Gabriel went to the row of steel green army-style lockers in which newly washed and freshly pressed sheets and blankets were stored. He was a methodical man. From the lockers he collected two sheets, a blanket, a pillowcase, and a towel. He carried them to the first cot in the nearest row of cots. He put the fresh bedding on the floor next to the first cot and stripped away from that cot the soiled sheets, blankets, and towels.
Whoever had last used the cot was foul. There were stains of shit and urine on the sheets. He piled the filthy sheets, blankets, and towels on the other side of the bed. With a practiced hand he swept bits of debris off the bare, exposed mattress and then carefully spread the clean, fitted sheet on the mattress. Once he had created a smooth surface, he carefully draped the top sheet and the green wool blanket over the bed, turning down the upper edges of the top sheet and the blanket. He then stripped the stained pillowcase off the pillow, shook the exposed pillow which had indelible sweat stains, and then slipped the fresh pillowcase over it. He placed the pillow in the center of the cot. The cot’s simple orderliness was a marvel. It had taken him fifteen minutes to create this.
Always adept at math, Gabriel calculated he would use six hours to remake each of the unoccupied beds. He could even extend the time by helping to prepare suppers, serve the food, and eat the same food. His plan was to spend the night in one of the cots if the shelter was not completely filled. It almost never was. The fact that the city would likely remain locked down for the rest of this night made no difference since stranded out-of-towners would never spend the night and sleep among street people in a homeless shelter.
But Gabriel Hauser didn’t spend the night in the basement shelter. At seven, as he was scrubbing the last of the dishes in the hot, soapy water-there was no automatic dishwasher-six men, two in suits and the rest in combat gear, entered the basement. He knew instantly why they were here, even though he had never seen any of them before. Gabriel’s hands were soapy. He shook his hands vigorously but didn’t bother reaching for the already soaked dish towel to dry them as the lead man, in a suit, approached him. He carried handcuffs. “Put your wrists together behind you,” the man said.
Gabriel did that. They were plastic handcuffs. They were pulled so tightly he worried about the circulation to his hands. But he said nothing. Everyone, all the homeless people he had fed and cared for and whose beds he had cleaned, was absolutely quiet. Whatever was happening to the doctor was none of their business.
The Holland Tunnel, unlike the Lincoln Tunnel two miles further uptown, could only be reached by following the maze of streets in old downtown Manhattan. Despite all the new buildings in that area, including the new triangular tower, the tallest building in the world constructed on the site of what had been in Gabriel’s eyes the two ugliest buildings he had ever seen, the World Trade Center Towers, the access to the Holland Tunnel still was a crazy complex of streets such as Vesey, Carlton, and Canal Streets that he had always avoided.
Still in the blood-constricting handcuffs and still silent despite the questions he heard from the three other men in the unmarked, over-powered Chevy Impala, Gabriel didn’t see any other vehicle as they approached the mouth of the brightly illuminated tunnel. He did see dozens of Army soldiers, dressed in the same desert-gray uniforms he had worn in the Army, on the sidewalks. The barriers that blocked access to the tunnel were moved to the side as the Impala, at a steady ten-mile-per-hour speed, approached. This trip, he knew, had been prearranged. How, he wondered, had the men who entered the homeless shelter known he was there?
And then the answer, the painful answer, came to him. Cam had told them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
HARLAN LAZARUS WAS furious. When he had arrived at PS 6 thirty minutes earlier, he had expected Roland Fortune to be waiting. Lazarus had sent two text messages to the mayor, messages which closed with the words “Judge Lazarus,” directing Roland to be there. As soon as he walked through the bright red school doors, he asked, “Where is Fortune?” The answer in a crisp voice from one of Lazarus’ staff members was, “No sign of him, Judge.”
“I told him to be here.”
“He isn’t.”
“Have someone call that guy Rothstein, the joker, who’s always with Fortune. And tell him that I’m going to call the president in fifteen minutes unless Mr. Fortune is here or it’s confirmed that he’s on his way.”
Lazarus stood at a window in a first-grade classroom that faced east. Directly across Madison Avenue was the quaint Crawford-Doyle Book Store, closed; the coffee shop at the corner of Madison and 82nd Street, which Lazarus had been told was a favorite place for tourists, was also closed. The explosions more than three days ago had been so powerful that the windows of the Nectar Coffee Shop were all shattered.
The final death toll-final unless more bodies were found in the debris inside the museum-was 1,766 people, at least 300 of them from foreign countries. Lazarus, although he now commanded what was in effect a force of more than 100,000 agents, had never been in the military or a war. As he looked down 82nd Street toward Fifth Avenue, beyond which he could see a narrow segment of the broken stone façade of the museum, he detected an odor he didn’t recognize. He said to the armed guard who stood next to him, “What’s that smell?” There was a joke in his department that he was so security conscious, so concerned about his own safety, that he slept every night with fully armed guards on either side of him.
The guard, who wore full combat gear, including a helmet, was a veteran of three tours of duty in Iraq. He hesitated before he answered. Although he’d spent hundreds of hours with Harlan Lazarus, Lazarus had never said a word to him. “That’s the smell of rotting flesh,” the guard finally said.
Al Ritter, Lazarus’ chief deputy, walked into the classroom. “He refuses to come over.”
“Refuses?”
“Rothstein says that Fortune is calling a press conference in an hour to announce that the lockdown of Manhattan will be lifted in three hours.”
Lazarus reached for the special cell phone he carried in a holster attached to his belt. There were only four numbers on that phone. One was President Carter.
Ritter said, “There is something else I need to tell you, Judge, something we just learned. It concerns Raj Gandhi.”
“And who is that?”
“The reporter for the Times who posted the blog about the police commissioner.”
“You mean the dead reporter? Gandhi?”
“That’s right,” Ritter said.
“So what is it?”
“We’ve just arrested the killer.”
“I’m just about to call the president of the United States, Al. Why do I need to know about this?”
“Because the man we’ve arrested is a mobster, an ex-con, named Tony Garafalo.”
“How the hell did an Indian reporter get killed by a mobster?”
“He’s a special mobster. He’s the lover of Commissioner Carbone. In fact, they’re so close that she’s been keeping him at the Regency Hotel since Sunday. Apparently she can’t function without whatever it is that he’s been giving to her for the last year or so.”