Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

HARLAN LAZARUS WAS furious. When he had arrived at PS 6 thirty minutes earlier, he had expected Roland Fortune to be waiting. Lazarus had sent two text messages to the mayor, messages which closed with the words “Judge Lazarus,” directing Roland to be there. As soon as he walked through the bright red school doors, he asked, “Where is Fortune?” The answer in a crisp voice from one of Lazarus’ staff members was, “No sign of him, Judge.”

“I told him to be here.”

“He isn’t.”

“Have someone call that guy Rothstein, the joker, who’s always with Fortune. And tell him that I’m going to call the president in fifteen minutes unless Mr. Fortune is here or it’s confirmed that he’s on his way.”

Lazarus stood at a window in a first-grade classroom that faced east. Directly across Madison Avenue was the quaint Crawford-Doyle Book Store, closed; the coffee shop at the corner of Madison and 82^nd Street, which Lazarus had been told was a favorite place for tourists, was also closed. The explosions more than three days ago had been so powerful that the windows of the Nectar Coffee Shop were all shattered.

The final death toll-final unless more bodies were found in the debris inside the museum-was 1,766 people, at least 300 of them from foreign countries. Lazarus, although he now commanded what was in effect a force of more than 100,000 agents, had never been in the military or a war. As he looked down 82^nd Street toward Fifth Avenue, beyond which he could see a narrow segment of the broken stone façade of the museum, he detected an odor he didn’t recognize. He said to the armed guard who stood next to him, “What’s that smell?” There was a joke in his department that he was so security conscious, so concerned about his own safety, that he slept every night with fully armed guards on either side of him.

The guard, who wore full combat gear, including a helmet, was a veteran of three tours of duty in Iraq. He hesitated before he answered. Although he’d spent hundreds of hours with Harlan Lazarus, Lazarus had never said a word to him. “That’s the smell of rotting flesh,” the guard finally said.

Al Ritter, Lazarus’ chief deputy, walked into the classroom. “He refuses to come over.”

“Refuses?”

“Rothstein says that Fortune is calling a press conference in an hour to announce that the lockdown of Manhattan will be lifted in three hours.”

Lazarus reached for the special cell phone he carried in a holster attached to his belt. There were only four numbers on that phone. One was President Carter.

Ritter said, “There is something else I need to tell you, Judge, something we just learned. It concerns Raj Gandhi.”

“And who is that?”

“The reporter for the Times who posted the blog about the police commissioner.”

“You mean the dead reporter? Gandhi?”

“That’s right,” Ritter said.

“So what is it?”

“We’ve just arrested the killer.”

“I’m just about to call the president of the United States, Al. Why do I need to know about this?”

“Because the man we’ve arrested is a mobster, an ex-con, named Tony Garafalo.”

“How the hell did an Indian reporter get killed by a mobster?”

“He’s a special mobster. He’s the lover of Commissioner Carbone. In fact, they’re so close that she’s been keeping him at the Regency Hotel since Sunday. Apparently she can’t function without whatever it is that he’s been giving to her for the last year or so.”

“Human nature,” Lazarus said, “is a marvelous thing.” He laughed. It was probably the second time in the three years in which Ritter had worked with him that he heard Lazarus laugh.

“There’s more,” Ritter said. “Our people found out that Mr. Garafalo had been feeding his pillow talk with Commissioner Carbone to Mr. Gandhi. Apparently the commissioner becomes talkative when Mr. Garafalo does whatever he does to her.”

“How do you know that?”

“Mr. Gandhi was a techie-kind of guy. He recorded every conversation he had on his cell phone.”

“That,” Lazarus said, “can be a dangerous habit.”

“It was. Gandhi was getting calls from a guy who imitated a crank from Queens or Brooklyn. Garafalo is the ventriloquist. Of course he never gave his name or said where he was getting his information. The commissioner must have whispered sweet nothings into Tony’s ears about the state-of-the-art dark prison on Pier 37 and her special anti-terror unit. Garafalo knew about the arrests of Arabs on the hit list Carbone’s people created.”

“And this Italian guy told a reporter for the Times about this? Will wonders never cease? Why?”

“Tony and Gina-sounds like the cast of Grease, doesn’t it-grew up together. Their families are part of the immense, closed-off Italian American tribe on Staten Island. Our intelligence people have quickly figured out that Garafalo, whose male relatives were always soldiers in the Gambino family, was upset, and that may not be the right word, when he found out during his trial that the then newly minted detective Gina Carbone was part of the large team that investigated him in the ’90s. He went to jail for seven or eight years for threatening people called to a special grand jury. When he came out, it so happened he met Gina at one of those big Italian barbecues. He had gone straight, he told her. He had taken a job at a Mercedes dealership. He is one extraordinarily handsome man. Carbone was attracted to him. She’s brave, she’s reckless. She’s also a devout Catholic. She believes sinners can be redeemed.”

Lazarus’ arms were folded. “And Mr. Garafalo holds grudges?”

“Big time,” Ritter said. “He was looking for a time and place and the right circumstances to hurt her.”

“And where,” Lazarus asked, “is the commissioner now?”

“We’re not sure. Until an hour or two ago she was with the mayor, at breakfast.”

“I want her arrested, too,” Lazarus said.