“I’m just surprised. I thought the Feds would’ve come knocking by now. Anyway, call Loomis. Is his office open today?”
“I have no idea.”
“You said he thought the perps might ask him for the money.”
“That’s what he told me, yes.”
“So how will they know where to reach him? Did you get his home number?”
“Yes, Pete.”
“Do you think
“I doubt it.”
“So they’ll call at his office tomorrow, right? So let’s get our Tech Unit to set up some stuff for us. We won’t need a court order for a Tap and Trap, Loomis is a friendly, it’s his own phone. But you’ll need one for a Trap and Trace, maybe more than one. Try to get the equipment set up today, ready for when they call tomorrow, if they call.”
“I’ll get on it right away.”
“I hate kidnappings,” Byrnes said, and sighed.
Both men fell silent.
“I sure would like a look at that tape,” Carella said.
“I have a feeling you’ll be seeing it on television. Over and over again. But you’ve got till three o’clock. Play it before you take it back. Who’s to know?”
“Is that an order?”
“It’s a suggestion,” Byrnes said.
THE WATCHMAN’S name was Abner Carmody.
He was asleep when Detectives Meyer and Kling knocked on his door at one that afternoon. He complained that he hadn’t got to bed till eight this morning, time he got home from the marina and all, and he usually slept till three or four, had a late lunch (or early dinner, depending how you looked at it), and went to work again at six, putting in a twelve-hour day (or night, depending how you looked at it), from six P.M. to six A.M.
“ ‘A man works from sun to sun,’ ” he quoted out of the blue, “ ‘but a woman’s work is never done.’ So why are you waking me up?”
Carmody was in his sixties someplace, the detectives guessed, wearing striped pajamas and eyeglasses he’d put on when he came to answer the door. He hadn’t invited the detectives in yet. They didn’t care to go in, either. The man wasn’t a suspect, there was nothing they wanted to see in his apartment.
“Sometime last night, maybe eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock,” Meyer prompted. “Twenty-seven-foot Rinker came in, passengers tied her up and drove off in a black Ford Explorer. Happen to see them?”
“What’s this about?”
“Maybe nothing.”
“So why’re you waking me up the crack of dawn, it’s nothing?”
“We can come back later, if you like,” Kling said. With a warrant, he almost added, but didn’t.
“Well, I’m up now,” Carmody said.
“Did you see the boat come in?”
“No, I must’ve been making rounds, other end of the marina. But I saw them carrying the box to the van, and driving off in it.”
“What box, sir?”
“This carton, maybe yay big,” he said, using his hands. “Two by two, three by three, no bigger’n that.”
“Heavy box? Did it seem to be heavy?”
“Not especially. Woman was carrying it. Couldn’t have been too heavy, could it?”
“The masks,” Meyer said.
Kling nodded.
“What’d they look like?” he asked.
“Was only one of them. Just a plain cardboard box. Brown, you know. What they call corrugated.”
“I mean the people who got in the van. Did you happen to get a look?”
“Oh, yeah, the van was parked right under one of the sodium lights.”
“Two men and a woman, were they?” Kling asked.
“Yessir, two men and a woman. All of them wearing black all over—jeans, sweatshirts, jogging shoes. One of the men had curly black hair, the other one straight blond hair. The girl was a redhead.”
“How old would you say?”
“The girl? Early twenties.”
“And the men?”
“I’d say late twenties, early thirties.”
“I don’t suppose you happened to notice the license plate on that van, did you?” Kling asked.
Carmody looked offended.
“I’m a watchman,” he said. “That’s my job. To watch.”
And reeled off what he’d seen on that plate, letter for letter, numeral for numeral.
A PATROLMAN with his back to them was sleeping on a cot in the swing room when Carella and Hawes came in to play the Channel Four tape. The television set down here in the basement of the old building was a relic of the eighties, with a screen much smaller than either of the men had at home, but it had a VCR attachment, and it would serve the purpose. They kept the volume low, so as not to awaken the sleeping patrolman.
Watching the tape was an odd experience.
They had heard this crime reported a hundred different ways by a hundred and twelve different people, so in a sense it was familiar to them. In a sense, they were seeing it all over again. But they were also seeing it for the very first time, objectively, no one telling them whether the men were short or tall or wearing black or blue or green, no one describing the action in often erroneous detail. There it was for them to see and to hear. It was rather like witnessing an actual address to the nation, rather than watching a bunch of talking heads commenting on it minutes later.
Hawes and Carella immediately agreed that the girl was a star.
Hawes voiced it first.
“She’s good,” he said.
But they weren’t talent scouts.
Nonetheless, she
“
