The Night Falconer (23 page)

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to meet a plane at LaGuardia,” I said.

28

After a phone call explaining my situation to a sympathetic representative, the car rental company agreed to provide me with a new vehicle. A pale Chevy compact this time, but by now I didn’t care. I was just happy to be on the move, away from the precinct and everything that was going on down there.

I fell into a steady stream of cars crossing the Queensboro Bridge, took Queens Boulevard to the BQE, and headed up the Grand Central Parkway toward LaGuardia. Back across the river, the midmorning sun bathed the cityscape in gold. Another day in the great metropolis of smoke and commerce.

New York was never static. It was a constant stream of humanity flowing in and out, from anywhere and everywhere, like an ocean or a mountain forest after a fire, forever renewing itself from the ruins. That was something the 9/11 terrorists hadn’t counted on. Was it happening again in the prefab woods of Central Park after dark? Nicole was finding out.

I found a space in the garage across from the terminals and walked across to meet the plane. Nothing else mattered right now until I got her back.

Jake Toronto’s flight was on time, a little early in fact. I caught up with him at the counter in baggage claim where he was discussing the need to have a thorough inspection of his checked-through weaponry with an anxious looking airline agent and a TSA Security Officer.

Jake looked stronger and definitely more ready for action than when he’d showed up back on my doorstep ten days before. His time overseas had taken a toll on him—that much was clear—but his eyes still blazed with the same certainty that caused others to take notice and step aside.

I walked up and bear hugged him, clapping him on the back.

“About time you got here,” he said. “Would you please explain to these people who I am and what I am not.”

I handed over my ID and did my best, and eventually it did some good. The agent released Toronto’s two big shipping containers into his custody and the TSA agent cleared out to watchdog duty somewhere else.

“How are you holding up?” Toronto asked in the car a few minutes later.

“Not so good,” I said. “No sleep. I didn’t think having something like this happen to Nicole would put me over the edge, but maybe it has.”

He nodded. “Hey, you’re human.”

“Right.”

“You got a plan?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He crossed his arms and leaned his head against the car window, closing his eyes.

“Speaking of sleep, how much have you had?”

“An hour just now on the plane. I had a lot of prep to do once I got your call.”

I glanced at his weathered fatigue pants and battered leather jacket, the new lines that had begun to gather on his face. “It’s good to have you back in the saddle, buddy.”

“Feels good to be back.”

We drove on in silence for a few minutes.

In the middle of the bridge on the way back into Manhattan he blurted, “So I hear we may be tangling with some remnants of Sudanese militias.”

“What? You just got here,” I said. “How do you know that?”

He opened his eyes and sat up straight again. “After I talked to you, I made a couple of phone calls.”

“At three in the morning?”

He shrugged. “No one you’d know, trust me. But these people are connected to the street, especially in Harlem and around the north end of the park.”

“Yeah, well maybe you’d better pass on this info to the NYPD.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll find out soon enough, if they haven’t already.”

“No one said anything in the meeting at the precinct I just came from.”

He shrugged. “You know how it goes in the belly of the beast.”

“By the time they figure how they really want to attack this thing, it could be game over.”

“So how do you plan to go after these people?”

“Two pronged approach,” I said. “First, we sit on Watisi.”

“Okay. He dirty?”

“Somehow. He’s definitely connected. The cops have figured that out by now too. Problem is, he’s lawyered up and it’s going to take them too long to shake anything loose from him.”

“Sure.”

I looked at my watch. “He’s probably still being questioned at the station house in Central Park with his attorney. My guess is they’re going to have to let him go.”

“Which is when we’ll move in for another round of questioning.”

“Yes, but we’ll need to be careful. NYPD will have someone keeping tabs on him.”

“A discreet round of questioning then,” Toronto said.

* * * * *

Stepping out of the precinct in Central Park, Dominic Watisi was accompanied by his attorney, a fat middle-aged gentleman with sagging cheeks, a receding hairline, and a two thousand dollar suit. They crossed the roadway to a parking lot where a dark blue limousine waited.

