Battaglia replaced the phone in its cradle when I walked in the room. The thick cigar was planted in the middle of his mouth, like a cork in a bottle. He clasped his hands as he talked, the words emerging from around the Cohiba as he smiled broadly.
“The least you could have done was bring a soufflé with you, Alex.”
“Sorry? Did I forget something?”
“A croissant. Some escargots. I had to go to a meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this morning. Your friend Mrs. Stafford’s on the board,” Battaglia said, referring to Joan’s mother. “She told me all about the wedding this weekend. Said there was a very determined French chef stirring the pot.”
McKinney was staring at me as I blushed and tried to make light of Battaglia’s joke.
Whatever incredible array of sources the district attorney had worldwide to give him breaking news on international business intrigue, banking scandals, terrorist financing funds, and crime cartels, they were light-years slower than word that came through his endless local pipelines. The man just liked to know everything, and he liked to know it first.
“I didn’t think that was a felony, Paul. Am I wrong?”
McKinney’s head was going back and forth as if he were at a Ping-Pong match. He didn’t know what to make of the conversation nor why it embarrassed me, and I knew that Battaglia liked that angle, too.
“Shows how little you understand about arson, Alex. A fire could be a good thing, if the flames don’t get out of control.”
“Obviously, you’ll probably know before I do. Rose said you wanted me here.”
Battaglia rested the cigar in an ashtray. “Pat’s going to represent me over at the mayor’s office. There’s a meeting on updating emergency evacuation plans for the city. Worst-case-scenario kind of thing.”
“Because of the explosion in Water Tunnel Number Three?”
“That’s the catalyst. Whatever turns out to be the cause of the blast, and I was just getting the latest from the commissioner, it reminded everybody that the entire city will have to be evacuated if any of our tunnels experience an actual breach-whether from metal fatigue or terrorism or any kind of criminal action.”
“Don’t look so skeptical,” McKinney said to me. “Think about the last few years and all the megadisasters. Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. There wasn’t a government official who didn’t know a monster storm was going to hit, but no one had a plan in place.”
“I know the terrorist task force is still working an aspect of the explosion, Paul, and I realize those two Saudi guys are in custody in Westchester, but Mike and I are certain the event on Thirtieth has something to do with the sandhogs,” I said.
McKinney leaned over in an aside to Battaglia. “‘Mike and I think.’ If Mike Chapman told her to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, she’d probably-”
“I’d check the homicide roster first before I went up on the bridge, just to make sure neither you nor your idiot girlfriend were on call,” I said to McKinney. He had annoyed Battaglia-a devoted family man-by recently leaving his wife for a woman in the office with whom he’d been having an affair for years. “Nothing personal, Pat. I’d just prefer a careful investigation from a sensitive prosecutor if I were to meet an untimely end.”
Battaglia ignored the quibbling. “I understand there’s no court today because of the Quillian funeral. Have you got half an hour to bring Pat up to speed on what you’ve learned about the tunnel system vulnerability?”
“Sure.”
“Sit down.” Battaglia motioned to the chair on his other side. He didn’t need to waste the time going to City Hall himself, but he clearly wanted to be in on any important developments. The cigar was back in his teeth, and he was already shuffling through the mounds of correspondence that Rose had stacked in front of him, more able to do four things at once than anyone else I’d ever met. “You do any homework on this, Pat?”
“I got the basics from the Office of Emergency Management. It’s entirely different for a Category Four hurricane than a catastrophic event.”
“Is that what you hear?” Battaglia asked, angling his head to me.
“Nobody’s talked about this much in my quarters, boss. These guys are just trying to solve a crime.”
McKinney’s expression of disgust wasn’t lost on Battaglia. “Apparently, the perfect storm could hit the financial district-and Kennedy Airport and half of Staten Island-with twenty-five-foot surges of water. The city’s been divided into more than a hundred zones-trying to move people out of harm’s way will make what happened in the Gulf Coast area seem like a picnic. We’re talking more than two million evacuees.”
Battaglia’s crooked nose was hovering above a memo from someone in the office, his eyeglasses raised on his forehead. “I’m not asking about a flood, Pat. I want to know what happens if there’s no damn water to be had. You’re going to have federal and state hotshots at this meeting today. Look smart, will you?”
Objection, I thought to myself. Beyond the scope of the possible.
McKinney fidgeted in his chair. “We’ve obviously got the advantage over New Orleans and southern Mississippi of mass transit opportunities to move people out of the metropolitan area.”
“Get some specifics about how those systems operate before you open your mouth. What about moving patients in hospitals on ventilators, people in nursing homes? What do the police and fire departments plan to do about looting and all the things that we’ll be responsible for dealing with? Who’s going to ride shotgun on water and gas deliveries so desperadoes don’t hijack them? It’s a strategic-planning meeting.”
McKinney started making a list of Battaglia’s concerns.
“Alex,” the district attorney said, putting down the memo and eyeballing me. “What’s got you and Mike thinking the way you do about the tunnel?”
I made my case presentation with the facts as I knew them, including my Sunday-afternoon excursion with Mike Chapman. McKinney was restless, too out of the loop to enjoy listening about an investigation in which he played no role.
Battaglia devoured detail as if it were essential to his diet, but then usually left his top aides alone to get the work done themselves, occasionally offering direction from his long prosecutorial experience. He listened intently to my description of the tunnel interior and dismissed the story of the tire iron that had narrowly missed my head-which he’d heard from the commissioner-with barely a question about my own fears.
“So Jerry Genco just told you about the exhumation order?” he asked. “I had to push you on that, didn’t I, Pat?”
“Good idea, boss. It really was.”
“Take Alex through it,” Battaglia said, ready to get us out of his hair now, and hoping, as he always did, that we would work through our personal differences. “You ought to think about asking Fred Gertz to do the same thing in this Hassett murder.”
I fingered the edge of the volume of criminal procedure law that sat on the table next to the phone. “I know it rarely stops you, but there’s a little concept known as jurisdiction. Bex Hassett was killed in another county.”
“Be creative, Alex. Maybe Quillian made the cell call from Manhattan. Get your toe in the door and make some noise here. I can always kick it over to the Bronx DA.”
McKinney could barely suppress his smile as he watched me struggle to handle the boss diplomatically. He knew as well as I did that Battaglia hated to be told no when he came up with an idea he thought was a winner.
“It’s a bit premature, Paul. Let’s see what condition the evidence is in when Mercer gets back from the property clerk. I’d have to have some basis in fact to even raise the issue.”
Battaglia’s lips pulled back around the cigar in the mischievous grin that characterized his relentless prosecutorial drive. “Rattle your boy Brendan’s cage, Alex. Use your imagination. Get under Lem Howell’s skin if you can. Even if Gertz can’t entertain the motion for an exhumation, the press hounds will love you for bringing it up.”