“Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. We’ll see.”
Bolden found duct tape in the pantry and socks in Schiff’s dresser. Returning to the guest room, he taped her ankles together. When she cried out, he stuffed a pair of silk dress socks into her mouth and taped that, too. Finally, he taped her wrists together and dragged her into the bathroom. He locked the door before pulling it closed.
It took him five more minutes to give Schiff the same treatment.
Somewhere in the house a phone rang. Security, he thought. Then he recognized the ring as belonging to a cell phone. He looked around and identified the noise as coming from the kitchen. He found the compact phone, next to Schiff’s wallet and keys. “Yes.”
“Mr. Morris. We’ll be meeting in the Long Room following the dinner this evening. Twelve o’clock. I trust you’re coming despite the weather.”
“Yes,” said Bolden. “I’ll be there.”
56
John Franciscus pulled his police cruiser to the curb in the center of the “No Parking Zone” fronting the Delta Shuttle Terminal at LaGuardia Airport. Grabbing his “Police Business” card off the passenger seat, he slid it onto the dashboard and climbed out of the car. He left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Let someone else move the car. He had a plane to catch.
The terminal was bedlam. Commuters rushed to gates, many of them hurriedly buying coffee and newspapers on the way. Those just arriving made a beeline to baggage claim. Everyone had someplace to go, and from the look of it, they were all late. New York City, he thought. It was a place you couldn’t wait to get to, and couldn’t wait to leave.
Franciscus showed his badge to the security supervisor, who guided him around the metal detectors. He jogged up the incline to the ticketing area. The line of passengers waiting for a boarding card stretched to fifty feet. He walked directly to the counter.
“Police business,” he said, laying out his badge and identification for inspection. “I need to be on the seven-thirty flight to D.C.”
“Yes, um, let me check.”
“It’s urgent, ma’am.”
“Of course, Detective. That will be two hundred dollars.”
Franciscus paid by credit card. Without further ado, she issued him a boarding pass.
He did not see the fit, dark-haired man who had followed him to the desk and demanded a seat on the same flight to the nation’s capital.
The black BMW 760Li slowed at the corner of Forty-sixth and Broadway. A window rolled down. “Hey… get in.”
Bolden opened the door and slid into the backseat. The car accelerated into traffic. A young African American male sat behind the driver. He was dressed in a navy business suit that Bolden knew was the work of Alan Flusser. He wore a high white collar and an oversize pink Italian necktie-or a “cravat,” as Bolden had been told it was called on more than one occasion. His shoes looked like they’d never touched the pavement. Only the sparkling diamond watch gave any indication that he might not work in the same office as Tom Bolden.
Darius Fell kept his eyes straight ahead, his face a mask of indignation. “Mr. T.,” he said after a moment. “Howzit?”
“Not real good.”
“Respect,” he said. “Now you know I’m right. Can’t trust no one. Never.”
“I didn’t come to argue.”
“You lookin’ all business. Saw you on the TV. You look like a Russian or something, one of them guys from Little Odessa, know what I’m sayin’? You one scary motherfucker.”
“The tape’s a fake,” said Bolden.
Darius Fell laughed and for the first time turned to look at Bolden. He extended an open hand. “Ain’t it always?”
The two shook hands. “White Man’s Handshake,” Fell called it. Nothing fancy. No changing grips, snapping of fingers, or pointing at the other guy. In the four years he’d known Darius, Bolden often felt that the only thing he’d taught him was the meaning of a formal handshake and where to buy a decent suit.
“My sister help you out?”
“She did. Tell her thanks again. I owe you.”
“Nah. You just keep doing what you doing. We even, then.”
Video screens mounted in the back of the headrests played a pornographic movie. Tucked in a custom holster near the driver’s left leg was an Uzi submachine gun. Fell did nothing to camouflage the rise under his left arm.
“Tell your partners, we’re going downtown,” said Bolden.
“Where to?”
“Wall Street.”
The concourse of the executive parking lot beneath the Harrington Weiss building was reserved for senior partners and visiting big shots. Located on the first underground level, it was not so much a parking lot as a very large automobile showroom. At any time, one could expect to find a selection of late-model Porsches, Ferraris, BMWs, and Mercedeses. Tonight, however, the parking lot was deserted. HW’s senior partners had flown the coop by seven-thirty. At least half were en route to Washington, to attend Jacklin’s Ten Billion Dollar Dinner. A lone car remained. Sol Weiss’s ten-year-old Mercedes.
The BMW slowed. Bolden jumped out.
“Chill for three minutes, then get movin’,” said Darius Fell.
Bolden nodded and slammed the door.
His name was Caleb Short and he was the officer in charge of security for 55 Wall Street. Short sat at a console of video monitors, a paper bag on the desk holding his evening’s dinner and snack. His wife had prepared a liverwurst sandwich, peanut butter and celery sticks, carrots, and a tin of organic apple sauce. He had stuck in the Clark bar himself. He couldn’t make a twelve-hour shift without a little candy. A man had his limits.
“You believe what went down here?” Short asked his shift partner, Lemon Wilkie, a scrappy kid from Bensonhurst who liked to wear his side arm low on his hip.
“Some bad shit,” said Wilkie. “Just goes to show, you never really can tell about some people.”
“You know him? Bolden?”
“Seen him around. He’s a suit. You?”
“Yeah. He works late. Real friendly. Wouldn’t figure him to be the type.”
“Yeah,” laughed Wilkie, into his hand. “What do you know?”
Short sat up, wanting to tear into him, then thought the better of it. Short knew plenty… certainly more than a twenty-two-year-old army reservist like Lemon Wilkie. Short had put in his twenty as an MP with the army’s 10th Mountain Division and got out a master sergeant. Three chevrons on top. Three rockers on the bottom. In the five years since he’d gotten out, he’d put on a solid fifty pounds. Being a little overweight didn’t mean he wasn’t on top of his game.
Short checked the bank of monitors. There were twenty in all. The four positioned directly in front of him were permanent feeds from the lobby, the garage, and the forty-third floor, where Harrington Weiss’s top executives worked. The others rotated among the cameras on the different floors. He looked at a few, then took out his sandwich. In three years on the job, the most exciting thing that had happened on his watch was one of HW’s partners having a heart attack while waiting for an elevator to take him to his radio car. Short had spotted him on one of the monitors, lying there wriggling around like a landed fish. His call to 911 had saved the man’s life. Every year the man invited Caleb Short and his wife to his home for Thanksgiving dinner and slipped him an envelope with an even grand inside it, along with a bottle of French wine.
“You want first rotation or me?” he asked Lemon.
Each night, Short and Wilkie were required to make a minimum of six tours through the building, meaning a stop at each floor to have a look around. A tour took a little more than an hour.
“Sure, I’ll go,” said Wilkie.
A skeleton staff was on duty. Besides the two Somalis working the reception desk, there was just Short and Wilkie.