Terminal City

SIXTEEN

Laura printed out the two photographs Mike had forwarded to me of Carl the mole-dead and alive-while I went to the ladies’ room and showered. The spare clothes I kept at the office to dress down when I had an unexpected reason to go out into the field were a huge step up from the tunnel-tour threads in which I’d left home.

“Mr. Battaglia’s waiting,” Laura said, when I returned to my office.

“Where’s Mercer?”

“He cleans up faster than you do. Maybe better, too. Put a brush to that hair, young lady.”

I closed the door that separated her cubicle from my office and tried to make sense of my tangle of clean hair in the mirror that hung on the rear of the door.

“Mercer’s out in the hallway waiting to go over with you. When you’re done, Judge Aikens wants to see you on the Dominguez case. Drusin’s filed some everything-but-the-kitchen-sink motions to get his client out of jail immediately and to get you off his back,” my efficient secretary said. “And Mike asked me to print out the rap sheet on the deceased.”

I picked up both files-the Thatcher murder and the Dominguez papers-from her desk, and grabbed the rap sheet. Mercer was outside in the main corridor, fifteen feet from Laura’s desk.

I handed the rap to Mercer. “Carl Condon. Get familiar with the record so you can help me answer the district attorney’s questions.”

We walked the gauntlet together, the locked executive wing hallway-lined with photographs of the stone-faced white men who had preceded Battaglia as DA-that led to his executive assistant’s desk.

“He’s ready for you, Alex,” Rose said, smiling at me. “Pat yourself on the back for calling him last night, even though it was late. The mayor thought the boss was at the crime scene, he seemed to know so much.”

Paul Battaglia had no use for the new mayor, who had no understanding of the criminal justice system. It suited Battaglia’s personality to walk all over a politician in whom he sensed a point of weakness, of vulnerability. New York City’s latest leader wouldn’t have a clue how to handle the DA and the police commissioner in front of the media, with all the frenzy surrounding a serial murderer.

The smell of Battaglia’s expensive Cohiba at ten in the morning was like a breath of cool mountain air after the oppressive odors in the Grand Central tunnels.

The cigar was lodged in a corner of the DA’s mouth when he said hello to Mercer and me, and he showed no intention of removing it. Words occasionally slurred as he talked around the brown stub, but it never got in the way of expressing his strong opinions.

“You two figured this one out yet, Alex?”

“This second kill has thrown us way off track, Paul.”

“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”

“Or team,” Mercer said. “No doubt.”

“You’ve got a young woman in a top-tier hotel, throat slit and body violated. Good family, important job. Now tell me about this guy.”

Mercer had done a quick study of the criminal history. “Carl Condon. Twenty-six years old. Originally from Apalachicola, Florida. Dropped out of FSU and moved here six years ago. Four collars for larceny and three for prostitution.”

“Common denominator?”

“Marks on their bodies,” I said. “Drawings that might represent train tracks.”

“Might? I can’t do a stand-up on might. The department never declares a serial case till there are three crimes. Why go on two?”

“I agree with the commissioner this time, Paul. People have to be made aware before the body count grows. Maybe these few clues will resonate with someone who knows the killer. They are especially brutal crimes.”

“There’s a homicide that isn’t brutal?”

“I’d say there’s a good chance that Carl Condon was an accomplice in getting the Thatcher girl into the Waldorf. He might have stolen the trunk-”

“I get that,” the DA said, blowing me off and turning to Mercer. “Did this guy really live in a hole in the ground? In a tunnel?”

“Yes, sir.”

Battaglia leaned forward, on the scent of a hit. “Were you there? Did you see it yourselves? Am I safe in actually saying people make their homes down there?”

“Alex and I went in this morning, with an officer from Grand Central. It was only Chapman who actually saw where Condon lived.”

“But the moles Alex described last night,” he said to Mercer, “they actually exist in numbers?”

“No question about it. We met a few dozen of them.”

“So the mayor’s been in office almost nine months,” the sixth-term incumbent noted. The DA’s office relied heavily on funding from the city, and the new mayor had not been Battaglia’s candidate. “He’ll get pummeled on his homeless problem once this gets out, am I right?”

“In all likelihood, sir.”

Paul Battaglia leaned back, sensing a hole in the mayoral armor. “All his blather about New York as a tale of two cities, and he hasn’t done a goddamn thing about the homeless problem yet. It’s an absolute disgrace on a human level, driving the murder rate back up after all the successes of my crime-strategies approach.”

“But, Paul-,” I said, trying to interject a thought.

“Cavemen lived underground, Alex. Troglodytes and other subhuman cultures burrowed into cliffside dwellings. Egyptian slaves lived and died in their mines. Cimmerian monks cut their cells into rocks, coming out only to minister to passing pilgrims.”

Battaglia was revving up a speech for his fall appearance at Riverside Church. I tried not to choke on his rhetoric as I stared at the sign hanging behind his head, reminding me that he couldn’t play politics with people’s lives.

“Scully and I may have two homicides to answer for this week, but City Hall has allowed the larger problem to exist, to flourish under this new leadership.” The cigar bobbed up and down furiously, marking the tempo of Battaglia’s prattle. “And if the mayor thinks that by spending all his time trying to raise taxes on my most loyal constituents while every John Doe Lunatic takes up residence in a train tunnel, he’ll be a one-termer faster than you can say Jimmy Carter.”

“Is there a problem you want to tell us about?” I asked.

Paul Battaglia had known Mercer for almost as long as he had known me, and trusted him as the loyal NYPD partner that he was.

“My application to the city council for twenty million dollars for the international cyberbanking initiative I want to create-remember that?”

It was part of the program for my counterparts in the white-collar crime unit of the office, which was Battaglia’s pet division. They did more intellectual work than street crime, cleaner and without any element of violence. “It was discussed at the last bureau chief’s meeting. That’s all I’ve heard.”

“The Speaker called me yesterday and told me the mayor’s going to veto it. Straight-out veto. No discussion, no money for this office.”

If the mayor wasn’t yet familiar with Battaglia’s form of payback, he was in for a rude awakening.

“He and I-Keith Scully, too-have been invited to the reception for the president when he arrives for the special UN meeting. You need to solve these cases before that. Let the mayor be the one who’s embarrassed about the homeless. His policies allow the situation in this city to deteriorate, while the commissioner and I tackle all the scum thrown our way.”

“You can’t put these homicides in the middle of a political skirmish,” I said. “That’s way too transparent for your style.”

The district attorney of New York County rarely left fingerprints, but this mix of money and murder was a formula that could lead him onto the rocks.

“The reception is Monday night. Get everything else off your plate, Alex. Give Rocco what he needs to get this done. There’s only one clown in town,” Battaglia said, “and unfortunately for me he’s running City Hall. I want results from you before the weekend’s over.”