Chapter09

 

If raid on the taxi garage had seemed like a military operation, the police attack on the Bronx neighborhood seemed rivaled the attack on Omaha Beach during D-Day – even though for the most part, Miller and Ransom watched it unfold from the seclusion of their car.

Hazmat and Swat teams swarmed through the streets, not just in front of the building in question, but up onto the stoops of each building to either side, and onto the roof tops of the buildings across from it, and behind it, boots kicking open doors that would not open more easily, machine gun tripods posted in corners so that not one inch of the suspected building remain uncovered by line of fire.

And then, for a brief moment, and with the exception of the hushed static of police radio, a strange silence fell over the block, a silence that this neighborhood had not known since its horse and carriage days, a silence emphasized by the slash of red and blue patrol car lights and the scaling beams of flood lights that illuminated the front façade of the building.

“All set,” said a voice over the police radio in Ransom’s hand.

A computer tablet locked into a frame near the dashboard showed a view of the building stoop from a camera attached to the helmet of a member of the swat team poised to rush up the stair.

For Miller, it was something surreal, seeing the real scene through the windshield complete with the array of vehicles and armed men with assault rifles behind each, and this close up, isolated vision that saw nothing but the stairs littered with bottles and paper.

“Go,” Ransom said into the police radio.

Through the windshield, Miller watched as seven officers in helmet and body armor rushed up the stairs, two stopping with backs to either side of the front door, as the other five climbed behind them as the small tablet showed a close up of them closing in on the door and finally, plunged through the unlocked outdoor and into the vestibule beyond, and then in a rush showed some officers advancing ahead with their weapons poised, a helmet moving along the lower floor door by door and vanishing as the cop with the camera went up the stairs, two cops in front, no doubt others behind, cops coming in and out of view two by two they took up posts to allow the advance.

 

To Miller, who clutched the door handle with each jerk of the camera, it felt like stumbling through a tunnel, each turn through the dark interior ripe with a horror house expectation. At any moment, something would leap out of the deep shadows and explode with sudden violence. A small red light appeared at the corner of the screen, drawing Ransom’s raised eyebrows.

“That’s odd,” he said.

“What is,” Miller said, his voice slightly strained, his own gaze staring into the shadows, not at the tiny warning signal.

“Someone just accessed our feed.”

“What does that mean?” Miller asked, his gaze shifting from the screen to the half illuminated face of his partner.

“It means someone is spying on us,” Ransom said. “We have alerts built into our systems against hacking, and alerts to let us know when someone has broken through the firewall.”

“And you’re saying someone has?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“It could be anybody,” Ransom said. “We get a lot of attempts from overseas, from Russia, China even Iran.”

“What would they want with us?”

“Nothing in particular. They just hit every system until they get in and steal whatever information they want.”

“Why would they want this?”

“I don’t know,” Ransom mumbled. “This is the first live feed that I’ve seen this happen to. It might not be them at all.”

“Who then?”

“Someone on our side,” Ransom said.

“You mean the U.S. government?”

“The NSA can do anything it wants, go anywhere it wants,” Ransom said.

“Why would they want to watch us?”

“A good question. But didn’t you feel the tension with the boss?” Ransom asked. “Someone is pushing him. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this dog and pony show – especially down at the taxi garage – there, it’s gone.”

Miller glanced  back at the screen and tiny red light have vanished. The scene showed a door open and an empty apartment beyond. The radio rasped back with voices saying no one was there.

“Let’s go,” Miller said, yanking on the car door handle and illuminating the interior of the car with the dome light.

“Not yet,” Ransom said. “Let them make the sweep first.”

“For what?”

“IUDs,” Ransom said.

“Are you out of your mind? This is New York City, not Afghanistan.”

“Anything is possible,” Ransom said. “Let’s not take unnecessary changes.”

Miller grumbled, but closed the door again, letting the light go out. He stared at the screen as figures moved through the interior of the apartment, and after a long time, the radio rasped with the all-clear.

 

 

 

Miller thrust open the door and got out; the cold air slapped his face after having sat under the infernal assault of the car’s heater. But it felt good. It felt real. It woke him up from a stupor he’d not been completely aware of, and shook him free of the dismal thoughts of a decade-old crime.

