Chapter22

 

Sara’s aunt, Margaret glared like Miller – as if he and Ransom had shown up at her front door wearing white hoods and a burning cross.

Outside, traffic buzzed up and down Bergen Avenue with the fury of a freight train, the mufflers of muscle cars giving up a sound not much different from the gun fire that often plagued this part of the city.

The FBI and Newark police had cordoned off the building. But this only made the local population more curious as they gathered across the street, staring at the windows as Miller passes across them.

Out the window, Miller could see straight down the street towards New York. He could see the Freedom Tower, and realized with horror that from here people had also seen the attack on the World Trade Center and the towers fall.

Pangs of old pain rushed through him like a chill. He remembered the call he got from the station house, how they had found his partner’s body in the rubble later.

He was broken, but whole, not like the other incinerated victims no one could find even pieces of.

The bullet hole in the back of his head and the missing portion of his skull told a different story from others who had been on the site that terrible day.

Miller was never able to confirm that his partner was in the town at the time of the attack, only the vague statement by his partner earlier that he had to meet someone there.

His partner never talked about the investigation, only that it involved some Southern senator. He kept telling Miller he was better off not knowing, too dangerous to know, death came to those who knew too much, as his partner eventually proved by being murdered.

High ranking officials in the department had warned him against investigating the murder, telling him that he had too personal an interest in it, and that other detectives would handle it, detectives in turn also told not to – a fact that enraged Miller when he found out, and pushed him deeper into the mess, and into heavy use of alcohol as well.

The alcohol, of course, gave management the excuse to crack down even harder on Miller, and this became a circular trip down to his own demise with warnings to seek help or lose his badge.

Although convinced that someone was directing everybody to not investigate the matter.

Even his friends with the feds said not to go there, the case was closed, too many records lost that were kept at the World Trade Center. But they, too, seemed to be afraid of something.

Miller forced himself away from the window and its view, and back into studying the apartment, and flash back to another time and place with its small rooms and its tenement style set up bringing him back to his own upbringing on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and a time when working people could still afford to live there.

Miller remembered how compact life was, with a string of rooms like box cars to a train, a bath tub in the kitchen, a bathroom with a shower the size of a phone booth (though who knew what a phone book was these days). This was half that size, a room and half, with three windows looking out on the street, and a single door leading to the hallway and stairs.

“She lived here alone?” Miller asked the aunt.

“What does it look like?” the aunt said, voice dripping with hostility.

“Just answer the question,” Miller said.

“Yes, she lived her alone.”

“And these?” Miller asked, pointed to a number of photographs tapped to a dresser mirror located in a portion of the room apparently reserved for sleeping. The other half served as a kitchen. The other room was far too small to serve as anything but a large closet. There were a few boxes in there. Police officers were going through them.

“They’re pictures of her family,” the aunt said.

“This one – the man in the uniform?”

“Her brother.”

“Did he come here?”

“From time to time,” the woman said, her tone changing, still angry, but not soc much focused on the police. “Not often enough.”

“A sore point?”

“A person shouldn’t forget where he came from.”

“And he did?”

“He would have if Sara hadn’t kept reminding him,” the woman said. “She kept in touch with him even when he didn’t call or write her.”

Miller nodded, then slowly made his way across the room, passed a rack of old style LP records beside which sat an old style turntable. The label of the record on the turntable said “Marvin Gay.”

The night table next to the bed had several bottles on it, one labeled as sleeping tablets, the other was a vitamin supplement – an amino acid of some sort. The slick cover of Ebony magazine glistened under the soft light of the night stand lamp. There were two paperback books, the Alice Walker novel’s pages were worn from frequent use.

Ransom, concluding an extended conversation with FBI investigators, crossed the room to where Miller.

“Find out anything useful?” Miller asked.

“Significant, if not useful.”

“Such as?”

“A file of correspondence,” Ransom said, pointed towards a metal filing cabinet in the corner of the room. The bottom draw stood open with several files raised.

“With her brother?”

“With a number of agencies inquiring as to his whereabouts,” Ransom said.

“How long did this go on?”

“The oldest date I saw was six months ago.”

“Anything else?”

“An answering machine message from him a few days ago. She apparently got to the phone late so that the recording started and picked up both voices.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Ransom led Miller across the room to a small deck, which has a small green-shaded lamp, a closed portable computer, a number of loose sheets of paper, a detachable cordless phone and the answering machine.
Tape was the wrong word. Messages these days were kept digitally. Ransom pressed a button that activated the pre-recorded message. This sounded wobbly and inhuman, a robotic imitation of what a person’s voice might have sounded like.

“I can’t get to the phone right now,” Sara’s voice said. “But if you leave a message, I’ll get back to you.”

“Hello? Sis? It’s me, David. If you’re there, pick up. It’s important.”

A click sounded followed by the sound of a fumbled phone, then this was replaced by Sara’s breathless voice.

“David! Is this really you?”

“It’s me and I’m in trouble. We have to meet.”

“Well, come on over. I still live in the same place.”

“No, I can’t bring this down to the hood. I don’t even want to get you involved, but I’ve got nobody else.”

“You know you can count on me – always.”

“I know. That’s why I called.”

At this point, Billman gave her the address to the Manhattan hotel and a time for a meeting.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

“One more thing, Sis,” Billman said. “I’m going to give you a laptop and some other things for you to hold for me. Don’t turn it on, and turn off your cell phone.”

