The Patriots' Club

12

Detective First Grade John Franciscus couldn’t believe his eyes. About ten yards away, a tall black guy, maybe forty, nicely dressed, was standing with his johnson in his hand taking a leak on the side of St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church. The sight incensed him. Here it was, barely eight in the morning, and this guy’s letting go on a house of worship like he’s watering the roses.

Slamming on the brakes, Franciscus pulled his unmarked police cruiser to the sidewalk and threw open the door. “You!” he shouted. “Stay!”

“Whatchyou-” The man didn’t have time to finish his sentence before Franciscus ran up and slugged him in the mouth. The man tumbled backward off his feet, his right hand still firmly clamped to his exhaust pipe, the pee flying all over him. “Shit,” he moaned, his eyes fluttering.

Franciscus winced at the smell of the booze wafting up at him. “That, sir, was a lesson in attitude adjustment. This is your neighborhood. Take better care of it.”

Shaking his head, Franciscus headed back to his car before the guy could get a better look at him. The kind of behavior that Franciscus called preemptive action, or an attitude adjustment, was strictly frowned upon these days. Some called it excessive force, or police brutality. Even so, it was too effective a policy tool to be discarded entirely. The way Franciscus saw it, he was just doing his duty as a resident.

Harlem was his neighborhood, too. Coming up on thirty-five years, he’d been policing out of the Three-Four and Manhattan North Homicide. He’d watched Harlem pull itself up by its bootstraps and turn from an urban war zone where no man was safe after dark-white, black, or any shade in between-to a respectable, bustling community with clean sidewalks and proud citizens.

You let the small things slide and people get the idea that no one gives a darn. No sir. You have to bust the homeless guys who spit on your window and want a dollar to clean it off; the winos who demand tips as doormen at ATMs; corner crack dealers; fare breakers; graffiti artists. Anybody and everybody who made the streets an ugly, difficult place. He was not about to stand for some knucklehead peeing in public, and on a church, to boot.

It was policing this kind of low-grade delinquency that had reclaimed Harlem from the thugs and the thieves, and made greater New York the safest big city in the world.

A mile down the road, Franciscus pulled his car over and slipped the “Police Business” card onto the dash. Craning his neck, he stared up at the high-rise. Hamilton Tower, after Alexander Hamilton, who’d built his “country” house, the Grange, just up the road. What someone was thinking building a luxury office tower around here was beyond him. The building looked to be about twenty percent finished. He surveyed the building site. The only vehicle on the premises was a Ford F-150 pickup. He looked around for some hard hats, checked if the crane up top was moving. The site was as quiet as a morgue. Franciscus knew what that meant. No dinero. Just what Harlem needed. Another white elephant, excuse the pun.

Franciscus checked both ways, waiting for a hole in traffic. Strictly speaking, he was off duty, but he had a few things he needed to clear up, or he’d never get to sleep. Home was not a place he cared to be when his mind was jumping through hoops. It was a nice enough place, four thousand square feet, two stories, white picket fence, and a lawn out back up in Orange County. But it was lonely as hell. His wife had passed away three years earlier. His sons were living the life of Riley out in San Diego, both of them sheriffs, God bless ’em. These days it was just him and the radiator, each of them ticking away, waiting to see who was going to give out first.

A car passed and he jogged across the street. Five strides, and he could feel the sweat begin to pour, his heart doing the Riverdance-and this with the mercury barely clawing its way above zero. He slowed to a walk, and wiped his forehead.

At the supervisor’s shack, Franciscus knocked once, then stuck his head in the door. “Anyone here?”

“Enter,” answered a gruff voice.

Franciscus stepped inside and flashed his identification, keeping it there good and long so there wouldn’t be any questions afterward. The badge wasn’t good enough anymore. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry had a fake. “I’d like to take a look around. You mind?”

“Not if you’re interested in building a new precinct station here. We got plenty of floors open. One through eighty. Take your pick.”

The construction manager was an older guy with a beer belly and a beet red face. He had a copy of the Post in his lap, a cigarette burning in the ashtray next to a supersize mug of coffee, and a bag of Krispy Kremes in arm’s reach. Franciscus took a look at him, wondering how this guy’s heart was holding up.

“I need to get up to the foreman’s shack,” he said.

“Go ahead. Gate’s open. Elevator’s running. Not much to see up there. Don’t get too near the edges, ya hear?”

“Don’t worry about me. I don’t feel like taking a dive anytime soon.” Franciscus nodded toward the work site. “Mind me saying, I don’t see many guys around.”

“You and me both. The suits are waiting to see if anyone’s actually gonna move in, before they plunk down any more dough. If you need anything, just holler. Loud!”

Franciscus chuckled. It was weak, but at least the guy was trying. “You said the gate’s unlocked. You keep this place open all night?”

“Tell me you’re kidding and you’ll restore my faith in city government.”

“Who has the keys?”

“Me. And about twenty other assholes. Don’t tell me you want their names.”

“Naw. Just yours. You look familiar. Ever carry a badge?” It was a line. Something to puff the guy up a little. Win him over.

“No sir. Did a year in ‘Nam, though. That was enough time in a uniform for me.”

“Same here. Nice memories.” Franciscus rolled his eyes.

“Alvin J. Gustafson at your service.” He reached into his pocket and found a business card. “Call me Gus. I guess I better ask what this is about. What exactly are you looking for?”

