"That was your first mistake," Gray replied. "The farther a rifleman is from foliage the easier he can see through it."
Coates asked, "What sense does that make?"
"I don't know the physics of it, but take my word for it. The killer probably could see through those sparse leaves to De Sallo even though we can't see in the other direction." Gray turned to the steps, running his eyes left and right. "There's his zero shot, that fracture in the riser of that step."
The stone riser had a pocket dug out of it. A few chips of stone and concrete lay along the tread below the gouge.
"What's a zero shot?" Coates asked.
"The rifleman sighted his weapon and scope by firing a practice round sometime before he let loose at the Chinaman." Gray bent to the cracked riser to stick his finger into the hole. "The bullet isn't here. Probably bounced out and was kicked away by a pedestrian or swept up by the grounds crew."
Gray led the detective away from the steps, between several parked cars, and across Centre Street toward the Court for International Trade. They walked west along Duane Street. A man wearing a black leather coat, open in front with no shirt underneath, handed Gray a leaflet that read, "Beautiful Girls, All Nationalities, A Unique Concept, No Hidden Charges Whatsoever." Gray wadded it up and pushed it into his pants pocket. He slowed his pace and looked skyward, up the side of the twelve-story Mardin Building. He narrowed his eyes, studying cornices several floors above the street. He saw nothing of interest and moved along the sidewalk.
"You looking for the sniper's window?" Coates asked. "These windows don't even face the courthouse."
Gray was silent, intent on a light pole.
The detective walked beside him, his hands jammed into his pockets. "You know, I would've made a pretty good sniper."
Still looking skyward, this time toward a lamp fixture attached to the front of the next building, Gray said, "Sure, and I could've played center field for the Mets."
He stopped at another light pole on which was a tattered poster reading "Awake! Cruelties Go Unchecked in Malawi." He stared above him at the light bracket for a moment, then walked on.
"Son of a bitch!" Coates exclaimed. Trying to follow Gray's gaze, the detective had stepped on a discarded soiled Pampers. He tried to scrape it off his shoe, but the diaper's adhesive strip clung to him and he kicked several times before he could dislodge it. He caught up with Gray. "I'm serious, Owen. I'm pretty damn good at the NYPD firing range. I could've been a sniper."
They approached Broadway and the sound of a conga band. Gray was still peering skyward. He said absently, "You wouldn't have had a chance to become a sniper, Pete."
"Hell yes, I would have." Coates's face lengthened. "What do you mean?"
"You wear eyeglasses. The Marines don't let you become a sniper if you need spectacles."
Coates argued, "A lot of good Marine marksmen wear glasses."
"Yes, but they aren't allowed to become snipers. The reflection off the glasses makes it too dangerous in the field." Gray looked at a power pole, then at the brackets holding a sign that said "Pal's Loans."
The detective said, "Well, assuming I didn't wear glasses, I would've made a great sniper."
"Not at all." Gray's eyes were still skyward. His gaze moved in a measured grid pattern. He had done nothing like this with his eyes for over two decades. A steady clicking — right, right, right, then back again, right, right, right, like a typewriter carriage, and shifting focus near to far, near to far. The small skill had not been forgotten. "You are left-handed. Lefties aren't allowed to become snipers because the additional movement required to operate the bolt over the top of the scope escalates the risk of detection."
At the corner of Broadway and Duane they stepped around a band of street musicians playing a maraca, a cowbell, a conga drum, and a percussion instrument made of four crushed beer cans. Their only audience was a transient with a full white beard and a red cap, eerily resembling Santa Claus, carrying a bottle of cheap port and sticking out his tongue through blackened teeth at the conga player. The hat on the ground in front of the band contained two dimes.
Gray's eyes scanned iron mounts attached to a building on the corner, perhaps once used to hold flowerpots. They crossed Broadway. A vendor had spread out several dozen wigs on a blanket on the sidewalk. The hairpieces were neon red, steel blue, and eggshell white. He was haggling with a woman in five-inch heels whose skirt had less fabric than most belts. Gray stepped around the display, veered through the stream of people walking along Broadway, and continued west along Duane Street, the detective in tow.
Gray's eyes were again turned skyward. He almost bumped into a woman in a Burberry plaid skirt who was stooped over trying to shove a newspaper under her squatting poodle. The dog preferred the cement and kept inching forward, so the woman had to scoot the newspaper after the poodle, saying again and again, "Do your duty, Pumpkin. Do your duty."
Coates tried again. "Well, if I didn't wear glasses and wasn't left-handed, I would've made a great sniper."
"Not even then, Pete." Gray stopped abruptly at the Winlox Building, a gray fifteen-story 1940s structure notable only for its refusal to leave an impression. Six stories up the side of the building a flagpole was attached to a column between windows.
Eyeing the pole, Gray said, "You need to have been a hunter or a tracker or a wilderness guide to get into the sniper program. You've only left New York City a couple of times in your entire life, and couldn't follow a bleeding coyote across fresh snow."
"Well, hell—"
"And even if you weren't a nearsighted citified leftie, you couldn't have become a sniper because they don't allow horses' butts into the program."
Coates laughed. "That last qualification would have sunk me for sure."
Gray pointed to the flagpole. "Your killer left some tracks. Take a look."
"I don't see anything."
"About halfway out the pole, there's a red streamer, cloth of some sort."
"So?"
"It's his wind telltale, like on a sailboat. A sniper usually uses a strip of red cloth two feet long."
"That could be just a piece of trash hanging there. Lots of crap hangs from flagpoles and signposts and power poles in this city."
Gray opened the spotting scope case. "I know a telltale when I see one. Set up the tripod, will you?"
"How'd he get it out there?"
"The window near the pole is probably in a lavatory or an empty office that he got into."
An elderly woman wearing a coat and a hand-knitted scarf despite the day's heat paused to say, "If you're looking for a peregrine falcon, there's a nest on the Wexler Building. Saw him snatch a pigeon right out of the air."
"Thank you, ma'am." Gray smiled. "We'll go there next."
"I'd have to be pretty hungry to eat a pigeon," she added as she shuffled on.
When the detective fumbled with the tripod, Gray tugged it out of his hands. The tripod was a government-issue Ml5. Gray pulled it open and locked the leg nuts, then withdrew the scope from its case. He attached the scope to the stand and removed the eyepiece cover and objective lens cover. The scope's lenses were coated with a hard film of magnesium fluoride to enhance light transmission. Bending over the eyepiece, he altered the focusing sleeve. Without looking up, he adjusted the azimuth with the screw clamps on the tripod shaft, and the elevating thumbscrew on the lens cradle.
He said, "If the sniper could see that telltale we might be able to see his firing site from here."
For twenty minutes Gray leaned over the scope, frequently looking up to relieve eyestrain. During that time Coates kept a running count of the passersby he chased away. "Eight palmers, six jackets, five prunes, and one mattress," meaning panhandlers, mental cases, senior citizens, and a hooker.