In This Rain (30 page)

“Sucks.”

She said nothing, letting the silence stretch.

“Fuck this job,” he said. “Fuck it all. I tried to quit.”

“What do you mean, ‘tried’? How hard is quitting?”

“Word came down. ‘Guy on parole, don’t look so good, he quits a steady job. His case officer might not understand. We need you, Sonny. Stick around.’ ”

“Word from where?”

“Came through the new site super, guy they moved over from some other project after Statius got canned. But he says, from the top.”

“The top?”

“Fucking blackmail, making me stay. Cocksucker’s setting me up, I swear to God.”

“Who are we talking about, Sonny?” Ann kept her voice steady.

“Who the fuck you think we’re talking about? Fucking Walter Glybenhall! You believe that shit?”

“No, not really. Why would a man like Glybenhall bother with a litle worm like you?”

“Fuck!” O’Doul yanked open a desk drawer, spilling a landslide of papers. He rummaged, pulled something out and tossed it to her.

She caught it in the air and held it up to look: a gold chain dangling a diamond-studded K. “If this is a bribe, Sonny, it’s not really my taste. And the catch is broken.”

“You’re doing your goddamndest to make me sorry I called, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to make you sorry you ever lived. Right now I’ll settle for knowing what this is and why you think I care.”

“I found it.”

“Good for you. Where?”

“On the roof. Saturday morning. After the accident, where the bricks killed that lady.”

Ann lifted the chain. The K twirled slowly. “Go on.”

“Security has a whole list of emergency numbers, something goes wrong. I’m number two. I got here before Statius. It was me took the cops up to the roof, to show them where the bricks was supposed to be. They’re looking at this and that, I spot this thing in a corner, partly under some crap. I grabbed it up when no one was watching.”

“You thought it might be worth something.”

“If those are fucking diamonds, you bet it is.”

“I think they are,” Ann said, and smiled. “I think it’s extremely valuable. So why the change of heart?”

O’Doul threw the chain a sorrowful glance.

“Sonny?”

He shook his head. “Like I said, I tried to quit. Asshole Glybenhall won’t let me. Why the hell not? I start to wonder. I’m so important around here, Walter fucking Glybenhall can’t live without me? Like hell.”

“And?”

“You stupid, or you playing stupid? What, you think some one of these masons wears shit like that on the job, maybe he forgot it? I walked that roof the end of the day. Bricks up there should have held that tarp down through a fucking tornado.”

“Gee, Sonny, I’m still not getting it. Tell it to me in small words.”

“Jesus Christ! Someone was up there after I left!” He pointed at the chain. “Them hip-hop assholes wear this shit.”

“So do guys from Howard Beach.”

“Yeah, whatever. All I’m saying, someone went up and moved those fucking bricks. It’s night, it’s dark, wind’s blowing, you’re trying to get out of there before the rain starts, maybe you don’t notice you lost nothing. Maybe when you get home and figure it out, you think you’ll come back for it, say like the next night. Except the next morning you find out some lady got killed because of the damn bricks you moved, and suddenly, forget it.”

“I suppose it’s possible you’re right, Sonny. But even if you are, K doesn’t stand for ‘Glybenhall.’ ”

“Not him personally! Jesus, asshole probably never picked up a brick his whole life. I’m saying, these accidents are no goddamn accidents. Look, this is a clean job, union job, no trouble anywhere. Everyone’s happy as pigs in shit. I been at it from all angles, I can’t see anybody who’d be coming out ahead on crap like this. Except one guy. Fucking Walter Glybenhall. Because insurance pays off for accidents.”

“Very clear analysis of a complex situation, Sonny. But now explain why you called me? Instead of going to Glybenhall and trying to get yourself a piece of the action?”

“What, me blackmail Glybenhall? That’s a joke, right?”

“You’re right. He’s way out of your league.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake! That’s got nothing to do with it. What I’m saying, if you’re playing your insurance company, you need insurance, too. In case somebody tips to you. So you hire an ex-con out of the blue, and then don’t let him quit. Fuck, lady, you do the math.”

Sutton Place

“Ann Montgomery.”

“Inspector, this is Ford Corrington.”

“Mr. Corrington. I was about to call you. I think I can show you what you wanted to see.”

“And I’d like to talk to you. I’d appreciate your time this afternoon, you have an hour to spare.”

“How’s now? I’m in the car, I’ll head right down. Fifteen minutes?”

