“Let me try it,” Jimmy said.
But his effort was no better than mine.
“Let’s go,” I said, and continued on down to the pedestal landing, where Mercer was waiting for us.
“Ready to call it a day?” Mercer asked.
“Why?”
“It’s written all over your face. There’s no trace of Alex here.”
“Who’d you talk to?” I said. “What do you know?”
“Nobody back in command central is doing any better than we are, Mike.”
“No leads? No legit tips? No ransom demands?”
“Nothing,” Mercer said. “Way too quiet for my taste. And yes, the ask is in for tickets for Walter. Why don’t you tell him-somebody will have to pick them up in Manhattan since nobody knows we’re here-and then we’ll go back to 79th Street and you can power down for a few hours.”
I didn’t want to argue with Mercer. We were both running on fumes. “I want to see the inside of that caretaker’s old house before we go. And I need some water or something. I’m really parched.”
I pressed the elevator button and we rode to the pedestal base.
We walked back out into the sunlight and down the steps. We circled the great monument in silence and started walking along the path that cut through the very center of the small island, making our way to the center of the workmen’s sheds.
Halfway there, as we refreshed ourselves by the shade of the trees that lined the path, two young men, not much more than twenty-five years old, passed us going in the other direction. They were headed toward the statue.
“Hey,” Jimmy said to them. “What’s happening?”
They walked on past us without answering. One looked up and acknowledged us with a nod while the other just kept going.
“You want me to check them out, Mike?” he asked.
I took a glance over my shoulder at the two young men, both dressed in work clothes: white T-shirts, jeans, and boots. “No reason to,” I said.
One of them, the taller one-well muscled and tattooed on both arms with colorful art stretching from his shirtsleeves to his wrists-had stopped in his tracks to stare back at us.
I was getting more and more agitated, and paranoid, too, but I forced myself to think rationally. “Nobody likes having a cop appear on his doorstep, Jimmy,” I said. “Can’t say as I blame ’em.”
THIRTY-SIX
I was inhaling a bologna sandwich like it was an aged New York strip steak.
Walter was on the phone with his son, telling him he’d be able to pick up concert tickets sometime tomorrow morning from the desk at the Twenty-Eighth Precinct. He had generously parted with the stale leftovers in the office refrigerator so the three of us could eat.
“Your men did a great job cleaning up after themselves,” I said.
“We’ve got a red-carpet list coming. The National Park Service didn’t give us much choice.”
“I’d like to see the names of your work crew.”
“Why’s that?” Walter asked. “You think we’ve got a security risk on board?”
“Just routine.”
He walked to an old file cabinet and riffled through some folders until he found the one he wanted. “Local 46,” he said. “Metallic Reinforcing and Lathers Union. A bunch of really good guys we got here.”
“That local is harder to get into than Yale Law School,” Mercer said.
The union had been around for a long time, and jobs in this hardworking brotherhood of construction workers were more likely to come by inheritance rather than application.
Mercer and I ran through the names together before xeroxing the pages. It looked like my class list from parochial school. Rourkes, O’Connells, Boyles, Doyles, Cavanaughs, Dolans, Lanigans, Cooneys, Coonans, Fitzsimmonses, Kilduffs, Hallorans, and more Macs than I could count.
There was an occasional Finelli or Fernandez, but most of the men who did this dangerous work found the courage to walk on those steel beams in their bloodlines going back for generations.
“Got any slackers?” I asked, shaking the papers at Walter.
“Not a one. I’ve seen most of them climb up inside the body of the statue on those horizontal bars, three hundred feet high without a safety net, or shimmy up the ladder to the torch to change out a floodlight for the electricians,” he said. “Like a buddy of mine remarked, once you’ve stood on the ground below and watched a man flapping around out in the wind high up on the nose of Lady Liberty, trying to patch a hole in her skin, you know there’s no dress rehearsal for it. You’ve either got the nerve or you don’t.”
“Amen to that.”
“How about ex-cons?” Mercer asked.
“Not very likely. At least not that I know of,” Walter said. “I’ve been told the rangers have to do a thorough background check on everyone because it’s federal property.”
“I’d like a shot at climbing that ladder up to the torch,” Jimmy said.
“Now, that’s really out-of-bounds,” Walter said.
“Did you have anybody up there this week?” I asked with heightened interest. I was looking for places that were totally out-of-bounds.
“Oh, sure. I’m just not looking for a lawsuit. That’s why I left it locked up. Somebody misses their footing on that ladder and they’re toast. But we cleaned it up in there for sure.”
“Then, can you let us see it?” I asked.
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“The caretaker’s house, too?”
“Let’s get a move on, then.”
Walter led us out of his makeshift office and started to walk toward the redbrick residence.
“I don’t blame you for looking in the house, Mike, now that we’re here,” Mercer said, folding the list and putting it in his pocket. “But the torch? Let’s get home before sunset, man. Nobody took Alex single file up a ladder to-well, there’d be no purpose to it. You’re clutching at straws.”
Everything we were doing was an act of desperation. I knew that.
Mercer’s phone signaled the arrival of a text.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Vickee. She’s telling me that the Coopers won’t be flying in till tomorrow,” he said. “Dr. Cooper had some significant-well, Vickee’s calling it palpitations. He’s hospitalized overnight and they’ll evaluate him for travel in the morning.”
“So she thinks I’ve dodged another bullet, doesn’t she? Vickee thinks I’m avoiding them.”
“Give your friends the benefit of the doubt, okay? All she wants to do is let us know what’s going on,” Mercer said. “You’d be mighty peeved if she didn’t.”
Walter had walked ahead with Jimmy North while Mercer let me vent.
I heard footsteps on the gravel path behind me. The same two workmen who had passed us on our way from the statue to Walter’s office were headed back this way, coming from the pedestal.
One of them, the tall one with tats, was carrying something rolled up under one arm. It looked like a sheet or thin blanket.
“Yo!” I shouted to them. “Hold up there.”
They both ignored me.
“What’s he carrying?” I asked Walter as I took off in their direction.
“A tarp. It looks like a tarp to me,” Walter said. “They’re all over the place.”
“I want to talk to those guys,” I said, breaking into a trot. “We just went up and down the whole statue and I didn’t see a single tarp.”
“Mike,” Mercer called after me, “you’re chasing shadows now. C’mon.”
“They’re probably not coming from the statue, anyway,” Walter said. “That kid likes to wander off by himself from time to time. Quiet type.”
“Still waters run deep,” I said. “And sometimes foul.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
I followed the workers to the trailer at the edge of the easternmost point on the island. I tried the door but it was locked, so I knocked.
“Yeah?”
“NYPD. Mayor’s security detail.”
“Yeah?”
“Come on out. I’d like to talk to you.”