Impact (25 page)

“What’s it about?” Corso tried to say, almost choking on the words.

“May I come in, please?”

Corso swallowed. Did he have a right to refuse entry? Did the man have to show a warrant? Maybe it was better not to piss him off. He un-shot the bolt, unhooked the chain, turned the lock, and opened the door.

Officer Moore slipped inside and Corso quickly shut the door behind him. “What’s it about?” Corso said, standing in the hall.

The man smiled. “Nothing serious. Now—is there anyone else in the house?”

He did not want his mother hearing any of this. “Uh, no. Nobody.” He’d better get the cop out of sight, quick. “In here,” he said, gesturing to the parlor. They went in, Corso quietly shutting the door. Maybe he should be calling a lawyer. That’s what everyone said you should do. Never talk to the cops without one. “Please sit down,” he said, trying to keep his voice relaxed, as he took a seat on the sofa.

The cop, however, remained standing.

“I think I need to talk to a lawyer,” Corso said, “as a matter of course. Whatever this might be about.”

The man reached into his jacket and removed a large black handgun. Corso stared at it. “Look, officer, you don’t need that.”

“I think I do.” He removed a long cylinder and affixed it to the end of the gun. And now Corso noticed he was wearing black gloves.

“What are you doing?” Corso asked. This wasn’t normal. His mind was boiling with confusion and conjecture.

“Don’t lose it. No screaming, no weeping, stay in control. Everything’s going to work out if you do what I say.”

Corso fell silent. The man’s soothing voice reassured him but nothing else made any sense. His mind was racing.

The man reached over and picked up the Xbox. The image was still frozen on the screen. “You play, Mark?”

Corso tried to answer, but it came out a gurgle.

The man flicked the switch and the game resumed. He turned up the sound until it was just about deafening.

“Now, Mark,” said the man, speaking over the noise and pointing the gun at him. “I’m looking for a hard drive you took from NPF. That’s all I want and when I get it I’ll leave. Where is it?”

“I said I want a lawyer.” Corso choked on his own words, swallowed, trying to recover his breath.

“You don’t get it, shithead. I’m not a cop. I want the hard drive. Give it to me or I’ll kill you.”

Corso’s mind reeled. Not a cop? Had Chaudry sent a hit man? This was crazy. “The drive?” he stammered. “All right, yes, yes. I’ll tell you exactly where it is—I’ll take you there—no problem. . . .”

The door to the parlor burst open. “What in the
world
?” shrilled his mother, standing there in her apron, dishrag in her hands, her eyes widening as she saw the gun. “
Aiiii!
” she shrieked, taking a step backward. “A gun! Help! Police!
Police!
”

The man pivoted and Corso leapt up to protect his mother but it was too late. The gun went off with a muffled sound and he saw, with utter disbelief and horror, his mother punched back by the round, blood spraying on the wall behind her. Eyes wide open, she stumbled back into the wall, losing one of her shoes, and toppled awkwardly to the ground.

With an inarticulate cry of existential rage Corso swept up the first weapon that came to hand, a lamp from the table, and swung it at the man. He ducked, the lamp shattering against his shoulder. The man staggered back, gun raised.

“No!” he cried. “Just tell me where the drive—”

Roaring like a bear Corso rushed him, seizing his neck in his hands and trying to crush the life out. He felt the gun shoved into his gut; there was a sudden raw punch, once, twice, which drove him back into the wall and then he was somehow on the floor curled up with his mother and all became peace.

50

When she was going to Prince ton, Abbey had made several trips to New York City with her friends, but they had never strayed from Manhattan. As she stood at the edge of Monsignor McGolrick Park in Brooklyn, rain dripping from the rim of her umbrella, she realized this was a New York she had never seen, a real working-class neighborhood of modest apartment buildings, vinyl-sided row houses, keys-made-here shops, dry cleaners, and neighborhood eateries.

“Number eighty-seven Driggs Avenue,” Abbey said, consulting a damp street map. “Must be that street across the park.”

“Let’s go.”

Two days before, Abbey’s calls to ex-NPF employees had hit paydirt with a technician named Mark Corso. Posing as a journalist doing an exposé on unfair personnel practices at NPF, she had really gotten him going. Not only was he pissed off about being fired, but he was eager to spill NPF’s darkest secrets—or so he claimed. And he hinted at having some really hot information that would “blow NPF out of the water.”

