“From what the neighbors say, whoever was using it wasn’t around very much.
My forensic chief says there aren’t a lot of signs of life inside either.
But we do have a numbers guy on the corner, who thinks he saw a Hertz truck around there last week.”
“What sort of sewage system do they have out there?”
Feldman, barely able to suppress a laugh, turned to his questioner, John Booth. What the hell kind of a question is that? he asked himself. “City sewers.”
“I’m going to send some of my people out to have a look at them. People who are in close physical contact with the material used in this will leave radioactive traces in their urine and feces. It’s not much, but if we find something it will at least give us confirmation that this is the shipment we’re after.”
Dewing acknowledged his words with a crisp authoritative gesture and went back to Feldman. “When can we expect your report?”
“In an hour or so. They’ve dusted a couple of fingerprints. We’re scouring the neighborhood, the stores and all for people who might have known them.
And the phone company’s getting a call report together for us.”
“How about our people with the truck, Harv?”
Hudson had checked on their activities before coming to the meeting.
“They’re just setting up, Mr. Dewing. All we know at the moment is the truck had two hundred and fifty-two miles on the clock when it came back in that night. Which tells us that the bomb can be anywhere within a circle with a 125-mile radius.”
That, Dewing thought, is really helpful.
“And our efforts to follow up on the stolen ID?” he asked Feldman.
“We’ve got the dip and we’re moving in on the fence he did it for.”
“Isn’t there some way we can speed that line of investigation up?” the FBI assistant director demanded impatiently.
“Mr. Dewing, you want to be a. bit gentle here. Some of these guys, you come down too hard, too fast and they’ll shut up on you. Then you’re nowhere, my friend, nowhere at all.”
“Up there.”
Pedro Torres, the Colombian pickpocket, gestured with his head to the second story of the brick tenement across the street. He was in the back of Angelo Rocchia’s Corvette, wrists handcuffed in his lap, his hands resting protectively over his throbbing groin. Carmen, his girl, was already at the Seventy-eighth Precinct being booked.
Angelo and Rand scrutinized the building from the car’s front seat. The windows were filthy and a fire escape obstructed what little view inside the grime allowed.
“What’s it look like in there?” Angelo asked.
Torres shrugged. “Big room. One girl. Benny in there.”
The detective grunted. “Typical. They try to set up so they look like some kind of wholesale house. Secretary in a glass cage and all. Buy anything.
Cameras, TVs, power tools, rugs, auto parts, whatever. Lot of ‘em rent guns. Have sixty to seventy Saturday-night specials stashed in there. Rent ‘em out for twenty bucks a night and a cut of the take.”
He turned down Sixth Avenue and began to look for a parking space well out of the line of vision from the fence’s window.
“We’ve set ‘em up ourselves. Open a shop. Send a couple of streetwise guys into the bars. Tell the bartender, `We’re doing a job, fixing up this new place there. We need some tools, you know? Couple tools. Cost so fucking much money for drills and all. Hell, I seen one up the street there, guy wants a hundred and forty dollars for it.’ Next thing you know, a guy comes in, says, ‘Hey, you want to buy a drill?’ ‘Yeah, what kind of drill?’
‘Brand new,’ the guy replies. ‘1’m a plumber by trade. Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I gotta have money, get s^m; bus tickets. Got a sick aunt up there in the Catskills.’ ” Angelo gave a gleeful laugh, one of the first Rand had heard from the New Yorker. “Operation like that you can bring in guys like our friend there in the back seat by the carload.”
As he was talking, Angelo had deftly slipped the car into a tight parking space half a block up Sixth. “Okay,” he said, yanking on the hand brake, “bring him in.” He jerked his thumb at Torres. “A minute after I get in there. Throw a coat over his bracelets so you don’t draw a crowd.”
He took a cigar from his coat pocket and lit it, then picked an old racing form out from under the dashboard and strolled off up Sixth, his face buried in the form sheet.
He paused at the light on the corner. Up Union, just fifty yards from the fence’s building, a blue-and-white Con Ed truck was stopped. Its crewmen were setting up sawhorses and unloading a jackhammer. Must be ours, Angelo figured. At the rear corner of the building, three spades in denims, goatees, black sunglasses and floppy berets lounged against the wall, laughing loudly. They too, Angelo realized, were probably fellow detectives.
The fence operation was marked only by a sign on the door, “Long Island Trading,” and the proprietor’s name, B. Moscowitz, in the lower righthand corner. As Angelo had predicted, a mousy secretary, listlessly polishing her fingernails, sat by the door.
She looked at Angelo. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting visitors. “What can I do for you, mister?”
Benny was in the next room, behind a glass partition. He was a wizened little man in his late fifties, wearing a vest and shirtsleeves, his shirt undone, his tie askew. Horn-rimmed glasses perched on his bald head. His lower lip, the detective noted, pushed forward like that of a pouting child fighting to hold back tears.
“It’s him I want to see,” Angelo replied. Before the girl could protest, he had stepped across the room into Benny’s office.
“Who the fuck are you?” Benny snarled.
Angelo gave him the shield.
The fence’s face didn’t betray even a flicker of emotion. “Whatta you want with me? I run a legitimate business here. Legitimate trading company. I got nothing to do with cops.”
Angelo stood above his desk looking down at the agitated fence. He slowly rolled his cigar between his thumb and forefinger, striving to fix Benny with his gray eyes, giving the little man the full force of what he called his Godfather look. Finally he lifted his cigar from his mouth. “Got a friend of yours here, wants to say hello to you.”
He turned to the door, and, as he had hoped, Rand and Torres were standing there. Angelo waved them into the office.
“Who is this fucking creep?” Benny roared. “I never seen him before in my life.”
From the Godfather, Angelo became the Prosecuting Attorney. “Pedro Torres,”
he intoned, “do you recognize and identify Mr. Benjamin Moscowitz here present as the individual who requested you to pick the pocket of a commuter in the Long Island Rail Road Terminal for his identity papers Friday morning and to whom you delivered same?” The legal jargon was utterly meaningless, but it occasionally shook up guys like Benny.
Torres shifted on his feet. “Yeah,” he replied, “it’s heem.”
“The fucking spic don’t know what he’s talking about,” Benny shrieked.
“What is this anyway, some kind of setup?” He leaped to his feet, his arms flailing in the air.
Angelo turned to Rand. “Get him out of here,” he said. He pointed his cigar at the fence. “Sit down, Benny, I want to talk to you.”
The fence, still babbling a protest, settled in his chair. Angelo perched on one corner of his desk so that he towered over him. He rested there, his face set, building the edge, letting the flow of Benny’s angry words trickle away to nothingness like the last sparks spurting from a dying Roman candle. The room, he noted, was a pigsty of papers, files, overflowing trashcans.
“Look, Benny, I know from the Colombian there you’re doing fifty cards a week.” Angelo’s voice vibrated with the husky, sincere tone of a salesman trying to close an order. “But I’m not interested in fifty. I only want to know about the one you did for order last Friday.”