“Anyone asks, Gus, I’m just checking the view.”

Franciscus found the foreman’s shack as Bolden had described it. He strolled to the door and opened it. The view faced north toward the Bronx, just like Bolden had said. No question this was the place.

Franciscus stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. He didn’t have much on his mind, no suspicions, no ideas, really. He’d come up to run Bolden’s story through and imagine what had happened here.

It was the man he had under watch at the hospital who bothered him. He had no doubt he was a veteran, but so far his prints had come back negative. He hadn’t been carrying any identification and refused to give his name. In fact, he didn’t even want to use his phone call. He just sat there quiet as a lamb. He was, Franciscus concluded, a serious player, and Franciscus had every intention of learning who had sent him uptown to do bodily harm to Thomas Bolden.

Franciscus looked at the doorway and the chairs, trying to figure out where Bolden had been standing, where he hit the floor. As his eyes skimmed the carpet, he spotted a sterling-silver collar stay lying near the base of the desk. He picked it up. From Tiffany, no less. Isn’t Bolden the big muckety-muck? he mused, dropping the metal sliver into his pocket. A little physical evidence never hurt.

After a few minutes, he headed back to the elevator. On the trip to the ground floor, he reviewed the facts as he knew them. Unbeknownst to him, Mr. Thomas Bolden is followed from his office to lunch at Balthazar yesterday at one o’clock. The suspect steals a cell phone that he can use anonymously later in the day. That night, Bolden’s girlfriend is mugged by two men in their mid to late twenties. Her watch (an anniversary gift valued at six thousand dollars) is stolen, along with a large sterling-silver plate. Bolden gives pursuit and is forced at gunpoint into the rear of a limousine. The watch is returned. During the ride uptown, one of the assailants hints at having served as a Ranger in the army. The limousine deposits Bolden and the two assailants at a deserted building site in Harlem sometime around 12:30 A.M. The gate’s open. The foreman’s shack has been prepared, right down to ripping the construction plans off the wall. Everything has been arranged beforehand with care and precision. He is interrogated by a man named Guilfoyle about something called Crown, and whether or not he was acquainted with an individual named Bobby Stillman. Bolden says no, whereupon Guilfoyle forces him outside, onto a platform seventy stories up and about the size of a postage stamp. When Bolden still refuses to play ball, he fires a gun next to his cheek to make sure he’s not lying.

At this point, Franciscus paused in his reconstruction of the events to reflect. In short order, he decided that if someone put a gun to his head, he would admit to knowing Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé Indians. Mr. Bolden has himself some brass ones. That’s for sure.

Franciscus continued. Guilfoyle gives his associate, Wolf, instructions to kill Bolden, then leaves the building. Bolden manages to wrestle Wolf off the girder. The two fall sixty feet into a safety net. Bolden descends to the ground, surprises the driver, whacks the hell out of him, and takes off with the car, crashing through the gates. Two hours later, when the site is checked, no sign is found of Wolf or of any crazy business whatsoever.

It was one wild-ass story, thought Franciscus as he crossed the construction area. It had to take a lot to bring someone like Bolden into the police station. He made a note to run a check on him, if the budget could stand it. Tossing the collar stay in his hand, he decided everything Bolden had said was true. What he wasn’t sure of was whether Bolden was hiding a prior association with Guilfoyle. It seemed like an awful lot of work to get the wrong guy.

“Still here, Gus?” he said, knocking on the door of the supervisor’s shack.

“Busy as ever.”

Franciscus stepped inside. “ ‘Fraid I’m going to need the names of the people who have a key.”

“Knew it.” Gustafson tore a sheet of paper from a notebook and handed it to him. A list of names numbered one through six filled the left-hand side of the page. “Be prepared, my father taught me. Turns out I couldn’t think of twenty. Only six. Otherwise, you can call the head office.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Jersey. Atlas Ventures.”

“Never heard of them. Why don’t they have a sign up?” Franciscus didn’t know of a construction site that didn’t boast ten signs advertising every tradesman working on the project.

“They did. They took it down a few days back.”

“Kids spray it with graffiti?”

“No. People don’t mess with us too much. The building’s considered good for the neighborhood and all that. Maybe they thought it was looking beat-up or something.”

“Could be,” said Franciscus, giving a shrug to show he didn’t really care one way or the other. “Heckuva view, by the way.”

“Ain’t it, though?”

Franciscus had driven fifty yards down Convent Avenue when he slammed on his brakes. He looked out the window to his right at an old Federal-style house painted pale chiffon yellow. The house was immaculately cared for. An American flag flew from the porch. A National Park Service sign declared it a national monument. The Grange had been the last home of Alexander Hamilton, built in the years prior to his death. At the time, it was considered a country house, and the ride to lower Manhattan took over an hour. It had been moved once already to its present location and another move was scheduled. It was flanked on one side by an aging brownstone, and on the other by an uncared-for church.

Why here?

That was the question that continued to nag at him. Why kidnap a man near Wall Street and drag him all the way uptown? Professionals who were patient enough to case a victim for days before grabbing him could have taken him anywhere. If someone wanted Bolden killed, then that someone had wanted him killed here. In Harlem.

He stared at the flag flapping in the brisk wind. For some reason, he thought of the musket tattooed on the man’s chest.