“I’ll be waiting, Inspector.”

*

“Hi, Luis.”

“Hey, Princess. I’m calling you back against my better judgment.”

“Luis, I have two boxes of ExtremeShock hollowpoints on Walter Glybenhall’s American Express Card.”

“Yeah, your message said. It’s legal ammo.”

“I have a forensic engineer who says the scaffold collapse and the falling bricks were both deliberate. Sabotage, Luis.”

“I’m losing you.”

“You wish. I have a gold chain with a K on it. K like ‘Kong.’ ”

“You do?”

“And I have a long conversation I just had with Ford Corrington to tell you about. I’m in Harlem. You want me to come up there, or you want to come down to me?”

“Greg? It’s Ann. I’m glad I caught you. I’m up in the Bronx with Luis Perez.”

“What the hell are you doing up there? I hope you’re dropping off your files and saying goodbye.”

“Luis and I need to meet with you, Greg. And I think Mark Shapiro ought to be there.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“The Three Star thing.”

“I told you to drop Three Star. You didn’t hear me? I can say it again.”

“It’s too big, Greg. It’s about to hit the fan. If we don’t take charge, we’ll be the ones covered in it.”

City Hall

Charlie Barr stared around his office, holding each pair of eyes before moving on. This was a trick he often used. It let people know he was serious. And it bought time.

This morning he was using it to do both, and also hoping that, with sufficient concentration, he could get one of these men to sprout horns or turn into a duck or do something else surreal enough for his theory and prayer— that this was a bad dream— to be borne out.

It wasn’t working, though. They just sat there and looked back at him. Shapiro and Lowry at least seemed sorry, Lowry even nervous, as though he was worried Charlie might forget they were just messengers. Don sat glowering as usual, but his heart wasn’t in it. Jen Eliot’s death was eating him. Well, Charlie could understand that. Don and the Eliot girl hadn’t dated very long, but it still had to be tough when a body you’d held in your arms gets raised from the river. When the cops brought the news yesterday, Charlie had suggested Don take a few days off. Or a day. Or ten minutes. But of course he hadn’t. And Charlie, sitting in this unthinkable meeting, was damn glad of it.

Briefly, Charlie entertained the notion that what they were discussing was so preposterous that the fact Shapiro had even brought it up proved this meeting was just a nightmare.

That didn’t work either.

So, with a sigh, he took one of the most bizarre steps of his political career. He began a rational discussion of arresting Walter Glybenhall for murder.

“You looked at it from all angles?” he asked Mark Shapiro. “You tried every possible way to make it mean something else?”

Shapiro nodded slowly. “Which doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Or, if it is, that we can prove it,” Greg Lowry said. “There are a couple of huge gaps. The gun, for one.”

“Mark?” said the mayor.

“That’s true. We don’t have the gun. But to look for it we’ll need a warrant. Once we get that I don’t think we can keep this out of the news.”

“No, you’re right,” Charlie agreed. “But that’s why your case had better be airtight.”

“It isn’t,” said Lowry. “It can’t be, without the gun.”

Shapiro said, “We may never get the gun.”

“Then what?” asked Charlie.

“Everything Montgomery has is circumstantial,” Lowry said. “We have no physical evidence. No paper trail.”

“Then why do we have to do this?”

“Mayor,” said Shapiro, “the point is, it may be circumstantial but it’s as strong as we have in ninety percent of the arrests we make. Either way, it’s a powder keg. If it was anybody else, we’d already have gotten a warrant for the gun. If we don’t at least go that far, if we don’t at least question Glybenhall, sooner or later the press will pick up on that.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“We’ll apologize. That’ll be easier than apologizing to the citizens for sweeping this under the rug.”

“You can’t,” Charlie said. “You can’t even think you can. Ah, shit. I don’t suppose we could call Walter off the record and ask him to turn over his gun for testing? If it’s not the one

”

Shapiro frowned and Lowry looked embarrassed. “Yeah,” said Charlie. “Dumb idea. Okay, run it down for me. What we have.”

“We have the forensic engineer’s statement on the scaffold bolts and on the bricks.”

“One of DOI’s people?”

“No, a guy named Sandy Weiss, at Packer Engineering. In Chicago. No axe to grind here.”

