Manhattan Lockdown (11 page)

“Why don't you take a guess?”

“Don't tell me: Dr. Hauser?”

“It's his name on the form.”

“You must have video of Nasar leaving and once outside getting into a car or van with license plates.”

“The video ends when he leaves the lobby. For some damn reason the outside cameras were down.”

“When the fuck, Gina, are we going to catch a break?”

She went silent for several seconds, and Roland took two, not one, of the potent Vicodins. “The attacks,” she said, “have been getting less lethal. Whoever did the explosion at Wall and Broad had to know that few people, or none, would be there.”

Roland, who had studied the history of the city he loved, said, “I think you might be missing something. There's a symbolism in the attack there. That is the exact intersection where anarchists blew up a horse-drawn wagon in 1920. There were many people killed. Horses, too, it was still that era. The men who did it were never found. Not a single arrest. No punishment, no retribution. A devastating wound to the city and never any closure of the wound, except for the passage of years. Now nobody remembers it.”

“These guys can't be that smart,” Gina said. “They don't know history, they know the Koran, they know killing.”

“Is that so, Gina? So far they're much smarter than the president, Harlan Lazarus, the general, you and me are.”

“I'm not going to let anybody spook me,” she said.

“I'm not spooked, I'm worried. They seem to have mastered the art of doing terrible things at times and places of their own choosing.”

He realized he sounded petulant and angry. He didn't want to
lapse into those rare moments of rage and anger he had felt toward Harlan Lazarus and the general in the last twenty-four hours. “I'm sorry, Gina, I didn't mean to get testy.”

She waited. “Not a problem, Roland. The pressure is on, it's hard to prepare yourself for what things like this will make you feel and how you'll react. And especially for you.” She paused again. “Sarah was a beautiful lady.”

Somehow he had never expected Gina to say anything about Sarah. They had briefly met once or twice. They were worlds apart. “Thanks, Gina. I need to separate my pain and grief over her from my pain over what's happened to this city.”

“You have to take care of yourself, Roland. People were in a panic yesterday when there wasn't any word as to how you were and where you were. Have you had a doctor look at you today?”

“Not yet.”

“Make believe,” she said, “I'm your Italian mama. Go see the doctor.”

***

Roland Fortune sat quietly for several minutes after the call ended. He had no idea where Sarah's body was. Where had her purse with her license and credit cards been when the blasts tore the roof garden to pieces, or where had those vicious concussions of air and stone and dust blown the purse if she had been holding on to it? Without the purse to identify her, her body could have been taken anywhere, along with the other dead in and around the museum whose names were not yet known. So somewhere in the torn city, he thought, was the shattered body of the woman who just three hours before she died had passionately rose up over him in bed as she straddled him, her naked body absolutely perfect in
the dim early morning light in the colonial-era bedroom in Gracie Mansion.

A former choir boy at the decaying and now abandoned Church of Saint Andrew in the South Bronx, Roland Fortune kneeled on the floor next to his desk and recited, in the Latin he had learned at parochial school,
Pater noster, qui es in caelis; sanctificetur Nomen Tuum...

G
ABRIEL HAUSER WAS
on the stairwell as he left his apartment building to return to Mount Sinai when six men—four in combat-style uniforms and two in suits—blocked the way.

Gabriel said, “Can I help you?”

“Just get out of the way, sir.” Gabriel recognized one of the big blond men who had stood silently behind Detective McDonough three hours earlier in his apartment.

“I asked you what's going on.”

“I need you out of the way, sir.”

Gabriel stretched out his arms and touched both sides of the stairwell, blocking passage, knowing the gesture was futile, almost comical.

The group of big men didn't stop climbing the steps. As they continued, two of the men in uniform came forward, grabbing Gabriel by the knees and arms and lifting him back up the steps. Gabriel was strong and agile but realized these men were experts in the dark art of overpowering and controlling other people. They had the training of Navy SEALs or Army Special Forces.

As soon as they released their grip, the lead agent said, “Sir, if you do one more fucking thing, we will put you in cuffs and take you away to where nobody will ever find you.”

