Kate stood.“We’ll figure out the safest way,” she said.“For now, you write down every time you met him, every time, every name you can recall, what shoes he wore, what he smelled like, whether he coughed.You understand?”
Tommy nodded helplessly.“Okay.”
Marcus pushed a legal pad toward him, set a pen on top.“Start at the beginning.We’ll fill in what you forget.”
They left him writing, shoulders hunched, letters large and awkward on the ruled page.
In the corridor, the fluorescent lights made everyone look seasick.Marcus leaned a shoulder against the wall.“He’s useful,” he said, quietly.“Scared enough to cooperate.Dumb enough to think he can improvise.”
“Which makes him bait,” Kate said.She didn’t like the word, even in her head.“But we’re not rushing it.”
“Friday buys us four days,” Marcus said.“We can pull CCTV from all routes to and from the 3rdAvenue Bridge.Plan a sting for Friday, or trigger an earlier meet using their code.”
Kate nodded distantly.Right now, her mind was on prevention: alerting the individuals on the list, and other potential victims without causing the kind of panic that Cox would notice.
Torres fell into step with them, having watched from the other side of the glass.“I’m not happy planning any operation around Tommy.Look at the poor guy.He’ll fold if the Reverend looks at him sideways.”
“It’s a concern,” Kate said.“But let’s concentrate on keeping him alive for now.No disrespect towards the PD, but my experience is that Cox has eyes and ears everywhere.Can we establish some cover story for why Tommy’s here?”
“Key witness in a recent gang-related murder?”Torres offered.“There are three to choose from.”
They paused at the corner where the corridor turned toward the bullpen.The place smelled of ink, old coffee and a blocked toilet.
“You buying his act?”Torres asked.
“I’m buying his fear,” Marcus said.
“He didn’t know about the murders,” Kate said.“Not until today.He’s a can-opener.Cox is the knife.”
Torres studied her face.“You good?”
Kate thought of the photographs.Of the precise, almost tender spacing of the letters carved into mahogany.Of the old ache behind the new case.She kept her voice level.“I’m good.”
“Okay,” Torres said, and clapped Marcus once on the back.“I’ll babysit our man while you two debrief Winters.”
They split.Back in the interview room, Tommy was writing, tongue caught between his teeth, pencil digging hard.On line three, he wrote: Last Friday, four p.m., Soup Kitchen, under 3AB, he wore boots.On line four, he wrote: He said God was tired, needed to rest.
In the margin, in smaller letters, he added: Don’t let him kill me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thursday February 27th
The weather had turned cold, but the diner never changed.
Same Formica booths, same faded Coke ads curling above the counter, same waitress with the same varnished smile, seeming to exist outside of time.The smell was still a cocktail of burnt coffee and grease seasoned by decades of repetition.
Kate sat by the window, nursing an untouched cup.Outside, sleet feathered the glass.A bus hissed past.The world, she thought, looked perpetually grey in this part of Manhattan.
When Gabe Levine came in, he was carrying the cold with him — an academic sort of cold, precise and slightly detached.He wore a corduroy suit, fire-truck red, with a paisley patterned waistcoat.People stared, even here in New York, where it was said you could lead a herd of elephants down to the subway, and no-one would look up.They looked up for Gabe, and Gabe just beamed right back at them as if their gaze was his birthright.
“Kate,” he said, sliding into the seat opposite her.“You look like someone who’s had a week.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
She gave him the short version — the things she could tell him without breaking half a dozen Bureau protocols.Her mother back at the State University, classes resumed, the protective detail stood down.No Monday attack, no new threats.Tommy Rodrigues still in what she called “custodial limbo” at the Fifteenth, dribbling out half-memories like confessions.He’d managed to remember a few more of the names he’d passed to Cox, but insisted there were others, hovering just beyond reach.His memory, he said, wasn’t too good.
A handful of bankers and financiers had been warned of “credible threats to life.”Three had fled the city, one had hired a private security team, another insisted the whole thing was media hysteria.The Bureau, Kate told Gabe, was quietly praying that by Friday the operation — the big one — would bring everything to a close.
