The Big Fear (20 page)

But he could step out of the way, and when Del Rio jumped and Leonard swept to the side, the officer sailed through the open window and onto the balcony. Before he could stop himself he was up in the air, his body over the ledge, his feet twirling behind him. His hands swarmed around, looking for something to hold. Leonard swung toward the cop; he didn’t want to kill anyone. He caught Del Rio’s arm and the cop gripped his wrist. Leonard was yanked toward the ledge by the other man’s weight, and his torso bruised suddenly against the railing. Leonard was bent over the edge, Del Rio holding his arm desperately with both hands. The cop’s face was speckled with pepper spray and his eyes were squinting shut with pain. Leonard heaved a moment upward, trying to bring the cop back inside. His shoulder soured and his arm was weak and limp. He looked beyond Del Rio toward the quiet street. The cop grunted, grabbed Leonard, and started to pull upward.

The pepper spray had been smeared across the cop’s hands and streaked onto Leonard’s arms. He could feel it start to sting, but more than that it was oily, slick. As Del Rio lifted one hand, the other slid down Leonard’s wrist, and even as he lunged again for the cop it was too late. Just below him, Del Rio looked as though he was hanging still in space, his mouth smeared with the spray and his eyes fierce, blinded, and cruel. He seemed to hover for a moment before streaking six stories downward. Leonard looked away, and when he turned back he saw Del Rio sprawled in the empty street. The whole block was deserted. If the guard saw it, he would already be on the phone. Otherwise the body might lie there all night. Leonard looked again as something caught his eye. Del Rio’s body, splayed on the street, still had a gun in its holster. The one that Leonard had wrestled away from him was a spare. An extra police-issued gun. Cops don’t carry spare firearms. But there was one weapon from the Harbor Patrol that had been missing for almost a week. And it was just like the one that Leonard was holding now. It was Rowson’s gun.

Leonard jammed the gun into the back of his pants and pulled his shirt over it. Nothing much was concealed—if a cop were walking behind him he would see the outline in a second. Sticking the gun there was the second-worst option, after just walking down the street with it in his hand. He had to get back to Roshni’s office. And now, with a dead cop to deal with, and proof that the cops were the ones that were after him, Leonard felt pretty sure that going out into the city with a gun was safer than going out without one. His hands were searing from the pepper spray. He soaped them up and washed them at the fancy sink. There were no towels and he had to wipe his hands on his pants. He collected the flash drive, he walked to the elevator and shot downstairs.

He couldn’t go back out the lobby. He thought about going to the second floor and taking a fire escape. He pressed the button for the basement and hoped for the best. The elevator opened into a garage filled with sleek little sports cars. Leonard saw a dim red light in the corner of the garage. A fire exit. He jogged past the late-model designer toys and toward the door. He pushed the bar, ready to run if there was an alarm. There wasn’t. Another part of the renovation they had skimped on. The door opened onto Washington Street, the gaudy new condos and the water beyond. To Leonard’s left was the edge of Perry Street, where he knew Del Rio was lying dead. He didn’t hear sirens. He didn’t hear anything at all. He walked right, went up a few blocks, and started to make his way up to the subway, ready for a short ride and another walk back to Roshni’s office. He had Davenport’s final collection of evidence tucked safely into his pocket and a dead cop’s gun tucked into his waistband.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

EVIDENCE

The subway was too cold. People who had been out enjoying the frivolity of a New York summer night in thin gauzy clothes were shivering home on the train, sweat freezing on their necks. The MTA blasts the air conditioning in the summer, trying to prove that it is providing a service, and half the time you end up sick.

But Leonard couldn’t stop sweating. He was perched in a corner seat, across from the conductor’s booth, squirming so that no one would notice the gun. He couldn’t be sure he wasn’t being watched. He couldn’t spot anyone who looked like a plainclothes. The people on the train, after midnight on a weeknight, were mainly kids, people in their twenties who were now rocking back and forth trying to keep from passing out or peering deeply into electronic gadgets. Maybe a half-dozen, maybe more. They seemed pretty harmless themselves, but you never know who might suddenly step on board.

The girls were in black, and not much of it, showing their navels and shoulders, parading their youth and glee. One of them danced in place, swaying in front of the guy she had gotten on the train with, as he sat with one hand on the railing and the other on her ass, holding drunk and steady, as though trying not to puke on her black-on-black stenciled skirt. The car was clean and fast and quiet—graffiti and soot and blood had yet to find their way back to the subway, and it hummed ruthlessly downtown toward Brooklyn. No one got on at Wall Street, and as the train sped into the tunnel, Leonard figured for the moment he was safe.

