No. With a minimum of three airports on either side, the whole thing was too unpredictable. He couldn’t narrow it down enough to make it operational, not unless he had a small army of people to rotate through all three possible destination airports for surveillance of multiple incoming arrivals. Even so, as always, I would assume the presence of a welcoming party, and use extra caution leaving whatever airport I flew into.
I purged the nav system for a last time, input LAX as my next destination, and returned the car at the airport. I caught a bus to the terminal, where I discovered that United offered three red-eyes: two to JFK and another to Newark. First class was sold out on the JFK-bound flights, but there was one first-class seat left on the 10:30 to Newark. I bought a ticket, spent two hours reading the latest Economist in the departure lounge, and slept for a few hours before arriving in Newark at six-thirty the following morning.
I waited in the arrivals area with my carry-on after getting off the plane, until the passengers from my flight had cleared out. Among the people who remained, all presumably waiting for other flights, no one set off my radar, but there was no way yet to be sure. I started walking toward the baggage area, and no one followed me out. So far, so good.
I took the tram to another terminal and noted again I wasn’t followed. If someone was waiting for me, he was outside the terminal, not inside. That, or they had enough manpower for a static approach. Regardless, there were a few more things I could do to make sure.
I went to a pay phone and used the Yellow Pages to find a place called Image Rent-A-Car that specialized in exotics. I was looking to rent a Mercedes for a few days, I told them, the S Class. Did they have one I could pick up today? Unfortunately, the Mercedes rentals were all out, the helpful gentleman on the other end informed me. But they could have a navy 2006 BMW 750Li delivered to me in most places in the tristate area in less than an hour-four days, four hundred free miles, seventeen hundred fifty dollars. I told him the BMW would do, and that I’d be happy to come to him, if he could give me an address.
I went outside, and the East Coast winter cold hit me immediately. I felt my nostrils prickle, and a sudden wind cut right through the cashmere blazer I was wearing. I wanted to hunch my shoulders and jam my hands in my pockets, but didn’t, in case I’d missed something and needed to react quickly. I scanned the area as I moved. There were people around, getting in and out of cars, fumbling with luggage, but no danger signals. Damn, it was cold. The airport workers were all in gloves and hats and bulky parkas, and the exhaust coming from cars and taxis was billowing out as white steam. I’d have to pick up some warmer clothing as soon as I could.
I got in a cab and, in a thick Japanese accent, told the driver I was concerned my suspicious wife was following me. Could he take a strange route so I could make sure she wasn’t?
“Anything you want, buddy,” he said. “I’ll just put it on the meter.”
I smiled, slipping on the leather gloves I had bought in Mountain View, and thought, I love New York.
ONE HOUR, TWO CABS, and a foot route later, confident I was clean, I picked up the BMW. Among the mansions of Sands Point, it would be familiar, comforting, and invisible. I threw my bag in the trunk, turned the seat warmer on high, plugged Accinelli’s work coordinates into the nav system, and followed the directions out to Long Island.
It was Sunday morning, so traffic was light, and the trip took about an hour. Global Pyrochemical Industries was on a four-lane road called the East Jericho Turnpike, which sliced east to west through a mixed residential neighborhood about a mile south of the Long Island Expressway. The immediate area consisted of modest single-family houses, compressed into regular clusters alongside one another, set slightly back from their streets on small, rectangular patches of lawn. There were a few apartment buildings; a school and a baseball field; train tracks and a lumberyard. East Jericho itself was zoned for businesses: real estate and other professional buildings; an office-supply store; restaurants; a bowling alley. And, at the east end of it, six H-shaped buildings, arranged in two rows of three, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Global Pyrochemical Industries.
I drove past, looking for anything that smelled of a setup. With Accinelli as the target, it wouldn’t be difficult for Hilger to predict my fundamental moves, such as initial surveillance of the target’s workplace and residence. There could be a team here, waiting for me. But for now, nothing set off my radar.
Operationally, I wasn’t wild about what I saw. First, the parking lot was accessible only through a gated station, currently manned by a guard. Probably a rent-a-cop, possibly half asleep, true, but it complicated things. And the presence of all that razor wire, and the fence, and the access control, and of course the guard, all hinted at other measures I would prefer not to encounter.
I drove through the area, getting a feel for it. I noted some possibilities, all involving setting up in a nearby parking lot and waiting to tail Accinelli’s Mercedes when I saw it leave the premises. The one advantage of the controlled access meant there was only one place I had to key on to know when he was coming and going. Well, it was a start. I decided to take a look at his home.
Sands Point turned out to be possibly the most moneyed town I’d ever seen. Mansion after mansion on plots the size of small countries, some of them set so far back from the road they were nearly invisible through the bare branches of all the winter trees. Because the town was set on the Port Washington peninsula, many of the homes fronted Long Island Sound and had their own marinas, the better to dock, of course, private sailboats and yachts. The cars I saw were all Mercedeses, BMWs, and Lexuses, along with one antique Bentley, and I was glad to have a ride that felt at home among them.
I was on high alert as I approached Accinelli’s house, on a quiet, tree-lined road called Hilldale Lane. If Hilger had decided to set up a welcoming reception, the area around the residence would be a key choke point. But the street was entirely quiet. I rolled up just past the driveway and took a peek.
Accinelli’s was one of the town’s more modest dwellings, but his home was still a mansion by any definition: a massive, Romanesque-style building of gray stone set a hundred yards back from the road; a rolling, manicured lawn, frosted over now, with a circular driveway cutting through it; old growth trees and plots of flower gardens, empty now but for a few hardy perennials hanging grimly on in the frozen dirt. The air of the place was ease, a relaxed confidence in the rightness of the natural order, money and status untouchable by the vicissitudes of the outside world.
Next to the house was a detached two-car garage of the same stone as the main structure. At the driveway’s center, at the front of the house, there was a stone portico, and under it, a black Mercedes S Class, the 2007. The way it was parked, I couldn’t see the license plate, but most likely it was his. Was someone coming, going, or did they typically just park the car there? No, there was no frost on the windows, so it hadn’t been there all night. Someone had just come from somewhere, some errand, maybe, maybe grocery shopping, and they had parked the car in front of the house to carry something inside.
Just then, the front door opened and I saw Accinelli. Son of a bitch. I eased off the brake and let the BMW roll forward. But not before I saw what he was carrying: golf clubs.
He hadn’t looked out toward the street, and I didn’t think he’d noticed me. Even if he had, I doubted he would have made anything of a fancy BMW driving past. I kept driving, thinking, weighing the possibilities. I hadn’t expected anything actionable to happen so fast-I had planned only on a drive-by, a get-acquainted-with-the-neighborhood visit-but this looked like too good an opportunity to pass up.