Perhaps the man in the Yankees cap.
Fisk said, “We have the license plate of the Explorer. Stolen four days ago from a parking lot in Ozone Park.”
Garza was transfixed by the image. “He has changed vehicles by now.”
Fisk watched her watch the screen. “You think that’s him? The Yankees fan?”
She nodded curtly. “I think it might be.”
“Okay,” said Fisk. “Now take a look at this.”
He pulled up stills from an e-mail from Canadian Intelligence. The first showed a series of color images of a man with tattooed arms walking through an airport.
“First U.S. No Fly Zeta goon,” said Fisk. “Back when he still had a head.”
He clicked to open up the second attachment.
Another man, this one wearing a tight gray sweatshirt and sunglasses, walking through the same airport corridor.
“U.S. No Fly Zeta goon number two,” said Fisk. “We think they crossed into the country through the border into New York State, either through the woods, which is better attempted in winter, or by vehicle, traveling with false papers. But we have no border-crossing photos, at least not yet.”
Fisk opened up the third attachment.
“Voilà,” he said.
A man of medium height, wearing a thin navy suit jacket and trousers, moved through a different corridor in the same airport, a travel bag slung over one shoulder. He held a cell phone to one ear, covering the other with his finger as though trying to hear someone over a bad connection. He wore sunglasses and a ball cap that further obscured his face.
The cap was black with a white Yankees logo on it.
“Chuparosa.”
Garza stared. The series of images cycled through on slideshow, the man walking down the corridor among other disembarking passengers. His face was mostly covered, but he certainly resembled the darker figure in the backseat of the Explorer near St. Michael’s Cemetery.
She glanced once Fisk’s way, in disbelief, then back to the screen. Memorizing his gait. The shape of his body. Burning it into her memory.
“It’s all circumstantial,” said Fisk. “But I’d lay odds it’s him. The question is, why did he off his own guys?”
“He’s killing anything that links to him,” said Garza. “He wants to succeed at any cost.” She turned to Fisk. “Based on what I saw back at his compound, I believe he understands this to be a suicide mission. It is the only way he can succeed. And, for whatever reason, he has accepted that fate.”
Fisk nodded. “All we need to know now is where he is.”
CHAPTER 47
Octavia Clement?”
The door to apartment 231 was barely open more than a crack. Garza was a block from Brookville Park in Rosedale, standing with Fisk in front of the door to a walk-up apartment situated over a store called Tats ’n More.
Garza could not see much through the crack: a single eye peering back, the door still on its chain.
“Who are you?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Octavia Clement? My name is Colonel Cecilia Garza.” Garza knew that the American equivalent of her rank sounded more impressive to the English-speaking ear, and less confusing than comandante. “I am here with Detective Fisk of the New York Police. I am with the Mexican Federal Police. May we come in and speak with you?”
The eye looked at her with unconcealed suspicion. “Mexican?”
Garza nodded. “We very much need to speak with you. It is very important.”
The eye blinked. After a moment the door closed, the chain came off, and then the door opened wide.
Standing in the doorway was a slightly plump woman wearing a thin T-shirt with a black bra showing through underneath. Her bare arms were covered with tattoos.
Her face was the face from the dead tattoo artist’s upper arm. A little older, a little more weathered, her hair dyed red now.
But the resemblance was plain. The facial recognition search had worked. This was the same woman.
“You are Octavia, correct?”
“Are you here about Gary?” Her mouth hung open a bit. She seemed to know what was coming.
Garza and Fisk stepped inside. The apartment reeked of cannabis smoke.
“Where is he?” the woman said. Garza noticed her tongue stud, the twin silver rings through her left eyebrow, the multiple loops in both ears. She looked petrified with fear and suspicion, her skin ashen, her hands trembling.
“May we sit down somewhere?”
The woman shook her head. She might have been indicating no to the truth she knew was about to come, but they did not sit. “Is Gary okay?” she asked.
Cecilia Garza pulled her cell phone from her purse. She had the photo of the tattoo ready. She thumbed the display button and turned it around so that Octavia Clement could see the picture of herself taken from the arm of the dead man on Rockaway Beach.
Octavia Clement stared at the picture. It was just the arm, not the entire dead body . . . but Garza could see that she knew. You didn’t show a candid picture of a tattoo on a person’s arm and then tell the person looking at it that the person in the phone was just fine.
Garza hated this part of her job. It was one hundred times easier looking at decapitated bodies than it was talking to the families of victims. “This is Gary?” asked Garza.
The tattooed woman let out an awful howl and sagged against the doorframe, clutching onto it as though she were holding onto the edge of a cliff. Fisk caught her before she could collapse completely and strike her head on the floor. He helped her into the front room of the apartment, setting her on a futon covered with homemade blankets.
It was a good minute or two before the woman could get enough breath to speak. “I knew he was gone,” she said, wiping her tears on her tattooed wrist.
“His full name?” asked Fisk.
“His name is Gary Lee Clement,” she said. “He’s my husband. Did those men kill him?”
“Those men who?” said Garza. “Please tell me what men you’re talking about?”
Garza sat so close to the woman on the couch, she felt the woman’s leg against her own. The apartment was lit by lamps with colored shades—red, amber, yellow. Large bright photographs of flowers hung on the walls, and there was a tripod and other camera equipment in the corner of the room. The furniture was old and mismatched, but the place appeared to be in perfect order, every surface clean. Amazingly clean. The scent of cleaning solution, bleach and ammonia, came through behind the lingering marijuana smoke. Bohemian, but without the squalor. A TV played a news channel on the other side of the room, turned so low it was barely audible.
The young woman waved a hand around the apartment. “I’ve been cleaning for twenty-four hours straight. Just trying to keep my mind focused on something . . . something else.” Her lips were pressed tightly together. “You still haven’t told me what happened to him. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Garza nodded. “I am very sorry to be the one to inform you.”
“And it was those men?”
Garza was patient with Octavia Clement. The bereaved required forbearance. Sometimes they were quite helpful; sometimes they were no help at all. “Tell me about the men.”
Octavia Clement closed her eyes for a moment. “Me and Gary, we grew up in McCool Junction, Nebraska. Population three hundred and seventy-two. Can you imagine that? We were the only people in our town who were like this.” She ran her hands down her body, showing off the tattoos, the hipster clothes, the eyebrow rings. “And it was subtle then, compared to now. Gary, he had such a gift. He was such a beautiful soul . . .”
She collapsed into tears again. Fisk went off in search of tissues and thankfully returned with some. Octavia blew her nose and balled the tissue in her hand.
“He was an artist. From the very first time I saw him, he could draw these amazing pictures.” She pressed her fingers against her wet eyelids, as though pressing and activating these happy memories. “I fell in love with him the very moment I saw him draw for the first time. Ninth grade! He was everything I wanted out of life. Everything.” She smiled gently, still with her fingers on her eyes. “It took him maybe a little longer to see me. But eventually he came around. I got him. We got married on my nineteenth birthday, March the twenty-third. On March the twenty-fourth, we loaded up his pickup truck and drove out here. Knew nobody and nothing. And we made it our home.”