“There’s Nicky and his Zoo crew,” Barnhart said.
Nimec sat beside him in the front passenger seat of the station wagon, looking out the windshield in silence.
“Like clockwork,” Noriko said from the vehicle’s rear section.
Nimec gave her a small nod but remained silent. They were in a parking space a half block down from the Platinum Club. Their engine and headlights were off. There was no heat issuing from the vents. A film of snow had formed on the glass, making it difficult to see through, but for the past few minutes they had refrained from clearing it with even intermittent swishes of the wipers.
They were being careful to do nothing that might draw attention.
His face intent, Nimec watched Roma walk toward the curb in front of the Platinum Club, the folds of an outback coat whipping around his ankles, a pair of hulking bodyguards on either side of him. Two more men were waiting on the street. The guards hung there until Roma got into the first of two large sedans that had pulled in front of the entrance, and then went back to the second car and crammed themselves into it.
Nimec and his team watched and waited. Snowflakes blew around them in tight little clots that burst apart like milkweed pods as they struck the hood of the wagon.
“He always surround himself with that much manpower?” Nimec said, breaking his silence at last.
Barnhart shrugged.
“The muscle’s a little thicker than usual,” he said. “Could be Nicky’s feeling a little paranoid these days. He likes to be prepared.”
Nimec thought about that. Barnhart, a former member of the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force, had assembled an extensive file on Roma that went back years. In the past week Nimec had read every word of it, and learned nearly everything there was to know about Roma and his criminal network… very significantly including information about his behind-the-scenes control of Mercury Distribution, an all-purpose clearinghouse for transport cargo, both legal and illegal, that he was moving into, out of, and around the country.
On November 28, Mercury had obtained delivery of a shipment of combined articles, marked generally as “theatrical effects,” the ultimate purchaser of which was Partners Inc., yet another of Roma’s multitude of shell companies, and the nominal owner of the Platinum Club.
The merchandise had arrived at the Red Hook shipyards aboard a freighter that belonged to the Zavtra Group.
Click-click-click.
“Rain, snow, sleet or hail, Nicky heads on over to his girlfriend’s crib every Monday night,” Barnhart said now, watching the automobiles carrying Roma and his crew swing away from the curb, make U-turns on Fifteenth Avenue, and then glide off in the opposite direction along the two-way street.
“Either he’s a creature of habit or she’s something else,” Noriko said.
“Probably a little of both,” Barnhart said. A smile touched his lips. “You jealous, Nori?”
“I’d rather mess around with an electric eel,” she said.
Nimec had been watching the taillights of the vehicles recede into the snow-clogged night. He waited for ten minutes after they were gone, listening to the snow rasp and rattle across the roof of the car. Then he glanced over at Barnhart, met Noriko’s eyes in the rearview, and nodded so both of his companions could see him.
The three of them pulled their Nomex hoods up over their heads.
“Here we go,” he said, and reached for the door handle.
TWENTY-NINE
Nimec waited in the mouth of the alley, standing lookout as Noriko and Barnhart moved through the shadows in back of the Platinum Club. Barnhart had a pair of cable cutters in one hand, a MagLite in the other. His Benelli pump gun was slung over his shoulder. They were leaving footprints in the snow, but there wasn’t much they could do about that. Besides, if Nick stayed true to form and didn’t come back until the next day, the footprints would have filled in before they were spotted.
The telephone connection box was mounted at eye level on a wall outside the building; on a surveillance run two nights earlier, Nori had found it by tracking the lines coming from a telephone pole on the adjacent side street.
She stopped now and examined the rectangular metal box, moisture steaming from her nose and mouth, snow rustling between her ankles. After a moment, she reached out to Barnhart and he handed off the cable cutters, directing the flash beam onto the box. The phone wires entered the bottom of the box through a PVC plastic conduit. The same line, she knew, would be used to transmit signals from the alarm system to its monitoring station. Although it was possible Roma had installed a dedicated line for his system, or even a cellular-link backup, she doubted it. As a member of Barnhart’s undercover strike force during his years with the FBI, she had broken into many mob-controlled premises, and almost to a one had found them protected with crude, easily circumvented systems. Big Paul Castellano’s mansion on the hill had been the singular exception, but the Gambino family don had always held lordly pretensions. Not so Roma. He was a gangster of the old school and would undoubtedly rely on his heavies for security.
Noriko brushed some snow off the PVC conduit and opened the cable cutters around it. The air trembled with lightning. A food wrapper broke away from a trash spill up the alley, skittered past her foot. Her lips compressed with effort, she clipped the pipe halfway through, then rotated the cutters and clipped the other half of the pipe, exposing the insulated wires inside it. She severed them with a single quick cut.
Barring some unlikely fail-safe, the phones and external alarms were out of commission.
She passed the tool back to Barnhart and gestured to her left. Several yards farther along the wall, he could see a back door that opened into the alley. He nodded and they hastened over to it, Nori in the lead.
She crouched at the door as Barnhart turned his flash onto the lock plate below the knob. Then she produced a flat leather case from a patch pocket on her coveralls. Zipping open the case, she selected two needle-like steel shims from the large set inside it, clamped one between her teeth, and inserted the working end of the other into the keyhole. She raked it deftly across the bottom cylinder pins, felt one, then two, of them activate. Seconds later she extracted the pick from the keyway, switched it with the one in her mouth, and used the second to jiggle open the remaining tumblers.
The latch slid back with a metallic snick.
Noriko glanced over her shoulder at Barnhart and he nodded again. She reached for the doorknob. If there were a fire bar or something of that nature across the inside of the door, they would have to try to gain access from the street, where they would be in a much more visible — and risky — position.
She twisted the knob, applied slight pressure to the door with her shoulder.
It eased inward a crack.
“Abracadabra,” Barnhart muttered, squeezing her shoulder.
A relieved breath hissing out between her teeth, the tension draining from her muscles, Noriko carefully replaced the shims in their case and returned it to her pocket. Barnhart swung the MagLite toward the mouth of the alley and thumbed it on and off twice. Nimec returned the all-clear signal and sprinted out of the shadows to his companions, a nylon duffel bag in his hand.
Suddenly they heard the rumble of an engine, saw the yellow sweep of headlights on the snow-covered blacktop, and froze outside the door, waiting. A second ticked by. Another. Then a Sanitation Department snowplow went clattering past the alley, turned left at the corner, and moved off down the avenue.
Nimec motioned for them to enter the building.
Barnhart went in first, his tools in his pockets now, both hands around the pump gun. Its underbarrel light threw a tight conical beam into the gloom beyond the door. They could see a narrow back stairwell leading upward to the left, a hallway straight ahead of them.