In This Rain (26 page)

“Mine either, Luis.”

“Yeah, but where you are the girl cops are prettier and you don’t get shot at. Why do you want the ballistics?”

“I want to play mix and match.”

“You have a gun?”

“No, but I know someone who does.”

“Who?”

“Later. When you call with the report.”

“Hey— !”

Ann switched the phone off and cruised downtown.

*

Eve Rudin still sat at her desk in Joe’s corner, leaning over paperwork. She looked as if she hadn’t moved all day. That was her way: the phone, the computer, almost never the field. Ann had once expressed to Joe the hope that Eve at least had a wild after-hours life, stiletto heels and micro-dresses, clubs and raves and private parties in bar lounges with no street signs. Joe had shaken his head without looking up from the report he was reading. “Three ex-husbands,” he’d said. “All cops.”

Ann hung her coat up and peeled the top off her latte. She took out her directory, ran her finger down the NYPD page, found the number of the License Division. There’d be a rigamarole: her ID, their call back on her office phone to make sure she was legit. It was irritating, and Perez could get it done faster, but she didn’t want Perez involved until she was sure she was right.

She was about to dial the number but her message light was blinking so she checked that first. Only one call, but interesting enough to move the NYPD License Bureau to the back burner.

“This is Lieutenant van Drost.” The call had come in half an hour earlier, and the Curaçao cop sounded as relaxed as he had that morning. In New York, cops— and DOI inspectors— usually snarled and snapped as the day wound down, even if they’d started out upbeat. Maybe she should consider relocating. “I had Mike Statius picked up,” van Drost’s voice told her, “but he’s gotten a cell phone so I let him go. He promised to answer if you call him. He says he has nothing to hide and he’s happy to talk.”

Van Drost recited the number twice. Ann took it down thinking, Sure he doesn’t, and of course he is.

She punched in the country code and Statius’s number, expecting a message telling her to call back sometime in the next century. Sipping her latte, she was taken by surprise when a live voice said, “Hello?” and waited for a response.

“Hello? Mike Statius?” Ann put the coffee down. “Can you hear me?”

“Very well. This is the police in New York?”

“Inspector Ann Montgomery, DOI. How do you know?”

“This is a brand-new phone, no one has the number. Lieutenant van Drost said he would give it to you. And this call is from New York. The phone tells me that.” His voice was deep and rich, his accent West Indies, not as Dutch as van Drost’s but without the French overlay of, say, Trinidad.

“Mr. Statius,” she said, “I want to talk about the accidents at Mott Haven.”

“Yes, I know. Please believe me, I had nothing to do with them.”

“If that’s true, why did you leave the country the day after the last one? The fatal one?”

“I had not seen my family in nearly a year. I was given a ticket and a month’s pay. And my conscience was clear.”

“A ticket and a month’s pay? From Three Star?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Didn’t that seem strange to you?”

“Strange?” He laughed, a hearty sound. “Ma’am, no, it did not. It seemed very clear they wanted you to have difficulty in getting in touch with me.”

“Why?”

“Most likely, to imply those accidents were my fault.”

“They’ve more or less stated as much. That you were incompetent, now you’ve been replaced, end of story.”

“I am not surprised.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“Yes, it does. I do not want it thought I am associated with these troubles. For that reason I acquired a cell phone, as there is no telephone at my family home.”

“But you didn’t call me.”

“No, ma’am. I thought perhaps the authorities could clear the matter up without my involvement.”

“Well, we haven’t been able to.”

“I am sorry about that. But you must see that when a large and powerful firm like Three Star orders me out of the country, and pays me handsomely for obeying orders, I must consider that there is more at stake than I am aware of. I have made it simple for you to find me. But I thought it not my place to come to you.”

“You were afraid?”

“I have five children, Inspector Montgomery. Site super work in the U.S. pays quite well. In Curaçao, at this time, there is no such work.”

“But you’re speaking to me now.”

“I would have been quite mad to turn down a ticket home and a month’s salary. And what point would there have been to my remaining in New York? Certainly, I would not have gotten more work as a result; the building world is a small place. But this island is also a small place. If Lieutenant van Drost suggests to a man that he make himself available to the New York police, everyone will know if he does or if he doesn’t. Thus no one, not even a large New York firm, can fault him for answering his phone.”

