Alert: (Michael Bennett 8) (4 page)

THE FORTY-FOOT-LONG
utility truck called a Supervac gave off a low grumble as it weaved slowly through the Broadway traffic in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights around noon.

The size and appearance of a high-tech garbage truck, with a huge hose attached to one side, the fifty-thousand-pound industrial vehicle was used to clean manholes and construction sites. Fully loaded, it was tricky to maneuver in the congested city traffic, especially in terms of braking, which was why the driver was keeping it at a slow and steady twenty-five miles per hour.

The truck itself was about ten years old and on its last legs from wear and use. The newest thing about it was the fake decal on its cab door that said it was from Con Edison, the New York City–area gas and electric company.

The driver was a doughy, vaguely Italian-looking guy in his forties wearing a blue Con Ed hard hat with matching baggy blue Con Ed coveralls. The con was definitely on, he thought, raising his stubbled jowls with a quick grin.

Then, as the truck finally approached its destination at the southeast corner of bustling 168th Street, he suddenly pointed ahead through the windshield.

“Uh-oh. Problem, Mr. Joyce,” he said to the man in the passenger seat beside him. “There’s a cop car parked right over our manhole. What do I do? Keep going?”

Mr. Joyce glanced up from the cluttered clipboard in his lap. Like the driver, he also wore bogus baggy Con Ed–blue coveralls and a matching hard hat. With the Oakley Sport sunglasses he wore under his hard hat, all you could tell about him was that he was pale and had a dark, reddish-brown goatee.

“Of course not. We’re on a tight schedule, Tony. Just pull alongside,” Mr. Joyce said calmly.

“Pull alongside?” the driver, Tony, said nervously. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just come back a little later? It’s the cops!”

“Listen to orders, Tony. Just pull alongside and let me handle it,” Mr. Joyce said as he rolled down his window.

There was only one cop in the cruiser. He was a lanky middle-aged black officer, and he looked up none too happily as Mr. Joyce gave him a friendly wave from the truck window. The cop had his hat off and a sandwich unwrapped in his lap.

“Sorry to bother you, Officer, but you’re parked over a manhole we need to gain access to,” Mr. Joyce explained, trying to make his voice sound as American as possible.

“Gimme a break, would you?” the cop said, flicking some five-dollar-foot-long lettuce off his chin. “Why don’t you go and take a nap somewhere for half an hour? When you come back, I’ll be gone.”

“I wish I could, Officer, honestly. But this one’s a real red ball. Apparently there’s some kind of power problem at the hospital,” said Mr. Joyce as he gestured at the multibuilding NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center complex across Broadway.

The cop gave him a savage look, mumbling something about red and balls, as he lowered his lunch and finally pulled out.

After Mr. Joyce hopped out of the cab, it took them less than a minute to maneuver the massive truck into position. As Tony got the manhole open with the hook, Mr. Joyce removed a blueprint from his clipboard and knelt with Tony at the rim of the hole.

“Start jackhammering right there,” he said, pointing into the manhole, a little left of the center of its south wall. “Should be about six feet in. It’ll look like square aluminum ducting, the same you would see in an HVAC system. Text me immediately when you see it. Oh, and watch those electrical cables at your back while you’re working, if you don’t wish to get fried. Half of them are uninsulated, and all of them are quite live.”

“You got it, Mr. Joyce. I’m, uh…on it,” said Tony, repeating an advertising expression that Con Edison had used in their commercials a few years before.

“This is no time for joking, Tony. Just get to work,” Mr. Joyce said.

WHEN MR. JOYCE
got to his feet, the other Supervac truck they had stolen was just pulling up to the curb. His partner, Mr. Beckett, climbed down from the cab in the baggy nondescript Con Ed getup with sunglasses. He could almost have been Mr. Joyce’s double, except his goatee was jackrabbit white instead of reddish-brown.

Without speaking, both men crossed the sidewalk and descended the steps into the 168th Street subway station. MetroCarding through the turnstile, they bypassed a sign directing them to the A train and found the concrete corridor for the number 1 line elevator.

