"You have anything specific in mind?" he asked, lifting up a can of c.o.ke and drinking the contents. Fear can make a throat dry up fast.
"Let me cut to the chase," I said.
"Please do; I"m all ears," Johnson said, crushing the c.o.ke can in his hand.
"Has anything highly unusual been reported lately?"
"Why? What"s going on that I should know about?"
"Nothing. At least, not yet. We, um, have been put on alert. Something may be about to happen. We don"t know what."
"Terrorism?"
"That"s the best guess. But we don"t know what form the threat will take. We"re trying to connect some dots here."
Johnson gave me a hard look. "Narrow down "highly unusual" for me. This is New York. We get weird s.h.i.t happening every day. Yesterday a guy tried to mug a lady by siccing his pit bull on her. The dog ran over and hid behind the woman. She called nine-one-one and the perp tried to press charges to get his dog back. The lady kept the dog."
"I mean something different. Bigger. How about anything around the piers, New York Harbor, something like that?" I suggested.
Johnson thought a moment. "Not in the harbor. Out at Arthur Kill. The Outerbridge Crossing. The other morning, right at rush hour, something hit a support column. Must have been fifty drivers in cars going over the bridge that called in. The weird part of it was that n.o.body saw anything.
"No ships in the area. Nothing under the bridge. But the Port Authority people sent a boat out and found evidence of a collision on the bridge support. Something sc.r.a.ped it. And it must have been something big."
"How big a boat can pa.s.s under that bridge?" Benny asked.
Johnson snorted. "A ship. Big as they make them. You got over a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty feet of clearance. Merchant ships, freighters go through there all the time."
"The Arthur Kill is a narrow pa.s.sage of water, right?" I asked. I remembered flying over it months before, when terrorists were trying to get a nuclear device into Port Newark.
"Yeah. It"s between Staten Island and Perth Amboy, and it runs between the Goethals Bridge upstream and Raritan Bay downstream."
"Where"s this Raritan Bay?" Benny asked.
"Off Jersey. North of Sandy Hook," Johnson said.
"And what"s that near?" Benny asked. She was from Missouri, and the state of New Jersey, sometimes called the armpit of the East Coast, was a foreign land to her.
"You keep going south and you hit Asbury Park," Johnson said.
Where the Intrepid Intrepid disappeared. disappeared. Bingo Bingo. Benny gave me a furtive pinch.
"Anything else?" I asked.
Johnson"s eyes flicked away from mine. He pulled another can of c.o.ke out of a soft-sided cooler on the pa.s.senger seat, popped the top, and took a long swig, obviously stalling, as if he knew something but was having a tough time deciding whether he was going to say anything to us. Finally he lowered the c.o.ke can and said, "Might have something, but it"s probably nothing. Bunch of drunks on the beach last night at Coney Island."
"What about them?" I asked.
"They called nine-one-one. Said they spotted a giant bat flying above the surf."
Neither Benny nor I said anything. Any of New York"s more than five thousand vampires could have been out there. Sure, most of us didn"t do solo flights over anything bigger than a lake or stream. We need places to land and land quickly sometimes, so ocean flights of any distance would be deadly. And most bat-form flying is done strictly for hunting and/or abducting humans. This vampire no doubt hoped to swoop down for a quick meal from somebody walking alone on the beach. Anyway, that was what I figured.
By this time I could feel Johnson"s agitation. I watched him open and close the fingers of one hand. He lost eye contact. His glance kept straying toward the street. We had him upset. He broke into my thoughts, wanting to know if the terrorist threat had to do with the bridges, a vulnerable target that worried most inhabitants of the city.
Both Benny and I shook our heads no, so he pushed for more information.
"So the threat"s got to do with a ship or a boat? Pleasure craft? Lots of talk lately about regulating them near Manhattan."
"Look, we don"t know," I said. "But if I had to guess, I"d say a ship."
Johnson"s eyes narrowed, his impatience increased. "Just a guess? Bulls.h.i.t. What else don"t you know?" he demanded.
"That"s it. Honest. I need to ask you one more thing..." I was thinking fast, taking a shot in the dark, hoping to hit something.
"What? Look, make it fast; I"ve got to be someplace."
Yeah, like going right back to your office and sounding the alarm that they"d better start watching harbor activity, I thought while I asked, "Has anything been going on in the local mosques? The more radical ones, like those out in Brooklyn a.s.sociated with the Blind Sheikh, the guy who planned the first bombing on the World Trade Center?"
Johnson"s eyes got hard. "You mean the mosque on Foster Avenue? That"s Abu Bakr. The other one is al Farooq on Atlantic Avenue."
"I guess. I don"t know that much about them," I admitted.
"We keep an eye on them. Talk to informants. You think somebody"s planning another bombing somewhere like the "ninety-one bombing?"
I shrugged. "I have no reason to think that, or anything. I"m just throwing out a wide net. All we know for sure is that this threat probably, but not positively, has to do with New York City, and maybe it"s coming by water."
"I"ll find out about the mosques. Look, you two," he said. "Don"t f.u.c.k with me on this. You find out anything-I do mean anything-I want to know."
