City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(70)
Although it was not yet six thirty in the morning, the call was answered on the first ring, and the voice on the other end did not sound sleepy. “Yeah?”
Longstreet noticed the voice did not identify itself. “Lieutenant?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the one our mutual acquaintance calls ‘H.’”
“Correct. Please keep your answers as brief as possible. Has he contacted you?”
“Yes.”
“And suggested a place where the two of us should go?”
“No place. Just told me to expect a call from you—urgent and confidential.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you outside your, ah, place of business at noon.”
“Okay.”
“Absolutely confidential.”
“Got it.”
The line went dead.
Longstreet replaced the phone. Despite a long career in covert operations, he could not help feel a quickening of excitement. After years of commanding large assault teams, a small, tactical operation like this was like going back to his roots. That Pendergast—always full of surprises. He had handled this extremely well. Nevertheless, the lieutenant’s involvement would be crucial if this was an NYPD situation.
He lay down in bed, hoping not for sleep—that was now impossible—but for clarity of mind and concentration of purpose. Noon would be at hand soon enough, and the case would enter its final stretch: the takedown. He hoped to God this nightmarish string of serial murders was finally at an end.
He closed his eyes as the breaking dawn light illuminated the bedroom curtains.
49
BRYCE HARRIMAN WAS led by the armed corrections officer down the sterile hallways of the Manhattan Detention Complex, then ushered into a tiny room with a table bolted to the floor, two chairs, a clock, and an overhead light—both fitted with wire screens. There were no windows; he only knew that it was quarter to nine in the morning because of the clock.
“Here you are,” the officer said.
Harriman hesitated, looking at two beefy, shaved-head characters already in the holding cell who were eyeing him as if sizing up a cut of rare roast beef.
“Come on, let’s go!” The guard gave Harriman a light shove. He entered and the door clanged shut behind him, the bolt shooting into place with a clank.
He shuffled in and took a seat. At least he wasn’t wearing leg irons anymore, but the orange prison jumpsuit was stiff and abrasive against his skin. The last many hours had passed in a dreadful kind of blur. The arrest, the trip in a squad car to the local precinct, the waiting, the arraignment and booking for embezzlement, and then the depressingly short ride to the detention complex just a few blocks away—it was over almost before he could process what had happened. It was like a nightmare from which he could not shake himself awake.
As soon as the guard was gone, one of the brawny guys came and stood over him, real close, staring down.
Harriman, not knowing what to do, finally raised his head. “What?”
“My seat.”
Harriman jumped up with alacrity while the man sat down. Two seats: three men. No cot. This was going to be a long day.
As he sat on the floor, back propped against the wall, listening to the yammer and bluster of fellow prisoners up and down the cell block, the mistakes he’d made paraded themselves before his eyes in dumb show. He’d been blinded by overconfidence, reinforced by his recent celebrity—and he’d fatally underestimated Anton Ozmian.
His first mistake, as Ozmian had taken pains to point out, had been to overlook the obvious question: Why had Ozmian beaten up the priest in the first place? Why no repercussions? It had been such an outrageous assault, right in front of an entire congregation, that his reportorial alarm bells should have rung, five-alarm.
His second mistake had been tactical: showing the piece to Ozmian before publishing it. That had not only tipped his hand, but also given Ozmian time to react. With bitter self-recrimination, he remembered all too well how Ozmian’s lieutenant had slipped out for a few minutes early in their meeting—only to return after setting the frame job in motion, no doubt. And then they’d kept him there in the office, talking, while the trap was being sprung. By the time he walked out of the DigiFlood building, flushed with success, he was already dead meat. He recalled, with a fresh wave of frustration and shame, what Ozmian had told him earlier: Our company has many fine programmers, and they created a most lovely digital theft leading back to you. And you simply do not have the knowledge, or the resources, to undo it. That was proving all too true: in one of the few calls he’d been allowed to make, he’d told his editor what had happened to him, how he’d been framed, and how he’d write a hell of a story about Ozmian that would explain it all. Petowski’s response had been to call him a liar and hang up.
It seemed an eternity, but it was actually only six hours later when his two cellmates, who had blessedly ignored him, were taken out of the holding cell. And then it was his turn. A guard came, unlocked the door, and ushered him down the hall to a tiny room with chairs and a table. He was told to sit, and a moment later a man arrived, wearing a well-tailored suit and gleaming shoes that squeaked as he walked. He had a cheerful, almost cherubic face. This was Leonard Greenbaum, the lawyer Harriman had retained—not a public defender, but an experienced and lethal defense attorney, the most expensive Harriman could afford…given the fact that most of his assets had now been frozen. The man nodded a greeting, put his heavy leather case on the table, sat down across from Harriman, opened the case, removed a pile of papers, and spread them out before him.