Daylight

Chapter 42

It was the hour of night when most people were already in bed. A marine fog had rolled in off the Hudson and been met by a twin mist burning off the East River. They met in the middle of Manhattan like secret lovers on a nighttime tryst.

Pine was fully dressed as she gazed out the bedroom window and saw nothing. Any activity going on at street level ten floors below was currently invisible to her.

She checked her main weapon and her Beretta for the fourth and final time. She moved down to Blum’s bedroom door and listened for a few moments until she heard the woman’s gentle snores. Puller was waiting for her in the front room. He was dressed all in black, and she noted the bulges along his waistline where his twin M11s sat.

Puller took out his phone and scrolled through some screens. “I’ve had a team of CID agents up here tracking Sands all day and night.”

“What has he been doing?”

“Apparently, the twin workloads of being a student at Georgetown and operating a drug ring got to be too much for him. He’s taking some time off from academia to fatten his wallet and expand his market share.”

“So it’s confirmed that he’s dealing?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Have we ruled out his father being a partner in all this?” she asked as they stepped into the elevator car and headed down.

“Not definitively, but from all we could ascertain the guy is legit rich. And he’s a prick for a father, at least to Sands. So I doubt father and son are in this together.”

A taxi dropped them three blocks from their destination in Brooklyn.

“It’s a club where Sands hangs out,” explained Puller.

“What kind of a club?”

“An expensive one.”

“You want front or back?” she asked.

“Up to you.”

Pine headed to the back.

She settled in behind a line of dumpsters about twenty yards from the rear exit of the place that was called, simply, the Club.

Now that’s either really lazy or really ingenious, thought Pine.

Puller had emailed her a picture of Sands. He was handsome, with an arrogant glaze to his features. He looked like a child of privilege to Pine. But then again, his mother had died while he was a child and his father had abandoned him. Pine could relate to that, but it didn’t absolve the man from the consequences of being a drug dealer.

A light rain began to fall, and Pine moved back so that she was under the cover of an overhang. She pulled up the collar on her jacket and kept her gaze on the back door of the Club. She stiffened at one A.M. when the door opened and two men stumbled out. But neither one was Sands. They quickly moved off, picking up their pace as the rain came down harder.

Twenty minutes more passed, and Pine was wondering whether this stakeout would turn out to be a bust when the door opened once more. She stiffened and then relaxed as the woman appeared. She looked to be in her twenties, short, voluptuous, and wearing barely anything at all.

A moment later Pine came to rigid attention as the man appeared in the doorway and looked around. Jeff Sands then stepped out, smiled, and coiled his hands around the woman. His hands dipped to her buttocks and took up purchase there. They kissed and he maneuvered her back against the wall.

Pine wasn’t sure she wanted to see what was coming next, until the two men appeared from a darkened corner of the rear of the building. The woman darted away, and it was just Sands and the two gents with pistols pointed at his handsome and now terrified face. He put his hands up and backed away. She could see him pleading with the gunmen, even as she knew these pleas would not cut it. She had already texted a one-word alert to Puller. She slipped out both pistols and moved forward. Her Glock was aimed at one assailant, her Beretta at the other.

They had backed Sands up to the same wall as he had the woman.

She would normally call out her presence and FBI authority, but this situation did not ideally allow for it. Rushing silently forward, she clubbed the first man on the back of the head with the butt of her pistol; he dropped to the ground with a yell. The other man whipped around, his gun leveled at her chest. The next moment he was on the ground after being slammed there by Puller, who had rounded the corner and hit the fellow with a full head of steam.

They quickly disarmed the men and then ordered them to get up.

The man Pine had clubbed had blood streaming down his face. “I need a doctor,” he screamed.

“What you need,” said Puller, holding out his shield, “is to start answering questions. Beginning with why you were just about to kill this man.”

Sands had collapsed against the wall and was panting with tears in his eyes.

“We weren’t going to kill him,” said the other man, rubbing a bruise on his cheek where it had slammed into the pavement. “We were going to talk to him about some delinquent bills.”

“And you do that with guns?” said Pine.

“Mr. Sands usually needs some persuading.”

Puller took out his phone and punched in a number. “Well, you can explain your technique to NYPD, how about that?”

“You don’t really want to do that.”

They turned because this came from Sands, who had regained his composure and was looking at them imploringly. “These are business associates of mine. They really weren’t going to hurt me.”

“Which I can’t say for you two,” the same man said, rubbing his cheek again.

Pine said, “Either one of you know Tony Vincenzo?”

The men glanced at each other until the bleeder said, “Who?”

Puller put his phone away and looked at Sands, who said, “This has nothing to do with Tony. They don’t know him.”

Pine turned her attention to him. “But you do?”

“I know him, yeah,” he said grudgingly.

Puller glanced at the two men. “Beat it.”

The men looked in surprise at each other and then hurried off, disappearing into the mist as quietly as they had emerged from it.

Sands pushed off the wall and straightened out his clothes. “Thanks for the help. I’d buy you a drink, but I have someplace I have to be.”

Puller hooked him by the arm. “You do have a place to be. Speaking with us. Let’s go.”

Sands strained against him. “This is a free country and I’ve done nothing wrong. So get your damn hands off me.”

Pine stepped forward. “Or we can call up your grandfather and let him know what our investigation has uncovered about you.”

“You think he’d care?” sneered Sands. “Why don’t you call the asshole who happens to be my father and see what you’d get there?”

“Maybe they won’t be interested, but the police probably will. Those guys weren’t collecting for a charity. How much do you owe them?”

“Why are you guys giving me such a hard time?”

Puller remarked, “We know what you’re involved in, Jeff. And people have died. What makes you think you’re special?”

“Who’s died?”

“Tony Vincenzo’s father. And a woman named Sheila Weathers.”

Sands looked panicked. “Sheila! You’re lying. She was just—”

“Just what? Just at that penthouse the other night? So was I. She’s dead. I saw her body.”

“You’re lying.”

“We can take you right now to the morgue to see her corpse. It won’t be pretty because they’ve already autopsied her. I have the report on my phone. You want to see the pictures?”

Sands shook his head and put a shaky hand to his face. “No... I...”

“Let’s go get a cup of coffee. There’s an all-night place right around the corner,” said Puller.

They walked off into the darkness.