Silent Mercy

THIRTY-EIGHT

I was belted into the backseat of Mike’s car as he rocketed out of the parking space, up Broadway toward the entrance to the GW Bridge at 178th Street and Ft. Washington Avenue.

“Peterson’s got the local cops ready to shut down the town. Get us backup from the State Police if we can figure out whether she’s still in the area. What does our time look like, Mercer?”

“Give it twenty minutes from the bridge,” he said, checking his watch. “Say Chat called two hours ago. No telling where she is now.”

“Why Secaucus?” I asked.

“Remind me to ask Chat after we find her, Coop.”

Mercer was thinking it through. “If somebody is on the move with her, Secaucus is the perfect transportation hub. You’re directly across the river from Manhattan. You’ve got the north-south stretch of the Jersey Turnpike, which is intersected by local highways up and down the entire line. And acres of rail yards.”

“Amtrak?” I asked.

“Freight. Not passengers. It’s a major transfer station for truckers too. Our killer could be scatting in or out of there any which way. I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope that Chat’s sitting in a terminal waiting for us.”

“I got a worse thought than that,” Mike said. “Secaucus used to be the hands-down winner of the most odorific stinking town in the US of A. Back before it became a destination shopping-outlet strip mall.”

The town had long been infamous for its foul smell, a stench so powerful that even as kids riding down the turnpike in the family car, we literally had to hold our noses for miles and miles along the drive.

“What causes the odor?” I asked. “My father used to tell us it was sewage.”

“The doc was sparing your sensitive nature, kid. Didn’t want to disconnect your olfactory nerve from your big brain.”

“Pig farms, wasn’t it?” Mercer asked.

“That would have been the part of town closest to the Chanel counter at Bergdorf ’s. The rest of the distinctive Secaucus fragrance came mostly from rendering plants.”

“Rendering. You don’t mean — animals?”

“Oh, yeah, Coop. Yes, I do. The process that converts waste animal tissue into useful materials — everything from lard to tallow.”

My fingers reflexively pinched my nostrils. We were high above the Hudson River on the upper deck of the bridge as Mike weaved in and out of the heavy flow of traffic heading to New Jersey.

“Butcher-shop trimmings, expired grocery-store meats, dead-stock,” he went on, listing things I didn’t want to envision. “Blood, feathers, hair. What? You think the Mob used the old Meadowlands as a dumping ground for dead bodies ’cause they were Giants fans? A murder victim could get good and ripe before anyone in town suspected a stray whiff of death.”

“The girl was alive two hours ago,” Mercer said. “Fingers crossed.”

“Be careful what you wish for. Being alive in this guy’s hands isn’t likely to be time well spent.”

“Freezing,” I said. “What about the freezing cold she described?”

“Take off your long johns, blondie. It’s twenty-six degrees outside.”

“Her silk long johns, you meant to say.”

“Now how would you happen to know that, Brother Wallace?” Mike asked with a grin. He had cut off two cars at the exit as he careened onto the southbound highway.

“ ’ Cause Alex was kind enough to give some to Vickee for Christmas, for that ski trip we took in January. Now I’m expected to keep my wife in silk underwear.”

“Coop dresses so she don’t know from freezing. The wind blows off the Hudson, that cold air can bite like a king cobra. That’s freezing.”

“So Secaucus is remote, industrial, and a ghost town at night. But just a short hop into Manhattan,” I said. “Trucks and trains and the smell of death in the air — maybe Chat wasn’t all that confused when she called Faith.”

“I’m telling you, Coop. This town is a natural killing ground.”