At the intersection of Pearl and Finest, he slowed at the white guard booth, the cop inside it a blurry shape waving at him behind fogged-up glass. Marino thought about calling Bacardi like he used to when it didn’t matter what time it was or what she was doing. At the beginning of their relationship, nothing was inconvenient, and he talked to her whenever he wanted and told her what was going on, got her input, her wisecracks, her constant comments about missing him and when they would get together next. He felt like ringing up Bonnell-L.A., as he now called her-but he sure as hell couldn’t do that yet, and he realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Scarpetta, even if it was work. He’d been surprised, almost didn’t believe it, when it was her on the phone saying she had a problem and needed his help, and it pleased him to be reminded that big-shot Benton had his limitations. Benton couldn’t do a damn thing about Carley Crispin stealing the Doc’s BlackBerry, but Marino could. He would fix her good.
The copper spire of the old Woolworth Building was pointed like a witch’s hat against the night sky above the Brooklyn Bridge, where traffic was light but steady, the noise of it like a surging surf, a distant wind. He turned up the volume on his police radio, listening to dispatchers and cops talking their talk, a unique language of codes and chopped-up communication that made no sense to the outside world. Marino had an ear for it, as if he’d been speaking it his entire life, could recognize his unit number no matter how preoccupied he was.
“… eight-seven-oh-two.”
It had the effect of a dog whistle, and he was suddenly alert. He got a spurt of adrenaline, as if someone had mashed down on the gas, and he grabbed the mike.
“Oh-two on the air, K,” he transmitted, leaving out his complete unit number, 8702, because he preferred a degree of anonymity whenever he could get it.
“Can you call a number?”
“Ten-four.”
The dispatcher gave him a number, and he wrote it down on a napkin as he drove. A New York number that looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He called it and someone picked up on the first ring.
“Lanier,” a woman said.
“Detective Marino, NYPD. The dispatcher just gave me this number. Someone there looking for me?” He cut over to Canal, heading to Eighth Avenue.
“This is Special Agent Marty Lanier with the FBI,” she said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
Calling him at almost five a.m.? “What’s up?” he said, realizing why the number seemed familiar.
It was the 384 exchange for the FBI’s New York field office, which he’d dealt with plenty of times, but he didn’t know Marty Lanier or her extension. He’d never heard of her and couldn’t imagine why she was tracking him down so early in the morning. Then he remembered. Petrowski had sent photographs to the FBI, the images from the security camera that showed the man with the tattooed neck. He waited to see what Special Agent Lanier wanted.
She said, “We just got information from RTCC that’s got you listed as the contact for a data search request. The incident on Central Park West.”
It rattled him a little. She was calling about the suspicious package delivered to Central Park West at the very minute he was headed there to pick up Scarpetta.
“Okay,” he said. “You found something?”
“Computer got a hit in one of our databases,” she said.
The tattoo database, he hoped. He couldn’t wait to hear about the asshole in the FedEx cap who’d left the suspicious package for the Doc.
“We can talk about it in person at our field office. Later this morning,” Lanier said.
“Later? You saying you got a hit, but it can wait?”
“It’s going to have to wait until NYPD deals with the item.” She meant the FedEx package. It was locked in the day box at Rod-man’s Neck, and no one knew what was in it yet. “We don’t know if we have a crime reference to One Central Park West,” she added.
“Meaning you might have a crime reference to something else?”
“We’ll talk when we meet.”
“Then why you calling me now like it’s an emergency?” It irritated him considerably that the FBI had to call him right away and then wouldn’t tell him the details and was making him wait until it was convenient for them to pull together a friggin’ meeting.
“I assumed you were on duty, since we just got the information,” Lanier explained. “The time stamp on the data search. Looks like you’re pulling a midnight.”
Bureau cloak-and-dagger BS, he thought, annoyed. It wasn’t about Marino pulling a midnight shift. It was about Lanier. She was calling from a 384 exchange because obviously she was at the field office, meaning something was important enough for her to have gone in to work at this hour. Something big was going on. She was explaining to him that she would decide who else should be present at the meeting-translated, Marino wasn’t going to know jack shit until he got there, whenever the hell that might be. Much would depend on what the NYPD bomb squad determined about Scarpetta’s package.
“So, what’s your position with the Bureau?” Marino thought he should ask, since she was jerking him around and telling him what to do.
“At the moment I’m working with the Joint Bank Robbery Task Force. And I’m a principal coordinator for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime,” she answered.
Joint Bank Robbery was a catchall task force, the oldest task force in the United States, comprising NYPD investigators and FBI agents who handled everything from bank robberies, kidnap-pings, and stalking to crimes on the high seas, such as sexual assaults on cruise ships and piracy. Marino wasn’t necessarily surprised the JBR Task Force might be involved in a case that the Feds had an interest in, but the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime? In other words, a coordinator with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. In other words, Quantico. Marino wasn’t expecting that, holy shit. SA Marty Lanier was what he still thought of as a profiler, the same thing Benton used to be. Marino understood a little better why she was being closemouthed over the phone. The FBI was onto something serious.
“You suggesting Quantico ’s gotten involved in the Central Park West situation?” Marino pushed his luck.
“I’ll see you later today” was her answer and how she ended the conversation.
Marino was just a few minutes away from Scarpetta’s building, in the low forties on Eighth Avenue, in the heart of Times Square. Illuminated billboards, vinyl banners, signage, and brilliant multicolored data-display screens reminded him of RTCC, and yellow cabs were rolling, but not many people were out, and Marino wondered what the day would bring. Would the public really panic and stay out of taxis because of Carley Crispin and her leak? He seriously doubted it. This was New York. The worst panic he’d ever observed here wasn’t even 9/11, it was the economy. It was what he’d been seeing for months, the terrorism on Wall Street, the disastrous financial losses and a chronic fear that it was only going to get worse. Not having two dimes to rub together was a lot more likely to do you in than some serial killer supposedly cruising around in a yellow cab. If you were friggin’ broke, you couldn’t afford a friggin’ cab and were a hell of a lot more worried about ending up a street person than getting whacked while jogging.
At Columbus Circle, the CNN marquee was on to other news that had nothing to do with Scarpetta and The Crispin Report, something about Pete Townshend and The Who on the ticker, bright red against the night. Maybe the FBI was calling an emergency meeting because Scarpetta supposedly had bashed the Bureau in public, had called profiling antiquated. Someone of her status making a statement like that was taken seriously and not easily dismissed. Even if she really hadn’t said it or had said it off the record but it was out of context and not what she meant.