They headed across the park and crossed the street toward one house in an identical row, streaked with damp, curtains drawn. They walked up the steps and Ford rang the doorbell. Abbey could hear it ringing forlornly within. A long wait. He rang again.

“You sure he said four o’clock?”

“Positive,” said Abbey.

“He might have had second thoughts.”

Abbey dipped in her pocket for the cell phone Ford had given her, and dialed Corso’s cell.

“You hear that?” She could hear at the edge of audibility a sound of music inside the house.

Ford leaned toward the door. “Hang up and call again,” he said.

She did so.

The music stopped, then a moment later it started again.

“It’s got to be his,” said Abbey. “Only a NASA engineer would have the theme of
Serenity
as his ringtone.”

There was no way to see in; the drapes were firmly pulled—even the ones on the second floor. The house looked shut up tight. The door had three little windows, arranged diagonally, but they were of rippled, opaque colored glass.

Ford knelt and examined the doorjamb and lock. “No sign of a break-in.”

“What do we do?”

“Call the police anonymously,” he said, “and watch.”

They cut across the park to an old phone booth sitting on the corner. Ford lifted the receiver with a handkerchief and dialed 911. “Eighty-seven Driggs Avenue,” he said, in a rough voice. “Emergency. Go there. Now.” He hung up. As he came out, Abbey was alarmed by the grim look on Ford’s craggy face. She had been going to say something funny but decided against it.

Ford drifted back into the park, hands shoved into his pockets, Abbey at his side. They took shelter from the drizzle in a pseudo-classical outdoor pavilion and waited for the police to arrive. Within a few minutes two cop cars came cruising down Driggs Avenue, lights flashing but sirens off. They stopped. A pair of officers from the first vehicle went up the stairs and knocked on the front door. No answer.

“Let’s get a little closer,” Ford said, drifting over. Three police officers were now at the door, knocking persistently, while a fourth remained in the squad car, talking into the radio. One of the cops fetched a wrecking bar out of his car and poked it through a door window. He picked out the glass, reached in, and unlatched the door.

The two cops disappeared into the house, one with a handheld radio.

Ford quickly crossed the street and leaned in the window of the second squad car. “There a problem?”

“Routine check,” said the cop, waving them along.

All of a sudden his radio burst to life. “We have a ten–twenty-nine double homicide at Eighty-seven Driggs; two squad cars on scene, sealing the premises.” Then another burst, “Two ambulances and CS team dispatched and en route; ten-thirteen homicide division . . .” The radio went on in this fashion and almost immediately sirens could be heard approaching. From her vantage point across the street Abbey could just see through the door into the interior of the parlor: a wall, with a starburst of blood on it, and below a woman’s bare foot.

51

It amazed Abbey how quickly the deserted, rain-drenched park filled with people. They came out of the town houses and apartments, white-haired ladies speaking Polish, middle-aged men with bratwurst guts, young professionals, hip-hop kids, junkies, drunks, shopkeepers, and yuppies, forming a loose crowd in front of the small three-story row house. Ford and Abbey mingled with the crowd while the police pushed everyone back, set up barricades, and blocked off the street. Two ambulances arrived, followed by unmarked cars packed with homicide detectives in brown suits, ambulances, a crime-scene van, and finally the local news vans.

Abbey crowded forward with the others, listening to the babble of voices. Somehow, as if by osmosis, the crowd knew everything: two bodies found in the front hall, shot at point-blank range, house tossed. No one had heard anything, no one had noticed strange people, no one had seen cars parked in front.

As the cops bawled at the growing crowd, Ford nodded to Abbey and they pushed toward a gaggle of local women.

“Excuse me,” said Ford, “but I’m new to the neighborhood. What happened?”

They turned to him eagerly, all speaking at once, interrupting each other, while Ford encouraged them with wide-eyed interest, adding interjections and expostulations. Once again she was amazed at Ford’s chameleon-like ability to play a part and extract information.