"Of course, Lieutenant," Benny said. "A deal"s a deal."
"So, what now, Sherlock?" Benny said to me after we climbed out of Johnson"s Chevy and found ourselves back on West Street, alone in the fog, which was now as thick as cotton.
I said I needed to go to the office and get my stuff. I asked Benny to come along with me.
She hesitated and asked, "Why? I was thinking about going downtown to the Laundromat. Maybe I"ll do the hunt tonight. If Martin shows up I want to ask him back to my place afterward."
I bit my tongue and didn"t voice what I was thinking: that Martin was another vampire loser and Benny was sure to get hurt if she got involved with him. Sleeping with a guy was one thing; caring about him was another. That was where Benny usually made her mistake. But I should talk. I said to her, "Take a detour and come with me. There"s something you have to see."
"What?"
"It"s better if you see it," I said. "Trust me; it"s worth the trip."
By now the fog had besieged the streets along the river and was battling its way across the island. The hour had gone past midnight and no cabs were in sight. On clear nights cabbies cheated death driving in the insanity of New York traffic. With the lack of visibility and few people venturing out on the streets, most them had probably quit early.
The streets deserted, sounds m.u.f.fled by the mist, and the fog enfolding us in its damp embrace, Benny and I started walking uptown toward Fourteenth Street. Somewhere between there and here we might find a subway to get to Twenty-third Street.
We might as well have been trekking toward the Yukon. We could barely see the buildings lining the sidewalk. If there was a subway entrance on any of the corners, we missed it.
Before long the hairs on my arms were standing up. My instincts were warning me that someone or something was watching me. Yet when I looked back over my shoulder I saw nothing but the swirling mist circling around the streetlights, snaking along the curbs, and closing in on us like a gray wall.
My scalp kept crawling. My nerves jangled. I made Benny stop for a moment and listen. No sound. No footsteps behind us. I didn"t like this. Maybe I was just spooked, but I had an uneasy feeling.
By the time we got to Twelfth Street, Benny said she was "plumb tuckered out" and her feet hurt like a toothache. She was wearing a pair of Manolo Blahniks, and those boots were not made for walking.
Determined to flag down a ride, we positioned ourselves right out in the street and stood there. When headlights finally approached I could see it was a Lincoln Town Car, a car service, not a city cab. Both of us waved frantically, and it pulled over. Benny threw herself into the backseat. I hung back a moment, checking out the driver. He was a young guy wearing a white shirt and tie, his livery jacket hung on a hook by the back window.
He didn"t look dangerous, so I joined Benny. The guy charged us a flat rate: fifteen bucks for the ten-block ride. Benny didn"t quibble. She whispered to me that she was willing to pay twice that to take a load off her feet. I didn"t care either, I was glad to get off the streets that held something I couldn"t see, yet I knew was there.
The car accelerated and raced up the avenue. I leaned back against the cushions and took a deep breath, feeling relieved. Whoever was following us had been left behind.
We got out of the Lincoln at the Flatiron Building and went over to the lobby doors. I tried them. They didn"t budge. I rattled them a little. They held fast. We couldn"t get in.
Benny looked at me. "I guess they lock them up after a certain hour. What time is it?"
"Heading for one a.m." I rang the night porter bell to see what would happen. At first nothing did. I leaned on the bell a few more times. I glanced over at Benny. She shrugged. We were about to leave when a uniformed guard-a tall, white-haired man with suspicion written all over his face-came to the door.
He didn"t open it. He shook his head and motioned for us to leave.
I pulled out my government ID and held it up to the gla.s.s. He finally cracked the door a couple of inches.
"What do you want?" he said. His dentures clicked when he talked.
"We need to get upstairs. I left some things in an office."
He opened the door and let us in. He said we needed to sign the register. We followed his lumbering shape through the lobby and past the bank of elevators. A podium with a light held a large open book.
"Put your name, company, and floor right there. Then the time," he instructed. "And let me see your ID again. Yours too," he said to Benny.
I handed him my ID, which says I work for the U.S. Department of the Interior. I signed in while he looked at it. When I finished I handed the pen to Benny. Along about then the guard glanced at what I had written.
His face darkened. "What are you trying to pull?"
"What are you talking about?" I said.
"There is no ABC Media in this building; that"s what I"m talking about."
Benny rolled her eyes. "Are you new or something? Of course there is. The name"s on the office door and everything. Look over there. It"s right on the building directory." She pointed to the black sign with the white magnetic letters that hung between the elevators.
The guard was angry now. "Are you two deaf or drunk? I told you, there is no ABC Media here."
Benny insisted, "Oh, yes, there is too." She went over to the sign and stood there. Then she turned around, her eyebrows raised, her eyes wide open. "Daph? It"s not here. It was here before; I saw it. I saw it tonight." Her voice shook a little when she said to the guard, "Our company, ABC Media, is on the third floor. It really is. We were just there a couple of hours ago for a meeting."
The security guard, whose shoulders were rounded and his back bent as if he didn"t like being tall, could see that Benny was genuinely upset. His voice was kinder when he repeated that there was no ABC Media in the building. "I told you ladies, it"s not here. The entire third floor is empty. No tenants. It"s been that way for months. They can"t rent it out. A radiator leak flooded the place. It"s got to be completely renovated."