Through the binoculars I was able to pick out the NYPD surveillance too. A guy sporting a full beard, muscle t-shirt, and a backpack was climbing onto a bicycle and either speaking softly to the other side of his schizophrenic personality or into a hidden microphone that went along with the earpiece he was wearing.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re on the move.”

I fired up the Chevy, which we’d managed to tuck between a panel van and a city maintenance vehicle on the far side of the lot. Toronto stirred from another nap.

“All right then,” he said. “Let’s do it.” Not a moment’s hesitation in his voice, as if he’d been sleeping with one eye open.

“We’ve got a bicyclist on observation, probably in touch with a mobile unit a block or two away.”

“Goodie.”

“I’ll stay well back of them. The Limo should be easy enough to pick out. Probably headed back uptown to Watisi’s office anyway. Once we get the indication they’re headed that way, we’ll cut across 125
^th
Street and try to beat them there.”

“How do we get out without being seen after we talk to him?”

“Somehow,” I said.

“Good plan,” he said.

It worked out almost as well as I had hoped. The limo was indeed headed back to Watisi’s office and with a little fancy maneuvering we managed to arrive there, stash the car semi-legally between a dumpster and a blocked off section of street construction, and slip into the office reception area before the boss returned. A secretary, not Watisi’s wife, looked up at us as we walked in.

“May I help you gentlemen?”

She was younger, about Nicole’s age, brown skin, a diamond stud earring protruding garishly but not entirely unattractively from one side of her petite nose. I flashed my VA Investigator ID, hoping she wouldn’t take the time to examine it, which she didn’t.

“Internal Revenue,” I said. “We’re here to see Mr. Watisi.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, but he isn’t in at the moment.”

“But he’s expected back soon.”

“I don’t know, I?”

“We’ll just wait in his office. We’ve been here before. His wife knows us.”

“She does? Maybe that’s okay then, although I’m not sure?”

“Listen, he’s going to be here any minute with his lawyer. We just talked with them on the phone. They told us to wait inside and help ourselves to the club soda.”

“Club soda?”

“Federal agents, miss. No drinking on the job.”

“Okay.”

If she said anything else, I didn’t hear it because Toronto and I had already slipped through the door down the hall and into Watisi’s office.

“Man with the clipboard,” Toronto said.

“What’s that?” I was busy making sure the door stayed closed behind us.

“Man with the clipboard. They say if you carry a clipboard, especially if you’re Caucasian and look official enough, you can walk into almost any warehouse in America. You just demonstrated it again. I wonder what the federal prison term is for impersonating an IRS agent?”

“We haven’t got much time.” I took a look around. Everything was the same as I remembered it. “You think our kingpin developer keeps anything important in his office, like financial records or anything that might of help to us?”

Toronto was scanning the room too. “Best bet’s the laptop,” he said.

There was a black laptop computer perched on the developer’s desk, its screen propped open but dark. I followed Toronto over to it.

“Probably in sleep mode,” he said. He punched a couple of keys and the machine flickered to life.

“I’ll watch the door,” I said.

“What am I looking for?”

“Easy. Anything marked illegal employees, racketeering, extortion?that sort of thing,” I said, slipping back to the closed door and putting my ear up to wood.

“You are not a funny man.”

“It’s either that or lose it completely,” I said.

He simply nodded.

The hallway was clear. The secretary must have gone back to her work. Either that or went to call for help.

Toronto worked the laptop, searching. After three or four minutes of admiring the rest of Watisi’s office, I said, “Anything?”

“Maybe. We have a printer in here?”

I spotted one on the side table behind the desk.

“There.” I pointed.

Toronto spun around in his chair and stood to lean over and pull a cable out from behind the printer. He snaked it across to the laptop and plugged it into the back of the computer. Turned it on and it began to spit out the pages.

“Just need one more minute.”

