When you move, they can’t getcha...
Patrolwoman Evelyn Maple, a ten-year vet on the NYPD, was keeping selfie takers out of the scene.
Yes, the crane was stabilized and dismantled.
Yes, the crews looked like they knew what they were doing.
But she, a mother of two, was keeping her damn distance. Because you never knew what could happen. Why wasn’t everybody else doing the same?
“You, you can’t be on that side of the rope.”
“It’s tape, technically, Officer.” Snotty little blond cheerleader sort.
The officer was not tall, about five-four, and petite, so she lacked the intimidation factor she wished she had.
On the other hand, she had a badge and a gun and an extremely cool gaze, and the combination tended to get people to do what she wanted.
Tape, not rope...
You, move along. It’s not safe. It’s private property. You’ll get squashed like a squirrel in Larchmont...
She squinted toward where the concrete counterweights of the big bright red crane were dangling as the acid or whatever it was ate through the brackets that held them to a metal trolley on the rear end of the boom.
Was someone there?
Yes.
Seriously?
Somebody was walking around the base of the crane, a massive concrete slab. He was looking down and picking things up.
A scavenger.
Maple ducked under the tape herself and made her way toward him. He was clearly homeless: dirty brown overcoat, squat orange and brown cap, shoes that didn’t match, no socks.
Trespassing on a crime scene.
Looking for spare coins or valuables from victims?
Disgusting.
“Sir, excuse me.”
He turned around, surprised.
“You have some ID?”
He looked at her with mad — though not, in her opinion, dangerous — eyes.
He said passionately, “New York has been transformed.”
“Let me see some ID.”
“Don’t have any. But don’t you think the streets are wider than they used to be? Sidewalks’re cleaner. The geraniums hanging from lampposts, the trees are more obvious.”
Oh, man.
One of those.
Maple had heard that the terror attacks were all about housing and getting people off the street. People like this.
He waved his arm. “See, they’re hiding in their homes, they’re afraid of those things.” His palm ended up aimed at the crane. “So who do we see on the streets? Statues! Famous leaders. And department store mannequins. They’re all correct shades now. Have you noticed?
“And how quiet it is! No jackhammers, no dynamite warning horns, not much honking. A siren or two, but they’re pretty rare. You don’t need a siren if there’re no cars to get out of your way headin’ for that shooting or the coronary, right?
“Transformed. Cranes come down, and the city’s gone back in time a hundred years. It’s 1900, except no a-ooo-ga squeeze horns on internal combustion vehicles and no clop clop of horses. And the shit! New York used to have a hundred thousand horses in the city. They produced two million pounds of shit a day.”
Hm. Never thought about it. But she was tired of him now. “Sir, do you have a shelter you stay in?”
“Downtown.”
“Why don’t you just go on down there now. This place isn’t safe.”
He rattled his cup. “This woman. She gave me a handful of pennies. Pennies! But the joke was on her. She had to go to all the trouble. And I still got twenty-four cents.” He cocked his head. “Like twenty-four hours in the day. That means something. Do you believe in signs, Officer?”
“Why don’t you just head on home now?”
“All right, all right.” He made his way back to the sidewalk and turned in the direction where Maple had seen that detective disappear just a few moments ago, moving quickly.
Amelia Sachs. Long red hair.
Tall.
Ah...
The homeless man stopped and turned back. “What do you think they did with it?”
“What’s that, sir?” Maple asked, weariness in her voice.
“Two million pounds a day.”
He continued down the sidewalk.
He had to be completely nuts. A businessman glanced at him and tried to slip a bill into his cup. He missed and it fluttered to the ground.
The homeless man glanced back — it looked like it was a ten or twenty — and just let it lie there as he continued down the sidewalk once more, walking with what almost seemed to be an intense purpose.
44
Sachs was breathless as she strode along the sidewalk to where the license plate number recognition system had placed the Mercedes owned by Willis Tamblyn, the developer who had possibly — likely? — hired the Watchmaker to create chaos in the New York real estate market.
She called, “Rhyme, you there? I’m on my way.”
“How far?”
“Three, four minutes. Odds that Tamblyn came here to meet the Watchmaker?”
“Don’t know. And I’m thinking,” Rhyme added slowly. “It might be a setup. Maybe Hale’s one step ahead of us. Or thinks he is.”
“And the car’s a trap?”
“Possibly.”
“The flash-bangs and breaching charges that Gilligan stole? An IED in the Merc.”
Rhyme said, “Or more HF acid. If there’s nobody in it, stand down and wait for Bomb Squad.”
“K. I’m almost there.”
She signed off and changed to the tactical frequency.
“Detective Five Eight Eight Five. ESU. Further to the attempted incident at Twenty-Third. Over.” The words came out between gasps. She might have been fine, but her lungs didn’t completely believe the assessment.
A clatter then: “Amelia. Bo Haumann. K.”
This time the operation warranted the chief of the Emergency Service Unit himself, not just a captain commander.
“Bo.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Three minutes out. On foot. And you?”
“Six or seven.” The man’s voice was raspy, and she’d always wondered why. As far as she knew, he didn’t smoke. At any rate, the lean, grizzled man certainly looked the part of someone with a voice like this. “What’s the scenario?”
“Got a car owned by a Willis Tamblyn. Real estate developer. Possible he hired Charles Hale—”
“The Watchmaker.”
“Right. To take down the cranes.”
“Why?”
“Money.”
“One motive that never fails.”
“I’m about there, Bo. I can see the vehicle. I’m taking a look. Over.”
“K.”
Ahead was the long, gleaming black limo. Fast, sleek, intelligent. But like that luxurious piece of machinery she’d seen earlier in the day, the Bentley, the Mercedes drove by electronics, not heart, and she wouldn’t have owned one for the world.
Sachs slowed to a casual businessperson lope as she crossed the street onto the block where the vehicle was parked, then caught her breath. This was a stretch of wholesale shops and warehouses, so there was minimal foot traffic. It was a good location for a takedown — low risk for collateral damage, though there was a downside to the sparsity; she and other officers, even in street clothes, would be more obvious to the observant Watchmaker, whose survival skills were legendary.
If this was a trap, though, she doubted he would spring it when she was outside the vehicle. The amount of explosives Gilligan had stolen was not nearly enough to create a big enough bang to injure anyone unless they were in the vehicle itself.
It would take a huge IED — pounds of C4 — to create a blast radius that large to kill officers merely nearby the car.