“As much as I hate political considerations,” Lanier then said.
“It’s a valid point,” Benton said, his voice brittle with impatience, and he sounded anxious and frustrated. “We kick in the door and they’re sitting in the living room having coffee. My bigger worry is a hostage situation and we cause it to escalate. I’m not armed.” He said it to Marino, said it like an accusation.
“You know what I’ve got,” Marino said to Lucy, giving her an unspoken instruction.
Special Agent Lanier acted as if she didn’t hear the exchange or notice Lucy grabbing a black soft case about the size of a tennis racket but with Beretta CX4 embroidered on it. She handed it to Benton and he slipped it over his shoulder, and she shut the trunk. They didn’t know who was inside the mansion or nearby but were expecting Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. Either he was Bobby Fuller or someone else, and he worked with others, those who did his bidding, people who were evil and would stoop as low as low got. If Benton had an encounter, he didn’t intend to defend himself with bare fists but a compact carbine that shot nine-millimeter rounds.
“I recommend we call ESU and get the entry team here.” Lanier was cautious, not wanting to tell NYPD how to do its job.
Marino ignored her, staring at the house as he asked Lucy, “And that was when? You were here last and saw a jamming system when?”
“A couple years back,” she said. “He had one since the early nineties, at least. The kind of high-power jamming system that can paralyze RF bands between twenty and three thousand megahertz. The radios NYPD has are eight hundred megahertz and wouldn’t be worth shit in there, and neither would cell phones. A little tactical advice? I agree.” She looked at Lanier. “Get ESU here now, the A team, because breaking down the door’s not the hard part. It’s what you do if you’re met with resistance, since you don’t know who or what the fuck’s in there. You force your way in all by yourself and maybe get your ass blown off or get crucified by Mother Blue. Take your pick.”
Lucy was the calm voice of reason because inside she was screaming and not about to wait for anyone.
“What Tac are you on if I see anyone?” she asked Marino.
“Tac I,” he said.
Lucy walked quickly toward Central Park South, and when she turned the corner, she started to run. At the back of the mansion was an apron of pavers that led to a wooden garage door, a swinging door painted black that opened on the left side, and nearby was a uniform cop Lucy had met earlier. He was probing shrubbery with his flashlight, the four floors above him dark, not a single window lit up.
“Tell you what,” Lucy said, unzipping the bag and pulling out the thermal scope. “I’ll hang back here and check the windows for heat. You might want to head around to the front. They’re thinking of kicking in the door.”
“Nobody’s called me.” The officer’s face looked at her, his features indistinguishable in the irregular glow of streetlamps. In a nice way, he was telling Berger’s computer nerd to fuck off.
“The A team’s en route and nobody’s going to call you. You can check with Marino. He’s on Tac Ida.” Lucy powered on the thermal scope and trained it at windows overhead and they turned murky green in infrared, the draperies across them splotched grayish white. “Maybe some radiant heat from hallways,” she said, and the officer was walking off.
Out of sight, gone, on his way to a forced entry that wasn’t about to happen where he was going. It was about to happen where he’d just left. Lucy got out the Rabbit Tool, a handheld hydraulic spreader capable of exerting ten thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. She worked the opposing tips of the jaws between the left side of the garage door and the frame, and started stepping on the foot pump, and wood strained and then several loud pops as iron strap hinges bent and snapped. She grabbed her tools and worked her way through the opening, pulling the door shut behind her so the breach wasn’t obvious from the street. She stood inside the cool dark, listening, orienting herself inside the lower level of the Starr garage. The thermal scope wasn’t going to help her in here, all it did was detect heat, and she got out her SureFire light and turned it on.
The mansion’s alarm system was unarmed, suggesting that when Bonnell and Berger had showed up, the person who let them in must not have reset the security system. Maybe Nastya, Lucy thought. She had met her the last time she was here and remembered the housekeeper as a careless and self-important woman, a recent hire of Hannah’s, or maybe Nastya was one of Bobby’s picks. But it had struck Lucy as peculiar that people like Nastya suddenly were part of Rupe’s life. They weren’t his type, and the decision likely hadn’t been his, and it caused Lucy to wonder what really had happened to him. She didn’t think it was possible to murder someone with salmonella, and it wasn’t likely there had been a mistake in the diagnosis, not in Atlanta, a city known for its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Maybe he’d willed his own death because Hannah and Bobby were cannibalizing his life and he knew what was ahead, which was to have nothing left, to be old and powerless and at their mercy. It was possible. People did that. Got cancer, got in accidents, short-circuiting the inevitable.
She set down her bag and slipped her Glock pistol out of its ankle holster, the long beam of the tactical light probing her surroundings, licking across whitewashed stone walls and terra-cotta tile. Directly left of the garage door was a bay for washing cars, and water slowly dripped from the end of a sloppily coiled hose, and filthy towels were scattered over the floor, a plastic bucket turned on its side, and nearby several gallons of Clorox bleach. There were shoe prints and a lot of tire tracks, and a wheelbarrow and a shovel, both crusty with dried cement.
She followed wheel marks on the floor and more footprints, different treads, different sizes, and a lot of dust, maybe a running shoe, maybe a boot, at least two different people but possibly more. She listened and probed with the light, knowing what the basement was supposed to look like and noting what was different, finding signs everywhere of activity that had nothing to do with anyone maintaining vintage cars anymore. The powerful beam cut across a work area with benches, pressure tools, gauges, air compressors, battery chargers, jacks, cases of oil, and tires, all dusty and randomly placed, as if moved out of the way but unused and unappreciated.
Not at all like the old days, when you could eat off the floor because the garage was Rupe’s pride and joy, that and his library, the two areas connected by a hidden door behind a painting of ships. The light moved across thick dust and cobwebs on a lift he’d installed when grease pits weren’t legal anymore, were deemed unsafe because of carbon monoxide in the hole when a car engine was running. There didn’t used to be a mattress, a bare one near the wall, covered with large brown stains and swipes, what looked like blood, and Lucy saw hairs, long ones, dark ones, blond ones, and she detected an odor or thought she did. Nearby was a box of surgical gloves.
About ten steps away was the old grease pit, covered with a painter’s drop cloth that didn’t used to be there. The surrounding floor was crazed with tread marks similar to others Lucy had seen, and there were spatters and smears of dried concrete. She squatted to lift an edge of the tarp, and under it were wide sheets of plywood, and under those her light illuminated the pit, and at the bottom of it was an uneven layer of concrete that wasn’t very deep, not even two feet. Whoever had shoveled in the wet cement hadn’t bothered to smooth it, the surface irregular and rough with mounds and peaks, and she thought she detected an odor again and was acutely conscious of her gun.