Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

What else is it? he thought to himself. Go ahead and tell me.

Go ahead.

“Why don’t we argue about it over dinner?” he told her.

“Argue?”

“I’m joking. Want to have dinner with me?”

She hesitated. If she said no, he would ask, straight out, if she was seeing someone else.

Then he’d pull out all the stops. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what that would mean.

“Where do you want to eat?” Alice said finally.

Macklin put a surveillance team on the real addresses but couldn’t come up with enough people to canvas the area of the phony address, which would have been across from Madison Square Garden if it had existed. Fisher decided to walk it himself, checking variations of the address on the theory that the real address would turn out to be some variation of the false one. He found a pizza parlor, an Israeli restaurant, and a junk shop proclaiming that it sold Manhattan ’s finest selection of antiques, but no safe house or reasonable facsimile.

“What’d you find out?” asked Macklin when he called in to see if anything was new.

“Scalpers are getting five hundred bucks for decent seats to the NCAA play-offs this weekend,” said Fisher.

“Five hundred, huh? Cheap.”

“Yeah, I bought two and charged it to your task force.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I am,” said Fisher.

“God, you just about gave me a heart attack,” said Macklin.

“You search those two apartments?”

“Jesus, Andy, there’s no way in the world I can get a search warrant based on an address in a shoemaker’s ledger. You know that.”

“You have to be creative, Macklin. Come on. You’re disappointing me.”

“Look, if it helps, the Amsterdam Avenue place is vacant.”

“Sure that helps,” said Fisher. “That’s probably the place.”

“I don’t think so. The building was torn down two weeks ago.”

“Maybe we should sift the rubble.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“We’re grasping at straws, Macklin. You have to get into the spirit of things,” said Fisher, though he, too, doubted that sifting the ruins would actually turn up anything.

“I put it under surveillance. Somebody’s watching it.”

“What about the other one-up in Inwood, right? Let’s get a search warrant.”

“If we see anything suspicious, then we can move.”

“He’s a terrorist and a fugitive, Kevin. You put that on the legal papers, the judge pounds his gavel, and we go in.”

“Come on, Andy. This is New York. I couldn’t get a search warrant here to raid Lee Harvey Oswald’s house.”

“That’s because he didn’t do it,” said Fisher.

Macklin, no conspiracy buff, changed the subject. “Kowalski has a phone conference set up for five.”

“That’s nice.”

“Come on, Andy. I have a number for you to call in to. You can do it with your sat phone. He’s been in D.C. talking to Howe and getting some other background. He really thinks the case is wrapped up,” Macklin added, “but if you want to present your arguments to him-”

“Listen, I’ll make you a deal: I don’t scalp the tickets and I miss the phone conference, okay?”

“Andy. Look, I’ll call you, okay? Just leave your line open.”

“What kind of seats you want? On the aisle?”

Macklin hung up. Fisher walked around some more, hoping to be struck by inspiration; the only thing that came close was a bike messenger crossing against the light. Finally, Fisher decided he might just as well head back up to Scramdale; with any luck he’d be on the train when Macklin tried to connect for the conference call.

His wanderings had taken him over to Seventh Avenue, where there was an entrance to the subway. Unsure whether the lines that stopped here went to the Grand Central train station, Fisher did something native New Yorkers are loath to do in public: He stopped and consulted one of the large subway maps near the gates.

The trains in question were the 1, 2, 3, and 9, and are known collectively as the Broadway Line, taking their name from the fact that they follow the street. They did not, in fact, go to Grand Central, though it was possible to get there via a shuttle at Times Square.

Much more interestingly, Fisher realized that, not only was it the same line that went to Washington Heights, but the train ran north to Inwood-and its last stop in Manhattan was within two blocks of the address he’d found earlier.

A straw, surely, but one to be seized.

“Last natural forest in New York,” said one of the detectives Macklin had sent to watch the Inwood address. He jerked his hand behind him, gesturing toward the expanse of trees rising to the northwest. “You know, Peter Minuit bought Manhattan on a spot over there.”

“I’ll take the tour later,” said Fisher. “We have a suspect or what?”

“Basement apartment, halfway down Nagle,” said the detective. “Separate entrance. Looks vacant.”

Nagle mixed small food markets with check cashing shops with travel agencies; some of the signs were in Spanish but the graffiti betrayed a much wider mix of ethnic slurs. The man playing tour guide was named Witt. He was a state trooper whose enthusiasm made it clear he was not a native. Fisher and Witt sat in the front seat of a Jimmy SUV;Witt’s partner was in the back, nursing a 7-Up. They had a clear view of the apartment’s entrance, which sat between two travel stores. The entrance to the upper portion of the building was near the end of the block. Fisher noted that there were plenty of pay phones along the street.

“You interview the subject?” Fisher asked.

“Our orders were to watch the place,” said Witt. “Nobody’s come in or out.”

“You mean nobody’s used that entrance.”

“It’s the only way into the apartment.”

“Where were you born?”

“ Long Island. Why?”

There was almost surely another entrance to the building from the apartment itself; the unit would have been set up originally either for a superintendent or else was a utility area for a furnace. In any event, there was no sense making a federal case out of it.

“Drive around the block a bit. I want to see what it looks like.”

“If we leave, we’re not going to know if anybody comes in or out.”

“Yeah,” said Fisher.

The trooper put the truck in gear. They drove past the 207th Street train yard, then back around toward Baker Field and Inwood Hill Park. It was a very mixed neighborhood, a little lower in the pecking order than Astoria, maybe, but probably a notch or two above the place in Washington Heights.

Witt pointed out some rocks he said had been disturbed by the “glaciers.”

“Very historical area,” said the trooper as they swung past the Dyckman House, which had been built just after the Revolutionary War and, by some colossal municipal oversight, had actually been preserved by the City.

“I’m thinking our guys don’t care too much for history-or glaciers,” said Fisher. “Park the car and let’s go talk to Mr. Brown.”

Fisher had the others go around from upstairs, covering the back entrance.

“You sure you want both of us there?” asked Witt. “What if he shoots you or something?”

“I doubt we’ll be that lucky,” said Fisher.

He gave the others a minute to get into position, then went down the stairs and rapped loudly on the door. He had to try twice before he heard shuffling inside.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Brown?”

“Yes?”

“FBI. I’d like to talk to you for a second.”

“FBI?”

“You probably hear that all the time, right?” said Fisher. He had his wallet out and held it up against the window near the door. “Here, take a look. I want to ask you a couple of questions.”