Manhattan Lockdown

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

JUDGE HARLAN LAZARUS was waiting alone for Andrew Carter in the ancient basement of Gracie Mansion, over two hundred years old and unchanged in all that time, and rose to his feet as Carter, alone, stepped down the creaking wooden stairwell. Carter, with the aid of his speechwriters who were in the Executive Office Building in Washington and linked to him by a large video screen, had finished preparing a five-minute speech that was to be broadcast around the world. He had just been told by one of the Secret Service agents that the director of Homeland Security had “absolutely vital information” he needed to give the president before he demonstrated to the world that he was unharmed and still completely in charge of the freeing of Manhattan and the defeat of the ISIS onslaught. “The judge,” the agent had said without a trace of irony, “is alone in the basement. And the basement is completely secure, a medieval fortress.”

There was only a single unshaded 75-watt bulb in the basement. It had the odor of old cold stone. Lazarus looked liked a spectre as he emerged from the semidarkness to the foot of the stairwell. Carter waited for him. Even under the light bulb, Lazarus’ face looked like a death mask.

“So what is it now?” Carter, annoyed and somewhat apprehensive, asked.

“Two assistant U.S. attorneys and some of my agents just had a long, tell-all interview with Tony Garafalo. They have enough information now to go in front of a grand jury and have Gina Carbone and Roland Fortune indicted today.”

“Why,” Carter asked, “would I let that happen?”

“Because justice is important.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Mr. President, the police commissioner of the largest city in the country has been having a two-year affair with a serious mobster. And that commissioner has since Sunday been engaged in secret arrests. And she has for years developed a cadre of what, in effect, are mercenaries, some of them once Blackwater mercenaries, and put them on the NYPD payroll as community liaison officers whose only real work has been to illegally, without warrants or court approval, put wiretaps and secret surveillance devices on people her mercenaries believe are security risks, people, by the way, who as I’ve just had my experts check, are not on any suspicious persons list-in my department, the CIA, or the NSA. She had a high-tech, off-the-books detention facility built on what, in effect, is a camouflaged and abandoned pier. And she has told all this to a mobster who has been her lover for several years. They were together as recently as last night. And it is obvious to us that her unusual confidante passed this information along to an investigative reporter for the New York Times. And that this lifelong gangster shot that reporter to death last night.”

“And you are telling me this,” Andrew Carter asked, “for what reason?”

Lazarus, who from the skeletal sockets in which his eyes were deeply set, looked at the president with the same skepticism and contempt with which he had glared at Ivy League law students when they had given him the wrong answer. He said, “Mr. President, she’s the hub of the wheel of a kidnapping and murder syndicate. At a minimum, a grand jury in two hours could, given what Garafalo has confessed to two experienced assistant U.S. attorneys and several seasoned federal law enforcement agents, indict her for these things, and she could then be arrested on that indictment in fifteen minutes.”

“Judge, do you have any idea how fundamentally off base you are?” Carter stared at him. “And what is this about indicting the mayor? Where did you get that idea? Is it against the law to be so good-looking?”

“Mr. President, the mayor is a drug addict. Garafalo on his cell phone had dozens of YouTube-style films secretly taken by Fortune’s security detail of Fortune taking and paying for deliveries of banned opiate substances from known drug dealers during all the years he has been in office. The security detail gave the live recordings to Carbone, to whom the detail members are extraordinarily loyal. The recordings were transferred to her cell phone. She either transferred them to Garafalo for the love of the game-maybe they learned those kinds of games when they were kids in the same neighborhood on Staten Island long before Steve Jobs gave the world cell phones-or he just roamed through her cell phone for the fun of it when she was sleeping. Whatever the way, he has the images. And now I do.”

Lazarus removed his iPhone from the internal pocket of the loose fitting suit he wore and held it up before the president. Lazarus said, “They’re both criminals. She has no respect for the Constitution. And she spends all of her spare time with Garafalo, who is a walking crime wave. And the mayor has enough banned substances to open a warehouse.”

Andrew Carter reached out and took Lazarus’ cell phone from him. Lazarus said, “I’ll cue up some more of the images for you. You can see for yourself.”

And then Carter deliberately let Lazarus’ cell phone drop from his hand. It hit the old stone of the basement floor, which was cobbled together two centuries ago. The phone was intact. Thinking that Carter had inadvertently lost his grip on the sleek silver object, Lazarus, in an uncommon gesture of cooperation, began to lean over to pick up the phone.

And it was then that the heel of Andrew Carter’s two-thousand-dollar shoes covered Lazarus’ cell phone and ground it into splinters.

“Here is what you’ll do, Judge, beginning immediately. First, if a grand jury is already sitting, disband it. Make sure if it is sitting that all of the people on it are told to disregard whatever they’ve heard so far and have them reminded that grand jurors are bound by law to total secrecy. If they’ve heard anything at all from the government lawyers or the agents they will be indicted themselves if they repeat anything they heard.

“Second, if any of the government lawyers have any of the tapes that were on this phone they are to turn them over to your people immediately and then your people are to bring them to my Secret Service agents. I will tell my agents to give me any of those devices.”

Lazarus was utterly motionless, like a medical school skeleton suspended in midair. He didn’t say a word.

“Finally, and most important, you are to fly back to Washington and stay in that little bachelor apartment you have in Anacostia and not leave it until I tell you to, and at that point I’ll have my press secretary announce I’ve received your resignation and accepted it with deep regret. And you will remember forever that before you took the job you signed an agreement never to write about or speak about anything you ever learned while serving as Director of Homeland Security. If you do I’ll have you indicted, since you seem to get such pleasure from indictments.”

Carter turned and began walking up the creaking stairs. “And don’t ever let me see your face or hear your voice again.”