“You see him earlier?”
“No.”
“We’ll keep an eye out.”
Edward Talese, a U.S. senator from New York, had just met with his party’s presidential campaign manager. The meeting between her and Talese had gone well and he’d come away with a list of donors to cuddle up with.
Talese was fifty-nine years old and sturdy of build and he wore his blond hair in a crew cut, which deemphasized the lack thereof. Not that he cared. His face was bulldog scrunched, though the jowls echoed a different breed — a bloodhound. Talese knew he was sometimes described in canine metaphors, and that was okay by him. He owned four: a wolfhound, a Malinois, a bluetick and a Chihuahua. Some people were amused that of the quartet the only one he himself had brought into the family was Buttercup, who weighed in at six pounds, three ounces. And that, only because she was overweight.
Normally he and Peter would be in the limo, which was bullet resistant (a phrase that, for some reason, amused him, as if the car merely disdained lead projectiles). But the first meeting had been at campaign headquarters downtown and to get to the next, with a donor at the Water Street Hotel, it was far more efficient and faster to walk than to negotiate the impossible Financial District traffic.
He wondered now if this exposure was a mistake.
He looked back once more.
He couldn’t tell if the man was still there; the lunchtime crowds were thick.
The day was clear. Strong sunlight slanted downward and replicated itself in a hundred windows, the reflected beams dimmer and cooler than the original act, but still glary.
Ahead he caught a glimpse of City Hall, impressive as ever. They would normally have cut through Steve Flanders Square, in front of the elaborate structure, but it was closed off, sealed with yellow police tape.
“What happened there?” the senator asked.
“Look.” He pointed to a construction site where one of those cranes was being built. The site was deserted.
“Oh, that affordable housing gang, or whoever.”
The crane was only sixty, seventy feet high. But, Talese supposed, could do some damage if it came down. Affordable housing — that was their gripe. He sympathized — he’d discussed the issue with the head of Housing and Urban Development — but killing people to make their point?
“That way.” Peter pointed and unbuttoned his jacket to reveal his firearm.
After some minutes of serpentine travel — dodging people who were glued to their phones — Talese and Peter emerged again into the sun. They crossed the busy street to the hotel, a structure impressive if you loved metal and glass. The word “cozy” need not apply.
“See him?” Talese was looking back.
“He turned. Probably nothing.”
In the bright, functional lobby, he expected to be greeted by the campaign donor himself, an impossibly wealthy hedge fund manager. When he didn’t see the man, he pulled out his phone. Before he placed the call, though, a tall man in a dark suit and white shirt walked directly up to him. Peter stirred.
“Senator Talese.”
Not a question. Anyone with a TV knew who he was.
“Mr. Roth won’t be able to take your meeting. But there’s someone else who’d like to see you.”
Peter said, “We’ll see some ID.”
He produced it.
Noting the man’s employer, Talese lifted an eyebrow.
The meeting, it seemed, was going to be considerably different from the one he’d had planned.
48
In his town house, on the line with Willis Tamblyn, Lincoln Rhyme was saying into the phone, “The person actually sabotaging the cranes is a hired gun. Charges millions for jobs like this.”
“My.”
Rhyme thought Tamblyn seemed unimpressed. Millions to him was probably just a private jet budget.
“We want to know who hired him. We find that out, we find him. So we need a motive.”
He imagined Sachs was nearly smiling to hear him say the disreputable M-word.
Rhyme continued, “First, it was what you might’ve heard in the news: activists forcing the city to convert old government property into affordable housing. But we’ve discarded that.”
“Well, I’d think so,” he said sardonically. “You should’ve called me right up front. I’d’ve told you. There are plenty of shits in the affordable housing movement and most of them are stupid. Naïve, at least. But extortion? Not their thing. And they couldn’t pull together a fee like that anyway.”
Rhyme said, “Then we were thinking of—”
Tamblyn interrupted. “An amoral real estate developer. Like me.”
“Yes. Driving down the market to pick up properties for cheap.”
A scoffing exhalation. “And how exactly would that work?”
Rhyme said, “REITs, for one.”
Tamblyn seemed perplexed at the very thought. “They’re long-term. And valuation is based on funds from operations, and interest rates. Not New York Post headlines. Next?”
Sachs came in with: “Manipulating the stock market?”
Now an outright laugh. “You can’t be serious. You want to play that game, you pick one stock, go short, get an anonymous blog, post fake stories about the dangers of electric cars or a dermatology drug, and cash out when the price dips. Then go to jail, by the way. The SEC’s been there. Falling cranes? Wall Street may hiccup, but they’ve forgotten about it come cocktail hour.”
Rhyme tried: “Delays in construction. The projects go bankrupt. A developer moves in—”
“And buys them for a song? Where did you hear that?”
“A news story...”
“Oh, oh... On the news. Of course it has to be true... Well, the last thing banks want is to own property they hold the mortgage on. The construction milestones? Nobody takes them seriously. It gets worked out.”
Rhyme’s eyes were taking in the evidence boards. He glanced absently toward the sterile portion of the parlor, where Mel Cooper was analyzing yet more trace Sachs and Pulaski had collected. His expression explained he was finding nothing new.
“Sachs, show him a list of the properties that were on the Kommunalka Project demand list.”
Tamblyn grunted. “I’m meeting someone.”
Rhyme said, “Five hours. Till another crane.”
“It’s Lucien’s. Do you know how long it takes to get a reservation?”
Sachs said, “I’ve got it.”
“Mr. Tamblyn?” Rhyme prompted.
“I’m reading, I’m reading.”
“Is there any strategic reason our perp would want those properties transferred to a corporation? Some’re former government installations. Maybe there’re records stored there? Research facilities? Some geographic reason? They’re adjacent to critical locations? Or, maybe, to keep them off the market?”
In a distracted voice, Tamblyn said, “You have quite the devious mind. Impressive. But... no.”
Rhyme asked, “Why?”
“Ninety percent of them ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. They’re frozen. On no-transfer lists.”
“No-transfer?” Sachs asked.
“They’re toxic. Literally. A couple’re Superfund. The others? Cleanup’ll take years. He had to’ve known that. Sounds like he closed his eyes and picked some property that was city owned without thinking about it.”
Rhyme asked, “So your opinion — your expert opinion — is that these crimes have nothing to do with real estate?”