He thought about that red light on the screen, and of the scene back at the hotel, and his boss’ behavior. New dots connected in his head. His boss’ arrogance seemed not tinged with something else, something less than confident – a nervousness that seemed to be associated with someone, such as the feds, staring over his shoulder.

Around him, other non-uniformed men and women climbed out of other vehicles, carrying the implements of their own, looking like an invading army of Wall Street accountants, suits and ties, pant suits with creases, people with stern expressions that seemed out of place among this part of the city, polished shoes climbing up the littered stairs of the brownstone stoop and vanishing through the door the swat team had just taken.

Miller and Ransom followed more slowly, pausing at intervals to study some minor detail along the way, a broken bottle or a piece of some other detritus that turned out to be irrelevant, then up the stairs and through the door into the vestibule – which itself was a time warp to an age when all this was part of a real community, rather than the northern wasteland of New York City.

The brass-colored mail boxes set into the left wall hung open, pried by the desperate fingers of junkies or others seeking to steal welfare checks or other item that had ceased long before, and now the open mouths of the boxes became little more than receptacles of junk mail or trash, much of which spilled out onto the yellowed tiles of the floor.

Miller and Ransom went to the hall beyond the stairs, following the same trail they had seen earlier on the screen, but now in Déjà vu even more surreal, like a scene from a science fiction movie.

Miller stopped at the foot of the stairs and sniffed.

“Smell’s like gun powder,” he said.

Ransom’s small nose moved slightly as he sniffed

“Yes, it does,” he said, then started up the stairs ahead of Miller.

 

 

Dust from the parade of police above rained down onto the stairs, filling the slanted light with the illusion of mist.

An old man waited on the second floor landing as Miller and Ransom reached there, so deaf he did not understand the armed officers who confronted him, they shouting at him, while he shouted back, “What? What?”

“Did you see or hear anything?” one of the non-uniformed detectives asked with the apparent frustration of having asked it before.

“Did I hear what?” the old man replied. He was so gray and wrinkled, Miller could not make out his ethnic background, but was so old, he might have been here in that mid-world war era when not all the Germans had fled. He held up a liver-spotted hand to his ear. “You’re going to have to speak up. I don’t hear so well any more.”

The detective repeated the question with exaggerated slowness, as if he mistook lack of hearing for lack of intelligence, the way many Americans sometimes mistook non-English-speaking people when overseas.

Miller and Ransom moved passed and around the curved banister leading to the next flight of steps.

Ransom paused at a point in the hall where the light was brightest and pointed to a dark wet spot, which was already marred by the passing of heavy boots.

“Blood,” he said, pointing to several other drops that seemed to form a trail leading to the next flight up.

“His blood?”

“We’ll have to check,” Ransom said. “But I’d lay good odds that it is.”

 

 

 

When the two men reached the third floor, they found an apartment door open and the army of police buzzing around inside – the flash of the official investigative photographer giving the scene an even eerier feeling.

Miller had investigated scores of murder scenes that had looked less like a war zone than this scene did, but none felt so stark. The scene of gun smoke still lingered in the air. The floor was littered with expended shells from some automatic weapon. Bullets had ripped open the surface of the now-overturned table and a good portion of the wall parallel to the door and the cabinets to Miller’s right as he entered. A single, bare ceiling light illuminated the room, leaving the corners with deep shadows, yet after the dim exterior of the hall, and the even dimmer street not yet in full dawn, Miller had to squint, making out one thing at a time as if taking snap shots of this part of the crime scene and that, until he had assembled it on in a collection of not quite unformed sequence. Some investigators concentrated on the bullet holes and casings, while others dusted this part of the room or that for fingerprints, while still others took samples of splotches of blood that may or may not have come from their suspect. But the investigator near the table dusting an open briefcase drew Miller.

“Is that the briefcase from the cab?” he asked.

“The latches are broken,” Ransom said, “suggesting that it might be. Our suspect apparently didn’t have access to the key and forced open the locks in the cab – we’ll know more when we compare the pieces.”

