From Potter`s Field

19

We discussed the plan in the air as our pilot flew toward Manhattan. The Bureau's New York field office would assign an undercover agent to the pharmacy at Houston and Second Avenue, while a pair of agents from Atlanta would be dispatched to Live Oaks Plantation. This was happening even as we talked into our voice-activated microphones.

If Mrs. Gault maintained the usual schedule, money was due to be wired again tomorrow. Since Gault had no way of knowing his parents had been told their daughter was dead, he would assume the money would arrive as usual.

'What he's not going to do is just take a taxi to the pharmacy.' Wesley's voice filled my headset as I looked out at plains of darkness.

'Naw,' Marino said. 'I doubt it. He knows everybody but the queen of England is out looking for him.'

'We want him to go underground.'

'It seems riskier down there,' I said, thinking of Davila. 'No lights. And the third rails and the trains.'

1 know,' said Wesley. 'But he has the mentality of a terrorist. He doesn't care who he kills. We can't have a shoot-out in Manhattan in the middle of the day.'

I understood his point.

'So how do you make certain he travels through the tunnels to get to the pharmacy?' I asked.

'We turn up the heat without scaring him off.'

'How?'

'Apparently, there's a March Against Crime parade tomorrow.'

'That's appropriate,' I said ironically. 'It's through the Bowery?'

'Yes. The route can easily be changed to go along Houston and Second Avenue.'

Marino cut in. All you do is move traffic cones.'

'Transit PD can send out a computerized communication notifying police in the Bowery that there is a parade at such and such a time. Gault will see on the computer that the parade is supposed to go through the area at the exact time he is supposed to pick up the money. He'll see that the subway station at Second Avenue has been temporarily closed.'

A nuclear power plant in Delaware glowed like a heating element on high, and cold air seeped in.

I said, 'So he'll know it's not a good time to be traveling above ground.'

'Exactly. When there's a parade, there are cops.'

'I worry about him deciding not to go for the money,' Marino said.

'He'll go for it,' Wesley said as if he knew.

'Yes,' I said. 'He's addicted to crack. That is a more powerful motivator than any fear he might have.'

'Do you think he killed his sister for money?' Marino asked.

'No,' Wesley said. 'But the small sums her mother sent her were just one more thing he appropriated. In the end, he took everything his sister ever had.'

'No, he didn't,' I said. 'She was never evil like him. That's the best thing she had, and Gault couldn't take it.'

'We're arriving in the Big Apple with guns,' Marino's voice blurted over the air.

'My bag,' I said. 'I forgot.'

'I'll talk to the commissioner first thing in the morning.'

'It is first thing in the morning,' Marino said.

We landed at the helipad on the Hudson near the Intrepid aircraft carrier, which was strung with Christmas lights. A Transit Police cruiser was waiting, and I remembered arriving here not that long ago and meeting Commander Penn for the first time. I remembered seeing Jayne's blood in the snow when I did not know the unbearable truth about her.

We arrived at the New York Athletic Club again.

'Which room is Lucy in?' I asked Wesley as we checked in with an old man who looked as if he had always worked unearthly hours.

'She isn't.' He handed out keys.

We walked away from the desk.

'Okay,' I said. 'Now tell me.'

Marino yawned. 'We sold her to a small factory in the Garment District.'

'She's in protective custody, sort of.' Wesley smiled a little as brass elevator doors opened. 'She's staying with Commander Penn.'

In my room I took my suit off and hung it in the shower. I steamed it as I had the last two nights and considered throwing it out should I ever get a chance to change my clothes again. I slept under several blankets and with windows open wide. At six I got up before the alarm. I showered and ordered a bagel and coffee.

At seven, Wesley called and then he and Marino were at my door. We went down to the lobby and on to an awaiting police car. My Browning was in my briefcase, and I hoped Wesley got special permits and did it fast, because I did not wish to be in violation of New York gun laws. I thought of Bernhard Goetz.

'Here's what we're going to do,' Wesley said as we drove toward lower Manhattan. 'I'm going to spend the morning on the phone. Marino, I want you out on the street with Transit cops. Make damn sure those traffic cones are exactly where they ought to be.'

'Got it.'

'Kay, I want you with Commander Penn and Lucy. They'll be in direct contact with the agents in South Carolina and the one at the pharmacy.' Wesley looked at his watch. 'The agents in South Carolina, as a matter of fact, should be reaching the plantation within the hour.'

'Let's just hope the Gaults don't screw this up,' said Marino, who was riding shotgun.

Wesley looked over at me.

'When I left the Gaults they seemed willing to help,' I said. 'But can't we just wire the money in her name and keep her out of it?'

