City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(12)
“I can work with them—don’t worry.”
“Glad to hear it.” Singleton rose. “Vinnie, you’re doing a fine job. Keep it up. Any support I can give, anyone you think needs a swift kick in the ass, you let me know.”
“Sure thing, Captain.”
Singleton left. D’Agosta tossed his empty beer can into the trash with regret and went back to the endlessly boring video feed.
7
LIEUTENANT D’AGOSTA PARKED his squad car in the taped-off area in front of the town house. He got out of the car, his associate Sergeant Curry emerging from the other side. D’Agosta took a moment to look up at the town house, built in pink granite, occupying the middle of a quiet block between Second and Third Avenues, lined with leafless ginkgo trees. The victim, Cantucci, had been the worst kind of mob lawyer there was, slippery as an eel. He’d been in their crosshairs for two decades, subjected to several grand jury proceedings—and they’d never even been able to take away his license to practice at the bar. He was one of the untouchables.
Except he’d gotten touched now—big time. And D’Agosta wondered just how the hell the killer had penetrated the town house’s formidable security.
He shook his head and walked through the darkness of the December evening and up to the front door. Curry held the door open and D’Agosta entered the foyer, looking around. It was some house, filled with rare antiques, paintings, and Persian rugs. He caught the faint scent of the various chemicals and solvents used by the CSU team. But their work was now complete, and he wouldn’t have to put on the usual booties, hair covering, and gown, for which D’Agosta was grateful as he breathed in the stifling air, the town house’s metal shutters still closed.
“All ready for the walk-through, sir?” asked Curry.
“Where’s the security consultant? He was supposed to meet me here.”
A man materialized from the shadows, African American, small, white hair, wearing a blue suit and carrying himself in a gravely dignified manner. He was said to be one of the top experts in electronic security in the city, and D’Agosta was surprised to see he looked at least seventy years old.
He offered a cool hand. “Jack Marvin,” he said, his voice deep, like a preacher’s.
“Lieutenant D’Agosta. So tell me, Mr. Marvin—how’d the son of a bitch get through this million-dollar security system?”
Marvin chuckled ghoulishly. “Very cleverly. Would you care for a tour?”
“Sure.”
Marvin set off, moving briskly down the central corridor, D’Agosta and Curry following. D’Agosta wondered why the hell Pendergast hadn’t shown up here in response to his request. This was just the kind of case that would fascinate him, and given the rivalry between the NYPD and the FBI, D’Agosta thought he’d been doing the agent a favor by extending him an invitation. But then, on the other hand, Pendergast had shown little interest in the case so far—just look at how reluctant he’d been to visit Ozmian.
“What we have in this house,” Marvin said, his hands moving constantly, “is a Sharps and Gund security system. Sharps and Gund is beyond state-of-the-art, the best there is. Favored by Persian Gulf oil tycoons and Russian oligarchs.” He paused. “There are twenty-five cameras distributed through the house. One there—” he pointed to an upper corner— “there, there, and there.” His finger moved swiftly. “Every square inch covered.”
He stopped and turned, sweeping his hands to one side and then the other, like a tour guide in some historic mansion. “And here we’ve got an IR break-beam fence, with motion detectors in the corners, up there and there.”
His gesture swept around to the elevator door, and he pressed the button. “The heart of the system is in the attic, in a reinforced locker.”
The elevator door—riddled with bullet holes—slid open, and they crowded in.
The elevator hummed its way up to the fifth floor and the doors reopened. Marvin stepped out. “Cameras here, here, and over there. More IR break-beams, motion detectors, pressure-plate sensors in the floor. Bedroom’s through that door.”
He pirouetted. “The front door and all windows are alarmed, and at sunset the place is sealed with steel shutters. The system has multiple redundancies. It’s normally powered by household current, with two independent sources of backup, a generator and a bank of deep-cycle marine batteries. It has three independent reporting methods to live operators standing by: via phone through the household landline, again through a cellular connection, and again through a satphone. Even if nothing happens, the system is designed to report a fair-weather signal every hour.”
D’Agosta gave a low whistle. He couldn’t wait to hear how this system was defeated.
“The system reports all anomalies. If a battery gets low, it reports. Power failure, it reports. Cellular interference, it reports. Lightning strike, power surge, spider building a web on an IR detector, it reports. Sharps and Gund has its own security teams that it dispatches, in case the police are slow or tied up.”
“Looks impregnable.”
“Doesn’t it, now? But like everything else ever designed by man, it just so happens to have an Achilles’ heel.”
D’Agosta was getting tired standing on his feet in the dark hall. An elegant sitting room with comfortable chairs beckoned at the end of the hall, and he’d been up for hours after less than ninety minutes’ sleep. “Shall we?” He motioned with his hand.