Crooked (10 page)

Patrick’s mind played through this scene again and again as he idly skateboarded the sidewalk on 61st Street across from Drummond Yager’s building. He’d only been there a half hour or so when a tall silver-haired guy exited the building and turned toward First Avenue. He fit Maureen’s description, right down to the folded face and round specs. Skateboard under his arm, Patrick pulled a comic book from his jacket and pretended to read it as he walked. He crossed the street, following Drummond.

Yager was moving slowly, and before he made the corner, an envelope dropped unnoticed from his pocket. Patrick scooped it up—it could be important, something Maureen could use in her investigation. Some tiny tubular things were inside, and as he approached the corner, Patrick held it up to the light. Crack vials. He figured Maureen must be working on some kinda drug case.

At the corner, Patrick peered around the edge of a building. Yager was hailing a cab.

A hand fell on Patrick’s shoulder. He turned, startled. It was a cop. Despite being truant, Patrick was relieved until the officer said:

“What’s in the envelope, kid?”

Patrick was a kid, but no dope. He’d been set up.

C h a p t e r                           1 4

 
A
fter meeting with Nicasia, Nicholas had gone home to his apartment, showered, and changed into a tan suit of very coarse weave that matched his mood: prickly. The game of wits with BB required him to make the next move. He had bait for his hook; now he just needed to find the fish he was angling for. What had become of
Trampoline Nude, 1972
? He assumed she’d moved it quickly, partially because that’s what most people did when they stole a painting, but also because he’d heard she was strapped for cash. It was too hot to sell in the domestic market, so it was probably out of the country. Money would have exchanged hands, a courier would have been deployed—you don’t drop a multimillion-dollar painting into a FedEx pouch. Once upon a time the sale could have been done in cash, large sums. No more. You’d have to look far and wide these days to find a millionaire, or billionaire, who does anything with cash, and they’re the retail market for stolen art. For that matter, you’d probably have to look far and wide across America to find someone laying out two hundred in cash at Costco. A
Homo sapien traditionalis
is defined by the tool. A
Homo sapien modernicus
is defined by the transmission of data. The swipe of a card, the flip of a phone, the click of the mouse. Every move BB had made was stored, somewhere, electronically.

So it was that Nicholas found himself climbing the stairs of a Federal-style town house in the West Village. It was on Commerce Street, a crooked, quiet little road.

At the top floor the door was opened by Melanie Dormé, whom Nicholas referred to as his computer person. Some would call her a skip tracer. Some would call her a credit investigator.

Mel knew what she was: a hacker. And that her name was unfortunately close to that of “The Velvet Fog”—Mel Tormé.

“Well, haven’t heard from you in a while,” she said, greeting him with a smirk. Mel was petite, and today she was wearing a white tank top and black miniskirt. Her dark hair was cut short in a way that might make a person think she was French—if one didn’t already gather that from her last name. Nicholas often mused that her olive-toned skin would fit in well on the Riviera. He’d known her for about a year, intimately for only a few months. He’d been referred to her after his last computer person was incarcerated for probing the Pentagon’s database.

Nicholas handed her a small cactus, gave her a peck on the cheek, and moved past her into the apartment, a sunny loftlike space with a skylight. It was more like a painter’s garret than a hacker’s dark cave. From a side room came the sound of a TV. Cartoons.

“I’ve been busy, you’ve been busy…” Nicholas waved a hand in the air while he studied her computer center. It dominated the room. Looked like a time machine from an old movie. A high-backed swivel chair was surrounded on three sides by monitors, servers, data ports, all kinds of stark-looking equipment that was out of place in the sunny room. Little green lights winked from the bricolage like errant fireflies. Cables, phone lines, and wires poured forth from the back of the contraption, each neatly tagged with color fasteners.

When he turned back to her, Mel was eyeing the pincushion cactus and its small pink flowers. “Well, at least you brought flowers.” She crossed the room and placed it among an array of much larger ones crowded in front of the window.

“You don’t really want me for a boyfriend, do you?” He began to lean against the time machine.

“Don’t lean on that! You might knock it over!” She prodded him away from her equipment. “I want you for my husband. Can’t you picture it? A bunch of little brats in tweed PJs running around, me making you chicken wings and wine for dinner.”

Her sarcasm left him undaunted.

