Jim DeFelice - Threat Level Black

The visit to Faud’s apartment and the subsequent adventure with the hand grenade had prevented Fisher from following up on Harry Spageas, the man who worked at the florist near Faud’s apartment. With Macklin and the NYPD continuing their interview of the neighbors-and with nothing definitive yet from the crime people checking out the bomb-Fisher headed over to Steve’s Florist on Monday morning to see the store owner and get Spageas’s address. The fact that the owner’s first name was Rose raised certain questions about predestination and parental premonition, but Fisher never got to raise them, for as he walked through the front door he found the proprietor being questioned by a uniformed NYPD officer. Rose had filed a complaint because both of her delivery vans had been stolen the night before.

“One is bad enough,” Rose complained. “But both? It shuts me down.”

Rose was the sort of woman who had begun tinting her black hair blond thirty years before and still did it now that the roots were coming in gray. She had a naturally indignant chin, and though she came up to about Fisher’s chest, she had shoulders a linebacker would spend thousands on supplements to get.

Fisher let the officer continue the interview. Rose thought that the vans must have been stolen by a competitor and gave the men a half-dozen leads.

“I didn’t realize the flower business was so cutthroat,” said Fisher when the cop was done.

“You’d be surprised,” said Rose.

“So they were here last night and they’re missing this morning,” said Fisher. “You’re sure they were here last night?”

“Mira said so, yes. She’s the manager.”

“I met her. You have an employee named Harry Spageas, right?”

“A damn good question,” said Rose. “He didn’t show up Friday.”

“Where does Harry live?” asked Fisher.

Harry Spaneas-not Spageas, but Greek enough-lived four blocks away from the florist shop on the bottom floor of a three-story row house across from the entrance ramp to the Triborough Bridge.

He didn’t answer his door, or his phone, which Fisher tried from his cell phone. Fisher leaned on the other bells, hoping they would bring some little old busybody out who would know exactly where Harry was. But no one appeared.

“Let’s go look in the windows,” Fisher told the patrolman. “Guy lives on the ground floor, right?”

The ground floor was actually about six feet above street level, and Fisher found it necessary to borrow a garbage can to look through the windows.

“I don’t know about this, if it’s kosher,” said the patrolman. “I better check with my sergeant.”

“Tell him there’s a guy lying on the floor in the hallway that looks a lot like the subject,” said Fisher, pressing his face against the glass. “Tell him there’s a pool of blood around his head.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I only wish I was,” said Fisher, jumping down from the garbage can.

Harry Spaneas had been killed either by a pair of.22-caliber bullets to the face or a similar bullet fired point-blank into his skull from behind. Given that he was lying facedown when they found him, Fisher figured that the bullet in the back of the head had been for insurance or good luck, but he’d leave it to the medical examiner to make the final call.

“Does this connect to Faud or not?” asked Macklin when Fisher called him from Spaneas’s kitchen to tell him what he’d found.

“I don’t know,” said Fisher. “NYPD’s going through the apartment now.”

“How cold was he?”

“Yesterday’s coffee cold,” said Fisher. “But not much of an odor. I’m figuring he was killed sometime yesterday, before the florist trucks disappeared. But maybe not.”

“So they stole the trucks?”

“Could be.”

“Come on, Andy. Of course they stole the trucks, right?”

“Michael, if you already know the answer, don’t ask the question.”

“I don’t. I’m asking. You’re connecting the murder with the trucks?”

“Why not?”

“Well, lack of evidence, for one.”

“He had a spare set of keys, which are not around anywhere,” said Fisher.

Macklin chewed on it for a second, processing the information slowly. “Well, let’s get some bulletins out on them,” he said finally.

“NYPD already has,” said Fisher. “You find anything from the neighbors of that apartment?”

“Nothing.”

Fisher pushed back in the chair. He’d already checked Spaneas’s name against the database of possible terrorists and come up blank, but that wasn’t definitive proof of anything. He wondered if it was possible that Spaneas had let Faud stay with him. There was no evidence that he had: A single coffee cup sat on the washboard, along with one knife and fork and plate. But anyone who took the time to think about what they were doing could set that up to make it look as if only one person, Spaneas, had been there.

E-bombs, night goggles, and nail bombs. Hired killers. Flower trucks.

Kind of a jumble, actually. One half of the operation was very sophisticated; the other half, not so much.

Which argued that he was looking at two different operations.

“Hey, Fisher, are you there or what?” said Macklin.

“I’m here,” he told Macklin. “Is the Washington Heights apartment still sealed?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you get somebody to let me in?”

“Why?”

“I’m running out of straws,” said Fisher.

When Howe told McIntyre what had happened, his new vice president for government affairs told him he sounded as if he were making a sales pitch for the Advanced Military Vision radar. And his offer to lend the device and the aircraft that were currently outfitted with it made it seem even worse.

“Why?” Howe asked him.

“Because nobody does anything for nothing in this town,” said McIntyre. “Probably not in the whole country.”

“Isn’t it our duty to do something?” asked Howe.

McIntyre sighed. “I like you, Colonel, and I owe you a lot, but boy, do you have a lot to learn.”

“Other people have a lot to learn,” said Howe.

McIntyre looked as though he were about to launch into an extended lecture about the facts of life when the telephone cut him off. It was from Nelson; Howe told McIntyre to wait and then picked up the phone.

“Colonel, what are we doing with this UAV business?” asked Nelson as soon as he got on the phone.

Howe explained the situation briefly. Nelson was already well informed enough to point out the NSC objection: The UAVs they’d found in Korea had no engines.

“An engine could be supplied,” said Howe.

“Just follow channels on it,” urged Nelson. “All right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Howe. He hung up.

“Nelson gave you flak?” said McIntyre.

“More or less.”

“Well, this isn’t the military,” said McIntyre. “You don’t work for him.”

“He’s head of the board.”

McIntyre shrugged. “The person you have to worry about is the President. Besides, right now they need you a heck of a lot more than you need them.”

“So they all think I’m trying to sell the AMV radar system?” said Howe.

“Yeah.”

“But I’m not.”

“You have to take a step back.” McIntyre’s hand jangled a little, a twitch Howe had never noticed before. “People are a little scared of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah. It’d be like a four-star general calling up out of the blue and saying, ‘Hey, this a problem.’ ”

“A general would have his calls returned.”

“You’d be surprised,” said McIntyre.

“So I should just sit here and do nothing?”

“Yup.”