He would load up the flash drive at Roshni’s; if it told him the next target, he would tell Veronica. Del Rio hadn’t known anything about the bank, about Eliot Holm-Anderson, but then again, why would he? If he had been hired just to do the dirty work, why would Sergeant Sparks tell him who they were working for? Instead Sparks had given his minions a cover story. Make people afraid to walk the streets at night, to ride the water taxis, the subways. Make them believe that the restaurants are foul and that the buildings are stuck together with silly putty. And then they’ll come crying back to you. Then this whole experiment will get turned around. Another iron fist will land in the mayor’s office and dole out another set of medals to the cops who run through the streets shaking down kids.

It was an easy train to get on—an easy story to believe. Leonard himself had started to believe it himself. For a time, he had started to think that the gleaming city of the past ten years, with a new skyscraper on every block and a suspicious cop on every corner, had been the better one. He had begun to doubt the fresh, darker, looser city that was poking its head back above the parapet. Until that night. Until walking to Davenport’s and seeing the messy city at play once again. Del Rio and the rest of them thought they were cleaning up the mess, but in fact they had been setting the stage for an even bigger one.

The train roared into Brooklyn as Leonard’s sweat eased away. The kids were still lounging and fondling each other, headed deeper into the borough to crash in their shared sublets on Flatbush or their parents’ place in Midwood. Leonard was the only one to get off at Borough Hall; downtown Brooklyn died at night. Staunch municipal buildings set off against quiet townhouses where comfortable professionals stay as close to Manhattan as their pay scale allows. No matter how far the city fell, Leonard thought, crime wouldn’t swarm back to Brooklyn Heights anytime soon, so they didn’t have his troubles. As he walked up the stairway from the subway and was met again with the heat—past one in the morning and still thick, heavy, wet—Leonard realized that no one had his troubles.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

NIGHT

Crossing Cadman Plaza, Leonard could see the garbage strike taking its toll. The bags that had been tied taut and placed carefully on the curbs already bore telltale gnawed holes, and small puddles of gunk seeped out of them. The headquarters for the Office of Emergency Management were still pristine—OEM had some way, in the crevices of that place, to take care of its own. But everything else—the court, the muni building, the McDonald’s that fronts the expressway as you turn toward Flushing Avenue—was piled with trash. The neat bundles had descended into scattered piles of wretched-smelling refuse and torn plastic. Even this late the air was still hot, and the urban reek that usually only lingers in alleyways and less desirable subway stations had become pervasive.

Leonard didn’t smell so great himself, he realized. It was nearly two, and the best he had to look forward to was crashing on the hardwood floor of Roshni’s office and trying to make sense of this all in the morning. He wasn’t sure even that she’d be there to let him in. She hadn’t given him a key. At least he had the flash drive. He hoped there would be something on it. Some kind of valuable news.

There was no one on the street. He wandered down past the on-ramp to the expressway, to avoid the Whitman courtyard. The toughs in there would have been able to spot the gun in his jeans, making him a legitimate target. He passed into the blocks surrounding the Navy Yard, abandoned for the night, crossed a deserted corner near the warehouse, and stared down the sickening road.

The sidewalk was sticky with ooze. Busted trash bags poured across the asphalt, leaking plastic containers, wet crinkled wrappers, and mottled sludge that had once been food. The scene was much worse than when he had left. It was the middle of the night and no one lived on this street; the trash hadn’t been tossed from nearby apartments. Up the road, Leonard could hear a diesel rumble and a familiar hydraulic hiss. He stepped onto the sidewalk and into the doorway of the Coalition’s building. It was dark enough that he could hide, so long as no light shone directly at him. He breathed deep and held still. The sound of an approaching truck wouldn’t ordinarily fill him with fear. Ordinarily, though, he didn’t break into buildings to steal documents and throw cops out of windows. There was nothing ordinary going on that night.

The truck turned the corner toward the trash-speckled street. A sanitation rig, all right. The kind driven by the guys who were on a full-on strike. The kind that no one believes is out of the garage. And here it was, carrying a full load down to the Navy Yard. As it passed the warehouse, the belly of the truck heaved upward and the flaps at its rear sliced open. A thick wave of trash gushed straight onto the asphalt, coating it slick and warm. The load spent, the truck roared on, righting its payload and gliding toward downtown, light on its feet now that it had released its burden.

Leonard stepped out of the doorway. Someone was dumping trash on purpose. Maybe certain neighborhood bosses had paid off their local council members to arrange for a few runs to ease the misery of the strike. Maybe the people running the basketball arena or the arts complex had found a way to get their special pickups. But what would be the point of spreading it all over the road? Who were they trying to punish? Wouldn’t somebody notice, with the drivers allegedly out on strike?