“It’s Mrs. Corso and her son Mark . . . He’d just come back from California . . . A lovely woman, husband died of a heart attack several years ago . . . Been a struggle since . . . Lived here all their lives . . . A good boy, studied hard, went to Brown University . . . Working at Moto’s to earn pocket money . . . Seems like yesterday he was playing stickball in the park . . . A tragedy . . .”

When the information from the ladies had been exhausted, they retreated to the edge of the crowd. Ford’s face was dark. “What was his title in the personnel file?” he asked Abbey.

“Senior data analysis technician.”

Without another word, Ford flipped open his cell phone and called the NPF switchboard, and in a moment was connected to Derkweiler.

“This is Ford from the Agency,” he said in a clipped voice. “This fellow Corso who was working for you—what exactly did he do and why was he fired?”

There was a long silence as Ford listened into his phone. Abbey could just hear the squawk of Derkweiler’s voice on the other end. Ford thanked him and hung up.

“Yeah?” Abbey asked.

“He was in charge of processing radar and visual data from the Mars Mapping Orbiter.”

“And?”

“He was fired for cause. Derkweiler said he didn’t have ‘adequate prioritization skills,’ became ‘obsessed with irrelevant gamma ray data,’ refused to follow instructions, and caused a scene at a scientific meeting.”

Abbey thought for a moment. “
Obsessed
, huh?”

Ford cleared his throat. “What do you know about gamma rays?”

“That there shouldn’t be any from Mars.”

52

Harry Burr sat in a Greek diner opposite McGolrick Park with a cheeseburger, coffee, and the
Post
, watching the rain run down the plate glass window in ever-changing rivulets. There were mathematical rules in the rivulets, rules that described chaos. It was sort of like the rules that described a hit. Controlled chaos. Because you could never anticipate everything. There was always a surprise: like dear old mother being in the house after Corso told him he was alone. Or being forced to kill Corso.

Always a little surprise.

He refocused his eyes farther away and had a clear view across the corner of McGolrick Park to the row house where he’d done Corso and his mother. The geek had been about to tell him where the drive was, he was pissing his pants with eagerness to tell him—and then the old lady walks in.

He nursed the strong coffee, leafed through the
Post
, and watched the show. He hadn’t found the hard drive but he knew the bar where Corso worked and he knew his ex-roommate’s address. The hard drive would be at the bar or the friend’s place. He’d check out the bar first. If Corso were really smart he might have mailed it back to himself or even stuck it in a safe-deposit box. But he was pretty sure he’d have kept it close by.

He took another sip of coffee, turned the pages of the paper, pretending to read. It had been slow in the restaurant and now it was empty, most of the customers having finished up quickly and gone into the park to check out the show. He kept an eye on the crowd, looking for anyone who might be a relative, a friend—a girlfriend—to whom Corso might also have given the drive.

Two people in the park began attracting his attention, a black girl and a tall, craggy man. They seemed just a little too alert, a little too detached from the rest, to be neighborhood rubberneckers. They were watching, observing. They were involved.

He marked them in his memory in case he saw them again.

53

Abbey slid onto the bar stool at Moto’s, Ford taking the stool beside her. It was an ultra-hip New York bar along the waterfront in Williamsburg, done up in black and white, with faux zebra-striped shoji screens and lots of black-and-white enamel, frosted glass, and chrome. Behind the bar stood a wall of liquor bottles, gleaming in a cool white lighting. The place was empty at four o’clock on a rainy weekday afternoon.

As they took their seats, a bald Japanese man with a bricklike physique and black-rimmed glasses, dressed in traditional garb, came over. He slid his hand along the bar holding a small napkin by the corner, which stopped in front of Abbey. “Lady?”

Abbey hesitated. “Pellegrino.”

The hand slid down in front of Ford with another napkin tweaked between thumb and forefinger. “Gentleman?”

“Beefeater martini,” said Ford. “Straight up with a twist. Dry.”

Sharp nod, and the man began making the drinks with virtuosic efficiency.

“You must be Mr. Moto,” Ford said.

“That’s me!” Moto’s face broke into a dazzling smile as he shook the drink and poured it out with a flourish.

“Name’s Wyman Ford. Friend of Mark Corso.”

“Welcome! But Mark isn’t here. He’ll be in tonight. Seven.” He poured the drink out with a flourish, flipping the shaker in the air, catching it, rinsing it, and sliding it into a holder.