“Sure can. My pleasure. I’ve been worried about those guys.”
“Me too.”
“Good job.”
“Good luck, you mean. But we’ll take it, right?”
“You bet. After they’re checked out I’ll see if I can bring them home with me. Hey, do you think they can fit back in that hotello with the old man?”
“I can set up another one for Hexter, right next to theirs.”
“Sounds good. See you tonight.”
Gen made arrangements for a water launch and asked Sergeant Olmstead to come with her. She piloted the cruiser up to the police station at 123rd and Frederick Douglass, taking Madison most of the way north and using some police boat privilege to pop through the intersections.
At the station they found the two kidnap victims recovering in the infirmary. Two middle-aged men. They had already showered and were wearing issue civvies. One of them, Ralph Muttchopf—brown hair thinning on top, about six foot, hound-dog face, skinny except for a slight pot belly—sat in a chair drinking coffee, looking around with a wary expression. The other, Jeffrey Rosen—small, feral, triangular head covered with tight black curls—lay on an infirmary bed with an IV in his forearm. He was running his other hand through his hair and talking a mile a minute to the other people in the room.
Gen sat and inserted some questions into his nervous chatter. It quickly became clear they would not be able to do much to dispel the mystery of their disappearance. They had been knocked out by whoever grabbed them, probably some milk of amnesia involved, as they had no memories of the abduction. After that they had lived in their container, fed two meals a day, they guessed, through a Judas slot in their door. Rosen had gotten sick at some point and Muttchopf had left messages on their food trays telling their captors about this, and meals after that had included some pills which Jeff had taken. More memory confusion at this point suggested more milk of amnesia. They had never seen or heard anything of their captors.
“How long were we in there?” Jeff asked.
Gen consulted her pad. “Eighty-nine days.”
The two men regarded each other round-eyed. Finally Muttchopf shook his head.
“Felt like longer,” he said. “It felt like, I don’t know. A couple years.”
“I’m sure it did,” Gen said. “Listen, when you’re cleared medically here, can I give you a ride home? Everyone at the Met has been worried about you.”
“That would be good,” Jeff said.
Gen left Olmstead there to guard them, warning the sergeant and the cops on duty there to take care; it was at least possible that the kidnappers had stuck trackers in them and might try to grab them back, or worse. She ordered thorough scans for such devices, then left and piloted the cruiser back down to the Central Park north dock, and walked to the federal building behind the big police docks at Fifth and 110th.
By this time it was sunset, and the sunlight was lancing through the great towers to the west, silhouetting them like a dragon’s back against a bronze sky. Gen walked into the fed building, got through security, and went to the office where the federal department of immigration, the FBI, the NYPD, and the Householders’ Union had combined to create a human smuggling task force. Here she found an old acquaintance from her first days in the force, Goran Rajan, who greeted her cheerfully and poured her a cup of tea.
Gen described the situation with her two rescued ones.
“Only two?” Goran repeated.
“That’s right.”
“And they were kept for eighty-nine days?”
“That’s right.”
Goran shook his head. “So this isn’t smuggling, it’s some kind of kidnapping. Was a ransom demanded at any point?”
“Nothing. No one involved seems to know why it happened.”
“Not the victims?”
“Well, I haven’t debriefed them fully yet. They lived in my building and were abducted from it, so I’ve been taking a personal interest. I’ll give them a ride home tonight and ask more questions.”
“Good that you take this over. Because we often find a hundred people in one of those containers. Your guys are not really in our realm.”
“I understand, but I was hoping you would check through your harbor surveillance data and see if you can spot anyone visiting this container to feed these guys. It was probably twice-daily visits.”
Goran sipped tea. “I can try. If they were coming from the surface, we’ll probably see it. If it was being done by robot subs, less likely.”
“How many cameras do you have deployed now?”
“It’s a few million. The limiting factor these days is the analysis. I’ll try to figure out some questions and see what I find.”
“Thanks,” Gen said.
“Remember, the kidnappers will know their hostages are gone. They’ll probably leave the area.”
“That might not be a bad thing,” Gen said.
“No. May I ask if you are expecting me to find anything in particular?”
“I’ve been finding stuff that makes me wonder about Pinscher Pinkerton.”
“Okay. They’re big. They have all the drones and subs you’d need to do the visits automatically. It’s possible this whole procedure was done remotely.”
“Still, you might at least see the drones.” Gen finished her tea and rose to leave. “Thanks, Goran. When can I expect a report?”
“Soon. The computers answer the moment you finish your question. So it’s a matter of having the questions to ask.”
Gen thanked him and went back to her cruiser and headed back to the Frederick Douglass station. There she found Muttchopf and Rosen ready to leave, and she and Olmstead escorted them onto the cruiser and headed down the East River toward home.
The two men sat in chairs on the bridge beside Gen as she stood piloting, looking at the city like tourists. The tallest towers behind them still reflected some of the glow of twilight, though it was night overhead, the clouds a noctilucent pink. The lights of the dusky city bounced and shattered in the wakes on the water.
“You must be kind of blown away,” Gen supposed. “Three months is a long time to be locked up.”
The two men nodded.
“It was a sensory deprivation tank,” Rosen said. “And now this.”
Muttchopf nodded. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “The city.”
“It’s cold,” Jeff added, shivering. “But it smells good.”
“It smells like dinner,” Muttchopf declared. “A New York seafood dinner.”
“Low tide,” Gen pointed out. “But we’ll get you something to eat when we get home.”
“That sounds good,” Rosen said. “Finally. I’m finally beginning to get my appetite back.”
At the Met they got off on the dock, and Gen had Olmstead run the cruiser back to the station. Vlade greeted them, and he and Gen escorted the two men to the dining hall. They were weak. In the dining hall they were offered the chance to sit and be served, but both of them wanted to go through the serving line and choose their food. They heaped their plates high, and poured themselves glasses of the Flatiron’s red, and as they ate and drank, Gen sat across from them asking questions about the night of their abduction. They nodded, shook their heads, shrugged, said little; then, with a look around, Muttchopf said to her, “How about you come up with us to our place when we’re done here.”
She nodded and waited for them to finish.
Eventually they said they were stuffed, and Jeff was looking sleepy. They took the elevator up to the farm floor and went to the southeast corner. There they found two hotellos, a smaller one next to the larger one. Mr. Hexter came out to greet his new neighbors. The two men shook hands with him politely, but clearly they were beat.