Leonard pushed through the doorway. No buzzer, no lock, just like this morning. He hiked through the dark stairwell to the steel door hosting the Coalition offices. He tried the handle. Nothing. He bunched his fist and banged the door. Three, four times, hard. Hoping he wouldn’t wake up the guys loading glassine envelopes downstairs; they might come out shooting. No answer.

There was nowhere else safe to go. He slouched, his back against the door, and slid to the floor. He was exhausted. He smelled. His shoulders were throbbing and all he wanted to do was sleep. He cradled his head into the doorframe, a steel pillow, and was almost asleep when Roshni, groggy herself, opened the door. He slid almost to the floor, catching himself on the doorframe before he banged his head.

“Leonard. Did you find anything?”

He turned to his knees and reached into his pocket. What to tell her? By now someone would have found the body. It would be over the radios. If she knew what kind of danger Leonard had brought with him she wouldn’t let him stay. Accessory after the fact is a real crime when the fact is a murder. And Leonard himself had to worry about more than just the cops from the Harbor Patrol. The whole force would be out after him. Someone would be talking to the doorman. They’d be getting a description. Not long after that . . . He didn’t like to think about it. Better to say nothing. For her own safety, after all. He pulled out the flash drive.

“We have to take a look at this.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

SPARKS

First Rowson, then Del Rio, Sergeant Sparks thought as he stepped onto the dock. These new officers were eager and hungry, but they couldn’t keep their cool. It was hard enough training them to be cops. Getting them onto bigger projects, getting them to keep their heads on under pressure, was almost impossible. It was a risk they’d both taken. They knew the drill. Rowson had a family, but the NYPD had good death benefits, they’d be well taken care of. Del Rio was just a kid, dumber than a sack of hair really, but they’d give him a hero’s funeral. Getting killed on the job was the best thing that could happen to him. The way it went down, people would think the kid was breaking up a robbery or something. Posthumous promotion to detective and a thousand cops who never knew how slow he was saluting him.

There were a few of them left, but Sparks wasn’t even sure he could trust them. Not after what just happened. He’d sent Del Rio after the investigator for a reason, but the investigator had turned the tables on them. A shoddy, sloppy civilian. It was an insult to the force to have someone like that best a uniform. Someone who didn’t have posture, didn’t have form, didn’t have self-respect. Not like the police. To Sparks, that was what the project was all about, after all, teaching the city the value of respect. The money was the least of it. No matter what the man who was paying him thought, to Sparks that was just a means to an end. A way to get the people back under control. And here was the evidence that they were necessary, a civil servant sneaking into an apartment after midnight and killing a police officer. Someone who carried a badge himself, no less. Shameful. No wonder crime was on the rise.

And who knew if Mitchell had found something. Sparks had the team search the apartment but you never know if everything is there. If the investigator knew, then Sparks would have to act quickly. There had already been too many mistakes. Del Rio had let Rowson get shot. Setting up Mulino for it by taking the gun had been gravy, but there was nothing on the wires about Del Rio having two guns on him. Del Rio didn’t even know how to wipe someone out and plant a gun on him properly. And it meant that Mitchell now had Rowson’s gun. That wouldn’t do him any good. It would only be a matter of time before the apartment was dusted for prints or the security guard sat down with a sketch artist—now every cop in town would be looking to take him out. The guy wouldn’t be able to cross the street without being shot. It was one less thing to worry about.

He stood at the base of the pier. Spindling out from the Harbor Precinct into the bay, the lights of the Verrazano signaling the way home to Staten Island. He walked down the scraggly wood toward the edge. The NYPD ought to renovate the docks. With the money being spent on iris scans and fingerprint sensors at One Police Plaza, it was a travesty that the special patrols in the outer boroughs had to suffer like this. A board creaked and nearly gave way; proof of his point.

It didn’t matter if Mitchell had found something at that apartment or not. Sparks would have to finish the job tomorrow, and he would have to do it alone, but after that, the people would come round. The fear that he had lived in for the past two years would fade, and he would be able to go back to the bright shining life he had been promised when he first put on the uniform.

Sparks stepped toward the last few feet of the antique dock. The water was still. He reached the edge of the pier and hauled in the little dingy. He pulled back the tarp and checked on the bricks. Tightly wrapped plastic packages, ready for their duty. He counted them, as he did every night. The full load was there. Time was short. He looked back up at the bridge. The Verrazano, the greatest bridge in the city, but the one that snobs in Manhattan don’t even bother to know exists, stood triumphant over the channel. On the edge of the pier at the Harbor Patrol, Sergeant Sparks folded a tarp over enough Semtex to bring it down.