“I see,” said Ann. “All right, tell me this: Why do you say these incidents aren’t your responsibility? Isn’t everything that happens on a job site the responsibility of the site super?”

“Of course. This is why I was fired. If you yourself, Inspector, made a serious error in your work— an error costing lives— or if you were to indulge in criminal behavior, would your supervisor not be forced to resign? And yet, who could say any fault was truly his?”

“Criminal behavior?”

“A possibility only. But I tell you this: our safety record at Mott Haven was quite good, until the day one of my assistant supers was replaced with Mr. Sonny O’Doul.”

“You think O’Doul’s responsible for what’s been going on?”

“I don’t like to accuse any man. But Mr. O’Doul caused me to wonder.”

“To wonder what?”

“He is not a pleasant man. And he is greedy. The kind of man who will eat two doughnuts from the box someone else has brought, and then take the last one to his desk, in case he should want it later. I’ve worked with many men like this. Rarely do they offer to make your final inspection round on a Friday afternoon.”

“And Mr. O’Doul did? That Friday? The night the storm came up and Harriet Winston died?”

“He said he was waiting for a late delivery, and that he would walk the site for me at the end of the day. Greedy and unpleasant, Inspector, but competent. I had strained my back and thought perhaps he had a talent for sympathy I had not seen before. I took his offer.”

“So you never saw the bricks on the roof Friday?”

“No, I did not. I do not know if Mr. O’Doul did, either. Perhaps he never made the inspection.”

“Perhaps not.” Why would you, if you knew a kid from Harlem was on his way uptown to remove half of them? “Did O’Doul often work late?”

“It was necessary for the responsibilities of his position. For deliveries. Unless he has been fired also, I think you’ll find he still does.”

*

Ann finished her coffee, now cool, as she slogged through the NYPD License Division’s process. After verifying her identity and legitimate need, it didn’t take all that long, just a few minutes of bland Muzak before she learned that Ford Corrington had no gun license. And that Walter Glybenhall had, for a Wilson Combat custom-built .45 semiautomatic.

“Either you’re surfing the Chippendales website or your case is going well.” Greg Lowry, fresh from some meeting— he was wearing a jacket and tie— rapped her desk with his knuckles as he passed by. “Can I have a report?”

“Sure. They have a new blond hunk with a thong— ”

“Ann?”

“Yes, boss. Your office?”

“Good idea.”

Ann got up and followed Lowry across the room.

“You’re grinning like a banshee because you’ve found irrefutable proof that some random madman is sabotaging the Mott Haven site and Walter Glybenhall is a choirboy.” Lowry dropped into his chair and thudded his feet onto his battered metal desk. “Right?”

“Why would that make me happy?”

“Because it would make the mayor happy. Which should be enough to have all loyal municipal servants jumping for joy.”

“So try me for treason.”

Lowry asked, in the voice of a man who already knew the answer, “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“No,” she replied. “But I love it.”

She gave Lowry a complete report. All during it he stared at the ceiling. “I so do not like it,” he said when she was done. “And,” he pointed out, “it’s circumstantial. Even the case against Corrington would be circumstantial, but it would be better.”

“It wouldn’t be better. You’d just be happier if it were Corrington.”

“It would be a hell of a political hot potato, if it was him. But it’s far worse if Glybenhall had anything to do with it. Jesus, Ann, I can’t believe this.”

“For God’s sake, Greg! You were IG at Sanitation eleven years. You never ran into rich guys with feet of shit?”

“In the garbage business, they wear pinky rings and their names end in vowels. And the mayor doesn’t sail to Bimini on their yachts.” He sat tapping a pencil on his desk. “If you’re right, here’s one way to look at it: it turns into a simple homicide. Civilian comes down from his penthouse, has business with a couple of civilians in the gutter. Things go bad, people die, but no one in city government’s involved.” He nodded, face brightening. “Not our problem. You can drop it all on Perez and— who was that other guy, at the two-eight?”

“Tom Underhill. And no way, Greg.”

“Ann— ”

“Corruption, Greg. That’s our job. If Harriet Winston died because of a dirty deal Glybenhall has with the mayor— ”

“No! Fuck, no, we are not going down that road.”

