As soon as they released their grip, the lead agent said, “Sir, if you do one more fucking thing, we will put you in cuffs and take you away to where nobody will ever find you.”
Gabriel didn’t move as the bulky men passed by him to the door of his apartment. He heard one of them murmur, “The fucking faggot loved it when we grabbed him.”
Gabriel’s rage made him shake.
Cam appeared in the doorway, impeccably neat as ever, his expression at first quizzical and somewhat annoyed, as if he expected to find boisterous teenage pranksters on the landing in front of the apartment. And then his expression changed to fear, a reaction that Gabriel had never witnessed.
The lead agent, who clearly believed no one would ever question his authority, said, “I need you to step aside, sir.”
Seeing the fear in Cam’s face and knowing that as a teenager in the Deep South Cam had several times been beaten by local boys in pickup trucks, events that Cam later referred to as his “Matthew Shepard moments,” Gabriel lunged forward. The startled men didn’t react at first. Even serious drug dealers when confronted by agents with weapons and search warrants tended to become docile. They were startled by a well-dressed doctor who vaulted toward them and pushed the lead agent in the back, making him stagger to the side. The man was momentarily startled and then he was furious, with deadly hatred in his eyes so much like the expression Gabriel had seen in Afghanistan from infantrymen suddenly under attack. “You fucking queer,” he shouted as he regained his footing. He reached beneath his jacket and his swift hand emerged with a pistol.
Cam was crying.
Gabriel feinted to his left, and the big man stumbled when he missed Gabriel’s head as he swung toward it with the pistol in his hand.
Gabriel laughed at him in the second before two other men, suddenly recovered from the shock of Gabriel’s resistance, tackled him. Under their weight, Gabriel fell to the floor. Strong hands flipped him over as other strong hands wrenched his arms behind his back and put plastic handcuffs, tightly, on his wrists. His face was pushed to the floor. Then Gabriel heard Cam screaming, “Leave him alone, leave him alone.”
Gabriel also heard Oliver’s barking escalate, wildly. He heard, too, one of the men grunt. “Fuckin’ dog bit me.”
Another voice, authoritative and loud, said, “Shoot the fucker,” and a gun with a silencer fired, a thud. Oliver whimpered and wailed, obviously injured. Cam screamed. “Don’t, please don’t, what did you do? What did you do? Don’t hurt him. He’s just a dog.”
They spent an hour in the apartment, opening every drawer and door, scattering clothes out of Gabriel’s and Cam’s meticulously ordered closets. Even though Gabriel lay facedown in the hallway, he heard them say repeatedly to Cam, “Where’s the damn bracelet? Where did he put it?”
Cam didn’t answer. He sobbed continuously. Gabriel’s mind was not fixed on the pain in his wrists and arms but on the image of his beloved partner who he was certain was on the floor trying to soothe Oliver, who sustained a constant whimper.
One of the men pulled back Gabriel’s long hair and asked, “Where did you fucking put it?”
Gabriel said, vehemently, “Go fuck yourself, Jack.”
As the sound of the ransacking subsided and finally stopped, Gabriel heard one of the men speaking on his cell phone. “Not here, no sign of the thing, ma’am.” The man paused, listening. “Everywhere, we went through everything.” Another pause as the man listened and then said, “He attacked me. I want to bring him in, ma’am.” He listened again. “Not a problem, ma’am.”
Within seconds of the conversation’s end, the handcuffs that had painfully bound up Gabriel were unlocked and he was jerked up to his feet. They left the building without him.
Gabriel ran into the apartment. Cam was on his knees next to Oliver. Always the instinctive surgeon, Gabriel touched every part of the dog’s body. There was a long bullet graze on Oliver’s left side. Gabriel ran to the bathroom and retrieved the needles and thread he needed to stitch the still-bleeding wound. There was dried blood all over the dog’s fur.
When he finished that, Oliver became quiet and looked at him with what Gabriel believed was a grateful gaze.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHARLIE BRANCATO, GINA Carbone’s first deputy commissioner, hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Although he was considered Gina’s male alter ego-he too was raised on Staten Island and had attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice at night while serving as a street cop just as Gina had-he led a different life. He was a party-goer, he loved fun, and he had legions of friends. He was an unabashed womanizer-handsome in the mold of a young Al Pacino, a weaver of stories, a generous man. People loved to be with him for a host of reasons. He had one of the most powerful law enforcement jobs in the country, he appeared to know every detail of the private and public life of the famous woman commissioner of the largest police force in the world, and he seemed closely connected to one of the most popular politicians in the country, Roland Fortune.
Charlie had been up so long because he was out at parties, bars, and after-hours clubs the entire Saturday night and Sunday morning before the first explosions. He had spent time during that long, festive night and morning at parties with Sylvester Stallone, Cheryl Tiegs, and even the party-loving, balding Salman Rushdie. He had intended to end his night and morning with a quick visit to Roland Fortune’s birthday party on the roof garden of the Met, but a chance encounter with a young actress had taken him elsewhere.
Charlie knew many journalists, from hard-right, hard-bitten Andrea Peyser at the Post to foxy Maureen Dowd at the Times. Journalists cultivated him and he cultivated them. Gina Carbone, somewhat reclusive but attuned to publicity and public relations, valued Charlie because he was able to handle reporters in a way that Gina herself couldn’t. She valued him for other reasons as well. He was loyal to her, ruthlessly tough, and a coldly accurate evaluator of people and their motives and objectives. He was also a great cop.
Charlie had seen the byline of Raj Gandhi in the New York Times but had never met him or talked to him. He was a foreign correspondent who had recently been reassigned to cover city politics, and Gina had asked Charlie to open up contact with him. “Imagine that,” Charlie had said to Gina when they talked about the new reporter in town. “A Hindu covering the streets of New York. You don’t see that all the time. We’ve come a long way from Jimmy Breslin.”
“Don’t talk to anybody else that way, fella,” Gina had said, laughing. “Have you ever heard of political correctness?”
Over the last three hours Charlie’s iPhone registered three calls and three text messages from Raj Gandhi. Each of the texts said it was urgent that Charlie call, and the texts and e-mails gave all of Raj’s four numbers and his e-mail addresses. Charlie hadn’t returned any of those messages, just as he had not yet responded to the dozens of other messages he had from journalists he knew far better than Raj Gandhi.
As he listened to Gina say into her cell phone, “No, leave him alone for now, the last thing I need is to arrest a doctor who people think is a fucking hero,” Charlie felt his own cell phone vibrate with the signal of yet another incoming text message. Charlie and the commissioner were in what they called the War Room at One Police Plaza in the drab, Soviet-style building near the East River and Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan. Gina’s office and Charlie’s adjoining office overlooked New York Harbor and the century-old bridge. Overnight someone had suspended huge, bright American flags from the bridge, that patriotic display that had sprung up just after 9/11.