Wesley said, 'We could. But the less attention we draw to what we're doing, the better. Mrs. Gault lives in a small town. If agents go in and wire the money, someone might talk.'

'And what someone might say might get back to Gault?' I asked skeptically.

'If the Western Union agent in Beaufort somehow tips his hand to the one here in New York, you just never know what might happen to scare off Gault. We don't want to take the chance, and the fewer people we involve, the better.'

'I understand,' I said.

'That's another reason I want you with the commander,' Wesley went on. 'Should Mrs. Gault decide to interfere in any way, I'm going to need you to talk to her and get her back in the right frame of mind.'

'Gault just might show up at the pharmacy anyway,' Marino said. 'He might not know until he gets to the counter that the money's not coming, if that's what happens because his old lady wimps out on us.'

'We don't know what he'll do,' Wesley said. 'But I would suspect he'd call first.'

'She's got to wire the money,' I agreed. 'She absolutely must go through with it. And that's hard.'

'Right, it's her son,' Wesley said.

'Then what happens?' I asked.

'We've arranged it so the parade starts at two, which is about the time the money has been wired in the past. We'll have HRT out - some of them will actually be in the parade. And there will be other agents as well. Plus plainclothes police. These will be mostly positioned in the subway and in areas where there are emergency exits.'

'What about in the pharmacy?' I asked.

Wesley paused. 'Of course, we'll have a couple agents in there. But we don't want to grab Gault in the store or near it. He might start spraying bullets. If there are to be any casualties, it will be just one.'

'All I ask is let me be the lucky guy who does him,' Marino said. 'After that I could retire.'

'We absolutely must get him underground.' Wesley was emphatic. 'We don't know what weapons he has at present. We don't know how many people he could take out with karate. There's so much we don't know. But I believe he's fired up on coke and rapidly decompensating. And he's not afraid. That's why he's so dangerous.'

'Where are we going?' I asked, watching dreary buildings flow by as a light rain fell. It was not a good day for a parade.

Tenn's set up a command post at Bleecker Street, which is close to Houston Pharmacy but a safe distance, too,' Wesley said. 'Her team's been at it all night, bringing in computer equipment and so on. Lucy's with them.'

'This is inside the actual subway station?'

The officer driving answered, 'Yes, ma'am. It's a local stop that operates only during the week. Trains don't stop here on the weekends, so it should be quiet. Transit PD's got a miniprecinct here that covers the Bowery.'

He was parking in front of the stairs going down into a station. Sidewalks and streets were busy with people carrying umbrellas and holding newspapers over their heads.

'You just go down and you'll see the wooden door to the left of the turnstiles. It's next to the information window,' the officer said. He unhooked his mike. 'Unit one-eleven.' 'Unit one-eleven,' the dispatcher came back. 'Ten-five unit three.'

The dispatcher contacted unit three and I recognized Commander Penn's voice. She knew we had arrived. Wesley, Marino and I carefully descended slick steps as rain fell harder. The tile floor inside was wet and dirty, but no one was around. I was getting increasingly anxious.

We passed the information window, and Wesley knocked on a wooden door. It opened and Detective Maier, whom I had first met at the morgue after Davila's death, let us into a space that had been turned, essentially, into a control room. Closed-circuit television monitors were on a long table, and my niece sat at a console equipped with telephones, radio equipment and computers.

Frances Penn, wearing the dark commando sweater and pants of the troops she commanded, came straight to me and warmly grasped my hand.

'Kay, I'm so happy you're here,' she said, and she was full of nervous energy.

Lucy was absorbed in a row of four monitors. Each showed a blueprint of a different section of the subway system.

Wesley said to Commander Penn, 'I've got to go on to the field office. Marino will be out with your guys, as we discussed.'

She nodded.

'So I'll leave Dr. Scarpetta here.'

'Very good.'

'Where is this going down, exactly?' I inquired.

'Well, we're closing Second Avenue station, which is right there at the pharmacy,' Commander Penn answered me. 'We'll block the entrance with traffic cones and sawhorses. We can't risk a confrontation when civilians are in the area. We expect him to come up through the tunnel along the northbound track or leave that way, and he's more likely to be enticed by Second Avenue if it's not open.' She paused, looking over at Lucy. 'It will make more sense when your niece shows you on the screen.'

'Then you hope to grab him somewhere inside that station,' I said.

'That's what we hope,' Wesley said. 'We'll have guys out there in the dark. HRT will be out there and all around. The bottom line is we want to grab him away from people.'

'Of course,' I said.

Maier was watching us closely. 'How did you figure out the lady from the park was his sister?' he asked, looking straight at me.

