David Rosenfelt - Airtight

“Of course,” she said. “And I know a judge advocate at Quantico. We worked on a case together last year; a Marine got into a fight at a rest stop off the Jersey Turnpike and killed a guy. I let the military handle it, so he owes me a favor.”

“Great; call it in,” I said. “We need to know who we’re dealing with.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to investigate a murder and pretend it’s not already solved.”

The door opened and I was looking straight ahead at a man’s chest.

I was at the late Judge Daniel Brennan’s house in Alpine, and I expected to be greeted by his wife, not a man who looked to be seven feet tall. But he obviously expected me, because the voice from up there asked, “Lieutenant Somers?”

I looked up. Way up. “Yes,” I said, to a face I recognized but in the moment couldn’t place.

He held out his hand. “Nate Davenport. Friends call me Ice.”

I shook his hand. We were just meeting for the first time, but I knew all about Nate “Ice Water” Davenport. He was the center for the Detroit Pistons in the late seventies and early eighties. He was one of the early big men who was also a great athlete; he could grab a defensive rebound and lead a fast break up court.

The “Ice Water” nickname came from the coolness that was said to run through his veins when it came time to take the key shot at the end of a game. He was a great clutch player, and though I wasn’t sure if he was in the Hall of Fame, he was certainly a candidate for it.

I’m not a huge pro basketball fan; I prefer football and baseball. But I read enough of the sports pages to have in the back of my mind that Davenport became an agent for players after he retired, though I wasn’t aware of a relationship with Judge Brennan when he played for the Celtics.

“Come on in,” he said. “Denise will be down in a minute.”

Denise was the recently widowed Mrs. Brennan, and my starting point in the investigation. “Good. Thanks.”

“I’m a longtime friend of the family; would you object to my sitting in on your talk? She would prefer that.”

I saw no problem with that, and said so. I wasn’t trying to trap her; I just wanted information, and the more at ease she was the more likely she was to provide it. “Whatever makes her comfortable.”

It was almost fifteen minutes before Denise Brennan came down the stairs, and if she spent that time trying to make herself appear not to be devastated, it was a wasted effort. She was a small, thin woman, and my guess was she looked a lot smaller and thinner than she had before her husband’s murder.

She apologized for keeping me waiting, and offered me coffee, which I accepted. Then, “Thank you for your efforts, Lieutenant. I share my husband’s disdain for capital punishment, but I must admit I wasn’t sorry to hear about the resolution of this situation.”

By “resolution,” she meant my putting three bullets into Steven Gallagher. “I understand,” I said, because I did. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions about your husband.”

“You don’t have any doubts about who committed the crime, do you?” asked Davenport.

I shook my head. “None. But in a situation like this, we have to tie up all loose ends,” I said, neglecting to mention that among the loose ends here was the fact that my brother had been kidnapped and in six days wouldn’t be able to breathe.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Had your husband ever mentioned Steven Gallagher, in any context?”

She shook her head. “No, he didn’t bring home his work. Once he took off the robe, that was it. His life on the job and his life at home were separate.”

“So he never felt threatened by anything that happened in court?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes, a few times. He never spoke about it, but I could tell.”

“How?”

“Sometimes he didn’t want me to go out somewhere, or he would go with me, even if it was shopping, or something else he didn’t like doing. And a few times I noticed some people that I think were security.”

“But he never told you why he was concerned, or who he was concerned about?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. He never addressed it in any way.”

“Was there anything unusual about the way he was acting recently? Any changes in mood? Anything that you noticed?”

She considered that for a few moments, and said, “I think he was feeling some stress, good kind of stress, over the Appeals Court appointment. When he testified before Congress, he was a little nervous. Dan rarely got nervous, so it surprised me. But it was more excitement than anything else.”

I basically asked the same questions a few more times, but this woman obviously had no information that would help me. I told her I appreciated her talking to me, and let Davenport walk me to the door.

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

“Strange way to spend yours.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that you’re not sure the Gallagher kid did it. Otherwise what would be the difference if Danny had enemies?”

“Gallagher did it.”

“I hope so. But if the real son of a bitch is out there, let me know how I can help.”

“Will do.”

When we got to the door, he opened it and I stepped outside.

“Danny was a complicated man, but a good one,” he said. “A very, very good one.”

It was a strange thing to say. “Complicated how?”

He just shook his head very, very slightly. “He was my friend.”

I took one of my cards out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Call me if you want to talk about your friend some more.”

Tommy Rhodes considered that night’s job beneath him.

It wasn’t a big deal, and he certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. He was only thirty-four years old, but he thought of himself as an old-school guy, which meant that you did your job and moved on to the next one.

Of course, the fact that he was being paid enough money to last him until he was a hundred and thirty-four years old made him even more sanguine about the situation. He was a mercenary, pure and simple, and that was fine with him. As such, it wasn’t his job to strategize; it was his job to accomplish the mission.

This was an easy assignment. He didn’t really need Frankie Kagan there. Kagan had no experience in these kinds of operations; his talents were more in the areas of guns and knives. In this case he was there to provide protection for Tommy while he worked, though it was extremely unlikely that any problems would arise.

Tommy was resentful of Frankie’s role as leader of their end of the operation, but he realized that it was Frankie who had the connection, and who brought Tommy in. There might be a time when Tommy would try to move up in the hierarchy, but he would have to be careful; Frankie was very, very dangerous.

So for now Tommy just focused on the work. The jobs he would be doing would grow progressively harder, and considerably more dangerous, but nothing that Tommy couldn’t handle.

The toughest part was learning the terrain. His employers were smart enough to go outside the area to recruit, and had done their homework. Tommy was from Vegas, as was Frankie, or at least that’s the place they had been working. So finding their way around upstate New York was not that easy.

They didn’t want to use a GPS; if it was ever confiscated, the fact that it contained addresses of all of these criminal acts would be rather incriminating. So they did it the old-fashioned way, with a map, which was a bit of a pain in the ass.

Tommy didn’t really know what was going on, and he didn’t care. He had vaguely assumed that it had something to do with this mining thing, something about natural gas, and the fight that was going on over it. His target tonight confirmed that suspicion, but it really didn’t matter to him either way.