“Oh, it’s a family you want?” He stepped forward playfully, taking her by the hands. “Well, let’s start immediately, then.”

“Ha.” She pushed him away, pointing at her ring finger playfully. “Where’s the rock? No rock, no family.”

“Starting a family requires practice.” He grinned.

“Boy, you are something else.” Mel snorted. “You know, I have to wonder how you got to be like this. You have serious avoidance and commitment issues.”

“What, now you’re Doctor Freud? I suppose it all goes back to my parents, how I’m emotionally stunted, not loved enough. Or was it the day I lost my pink security blanket?”

She smirked. “It’s gotta be something like that, because you are a mental case.”

“Or maybe it’s not me, but you, Mel. Do you have
trust issues
? Hmm? Look, let’s forget about all this psychobabble. I’m a charmer, Mel, and you liked to be charmed. Can I charm you tonight? I have a few things to do, but we could do dinner, I’ll take you to one of those bizarre little plays you like on the Lower East Side…”

“It’s Saturday night, Nicholas. I have plans.”

“Plans? Really?”

“No, I don’t, damn you.”

“Well, now you have a date. What could be so bad about that?”

“I refuse to be that easy, that’s what’s so wrong with that.” She squinted, but her smirk dissolved. “Besides, I don’t have a babysitter.”

“A babysitter?” Standing in the doorway to the side room was a miniature seven-year-old version of Mel, wearing baggy red pants and a bright green T-shirt, white socks on her feet, and red plastic butterfly barrettes that were only partially successful in keeping her black locks out of her eyes.

“I don’t need a babysitter, do I, Nicky?”

“Hey, sugar snap.” He held out his fist, and she marched forward warily, bunched her tiny olive hand into a fist, reached up and bumped his with hers.

“Mai tai,” they said in unison. It was their greeting, Nicholas’s invention. Told her it was good luck. The way people greet each other in Fiji.

“Don’t sugar-snap me.” Dottie squinted at him suspiciously. “Nicky, you promised.”

Like mother, like daughter.

Nicholas suddenly felt warm. He’d forgotten. What? Didn’t know.

“I haven’t forgotten, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Nicholas fibbed. He glanced at Mel, who seemed to enjoy watching Nicholas being called on the carpet by her daughter.

“You said you’d get me a tookie tookie bird, and that if a little girl has a tookie tookie bird, she can stay at home all alone because the tookie tookie bird can dance and sing and juggle mice and make grilled cheese sandwiches, and is fierce as a lion and will protect its master no matter what, against burglars and thieves and pirates.”

“I said that? I mean, yes, I said that, and it’s true. Tookie tookie birds are hard to come by this time of year in New York. But I’m working on it.”

“Are you sure?” Dottie’s lip twisted. Her big black eyes bore straight into his, dark lamps of innocence and trust.

“If Nicky says he’ll get you a tookie tookie bird, I’m sure he means it.” Mel slid over to Dottie and wrapped an arm around her. “He wouldn’t lie. Would you, Nicholas?” Sarcasm.

Nicholas could handle Maureen. He could handle Mel. He could handle BB, Nicasia, and Ozzie. Even pirates, if he had to. Real pirates, with guns and knives. Even evil, double-crossing mentors like Smith. But not Dottie. This was new. Oddly, he liked it. Like his relationship with his brother’s gal, Angie, he didn’t know why. Didn’t want to know why. Think fast. Faster.

“OK, here’s an idea.” Nicholas put a hand on her head.

“This’ll be good,” Mel muttered.

“I can show you a tookie tookie bird tomorrow night. He won’t be alive, but at least you’ll get to pet one and see that it looks just the way I said it does.”

Dottie’s face went from March to June, all sunshine. “Tomorrow? Why not now! I want to see a tookie tookie bird! Let’s go now! Mommie, can we go now?” She grabbed his hand from atop her head and pumped his arm excitedly.

Mel shot Nicholas a scornful look. “Nicholas, honestly.”

“Really, Mel. I know where we can go see a tookie tookie bird. But we have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Dottie whined. “But, Mommie…”

“That’s enough, Dottie.” Mel’s tone put the frown back on Dottie’s little round face. The girl slumped, draping herself on Nicholas’s arm dejectedly.

“How about the two of you come to Sunday dinner with my family?”