The mayor nodded and Shapiro went on. “We have statements from the two kids in Harlem— Armand Stubbs and Leonard Fisher: A-Dogg and Blowfish. And from the jeweler, about the chain found at the jobsite, that it was Kong’s. We have Glybenhall buying ExtremeShocks, and the range manager’s statement that they’re not Glybenhall’s usual load, and that he was paid to stonewall if anyone asked about them. And Corrington’s evidence on T. D. Tilden’s girlfriend’s statement. That’s hearsay but we can make Corrington produce her later if we need to. I thought you’d rather we didn’t lean on him now.”

“Good call.” Charlie nodded wearily.

“We have a doubling in the insurance coverage for Mott Haven four months ago, for no reason we can see.”

“It’s a dicey neighborhood?”

“The neighborhood’s the same as the day Three Star broke ground. If they need this level of coverage now, they needed it then. And they had no trouble out there until after they got it. Also, without being obvious about it, we’ve been looking at Glybenhall’s finances.”

“What’s ‘without being obvious’?”

“We’ve stuck to Mott Haven, which he offered us, and to the public record. But from what we can see, he looks to be short. A few bad decisions in the last few months. We can’t tell how deep it goes, but it fits together. Guy needs money, hires people to put together some accidents, scams his insurance company. Things go way bad. He has to get rid of anyone who knows it’s him.”

A breeze caught the blossoms on the chestnut tree outside the window. They bobbed and wove, like fighters sizing each other up. I know how you feel, Charlie thought.

“We’re just talking about a warrant, Mayor,” Shapiro said. “If we can’t find anything, that’s that. But if there is something and it comes out later that we never acted— ”

“No, you’re right. You’re right. I don’t want the press to say we dragged our feet. You talked to the DAs’ offices?”

“We haven’t talked to anyone yet. We wanted you to hear it first.”

“This would involve Manhattan and the Bronx both. Jesus, they’ll be fighting over it.”

“The crime we’re focusing on, because the case is potentially strongest, is the shooting of the gangbanger, Kong. That’s Manhattan.”

“Hal Levine’s a hundred and three. He was planning to retire when his term’s up,” the mayor said. “Lucky bastard, what a way to go out. Listen, don’t talk to Levine without the Bronx DA’s office there, too. Go for whichever case you think you can make, but keep Levine and Hernandez both in the loop. And make sure they know I told you to.”

“Whatever you say.”

“And the NYPD? Are they going to let you do it? Isn’t this a collar they want for themselves?”

“Oh, it is. And because it’s homicide it should by rights be theirs. But I figured if it had to be done you’d be happier if DOI did it. So you could salvage something in terms of public relations. I talked to the Chief of Department.”

“You named names?”

“No, sir. Gave him a hypothetical. NYPD’s willing to put it in the ‘owed’ column, pending the actual facts, of course, and if our spokes-people use language like ‘joint operation.’ ”

Charlie sat peering into his long-empty coffee cup. “All right. Do what you have to do.”

“I’m going to ask for simultaneous warrants in all jurisdictions. Glybenhall’s office, home, summer home— ”

“Do what you have to do,” Charlie repeated. “Do what you’d normally do. But do it quietly. If you need an official statement, ask Walter to come down at his convenience. Bring him in the back door.”

“We’ll do that, Mayor.”

Charlie gave up and stood. “All right. I’m going to keep my hands off. Christ, maybe I should consider a trip. Mongolia. Or Zanzibar. But obviously, keep in touch minute by minute.”

“Will do.”

“And Mark?”

“Sir?”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

Shapiro nodded, rising. “Part of our job.”

*

After Shapiro and Lowry left, Charlie turned to Don. “We’re fucked.”

“It’s bad,” Don agreed. He lit the cigarette he’d been rolling around in his fingers. “But it may not be fatal.”

“How can it not be?”

“You’ll distance.”

“Zanzibar, great.”

“You’ll deny having promised Glybenhall anything. In fact”— he waved the cigarette— “we’ll put it out that that’s why he did it. Because you wouldn’t promise him anything. So he had to find a way to make sure he got his hands on Block A however he could. We can even hint you were leaning toward Corrington. I’ll call Sue. That’s what we’ll have her say when the press starts calling for statements.”

“Off the record,” Charlie said.

“Naturally off the record. As though she shouldn’t be saying it, except whoever she’s talking to is her best buddy. Sue knows the drill. You’ll have to do a lot of repair work with Glybenhall’s friends. But on the plus side, we can spin this well in the black community. Corrington’s people will love it. This could work out all right. You can replace the Upper East Side money with Upper West Side money.”