Benny looked at me, bewilderment on her face. "I don"t understand this. Do you?"
I didn"t answer her. It was time we got out of there before we ended up facing the men in blue who protect and serve. I turned to the guard, doing my best to look puzzled. "I don"t understand either. I"m sure our meeting was at 173 Fifth Avenue."
"Ladies, this is 175. The Flatiron Building."
"Oooooh, no! I"m so sorry," I simpered.
Benny jumped in with her ditzy-blonde imitation and said indignantly to me, "I told you not to let me have that there Acapulco Zombie drink. I swear, it"s just made my brain all mush. If"n I had another one it would take three men and a fat boy to carry me on home."
Then she looked up at the guard, her brown eyes limpid, artful tears like crystals on her lashes. "Mister, I sure am dumber than a box of rocks. Our building"s on the next block. I do hope you ain"t too mad at us. Come on, Daphne. We"ve troubled this gentleman long enough." She hooked her arm in mine and we beat it in double time to the door.
As soon as we were back outside, we walked in a downtown direction toward the next block just in case the guard was watching. The fog was so intense we disappeared quickly from his view. We stopped midblock. Benny asked me what the h.e.l.l was going on.
I explained what happened earlier when I went back upstairs to leave my packages under my desk. I told her that I suspected that the premises had been "sanitized" once the Darkwings left. I also told her I thought J probably had an office somewhere else in the building, and so did a staff of operatives from whatever intelligence agency we worked for. Maybe they occupied the rest of the third floor. Anyway, they were there. They were no doubt watching us at all times.
Benny appeared dumbfounded. "You mean the whole thing is a stage set? They put it up when we"re going to be there, and once we leave they remove everything?"
"Exactly."
"Now, don"t that beat all," she said. "I guess it"s to give them that there "deniability" if anybody finds out about us."
"Yeah. Any exposure and they can say they never heard of us. They have nothing to tie them to a team of vampire spies. They"d be the first to say, "Go ahead and terminate them." They"d leave us hanging out to dry in a New York minute."
Benny shook her head. "Us, maybe, but not you. Your mother would protect you, Daphne. You have nothing to worry about," Benny said.
"Yeah, right. That"s what you think. My mother loves me in her fashion. But as the poet Richard Lovelace wrote, "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more." If the mission were important enough, my mother, the spy-master, would deny she ever met me. It sounds harsh, but I know that if she felt I had to be sacrificed for the "greater good," she"d do it."
"You don"t mean that," Benny said. "Not your own mother."
"You don"t know the half of it. My mother could teach Machiavelli a thing or two. h.e.l.l, she probably did. No, Benny, I was thinking earlier tonight how I couldn"t trust anybody. That includes my mother."
"You can trust me," Benny said.
"Thanks," I said. "That means a lot." I hoped it was true, but in my heart I wasn"t certain even of that.
Benny gave me a hug and left, hoping to hook up with Martin. With a wave she disappeared into the stairwell leading from street level to the downtown trains on the Broadway line forty feet below.
I had no interest in going clubbing. I wanted to go home. I wanted to pour my blood-bank blood into a lovely winegla.s.s, sip it delicately, turn on the TCM channel, hope for a Hitchc.o.c.k film, and veg out. I wanted to forget about missing ships and the funhouse-mirror life I was living, where everything was deception and illusion. I wanted the comfort of my pets. I wanted to feel safe.
Since a cab ride was unlikely, I faced a long subway journey: catching the train here at Twenty-third Street, then changing to the number one at Forty-second Street. I needed to go uptown, which meant crossing the wide expanse of Broadway to the subway entrance on the southeast corner.
The traffic light looked like a green moon suspended in the mist as I stepped into the broad thoroughfare, moving at a trot to get to the other side before some reckless driver came barreling into the intersection. The opposite side of the street lay unseen behind a thick wall of fog. I felt wrapped in a coc.o.o.n of white mist, my visibility reduced to an arm"s length around me. I finally spotted the curb, saw the railings of the subway stairs, and arrived at the stairwell to begin my descent.
Suddenly the hairs on my arms bristled. A tingling skittered up the back of my neck, and my scalp crawled uncomfortably, as if a low current of electricity ran over my skin. I didn"t have to turn around to know someone was coming up behind me and meant me harm. I just had to pay attention to my instincts.
I quickened my pace, having no choice but to continue going down into the earth, into the tunnels that honeycombed the rock beneath the city. I reached the subway station and dashed with my MetroCard in my hand to the turnstiles. I pushed through and rushed onto the platform. No one else waited there; the s.p.a.ce stretched forlornly in either direction until it dead-ended in a tile wall. Before me lay the deep, forbidding trench of the tracks.
Now I could hear heavy, clattering footsteps coming down the stairs. My heart beat a staccato. My mind raced: fight or flight?
If a train pulled into the station now I could hop on and get away. I darted over to the edge of the tracks and peered into the unremitting darkness of the approach tunnel. I saw nothing. I"d have to fight.