I gave him a quick summary, adding, 'We'll use DNA to verify it.'

'Not from what I heard,' he said. 'I heard they lost her blood and shit at the morgue.'

'Where did you hear that?' I asked.

'I know a bunch of guys who work over there. You know, detectives in the Missing Persons Division for NYPD.'

'We will get her identified,' I said, watching him closely.

'Well, you ask me, it's a shame if they figure it out.'

Commander Penn was listening carefully. I sensed she and I were arriving at the same conclusion.

'Why would you say that?' she asked him.

Maier was getting angry. 'Because the way the stinking system works in this stinking city is we nab the asshole here, right? So he gets charged with killing that lady because there isn't enough evidence to convict him of killing Jimmy Davila. And we don't have capital punishment in New York. And the case just gets weaker if the lady's got no name - if no one knows who she is.'

'It sounds as if you're saying you want the case to be weak,' Wesley said.

'Yeah. It sounds that way because I do.'

Marino was staring at him with no expression. He said, 'The toad whacked Davila with his own service revolver. The way it ought to work is Gault ought to fry.'

'You're damn right he should.' Maier's jaw muscles clenched. 'He wasted a cop. A goddam good cop who's getting accused of a bunch of bullshit because that's what happens when you get killed in the line of duty. People, politicians, internal affairs - they speculate. Everybody's got an agenda. The whole world does. We'd all be better off if Gault gets tried in Virginia, not here.'

He looked at me again. I knew what had happened to Jayne's biological samples. Detective Maier had gotten his friends at the morgue to do him a favor in honor of their slain comrade. Though what they had done was terribly wrong, I almost could not blame them.

'You got the electric chair in Virginia, where Gault's also committed murders,' he said. 'And word has it that the Doc here breaks the record for getting these animals convicted of capital murder. Only if the bastard gets tried in New York, you probably won't be testifying, right?' 'I don't know,' I said.

'See. She don't know. That means forget it.' He looked around at everyone as if he'd argued his case and there could be no rebuttal. 'The asshole needs to go to Virginia and get cooked, if he don't get nailed here first by one of us.'

'Detective Maier,' Commander Penn quietly said, 'I need to see you in private. Let's go back to my office.' They left and went through a door in back. She would pull him from the assignment because he could not be controlled. She would give him a Complaint and he would probably be suspended. 'We're out of here,' Wesley said. 'Yeah,' Marino said. 'Next time you see us it will be on TV.' He referred to the monitors around the control room.

I was taking off my coat and gloves and about to talk to Lucy when the door in back opened and Maier emerged. He walked with quick, angry strides until he got to me.

'Do it for Jimbo,' he said with emotion. 'Don't let that asshole get away with it.'

The veins were standing out in his neck and he looked up at the ceiling. 'I'm sorry.' He blinked back tears and almost could not talk as he flung open the door and left.

'Lucy?' I said, and we were alone. She was typing and concentrating intensely.

'Hi,' she said.

I went to her and kissed the top of her head.

'Have a seat,' she said without looking away from what she was doing.

I scanned monitors. There were arrows for Manhattan-bound, Brooklyn-, Bronx- and Queens-bound trains and an intricate grid showing streets, schools and medical centers. All were numbered. I sat beside her and got my glasses out of my briefcase as Commander Penn reappeared, her face stressed.

'That was no fun to do,' she said, standing behind us, the pistol on her belt almost touching my ear.

'What are these flashing symbols that look like twisted ladders?' I asked, pointing out several on the screen.

'They're the emergency exits,' Commander Penn said.

'Can you explain what you're doing here?' I asked.

'Lucy, I'll let you do that,' the commander said.

'It's really pretty simple,' Lucy said, and I never believed her when she said that. 'I'm supposing that Gault is looking at these maps, too. So I'm letting him see what I want him to see.'

She hit several keys and another part of the subway was there before me, with its symbols and long linear depictions of tracks. She typed and a hatch work appeared in red.

This is the route we believe he'll take,' she said. 'Logic would tell you that he'll penetrate the subway here.'

Lucy pointed to the monitor left of the one directly in front of her. 'This is for the Museum of Natural History station. And as you can see there are three emergency exits right here near Hayden Planetarium and one up by Beresford Apartments. He also could go southbound closer to Kenilworth Apartments and get into the tunnels that way and then pick any platform he wants when it's time to get on a train.

'I haven't altered anything on these field surveys,' Lucy went on. 'It's more important to confuse him at the other end, when he gets to the Bowery.'

She rapidly typed and one after another images appeared on each monitor. She was able to tilt, move and manipulate them as if they were models she was turning in her hands. On the center screen in front of her the symbol for an emergency exit was lit up and a square had been drawn around it.

