I entered the search.
“You think I’m entirely off track, don’t you?” I kept my eyes on my phone.
“Not a far-fetched theory, actually. And it’s not a lot of territory for us to cover quickly,” Mercer said. “What I like about it is that this place has been shut down since the end of the workday on Wednesday.”
“That, and getting here at two in the morning, there wouldn’t be a soul to interfere.”
“We just have to find a link, if there is one.”
“Walter has to give us a list of the workers,” I said. “Run that against parolees and perps.”
“Who’s going to run all these lists for us? If you’re doing nothing else, you’re generating lists.”
“Coop’s team at the office. They’ll do whatever it takes. One name is all we need,” I said. “I’m thinking Shipley.”
The elevator doors opened and we stepped out onto the landing.
“Shipley and this place?”
“No, no. Somebody in Community Affairs in the Twenty-Eighth Precinct must be all up into being liaison to Fat Hal,” I said. “Much as he hates cops, Community Affairs can tell his peeps that some local orphans should be comped to see Kanye. You know who the liaison is?”
“I can find out.”
“Make a call. You know the reverend can get tickets for this concert. If we make that deal for Walter, we’ll have a list of workmen’s names before we leave the island.”
“You’re right. I’ll call Vickee. She’ll have a department contact who can suss it out without dropping your name.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Do not be calling your wife, Detective Wallace. Do not be telling her what we are up to, okay? She’s sitting three offices away from Keith Scully and she’s very vulnerable emotionally right now. Get this done another way.”
Jimmy wasn’t even breathing hard when he emerged from the staircase. He shook his head at me. “Not so much as a chewing gum wrapper or a cigarette butt.”
“So maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “This whole trip won’t take long. Mercer, why don’t you make some calls and find out what’s going on while Jimmy and I climb up to the crown. Your feet won’t even fit on the steps.”
I leaned back and looked up, through the glass ceiling that had been installed at the very top of the pedestal, at the massive interior of the statue.
Inside her hollow body was a maze of armature, as far up as I could see. It was a vast honeycomb of steel bars, molded to fit the contours of the copper plates, which expanded and contracted with the weather. They ran horizontally and vertically, joined by steel brackets best known as saddles. In here-no place to hide anything or anyone-were many of the thousands of rivets that had to be resecured.
“You ready, Jimmy?”
He was mesmerized by the intricacy of the statue’s interior, the folds of her long copper robe-Coop said it was a stola, copied from the dresses of Roman deities-that rippled down from her shoulders to the very top of her sandaled feet.
“No elevator to the crown?” he asked.
“I just cheated and looked it up. Three hundred and ninety-three steps-almost thirty stories. And they’re narrow and slippery from wear, so hang on.”
I led the way, winding upward in the staircase, determined to get to the top, which I remembered as having enough space to hold a cocktail party, if not a hostage.
The higher we went, the more claustrophobic the feeling. As hot as the afternoon sun had felt, it was about twenty degrees warmer in the body of the statue. There was no air-conditioning and she was airless inside.
When I reached the top, I was disappointed again. The space was remarkably clean, with three large speakers, the latest in high-tech sound systems that looked as though they had just been installed for tomorrow’s concert.
I walked to one of the windows, leaned my back against it, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and tried to catch my breath.
Jimmy was right behind me. I envied the effects of his daily gym routine.
“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve never been up here. It ought to be a required visit for every American.”
“Damn right.”
The view of the harbor, of the city, of the piece of the Atlantic Ocean that rubbed up against New York, was the most dazzling sight imaginable.
“Seven rays in Liberty’s crown,” I said. “For the seven continents and seven seas. And twenty-five windows right here.”
I moved along from one side of her head to the other, and then crossed back, looking at every frame as a separate photograph of the city.
Each vista offered so many possibilities for kidnappers to hide out. Our task seemed absolutely hopeless from this vantage point.
“Keep your spirits up, Mike,” Jimmy said. “This was such a long shot.”
“Yeah, but if these guys knew Coop-I mean, if they were really out to torture her-here would be the right place to do it.”
“Her vertigo, you mean?”
“Dead-on. She’d still be waiting for me at the foot of the pedestal,” I said. “Dangle her out one of these windows and she’d give up her own mother.”
“So be glad there’s no sign of her here,” Jimmy said, hesitating for a few seconds. “How about the torch? That’s much higher still.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s another forty feet or so. And the only way up there is a ladder.”
“I’ll do it for you. I know you’re not going to quit till you’ve seen this whole place.”
“The torch was replaced thirty years ago. Other than that, it’s been shut down for one hundred years,” I said. “I mean, totally shut down.”
“Accidents on the ladder?”
“Much worse than that.”
“How?”
“Ever hear of the Black Tom explosion? In 1916?”
“Can’t say as I have, Mike.”
I looked out to our right and pointed off to a spot in the harbor, almost adjacent to Liberty Island. “There used to be a spit of land out there called Black Tom. Not much bigger than a sandbar.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Nothing to see now, Jimmy. But back then, the government covered the whole little island with munitions, meant to eventually help the Allies in World War I. In the middle of one hot night in July that year, some saboteurs set fire to the stash, causing a deadly explosion and an inferno that consumed all the ammo as well as the island itself.”
“And hit the statue?”
“Struck right on the torch. It’s never been open to the public since then.”
“How do I get there?”
“I’m going myself. Let’s walk back downstairs a bit. You’ll see a door off to the side, to the left, when we get to the statue’s neck.”
“This Black Tom thing,” Jimmy said, “did they ever catch the guys responsible?”
“You’re a lot like me, always looking for the police angle, aren’t you?”
“You could say worse things.”
“They rounded up some Germans, if I remember right. They were the ones who had the most to gain for the munitions not getting to Europe, but the thinking was that our boys had something to do with it.”
“No kidding. The Irish?”
“In 1916 we were a bit wound up in our own fight for independence,” I said. “Would be just like some thickheaded relative of mine to want to keep the goods out of British hands. You know Clan na Gael?”
“Heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.”
“A powerful group fighting for Irish independence, and their greatest ally during World War I was the Germans. Anything to defeat the Brits. Took hold big-time in America, the clan did. So they were believed to be the driving force behind Black Tom. Besides, there was no question that the Irish controlled the waterfront. Ran the longshoremen’s union. Very little happened in this harbor that wasn’t under their watch.”
I reached the unmarked door first. I turned the knob, but it was locked. I turned the knob again, both ways, and added the weight of my shoulder against it, but it didn’t budge.
“Locked,” I said. “We may need Walter after all.”