Mel cocked her head, like she’d misheard. “Nicholas Palihnic has a family?”

“You bet. So come tomorrow night to dinner, with my family. My brother. He has a tookie tookie bird.”

A bunch of things were on his mind. It would get Angie off his back about settling down, about making his life less arbitrary. A “girlfriend” would look good. Bring Mel to dinner, mix things up, make the dinner more tolerable. Garth would be less inquisitive of little brother’s lifestyle, more solicitous to his “date.” Mel: she’d think he took her seriously. Dottie: gets to see a tookie tookie bird. Garth must have something among all that junk that would pass for one. Nicholas hoped so. At the same time, Mel sees his “family.” Were these kooks and their taxidermy something she wanted in her life? He and Mel kidded a lot. Nicholas didn’t really think she wanted marriage. She just wanted to be taken seriously. Whatever that meant. You didn’t need to understand women to get them to do what you wanted. Mostly.

“You
are
joking?” Second time in an hour a woman was looking at him like he was selling cure-alls from the back of a covered wagon.

“They have a tookie tookie. Garth collects taxidermy. Honest.”

Dottie loosed a low moan. “Why do I always have to wait? I have to wait to get a falafel. I have to wait to get an Italian ice. I have to wait to go to the ice rink. Wait, wait, wait.” She groaned: “What’s taxi termy?”

“Animals that are no longer alive but look that way,” Mel said, stroking Dottie’s head. “I dunno, Nicholas…” She furrowed her brow and searched his eyes.

“Mel,” he said, keeping a straight face, “I would be honored if you’d let me introduce you two to my family.”

“Dottie, go back in and watch cartoons. I’ll bring your snack in a little while.”

Dottie slid off Nicholas like a wet rag, the embodiment of abject disappointment.

“Go on,” Nicholas added, putting out a fist. “We’ll go see the tookie tookie tomorrow. Be here before you know it.”

Dottie bumped his fist with hers, mumbling, “Mai tai.” As though trudging through a swamp, she disappeared back into her room.

Mel sighed and stepped up to Nicholas. Straightening his thin tie with her fingers, she said, “What time tomorrow?”

“I’ll ring at precisely seven, a cab waiting.”

“That’s a little late for Dottie.”

“Late?”

“She goes to bed at eight.”

“Eight?” He tried to conceal his surprise. How could anybody go to bed at eight?

“Five would be better.”

“Five? OK, five it is.”

“If you’re late, one minute late, I won’t answer the buzzer. Got it?”

“Fair enough. So, now that we’ve settled that…”

“We’re not having sex.”

“Mel, I don’t think of you that way.” Eight. Well, if Dottie went to sleep at eight tomorrow, perhaps…“I don’t see you just for sex.”

“I know. You need information.”

“I do.”

Nicholas could tell Mel was uncomfortable with this whole turn in his tact and wanted to change the subject to something safe, like business. She slid from between him and the cactuses, climbing into her time machine. “You mean it, don’t you?”

“About what?” Nicholas drifted behind her chair. “You mean tomorrow? I wouldn’t kid about something like that.”

Her hands hovered over the keyboard. “OK, so who is it you want me to gut?”

“Beatrice Belarus, gallery owner.” He spelled the name.

Her fingers began clacking on the keyboard, and the New York City Department of Investigation database popped up. “You want everything?”

“The whole shebang.”

C h a p t e r                           1 5

 
S
eeing as how he was supposed to be in Costa Rica, Barney had pointedly rented an apartment in an obscure part of town. He wanted it close to Little Hell Gate, which necessarily meant at or near one of the three termini of the Triborough Bridge. One end was in Harlem, one was in the South Bronx, and the third was in Astoria, Queens. Nicasia’s extended family was Greek and inhabited Astoria. They’d had a good gander at him during their Easter Feast, so Queens was out. And to set up in either Harlem or the South Bronx would make him the consummate “Urban Pioneer”—a title Barney felt sure would get him scalped by the natives. So he had to venture farther afield.

Back when he worked for the City, he’d become familiar with an insular Bronx neighborhood called Pugsley’s Point. It was within easy access to both the Bruckner Expressway and the Triborough Bridge.