“This station is one of the deepest in the entire system, Mr. Beckett,” Mr. Joyce said as they stepped off the elevator onto the bridge that connects the uptown and downtown sides of the massive arched number 1 line’s underground station. “We’re presently ten stories below street level.”

Mr. Beckett nodded. He was pleased with his partner’s automatic use of their code names now that they were finally operational. All the exhaustive lessons he’d given his young partner about tradecraft had definitely sunk in.

“Why does it say ‘IRT’ here while upstairs, on the A line, it says ‘IND’? What do the initials mean?” Mr. Beckett wanted to know.

“It doesn’t matter for our purposes,” Mr. Joyce said, frowning. “You will find it boring.”

“No, I won’t. I promise. We have time to kill before that fool Tony gets to the air shaft. I’m curious. You don’t think I enjoy your little history lessons, Mr. Joyce, but I actually do.”

Mr. Beckett was right. Science was Mr. Joyce’s forte, but history was his true passion. Since he had arrived in the country years before, he had found the history of America, and especially New York City, surprisingly rich and fascinating. He was looking forward to delving into it more deeply at his leisure once all was said and done.

Especially, he thought, since he was about to make a great deal of the city’s history himself in the coming days.

“The abbreviations actually mean nothing anymore,” Mr. Joyce explained. “They’re just old subway nomenclature, remnants of the time when the city subway system was divided into lines run by separate companies instead of the current unified Metropolitan Transportation Authority. IRT stands for Inter-borough Rapid Transit, while IND stands for a company called the Independent Subway System. You may have noticed the abbreviation BMT on other lines, which stands for the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation. I could go into detail about the three lines and how they fit into the subway system’s famous color-coded numerical and alphabetical signage if you wish.”

“No, that’s okay. I need to stay awake,” Mr. Beckett said and laughed.

“I told you that you would find it boring,” Mr. Joyce replied with a sigh.

“On that, as on most things,” Mr. Beckett said as he clapped his protégé playfully on the shoulder, “you were annoyingly correct, my friend. How does it finally feel to be out of the lab and into the field?”

Mr. Joyce watched as a pigeon suddenly flapped out and down from a tunnel ledge above them and started pecking at some garbage between the uptown rails. Then he shrugged.

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t feel. I think.”

Mr. Beckett smiled widely.

“That is why you are so valuable. Now, give me damage estimates again in tangible human terms.”

“At the minimum, we’re looking at massive damage to the tunnel, shutting down service for months, and obviously terrifying this city like nothing since nine eleven.”

“And at the maximum?” said Mr. Beckett, hope in his bright-blue eyes behind the shades.

Mr. Joyce folded his hands together as he closed his eyes. Mr. Beckett thought he looked almost Asian for a moment, like a pale, goateed Buddha.

“We collapse a dozen city blocks, destroying the hospital complex, much of Washington Heights, and killing thousands,” Mr. Joyce finally said.

Mr. Beckett nodded at this pensively.

“And we go when, again?” he said.

“Tomorrow night.”

“So many decisions,” Mr. Beckett said, gazing north as a downtown-bound 1 train pulled, clattering, into the station. “So very little time.”

“DAD, DO I
really have to wear this?”

Sunday morning around ten thirty, I waited until I heard the question repeated two more times before I looked up from an open old tin of black Kiwi shoe polish that I was using to teach Eddie how to shine his shoes.

The question was posed by Jane, who stood there in her lavender flower-print Easter dress. Her Easter dress from the previous year. Considering she’d grown about two inches in the meantime, she looked a little like Alice in Wonderland, suddenly enormous after consuming the “eat me” cake—or was it the “drink me” drink?

“It is a tad formal, I guess,” I said as I buffed at Eddie’s school shoes, “and, um, weird-fitting.”

“Gee, Dad. That’s really what a girl wants to hear. ‘What a weird-fitting dress you’re wearing.’ You really know how to pay a compliment.”

“Give me a break, Jane, will you, please? I’m up to my neck here. Do you have another nice dress?”

“Um, no. Mary Catherine was supposed to take all us girls shopping before she left, remember? Or maybe you forgot. Like the way you forgot to bring Mary Catherine home.”