I kept my ear to the door, straining to hear any sound. “That may be all we’re going to get.”

When Dominic Watisi burst into the room exactly two and a half minutes later, with his storm troopers and attorney in tow, Toronto and I had already taken up stations on the couch in the seating area across from the desk. We acted as though were making casual conversation and had been waiting there all along.

The laptop, printer, and cable, of course, had been set back in their original position. And unless Watisi was into fingerprinting on the spot or counting the number of blank sheets in his printer tray, we were going to be okay. The summary list of each of the companies in which he had an interest rested securely in my jacket pocket.

“You again.” Watisi’s eyes grew small and hard upon seeing me there. “What kind of ruse are
you
trying to pull with my secretary?”

“Really sorry about that,” I said. “We had to get into the building quickly. Didn’t want to run the risk of being seen.”

“Seen? Seen by whom?”

“Who do you think? NYPD’s keeping tabs on you.”

“This is unacceptable,” the lawyer said to his client.

“Mr. Watisi. We can take care of this.” The security team this time included my old friend flanked by another young cretin, who looked equally narrow-eyed and hungry. Both had flinched and held back at the first sight of Toronto, but they seemed to have recovered from their initial trepidation.

“A horse that can’t wait to leave the gate usually runs out of gas before the finish,” Toronto said, staring at the security types but not stirring from his seat on the couch.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Watisi held out his arm for the two bodyguards to back down.

“Who are these men?” the attorney asked.

“One of them,” he said, indicating me, “is a private detective. The other one, I’m not so sure.” He cast a curious eye on Toronto.

“Private detective? Did you hire him, Dominic?”

“No. He’s the one whose daughter is missing. They’re working with the other investigator, the woman who was shot.”

“Is he the one who broke in to your estate up in Westchester?”

Watisi looked at me.

I shrugged.

The lawyer’s eyes lasered into mine as he put on his game face. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave these premises immediately. We’ll be asking the police to file criminal charges against—”

Watisi held up his hand again. “It’s all right, Harry. I believe we can deal with these men.” He looked at me. “In fact, Mr. Pavlicek, I think you and I may have something in common.”

“Oh?” I said. “What’s that?”

The developer had been standing in the doorway with Harry, but now walked over and took the seat behind his big desk. We were about fifteen away from him. He motioned for his attorney to join us in one of the chairs in the sitting area. “We’re both missing something,” he said.

“Well what do you know? But no fair, you already have a handle on my dilemma.”

“Exactly. Children are the rarest of jewels.”

This guy was either as full of hot air as a political spin doctor or up to something.

“You must know something about my daughter’s disappearance then.”

He shrugged and held up his hand again. “I wish I did. That might make all of our tasks a little easier.”

The admission appeared genuine. I glanced at Toronto to see if he concurred, but my old buddy seemed to be more interested in picking something out from under his fingernail at the moment.

Watisi followed my gaze and glanced again at Toronto.

“But we all haven’t been introduced. This is my lawyer, Harry Smith,” he said, indicating the balding man who now sat rigidly still opposite us. “And your new friend is?”

“Jake Toronto. He’s my former partner.”

“I see.” He looked at Toronto. “And just what is it you do now, Mr. Toronto?”

Toronto looked up and bore into him with a slight smile. “I work for my friends,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Of course. Let’s hope we can all be friends,” Watisi said.

“Just what exactly are you missing, Mr. Watisi?” I asked.

“Something not so precious as your daughter, Mr. Pavlicek. But something rare, and precious nonetheless. A Book.”

I stared at him for a moment. “Book of the Mews,” I said.

Toronto looked interested all of a sudden. “Say what?”

Watisi’s face broke into a smile of admiration. “You’re a thorough investigator.”

“Actually you can chalk that one up to my daughter,” I said.

“But you do know of this book.”

“You bought it in a private sale a few years ago from a dealer here in Manhattan.”

“Very good.”

“Let’s cut the crap here. What are you really hiding?” I said.