker of stone and exposed girders painted white. I’d never been inside, but I make it a point to scout all the lower Manhattan police stations at least once a year. I even visit the cop bars now and then, pretend I’m a wannabe, see what they’ll tell me. You never know.

So I was familiar with the building. When the taxi had driven off, leaving me across the corner, I tried Ganderson’s cellphone but got no answer.

I looked at the station. A half-dozen police vehicles were parked under “No Parking” signs along the street—unmarked blue-and-whites, a supervisor’s SUV—and some of the other cars were obvious, with Fraternal Order of Police stickers in the windows or reflective vests on hangers in the rear. But no people were standing around, not in the rain, and the dark windows stared blankly back at me.

Not a happy-feeling place, but maybe that was the point.

Fortunately, I found Ganderson quickly enough, in a public waiting area to one side of the concrete reception desk. Plain steel
benches sat along the opposite wall, under stained acoustic paneling. The officer behind the desk gave me the eye, but I nodded at Ganderson and walked over.

“They won’t let me see him,” he said, skipping right past the hi-how-are-you-thanks-for-coming bit.

“A good attorney will have you in straight away.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” Probably not, but it wasn’t my problem. “What was he doing?”

“I don’t know! I called the son of a bitch an hour ago. The retainer I pay him, you’d think he’d be here in his pajamas.”

Behind the desk sergeant, an open space had some cubicles, with glass-fronted offices along the wall. A metal detector stood unused in front of an elevator bank. Two uniforms were talking in low voices at the stairwell, both holding styrofoam cups of coffee. Office noise—keyboards, the occasional cellphone, a copier—drifted from the bullpen. The holding cells were probably in the basement, hidden away, and the detectives would have their own unit somewhere else.

“I meant Brandon,” I said.

“Oh.” Ganderson grimaced. “He was being an idiot, as usual. He didn’t say much on the phone, maybe because cops were listening in, but it sounded like he was hanging out at the park after midnight and one of his friends mouthed off to someone and it got out of hand.”

“Which park?”

“Tompkins Square.”

“Ah.” The notorious after-hours drug market had been cleaned
up and the homeless largely evicted, but it still wasn’t exactly a frisbees-and-hot-dogs greensward. Not in the middle of the night. “Anybody hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Doesn’t sound like more than a misdemeanor, then. They’re probably keeping him a few hours just to make a point.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Want to sit down? Go get a coffee or something?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I need to wait here.”

Ganderson wore a nylon shell over a plain polo shirt and jeans. His hair, which had always been exactly combed, stuck this way and that—buzzcut short but unruly. He had on a pair of eyeglasses, squarish titanium frames. Woken in the middle of the night, he must have skipped the contacts.

It was hard to square this worried father with the suspicions I’d begun to have.

On the other hand, I thought I noticed a bulge under his jacket.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re not carrying, are you?”

“What?”

“That handgun of yours. Did you just walk into a city police station
armed
?”

“Yeah, so?” He shrugged in annoyance.

“Jesus.” I looked around, suddenly feeling like a focus of attention from every policeman in the building. “Someone sees that and we’ll
both
be sitting in a cell, waiting for the lawyer.”

“Calm down. It’s licensed. And I contribute a nice packet to the PBA every year. They won’t give me any trouble.”

“Why do you have that cannon, anyway?”

“Four dead guys and another on deck, that’s why. If those terrorist madmen come after me, they’re going down first.”

I glanced at the sergeant again, but he seemed to be ignoring us.

“And now they’ve struck again,” said Ganderson. “Though nothing like the pattern so far.”

I brought my attention back. “Is Plank dead? I hadn’t heard.”

“Plank? What are you talking about?”

“You said—”

“Blacktail.” He frowned. “The terrorists hit Blacktail yesterday. Don’t you get the news?”

“Oh, that.”

“Plank’s still alive and well. CNBC did an interview this morning—asked him what
he
thought about the car bomb.”

The cabbie’d had his radio on during my ride down the length of Manhattan. The world seemed to have decided that the anarchist cell was floundering, and Terry Plank too well hidden, so they’d struck a different target instead: another hedge fund. But instead of one of the principals, they’d taken down the entire operation—and by an unfortunate chain reaction, the rest of the stock market, too.

It was the sort of story that almost made sense.

“Look at this.” Ganderson held up a copy of the
Daily News.
The headline read, “BLACKTAIL DOWN.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think this has to end, is what I think. We can’t live on the Kingda Ka roller coaster.” He tossed the paper onto the metal bench. “What will they do next, nuke JP Morgan?”

“I’m sure that’s been discussed at the Fed.” I kept my voice down,
hoping Ganderson would do so as well. “The coincidence seems a little too…uh, coincidental.”

“What coincidence?”

“Blacktail. I matched their Director of Security to the attack on Faust, and you talked to them on Tuesday. Two days later, the Expendables blow up their office. See what I mean?”

“You think they attacked
themselves
?”

“The timing’s funny, that’s all.”

We eyed each other for a few moments. I broke first.

“Terry Plank escaping, apparently,” I said. “That seems funny too.”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” said Ganderson. “The way these terrorists operate.”

“Not if they don’t know where he is.”

“How hard could it be? CNBC found him.”

“Good point.”

“In fact, I think he’s the best bet.”

“Huh?”

Ganderson rolled his shoulders like a fighter trying to get back in the match. “There’s no clue about where they’ll strike next. You haven’t found anything to lead us to them—your one lead, Blacktail, ended up being a victim itself. The way I see it, all we have is Plank.”

I couldn’t figure Ganderson’s angle. “Maybe…”

“I’m going to try to contact him. And when I do, I’ll get you in.”

“What? And why on earth would he agree?”

“To save his life, that’s why. You seem to be a lousy detective, but
everyone I’ve talked to says you’re the best, ah, security contractor available.”

“Well, I don’t know about—”

“True or not, I don’t care. You’re good with a gun, and you’re closer than anyone else to the case. It might be the edge Plank needs.”

So there: no longer an independent, crackerjack investigator, I’d just been demoted to bodyguard, the lowest form of hired gun. What was Ganderson up to?

I protested, a little, enough to renegotiate the rate upward ten percent. Then he stepped aside to call his attorney again. I watched, Ganderson apparently hearing nothing but rings, wondering how he could possibly be involved with the bad guys.

The main problem with fitting Ganderson in as villain was that I couldn’t see how it made any sense to put
me
on the payroll.

He came back. “Voicemail. Again. Maybe I should try someone else.”

“Sorry.”

A woman came in, older and Chinese. She began a long discussion with the desk sergeant, gesturing, but not loud. He nodded, commenting occasionally. It looked like they knew each other, like they’d had the same conversation before.

“The industry can’t take much more of this,” Ganderson said.

“Of what?”

“The murders! This killing has to
stop.
”

Oh, that. “Look at it this way—how many private investment firms are there in the U.S.? Plus the prop traders and mutual funds?—it’s got to be thousands. Statistically, that’s a robust ecosystem.” Clara’s point.