I winced. I probably deserved that one. In fact, I knew I did. The fact that Mary Catherine hadn’t come home with me was still stinging to everyone. To me most of all.

“Figure it out, Jane, okay? Please? You can wear jeans, I guess, if they’re nice. We have to look really good, remember? That’s the point here. That’s the theme. Sweet and presentable and appropriate, okay?”

“Hey, everyone! Dad said we can wear jeans!” Jane shouted as she took off down the hallway.

“Dad, can I borrow your razor?” someone else asked a minute later.

This new query came from a groggy-looking Brian, still in his pj’s. I looked at his smooth, pale, sixteen-year-old cheeks. There was no hair to speak of. I didn’t say this, of course. Not passing on my observation was a no-brainer. Dad 101. Maybe his eyesight was better than mine. Make that definitely.

“In my medicine cabinet,” I said. “But hurry up. Please. We need to do this for Seamus. We need to pull together, or we’re all going to be late.”

Ten minutes later, I had everyone ready and gathered in the living room. Jane had actually found another dress and was looking quite spiffy, as was everyone else. Even I was wearing a tie for the special occasion. Everyone was present and accounted for except Seamus and Ricky and Juliana.

Which reminds me, I thought as I checked my watch. I nodded to Fiona, and at my signal she hit the stereo as the clock struck eleven precisely.

The door to the back bedroom opened just as the first strains of “Immaculate Mary” filled the room. Out the door came Juliana, holding a bookmarked Bible, followed by Ricky, wearing his altar-boy robe and holding a lit candle, then lastly, Seamus, wearing a surplice and clasping his hands in prayer.

As they arrived at the front of the room, I elbowed a daydreaming Trent to up the volume or, better yet, actually start singing from the lyric sheet I had printed out.

Since Seamus needed to take it easy after his stroke, I’d decided to turn the apartment into Saint Bennett’s Cathedral this Sunday and do Mass at home. He seemed to be fine enough since we brought him home, but I was still quite worried about him, of course. Not having Mary Catherine here to help me keep an eye on him, I decided to err on the side of caution.

The good news was that Gramps really seemed blown away when he saw the furniture rearranged in the living room and all the kids in their Sunday best.

“Good morning, parishioners,” he said, winking, as he stood smiling at the front of the room.

“Good morning, Father,” everyone said, smiling back.

Seamus stood there, then suddenly brought a finger to his open mouth as a vacant look glazed his eyes.

“Now, what’s next?” he said, looking down at the carpet, confused.

“Seamus?” I said as I stepped forward.

“Psych!” he said to me, snapping out of it after another moment as everyone laughed.

“Don’t worry: I’m not ready for the glue factory yet, Detective. Still a marble or two rolling around in this old gray head.”

“Very funny, Father,” I said, stepping back. “I’ll be the one with the stroke next if you keep it up.”

“Nonsense,” Seamus said. “Now, where was I? I know. Let us begin today as we begin every day. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

THAT EVENING, I
was minding my own business, sheltering in place on the couch with a pint of Smithwick’s, about to watch the Yanks at Boston—ESPN’s game of the week—with Seamus and the rest of the boys, when I made the mistake of checking my phone for messages.

My boss, Miriam Schwartz, had sent a text about an hour before. In it she let me know that during the week I’d been in Ireland, the department had appointed a guy I’d vaguely heard of named Neil Fabretti to be its newest chief of detectives.

Chief Fabretti was trying to get up to speed before officially starting on Monday, Miriam explained, and was requesting a quick informal meet and greet with his transition team at his house up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. In the next half hour, I thought, groaning, as I checked my watch.

Get up to speed during a New York–Boston rubber game? I thought as I stared at my phone, dumbfounded. I’d been busting my hump all day with laundry and homework and getting dinner on the table. I’d even been to Mass—or at least Mass had been to us. I’d been looking forward to a little Sawx-crushing, male-bonding downtime all day.

Are you sure this guy is the new chief of detectives for the
New York
police department? I almost texted back.

Instead, I reluctantly put down my Smithwick’s and stood and found my keys.

“Excellent idea, Michael,” Seamus said as I headed out. “We could use some goodies for the game. And don’t forget another six of Smithy’s.”