Gabriel didn't move as the bulky men passed by him to the door of his apartment. He heard one of them murmur, “The fucking faggot loved it when we grabbed him.”

Gabriel's rage made him shake.

Cam appeared in the doorway, impeccably neat as ever, his expression at first quizzical and somewhat annoyed, as if he expected to find boisterous teenage pranksters on the landing in front of the apartment. And then his expression changed to fear, a reaction that Gabriel had never witnessed.

The lead agent, who clearly believed no one would ever question his authority, said, “I need you to step aside, sir.”

Seeing the fear in Cam's face and knowing that as a teenager in the Deep South Cam had several times been beaten by local boys in pickup trucks, events that Cam later referred to as his “Matthew Shepard moments,” Gabriel lunged forward. The startled men didn't react at first. Even serious drug dealers when confronted by agents with weapons and search warrants tended to become docile. They were startled by a well-dressed doctor who vaulted toward them and pushed the lead agent in the back, making him stagger to the side. The man was momentarily startled and then he was furious, with deadly hatred in his eyes so much like the expression Gabriel had seen in Afghanistan from infantrymen suddenly under attack. “You fucking queer,” he shouted as he regained his footing. He reached beneath his jacket and his swift hand emerged with a pistol.

Cam was crying.

Gabriel feinted to his left, and the big man stumbled when he missed Gabriel's head as he swung toward it with the pistol in his hand.

Gabriel laughed at him in the second before two other men, suddenly recovered from the shock of Gabriel's resistance, tackled him. Under their weight, Gabriel fell to the floor. Strong hands flipped him over as other strong hands wrenched his arms behind his back and put plastic handcuffs, tightly, on his wrists. His face was pushed
to the floor. Then Gabriel heard Cam screaming, “Leave him alone, leave him alone.”

Gabriel also heard Oliver's barking escalate, wildly. He heard, too, one of the men grunt. “Fuckin' dog bit me.”

Another voice, authoritative and loud, said, “Shoot the fucker,” and a gun with a silencer fired, a thud. Oliver whimpered and wailed, obviously injured. Cam screamed. “Don't, please don't, what did you do? What did you do? Don't hurt him. He's just a dog.”

They spent an hour in the apartment, opening every drawer and door, scattering clothes out of Gabriel's and Cam's meticulously ordered closets. Even though Gabriel lay facedown in the hallway, he heard them say repeatedly to Cam, “Where's the damn bracelet? Where did he put it?”

Cam didn't answer. He sobbed continuously. Gabriel's mind was not fixed on the pain in his wrists and arms but on the image of his beloved partner who he was certain was on the floor trying to soothe Oliver, who sustained a constant whimper.

One of the men pulled back Gabriel's long hair and asked, “Where did you fucking put it?”

Gabriel said, vehemently, “Go fuck yourself, Jack.”

As the sound of the ransacking subsided and finally stopped, Gabriel heard one of the men speaking on his cell phone. “Not here, no sign of the thing, ma'am.” The man paused, listening. “Everywhere, we went through everything.” Another pause as the man listened and then said, “He attacked me. I want to bring him in, ma'am.” He listened again. “Not a problem, ma'am.”

Within seconds of the conversation's end, the handcuffs that had painfully bound up Gabriel were unlocked and he was jerked up to his feet. They left the building without him.

Gabriel ran into the apartment. Cam was on his knees next to Oliver. Always the instinctive surgeon, Gabriel touched every part
of the dog's body. There was a long bullet graze on Oliver's left side. Gabriel ran to the bathroom and retrieved the needles and thread he needed to stitch the still-bleeding wound. There was dried blood all over the dog's fur.

When he finished that, Oliver became quiet and looked at him with what Gabriel believed was a grateful gaze.

C
HARLIE BRANCATO, GINA
Carbone's first deputy commissioner, hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. Although he was considered Gina's male alter ego—he too was raised on Staten Island and had attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice at night while serving as a street cop just as Gina had—he led a different life. He was a party-goer, he loved fun, and he had legions of friends. He was an unabashed womanizer—handsome in the mold of a young Al Pacino, a weaver of stories, a generous man. People loved to be with him for a host of reasons. He had one of the most powerful law enforcement jobs in the country, he appeared to know every detail of the private and public life of the famous woman commissioner of the largest police force in the world, and he seemed closely connected to one of the most popular politicians in the country, Roland Fortune.

