Terminal City

FIFTEEN

I doubled back with Mercer, into the great train station, stopping in the restroom to scrub my hands and face before going outside and walking-first north on Lexington and then west to the corner of Madison and 47th Street.

The Northwest Passage was the entrance to the train system where the antique steamer trunk had been found-bleached out and abandoned.

Mike took the tunnel route along with Hank Brantley and Joe Sammen, hoping that Sammen might recognize other moles, men who were geographically closer to Carl’s turf in their underground lairs. Mercer told them we’d find a coffee shop near the corner of 47th Street and wait for them.

I couldn’t bear the thought of eating after what I’d seen belowground. Two cups of strong black coffee couldn’t make my nerves feel any more jangly than they already did.

At eight forty-five, a patrol car dropped Mike in front of the coffee shop, and Mercer waved him inside to us. He looked more like an off-duty coal miner than a cop.

“Sit down,” I said. “The girl will be right over with your coffee.”

“I gotta go home and shower first thing. I stink.”

“I’m going to shower in the office. The sooner I get there and fill Battaglia in, the better.”

“I’m with Alex. I got fresh clothes in my trunk,” Mercer said. “What’d you see?”

“First of all, I could probably get to Philly tunneling underground. Maybe all the way to DC.”

“But did you find out anything about who Carl is?” I asked.

“Everything but a name, kid.”

“What do you know?”

“That was his crib, right below 46th Street. If Hank’s coordinates are as accurate as I think, it’s an easy crawl-if you don’t mind feeling like you’re in an episode of some Animal Planet show-to the Northwest Passage. Joe Sammen recognized a whole pod of Carl’s friends.”

“What did they call him?”

“Runner-Boy. From the days when Smitty was in charge and dubbed him that.”

“Get anything useful?” Mercer asked.

“I went in to look at his space. All he had was a yoga mat on the floor, a couple of torn T-shirts, a pair of sandals, and a picture of himself from a few years back. I grabbed that,” Mike said. “I asked Hank to see if he could find a man to safeguard the joint till you can get a warrant to search it. Didn’t want to get you riled up, but there won’t be anything left of Runner-Boy’s once the pals in the hood know he’s dead.”

I reached across the table for the old photograph. “We don’t need a warrant. Carl wasn’t paying any rent. No expectation of privacy. Call Hank and tell him to go in and grab whatever there is. Look for paper, for other photos. Grab it all.”

“Love it when you go rogue, Coop.”

“It’s the law, Mike. Every now and then the law is your friend.”

“Clean-cut kid,” Mercer said, when I passed him the picture. “Wonder what happened here.”

“At least it gives us another photo to go public with. Sort of before and after looks.”

“Does headquarters have the shot on your iPhone?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s okay to forward it to Mercer and me now.”

“Will do.”

“Mercer, let’s you and I stop by to see Johnson White before we go to the office.”

“Who’s he?” Mike asked.

“The porter who saw a man make off with the Yalie’s steamer trunk,” I said. “You didn’t find any other clothes in Carl’s cubby?”

“Torn-up tees, like I told you.”

“So the Grim Reaper fetches him in a new sports shirt from the Gap,” I said. “And a touristy baseball cap.”

“And long dark hair over the collar of the shirt,” Mercer said.

“But he’s got no other clothes. What does that say?”

“That whoever he was running for recently bought him new duds. Suited him up for a job, like stealing a trunk while no one’s looking.”

“Might get us a step closer,” I said.

“Then Johnson White it is,” Mercer said, paying for the coffee as we stood up.

“I’ll be home till I hear from you two,” Mike said. “Unless Rocco’s got plans for me.”

“Call you later.”

We walked across to Park Avenue and down to 43rd, to the Bank of America building. I waited in the lobby while Mercer was directed to the basement to find White.

He returned five minutes later, shaking his head. “Best he could say was that the shirt was light-colored, like the one Carl was wearing when he was found, and that the cap was darker than the guy’s hair. But because the brim of the cap was pulled down so low, White couldn’t make anything out of his features. Showing him the iPhone photo didn’t give us anything.”

“Skunked. Might as well go downtown.”

“I’m parked on 45th Street, just east of Grand Central.”

We tried to make a game plan for the day, unable to factor in what would happen once Commissioner Scully made a public statement about the second murder.

“Did you ask Mike to have the dead man’s face run through facial recognition programs in the Real Time Crime Center?”

The NYPD’s dramatically effective “real time” center worked with more than thirteen million mug shots and arrest photos, scanning them against images of suspects sought for violent crimes.

“Rocco’s on it.”

“Last count,” I said, “there were more than four thousand closed-circuit TV cameras in the subway system citywide. There must be a few at the entrance to the Northwest Passage.”

“Same way the baseball cap pulled snug down prevented Johnson White from seeing the trunk thief’s face? That would have foiled facial recognition software, too.”

We were almost near the courthouse when Mike called.

“We haven’t even reached Hogan Place,” I said. “Be patient.”

“Got a hit?”

“Not yet. The photo you took last night?”

“Didn’t work. Rocco had it run against Universal Face Workstation,” Mike said, referring to the program with millions of criminal faceprints, digitally recorded representations of human faces, as individual as fingerprints. “But the system works in part on the theory that faces are symmetrical. And our boy wound up a little cockeyed last night. The photo drew a complete blank.”

“Scully will go public by noon,” I said. “That should help.”

“I stole his thunder, Coop. That other photo of him I swiped, that was taken a few years ago?”

“The one where he looks like a Boy Scout?”

“That one. Earned him a few badges they don’t give out in scouting,” Mike said.

“A criminal history?” I asked.

“Smitty was right about our boy hustling. His picture comes up with three arrests for prostitution. About five years ago, in Midtown South, before he went down under and got too dirty to sell his flesh. And he was a frequent flier for petty theft, too.”

“Sounds like a runner for hire to me. Now what in God’s name would a guy like that have to do with Corinne Thatcher?”