 

 

 

“And the contents?” Miller asked.

“Nothing,” Ransom said. “Just more blood near the latches and inside the case.”

“What about the neighbors? Did anyone see anything?”

“There are only two occupied apartments, one by the old man we saw on our way in, the other by a woman upstairs who said she thought she heard a backfire.”

Miller glanced around the room that looked like it had been splattered with shrapnel, and at the overturned table and chair.

“She must have heard an awful lot of backfires all at once,” Miller mumbled.

“This is a bad neighborhood, Kevin,” Ransom said. “People mind their own business, especially when things like this happen.”

“What exactly did happen?”

“Obviously a shooting.”

“But no bodies.”

“We did find bullet casings.”

“From my friend’s mauzer?”

“No, these didn’t come from a handgun,” Ransom said. “They came from a large caliber weapons – most likely an assault rifle. While I can’t say for certain until I get them into the lab, I would say they were military issue.”

“Military? Like Billman’s?”

“There might be some connection.”

“A friend of Billman’s?”

“Possibly. But it doesn’t seem likely. This was a prearranged meeting, from all I read from this.”

“Obviously something went wrong.”

“Terribly.”

“Dispute over the contents of the briefcase, perhaps?”

“It is some kind of falling out between conspirators,” Ransom said.

“Perhaps our military friend decided to pay off his hired gun with lead.”

“If he’s dead, where is the body?”

“You did find blood,” Miller said.

“Yes, a little – but nothing to indicate that any of these bullets hit him. My best guess is that his old wound opened up as a result of this conflict. Besides, we have witnesses on the street who claim they saw two men exiting the building – one down the back stairs, the other the way we just came in.”

“So we have two suspects going in different directions after the dispute in which one or both tried to kill the other – over something in a brief case the killer went back to the hotel to get,” Miller said. “I wonder which one left with the prize.”

“Hard to say,” Ransom said. “But we do know how one of the suspects got away.”

“Oh?

“A man fitting the description from the hotel hijacked a car about a block from here – at gun point.”

“That’s something,” Miller said. “But I can’t imagine old Silvertop being happy about our losing him twice.”

“That’s not all,” Ransom said.

“Oh, tell me more good news.”

“Someone else came in here after the shooting,” Ransom said. “We found footprints in some of the blood that can’t accounted for by either of the suspects.”

“One of the neighbors?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then who?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Ransom said. “But I can tell you what they came here to retrieve. This,” he said, holding up a tiny silver sliver that looked something like a transistor.

“What exactly is that?”

“I listening device – perhaps even a camera.”

“What?”

“High tech stuff,” Ransom said. “They must have had a few installed in here. We seemed to have arrived when they were trying to collect them, so they left one – perhaps more – in their attempt to exit before we got in here.”

“How the hell did they get out if we had the place surrounded?”

“I can’t say, but this isn’t the stuff you buy in Radio Shack,” Ransom said.

Miller again thought about the tiny red light that had popped up on the screen in the car.

“And there’s something else,” Ransom said.

“Which is?”

“The swat team found something odd on the roofs of this and nearby buildings.”

“Odd? In what way?”

“These,” Ransom said, holding up bullet casings. “And a significant amount of blood in several locations.”

“Our friends from in here?”

“I think not,” Ransom said. “These came from weapons neither of our suspects had. Foreign-made.”

“Are you telling me there was a shootout on the roofs we didn’t know about?”

“Among others we don’t know about either.”

“When?”

“About the same time all this transpired.”

“And no one heard or saw anything?”

“Apparently not,” Ransom said. “And if there were bodies to go along with all the blood, someone removed them.”

At this point, Ransom’s radio rasped, and Ransom stepped aside, spoke for a few moments, and then came back to Miller.

“What now?” Miller asked.

“The hotel found another body and one of our officers tied up in the bedroom the suite he was assigned to guard.”

“How could our suspect do all that when he was supposedly here?”

“He couldn’t.”

“I you telling me he went back to the hotel again?”

“It would seem so.”

“But why?”

“My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that he went back to get whatever was supposed to have been in the briefcase.”