Pugsley’s Point was a crusty slice of suburbia where those of modest income had staked a claim to cheap white clapboard houses. The peninsula community was decidedly for the nautically minded, the salts and the sailors. Boats, grand or modest, graced nearly every narrow driveway, often dwarfing the little white houses. Weekends united the populace of Pugsley’s Point in a lemming-like drive to the nearest boat launches, mere walking distance from any home. They towed their boats to the launches, parked their cars back in their driveways, revved up their Mercs, and blasted up to Long Island Sound to wet a line and drink beer.

On summer days Pugsley’s Point became a ghost town. But in the winter, as when Barney took up residence, the entire populace was stricken with cabin fever as bad as any in Juneau or Nome. Boats were shrink-wrapped in their blue cocoons for the winter and men in yachting caps eagerly awaited the next
Boat Show Magazine
or
B&B Marine Products
catalogue. And, of course, they braved ice, wind, and snow to saddle the barstools at Mariner Jack’s on River View Avenue.

Although he’d technically been away in Costa Rica for a week, he’d only been drilling for two nights. So Barney had found more than a few hours to spend at Mariner Jack’s: The regulars already knew him as the boatless renter who lived on Hull Street, but they pretty much left him to himself, making it an ideal place to catch up on research while enjoying a good cup of coffee and a decent burger. Drummond had given him a dossier on a boat called the
Bunker Hill,
the channel between Randall’s and Ward’s islands, and Hell Gate—a fork of the East River that led to Long Island Sound. He’d pored over the history lesson several times already. But exhaustive and sometimes repetitious study often paid off.

The California Gold Rush of 1849 had created the need for better, faster ways to move gold to the East Coast. This was before hammers drove the golden spike, so clippers competed for the shortest sailing time around the horn. But clippers were soon eclipsed by steamers on both coasts using a Central American shortcut. A railroad was built across the narrow Panamanian isthmus, shortening the San Francisco to New York trip by two weeks. Vanderbilt got into the act, built his own Nicaraguan railway, and challenged the reigning U.S. Mail Steamship Company and all others to beat his service.

Competition was keen. Banks paid well for safe, fast gold shipments, which were commonly in excess of one million dollars. In a bid to win the gold delivery contract for a Boston bank, Vanderbilt challenged the New Haven Steam Ship Line’s
Bunker Hill
to a race from New York to Boston. And to make the stakes equitable, Vanderbilt put an equal quantity of his personal gold into the hold of his steamer
Stuyvesant
. Each boat was loaded with 60,000 troy ounces of gold, which at the price of the day equaled $1,200,000. Converted to a contemporary price, that would work out to something well over $20,000,000 per ship.

The route they were to follow to Boston took them up the East River, through Long Island Sound and Block Island Sound, around Nantucket, and into Boston Bay. There was, however, a catch. To get to Long Island Sound from the East River, vessels had to pass through Hell Gate, a narrow, turbulent, rocky passage subject to reversing currents and tricky tidal fluctuations. Navigating Hell Gate, which divided Randall’s and Ward’s islands from Queens, required specially trained pilots to sail an S-curve of whirlpools around jagged rocks and deep holes. In the morbid fashion of the day, the most notorious rocks had been given nicknames like The Grid Iron, Hog’s Back, The Pot, Frying Pan, Mill Reef, Governor’s Table, and Negro Head. In a single month in 1848, upwards of fifty vessels were wrecked in Hell Gate—as many as seven in a single day. New York merchants lobbied Congress to clear the channel, but the blasting of Hell Gate’s rocks didn’t commence until 1866.

It was too late for the
Bunker Hill
. Conditions were horrendous on that morning of March 1855: fog, ice runoff, a low tide, and no wind. But a contract was in the balance. It’s said that the
Bunker Hill
had passed the most treacherous rocks—Hog’s Back, Frying Pan, and The Pot off Hallet’s Point—and was pulling out of the S-curve when she was driven off course by an out-of-control schooner. She drew too close to the shore of Randall’s Island and fetched up on a rock called Fat Annie. Now, although the
Bunker Hill
boasted an iron-clad hull, her paddlewheel smashed, dislodging the axle and taking on water at the shaft as she listed. Although the sails were hurriedly raised, there was insufficient wind to regain control. The
Bunker Hill
swirled back into the main channel and sank somewhere off Hallet’s Point in a whirlpool eighteen fathoms deep.