“Greg? Perez is a good cop. A pain, but a real good cop.” There, Luis, an early installment. “If you take me off this he’ll be all over it. And the NYPD’s a lot more heavy-handed than I am.”

Lowry shook his head. “Mark Shapiro will have a cow.”

“Look: if Charlie Barr’s smart, nothing’s on the record. I go in surgically, wrap up Glybenhall— if it’s him, if it’s him— and whatever Glybenhall says about Charlie during the froth-at-the-mouth stage, Hizzoner can deny. He can admit to being too trusting, to being taken advantage of by a snake in the grass. He can say how hurt he is to find he’s been used that way. Voters love that teary stuff. He’ll probably gain in the polls. But if it’s Perez, the whole thing’ll fly out of control. They can’t control spin at the NYPD, you know they can’t. Right now Perez isn’t spending a lot of time on this because he’s not convinced Harriet Winston’s death is a homicide. Tom Underhill has no idea yet his dead gangbangers are even connected to this.”

“You don’t either. It’s all conjecture.”

“So let me find out! I’ll be subtle. I’ll keep them— Perez and Underhill— at arm’s length. Until I really have something.”

“And if you never do?”

“On Glybenhall? Then I’ll find you your random madman and everyone’ll be happy.”

A long silence, Lowry staring at his pencil as though it might suddenly start to move, spirit-writing an answer for him.

“No,” he finally said. “No. It’s way beyond our mandate. If no one at Buildings is dirty, we wash our hands of this investigation.”

“You told me the mayor said ‘think outside the box.’ ”

“From where you want to go you can’t even see the box.”

“You can’t just ignore this! A woman died!”

“I’m not ignoring it. I’m telling you to give it to the NYPD. From this moment. I’ll instruct reception to direct all inquiries over there. Our jurisdiction— ”

“Corruption in construction! This— ”

“No, I said!” He swung his feet off the desk and faced her straight on. “Look: one of the reasons I put you on this was so you could prove yourself. I want you back, Ann, not out in Bay Ridge. You’d figured that out, right?”

“No. I thought it was because you saw this as a sacrificial position and you didn’t want to lose Dennis.”

“Dennis? You’re kidding. Dennis is good but he’s not half the investigator you are. Your exile was political and I thought it was a waste from the day I got here. This was my chance to get you back. We have work coming up— ”

“The multiagency task force. Industry-wide. You told me.”

“Damn right. There’s going to be a lot of pressure on me behind that and I want top people. What you’ve already done on this proves I was right about you, but one slip when it’s someone like Glybenhall and you’re done, Ann. Finito forever. You screw up like that, I won’t be able to help you. And I won’t try.” He gave her a long look. “Please. Just give it to Perez, let the NYPD see where they can take it. We have other things to do.”

*

When Ann got home, she took the Boxster from the garage and told herself she just needed a little air to clear her head.

Why anyone looking for a little air would choose to sit in rush-hour traffic on the FDR, the Deegan, and the Tappan Zee was a question she wouldn’t have been able to answer, but luckily she didn’t hear herself ask it. Finally released to the soaring freedom of the Thruway, she lowered the top and raced north in the soft purple evening.

Heart’s Content

Headlights swept his wall, bounced to a stop, and cut off. Never before, a car in his driveway at this hour; never since he’d gotten out of prison, this once-familiar swell of adrenaline and dread.

And never anticipated, this surprise of shock and longing as Ann’s tangled hair, unbuttoned coat, and long-legged stride neared his open door.

“Expecting someone? You didn’t even give me a chance to knock.” She stopped in the dust of the yard.

“No. No one. No one comes here.”

“I do.”

The breeze and the scent of pine needles wandered together through the silence.

He realized she’d made no move to enter. Ann, waiting for an invitation. “What do you want?”

When she didn’t answer, he stood aside; when he stood aside, she stepped past him into the darkened room.

“I wanted to fill you in.” She spoke without facing him. “Tell you what’s happening.”

“You could have called.” He closed the door.

“Joe

”

This would be the time to snap on the light, open a beer, walk away. This would be the time to tell her to leave.