'We think this is his snake hole,' Lucy resumed. 'It is an emergency exit where Fourth and Third merge into the Bowery.' She pointed. 'Here behind this big brownstone. The Cooper Union Foundation Building.'

Commander Penn spoke. The reason we think he has been using this exit is we've discovered it has been tampered with. A folded strip of aluminum foil has been wedged between the door and its frame so someone could access the exit from above ground.

'It's also the closest exit to the pharmacy,' Commander Penn continued. It's remote, back here behind this building, basically in an alleyway between Dumpsters. Gault could go in and out whenever he pleased, and it's unlikely anyone would see him, even in broad daylight.'

'And there's another thing,' Lucy said. 'At Cooper Square there's a famous music store. The Carl Fischer Music Store.'

'Right,' Commander Penn said. 'Someone who works there recalls Jayne. Now and then she wandered in and browsed. This would have been during December.'

'Did anyone talk to her?' I asked, and the image made me sad.

'All they recalled was that she was interested in jazz sheet music. My point is, we don't know what Gault's connections to this area are. But they could be more involved than we think.'

'What we've done,' Lucy said, 'is take away this emergency exit. The police have bolted it shut, and boom.'

She hit more keys. The symbol was no longer lit up and a message next to it said Disabled.

'It seems that might be a good location to catch him,' I said. 'Why don't we want him there behind the Cooper Union Building?'

'Again,' the commander said, 'it's too close to a crowded area, and should Gault duck back into the tunnel, he would be very deep inside it. Literally, in the bowels of the Bowery. A pursuit would be terribly dangerous and we might not catch him. My guess is he knows his way around down there even better than we do.'

'All right,' I said. 'Then what happens?'

'What happens is, since he can't use his favorite emergency exit, he has two choices. He can pick another exit that's farther north along the tracks. Or he can continue walking through the tunnels and surface at the Second Avenue platform.'

'We don't think he'll pick another emergency exit,' Commander Penn said. 'It would place him above ground too long. And with a parade in progress, he's going to know there will be a lot of cops out. So our theory is he will stay in the tunnels for as long as he can.'

'Right,' Lucy said. 'It's perfect. He knows the station has been temporarily closed. No one's going to see him when he comes up from the tracks. And then he's right there at the pharmacy - practically next door to it. He gets his money and goes back the same way he came.'

'Maybe he will,' I said. 'And maybe he won't.'

'He knows about the parade,' Lucy said adamantly. 'He knows the Second Avenue station is closed. He knows the emergency exit he's tampered with has been disabled. He knows everything we want him to know.'

I looked skeptically at her. 'Please tell me how you can be so sure.'

'I've worked it so I get a message the minute those files are accessed. I know all of them were and I know when.' Anger flashed in her eyes.

'Someone else couldn't have?'

'Not the way I rigged it.'

'Kay,' Commander Penn said. 'There's another big part of all this. Look over here.' She directed my attention to the closed-circuit TV monitors set up on a long, high table. 'Lucy, show her.'

Lucy typed, and the televisions came on, each showing a different subway station. I could see people walking past. Umbrellas were closed and tucked under arms, and I recognized shopping bags from Bloomingdale's, Dean amp; DeLuca food market and the Second Avenue Deli.

'It's stopped raining,' I said.

'Now watch this,' Lucy said.

She typed more commands, synchronizing closed-circuit TV with the computerized diagrams. When one was on-screen, so was the other.

'What I can do,' she explained, 'is act as an air traffic controller, in a sense. If Gault does something unexpected, I will be in constant contact with the cops, the feds, via radio.'

'For example, if, God forbid, he should break free and head deep into the system, along these tracks here' - Commander Penn pointed to a map on screen - 'then Lucy can apprise police by radio that there is a wooden barricade coming up on the right. Or a platform edge, express train tracks, an emergency exit, a passageway, a signal tower.'

'This is if he escapes and we must chase him through the hell where he killed Davila,' I said. 'This is if the worst happens.'

Frances Penn looked at me. 'What is the worst when you're dealing with him?'

'I pray we have already seen it,' I said.

'You know that Transit's got a touch screen telephone system.' Lucy showed me. 'If the numbers are in the computer, you can dial anywhere in the world. And what's really cool is 911. If it's dialed above ground, the call goes to NYPD. If it's dialed in the subway, it comes to Transit Police.'

'When do you close Second Avenue station?' I got up and said to Commander Penn.

She looked at her watch. 'In a little less than an hour.'

'Will the trains run?'

'Of course,' she said, 'but they won't stop there.'