Local tugboat captains were proficient at retrieving wrecks from Hell Gate’s shallower traps during the brief slack tides. But deeper wrecks remained unreachable, and were covered in debris from subsequent rock-blasting operations.

Newcastle Warranty had insured the
Bunker Hill
. One hundred and thirty-five years after the accident, a crack unit of Newcastle LAD investigators was formed to collect data on the prospects for the retrieval of lost ships. When they tried to pinpoint the current location of the
Bunker Hill,
studying nautical charts and cross-referencing them with maritime records of ships that sank in Hell Gate, they found something interesting.

Just downriver of where the
Bunker Hill
sank was Hell Gate’s most treacherous rock: Flood Rock. This obstruction was a jagged underwater extension of Hallet’s Point on the east shore in Queens. At the behest of New York City, the U.S. Army removed Flood Rock on October 10, 1885. This feat was accomplished by digging a deep shaft in Hallet’s Point and tunneling under Flood Rock. The project was unprecedented: 300,000 pounds of dynamite was packed into the tunnel and detonated, removing nine acres of solid rock in one dramatic explosion heard as far north as Poughkeepsie. It was the largest man-made explosion prior to splitting the atom. Hell Gate was instantly widened from 600 to 1,200 feet.

After this event, the area was resurveyed to assess what, if anything, remained to be blasted. The survey discovered the remnants of hundreds of unidentified wrecks, one of which was noted to be a steamer. The significance of its appearance after the Flood Rock explosion went unnoticed. Until recently. The Newcastle theory went that the explosion and cascading rocks had flushed the iron-hulled
Bunker Hill
from its original resting place and shifted it toward Randall’s Island. They reasoned she was only loaded with two and a half tons of cargo, was principally made of buoyant wood, and yet had an iron hull that would have kept her from breaking apart. Computer modeling further demonstrated that this was all feasible.

Records showed that the wreck in question, along with numerous others, had been dragged from the channel’s edge by the Army Corps of Engineers and deposited between Randall’s and Ward’s islands, after which New York City covered her with construction debris to connect the two islands with a landmass.

Barney was just opening Section Seven of the report, “Medium of Exchange,” the part about the gold being transported, when he realized he was being hailed.

“Hey!” A group of three boat junkies at the bar gestured him over eagerly.

“Buddy, c’mere. We got a boat for yuh.” Alvin, a sallow carrottop, held up a local ad magazine.

“Me?” Barney stuffed the documents back in their folder.

“Yeah, c’mere.”

He tucked the folder under his arm and sauntered over, a bemused glint in his eye. “Do I need a boat?”

Alvin sneered. “Yuh need a boat, all right. Yuh just don’t know it yet. Look, buddy, right here.”

Barney took the magazine, cocking his head at a circled classified. He sipped his coffee, coolly scanning the ad.

“Not much to look at,” Alvin allowed. “Not much to look at. But it’s in good shape, good shape. Just up the road, on Bronx River Ave. Got twin Mercs.”

“Center console,” one of his pals added.

“Comes with a trailer,” the other pal said.

Barney rubbed his jaw. “I appreciate you thinking of me, but…”

“Five thousand. Bet yuh give him five thou, it’s yuhrs.” Alvin snapped his fingers, took a fresh beer from the barmaid, and handed it to Barney.

“Uh huh. Now, just exactly what am I going to do with a boat?” Barney’s exclamation made the whole bar go silent. He scanned the room. “That is, I don’t know anything about boats.”

At this, the audience shook their heads dismissively and resumed their nautical chitchat.

“I do,” Alvin assured him. “I’ll show yuh where to launch, where to fish, where to buy gas.”

“Don’t forget the magazines,” one pal chirped.

“An’ the catalogues,” the other pal said.

“But yuh gotta get a boat first, buddy.” Alvin was practically begging.

Barney perused the ad again, pursing his lips. He had been intending to execute his plan on Randall’s Island with a truck. But a boat might be better. He finally looked up.

“Let’s say I buy this boat. Do I need a license?”

They laughed and shook their heads.

“Could I go anywhere I wanted?”

They laughed and nodded their heads.

Barney pointed his finger at them like it was a gun. “Even down to Hell Gate?”

They swallowed their beer hard with an audible, collective gulp.

Hell Gate’s reputation died hard.