“What if I have to get a hold of you?”

“If I don’t show up, then this is good bye. Otherwise, I’ll explain more when I see you.”

The click sounded on the far end.

“We know the rest,” Miller said. “Although I wish he had said something more about the contents of the lap top.”

“He couldn’t,” Ransom said. “Most likely he suspected the phone was tapped.”

“Is it?” Miller asked.

“Yes.”

“What?” Miller said, his voice rasping with the shock of this news. “By whom?”

“Can’t say for certain,” Ransom said. “But this is very high tech stuff – the kind usually reserved for serious surveillance. Even the feds might have overlooked it, had I not warned them this might have a high level government connection.”

“What do they think?”

“They won’t say so in some many words. But I gather this is the kind of stuff they’ve seen the CIA use.”

Miller moved away from the desk and back to the window overlooking the street. The world beyond seemed much more complicated that it had been prior to this moment, and pieces of something began to connect in his head: his partner, the hit man, the massive pursuit. Whatever was on that computer was so hot that top people sought it, and perhaps, connected somehow back to the investigation his partner would not talk about so many years earlier.

Ransom settled beside him.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I guess,” Miller mumbled. “Things are starting to make some sense. “Our guy, Billman snatched something highly sensitive. My guess it’s something on the level of what the other guy – Snowden – snatched a few years back, but a whole lot more sensitive. Hot enough for big time people to want to kill to get it back.”

“But the CIA wouldn’t hire a hit man to do a job like this,” Ransom said. “They got plenty of their own people – some of whom were likely those we saw dead back at the liquor store.”

“I get that,” Miller agreed. “We know there are other players in this – like the guy from the Bronx. That guy must have hired the hit man to get the laptop from Billman before the government got to him first.”

“That would explain the explosion at the motel, and all the dead ghosts,” Ransom said.

“Billman like Snowden probably got wind of some serious wrong doing in the government, collected the proof, and took off with it, most likely planning to deliver to the press or one of those radical websites.”

“But where does the third party come into it?” Ransom asked.

“My guess is that Billman was connected to this third party from the start, perhaps stealing the information on their behalf, then panicked when he saw what it was they were asking him to steal. The stuff must be so provocative, Billman couldn’t just put it back. He needed to tell someone else about it, someone that might hold the government accountable.”

“So Billman takes off, some government agency finds out he’s got stuff they don’t want in the open, and sends a team out to get him?” Ransom said.

“Yes,” Miller said. “At this point, the third party must have become aware of Billman’s betrayal, and hired the hit man to get Billman and the laptop before the government does, thus getting back to the original plan.”

“Which is what?”

“What knows? Stuff like that would be extremely valuable. The third party might sell it to a foreign power or perhaps hold the government hostage for some demands of their own, or simply ask for a lot of money to get it back.”

“All right, the killer shoots Billman and then goes up to the Bronx with the briefcase that supposed to contain the laptop.”

“But doesn’t,” Miller said. “The Bronx man loses it, and tries to kill the killer, perhaps thinking he’s been double crossed. Botches it. The killer apparently as confused by the lack of laptop heads back to the hotel to go find it – and runs into Sara Billman instead.”

“Are you telling me, the woman took the laptop?”

“It would seem so,” Miller said.

“When did she have time?”

“During the killer’s running down Billman near Sheridan Square.”

“But if she had it when the killer found her, what’s the rest of this about – the motel and the liquor store?”

“My guess is that she didn’t hold onto it,” Miller said. “She went and shipped it out via Fed Ex.”

“To the liquor store?”

“Yes, she, her friends and the killer were there to pick it up when the CIA or whoever they are showed up.”

“So she and the killer have the laptop now?”

“I would say so, yes.”

“What do they do now?”

“A practical man  -- which the killer certainly is – would see how everything is stacked up against him. At first, I think, he just wanted to finish the deal. Now, I think he wants to trade the laptop for his life.”

“Which means, he’ll need to set up another meeting with the man from The Bronx,” Ransom said. “But that’s not going to get the government agents off his back.”

“If I was him, I would hope that the government pursuit would follow the package, not him,” Miller said, “although this whole thing has gotten too complicated. There may even be others involved.”

“Others?”

“Once word got out that the material is out in the open, you can bet others – most likely foreign governments – will also have people looking for it.”

“Spies and more spies,” Ransom mumbled. “What comes next, vampires?”

His cell phone rang.

“Excuse me, Kevin,” he said, “I have to answer this.”

Miller went back to the dresser, his reflection framed in a mirror cluttered with someone else’s memories, photographs and yellowing newspaper clippings.

Age had yellowed many of the pieces of newsprint making the print almost illegible, although one seemed to be a marriage announcement, another about Billman’s enlistment. Some of the photographs were in black and white showing two adults and two kids, a boy and a girl, at some amusement park. A similar photo in color had the same, but taller girl, dressed in a graduation gown. A second photo had the girl replaced by a boy in a similar gown. A sole portrait shot showed the boy in a uniform. This one seemed to be the most recent addition to the collection.

Ransom returned to Miller’s side.

“I have an answer to one of our questions,” he told Miller. “Homeland Security says they’ve spotted a man and a woman fitting our suspects’ description at Penn Station.”

“Back in New York?” Miller asked, sounding confused.

“No, not the one in New York,” Ransom said. “Newark has its own Penn Station.”