“Excuse me, Agent Morrow?”
He turned, recognized Gannon and stopped. Gannon double-checked to ensure they were alone.
“Jack Gannon, WPA. We met at the scene.”
“I know who you are.”
“May I ask you a few confidential questions?” Gannon said.
The sternness of Morrow’s face dared Gannon to continue.
“Look, I can understand that you and the agents on the case might be having a hard time and—”
“How’s that? Now you know what we’re going through? Did your ‘sources’ tell you how we’re feeling?”
“No, I was just being respect—”
“You don’t know dick, Gannon.”
“Were the facts in my story wrong, Agent Morrow?”
Morrow didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked one.
“Who are your sources?”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m not telling you who my sources are.”
“I didn’t think so. But let me enlighten you, all-star, if I fuck up, people get away with murder, maybe even die. If you fuck up, what happens?”
“Possibly the same thing.”
“Is that right?” Morrow almost laughed.
“I’ll tell you one thing—you can bet your pension your shooters are reading every word I write, wherever they are.”
“Now you get why we don’t want to talk to you.”
“I see.” Gannon tilted his head to the briefing room. “But you sure do need us to spread the word on your bike photos and reward. You have no problem using us like a fifty-dollar hooker. But when we dig, when we do a little journalistic investigating, well, that changes everything. Which brings me full circle— Was my information wrong?”
Morrow’s jaw muscle pulsed.
“Just as I thought,” Gannon said. “Well, think about this. WPA stories go everywhere, and I mean, everywhere. The killers likely read my stuff. I am a conduit to what they digest, Agent Morrow. Think that over.”
Gannon’s phone rang, Morrow walked away and he answered it. It was Dixon, anxious to get rolling to Brooklyn.
“On my way.”
Gannon left.
As he exited Federal Plaza, he hurried to where Dixon had parked; a spot off Broadway on Chambers. Gannon was near the northwest edge of City Hall Park when across the street he spotted Katrina Kisko on a bench. She was talking to a guy in a suit and taking notes. Gannon recognized the man as a New York City police detective he’d met a couple of times.
He looked as if he was telling Katrina something significant.
16
New York City
The Blessed Virgin Mary ascended to heaven on a cloud of roses supported by angels in the framed print on the living room wall of Ana Mendoza’s Brooklyn home in Flatbush.
“Mi Felipe!”
Ana hugged her wedding photo tightly, while clutching a rosary. Its beads ticked against the frame’s glass as she rocked on her sofa, her face a portrait of agony. A grieving daughter on either side stroked her arms. Their tears fell on the younger Ana and Phil, who smiled at Gannon from a happier time.
“Why did they take my Felipe? Why?”
Ana’s raw, choking sobs tore at Gannon. This was the part of his job that he hated, meeting bereavement face-to-face.
The Mendozas had agreed to allow him and Angelo Dixon into their home for the WPA’s profile, to offer a tribute. A proud family, they struggled with their words in honoring their beloved husband, father and grandfather.
Throughout his years, Gannon had faced many situations whenever he made “death calls.” People had cursed him, threatened him or slammed doors on him. He never took it personally. Rejecting him was their right. What amazed him was how most people had invited him into their homes, while they praised the dead, showed him pictures, stared blankly or cried on his shoulder.
No matter how any times Gannon had done it, he always believed he was trespassing on a private moment of mourning; that he’d only gained entry largely because the bereaved were stunned by their loss and vulnerable. He was always respectful of their suffering. Experience had taught him when to offer words of compassion and when to sit in silent understanding. At times like this, Gannon steeled himself to be at his very best because he believed this was one of his greatest duties.
The families of the dead deserved nothing less.
And so he was more than patient with Ana Mendoza as she fought her anguish to talk about her murdered husband.
“I had a bad feeling yesterday morning,” Ana said. “I didn’t want him to go in, but I never told him. I don’t know why. Somehow, he must’ve known, because before he left he kissed me and said he loved me.”
The house filled with sobbing from Ana’s daughters and daughter-in-law. Her grandchildren, those old enough to grieve, cried too, while the little ones played.
“Why did they do this?” Esther Paulson, one of Ana’s daughters, asked Gannon. “I’ll never see my dad again. Our children are without their grandfather. Do these killers have a conscience?”
Esther’s sister, Valerie Roha, hardened her tear-stained face. “We want the hammer of justice to come down hard on them,” Valerie said. “It won’t bring my father back, but he didn’t deserve to die this way. None of them did. My father was a good man.”
Gannon’s gaze went to the mantel and framed photos of Phil Mendoza as a U.S. marine, local baseball coach, amid those of his children and grandchildren. Dixon’s camera clicked as he shot Ana with her daughters in the seconds before she fell into a session of inconsolable weeping. The women helped her to her bedroom while her son, Juan, finished a phone call in the kitchen.
“…yes, I told the FBI this morning that Dad thought they were being watched… Right. I’ll be there in about half an hour… Okay. Thanks.”
After ending his call, Juan Mendoza, a New York City Corrections Officer at Rikers Island, took his mother’s place on the sofa. His face was drawn. He hadn’t slept.
“Got everything you need?” Juan asked. “Because I have to go.”
Gannon seized this chance to build on the fragment of Juan’s telephone conversation that he’d overheard.
“Juan, I’m sorry, but I need to ask you about this. As you know, there’ve been rumors that investigators think this could be an inside job—”
“Are you saying that my father or his crew—”
“No! No. Forgive me. No, nothing like that. Let me clarify. There’s speculation that someone inside the company tipped the suspects about the route and the amount of cash your father’s crew was carrying. Have you heard anything on that? Did your dad raise any concerns on that, given all his years on the job with the company?”
Juan clasped and unclasped his hands while looking long and hard at Gannon, thinking carefully about the question. Then Juan’s red-rimmed eyes shifted to the wedding photo his mother had left on the coffee table and his focus seemed to drift before he spoke.
“A week or so before the attack, my dad and I went to a Yankees game. He rarely talked about his job, when out of the blue he tells me that he thought someone was casing his crew for a hit, that he’d sworn he’d seen the same guy appearing at various drops and that he was thinking of doing something about it.”
“Did you tell the FBI this? Did your dad tell someone, give you details?”
“Whoa! What are you doing? You’re writing this down?”
Gannon looked up from his notebook.
“I want to use it in the story.”
“No. No way.”