Charlie had been up so long because he was out at parties, bars, and after-hours clubs the entire Saturday night and Sunday morning before the first explosions. He had spent time during that long, festive night and morning at parties with Sylvester Stallone, Cheryl Tiegs, and even the party-loving, balding Salman Rushdie. He had intended to end his night and morning with a quick visit to Roland Fortune's birthday party on the roof garden of the Met, but a chance encounter with a young actress had taken him elsewhere.

Charlie knew many journalists, from hard-right, hard-bitten Andrea Peyser at the
Post
to foxy Maureen Dowd at the
Times
.
Journalists cultivated him and he cultivated them. Gina Carbone, somewhat reclusive but attuned to publicity and public relations, valued Charlie because he was able to handle reporters in a way that Gina herself couldn't. She valued him for other reasons as well. He was loyal to her, ruthlessly tough, and a coldly accurate evaluator of people and their motives and objectives. He was also a great cop.

Charlie had seen the byline of Raj Gandhi in the
New York Times
but had never met him or talked to him. He was a foreign correspondent who had recently been reassigned to cover city politics, and Gina had asked Charlie to open up contact with him. “Imagine that,” Charlie had said to Gina when they talked about the new reporter in town. “A Hindu covering the streets of New York. You don't see that all the time. We've come a long way from Jimmy Breslin.”

“Don't talk to anybody else that way, fella,” Gina had said, laughing. “Have you ever heard of political correctness?”

Over the last three hours Charlie's iPhone registered three calls and three text messages from Raj Gandhi. Each of the texts said it was urgent that Charlie call, and the texts and e-mails gave all of Raj's four numbers and his e-mail addresses. Charlie hadn't returned any of those messages, just as he had not yet responded to the dozens of other messages he had from journalists he knew far better than Raj Gandhi.

As he listened to Gina say into her cell phone, “No, leave him alone for now, the last thing I need is to arrest a doctor who people think is a fucking hero,” Charlie felt his own cell phone vibrate with the signal of yet another incoming text message. Charlie and the commissioner were in what they called the War Room at One Police Plaza in the drab, Soviet-style building near the East River and Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan. Gina's office and Charlie's adjoining office overlooked New York Harbor and
the century-old bridge. Overnight someone had suspended huge, bright American flags from the bridge, that patriotic display that had sprung up just after 9/11.

Charlie read the newest text message twice. He whispered, “The motherfucker.”

Gina could do a good street accent, often talking to Charlie as though they were in
Grease
. “You talkin' to me, buddy?”

Charlie was grave. “This guy is on to us.”

“Who?”

“Mahatma Gandhi.”

“Say again?”

“Gandhi, that new reporter at the
Times
.”

“He's on to what?”

“He wants to ask us questions about the eighteen or so men who were picked up yesterday in upper Manhattan and Queens. He claims to have information that they were all picked up in coordinated raids and that they are all in what he says is an ‘off-the-books' prison.”

Gina Carbone, suddenly and visibly angry, asked, “How does he know that?”

“Fuck if I know. It's in the text message he just sent.” He held up the cell phone so that the luminous screen shined in Gina's direction. As he did so, the elegant and miraculous instrument vibrated again with a new text message. Charlie read it and then said, “I'm going to throw this guy in the river.”

“What now? We'll talk about the river later.”

“You're not going to fucking believe this. It says he also wants to talk to you about Tony Garafalo.”

She felt a rush of anger-driven adrenaline. “Check the guy out.”

***

Rajiv Gandhi had long ago, as a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan, learned to deal with fear. You didn't ignore it because you couldn't; you didn't by an act of the will overcome it because you couldn't; and you didn't deny that you had it because there was no room for denial. At least in Raj Gandhi's case, you told yourself that fear, like all other emotions, shall pass, sometimes in an hour and sometimes in days.