This was it! The one thing about him he could never change. No matter what name he was under. Or who he was now.
Or where.
His stupid car. Charlie’s Baby. He read about the damn things in his spare time, checked out the prices, chatted about them online. They always joked how it was a part of him. His mistress that Karen just had to put up with. She called it Camilla, as in Camilla and Charles. Better than Camilla, Charlie always joked.
“Better-looking, too.”
Mustang World.
He constantly put the car up for sale, then never sold it. In the summer he drove it in rallies. Monitored the online sites. She didn’t understand what these cards she’d found were about. They scared her. She didn’t know for sure what he’d done.
“But that’s the way,” Karen said to Hauck as she went to dress his wounds now.
She reached into her bag and dropped a copy of the magazine on the table. Mustang World.
“That’s how we find him, Ty. Charlie’s Baby.”
One Police Plaza was the home of the NYPD’s administrative offices in lower Manhattan, as well as of the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force that oversaw the city’s security.
Hauck waited in the courtyard in front of the building, looking out over Frankfort Street, which led onto the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a warm May afternoon. Strollers and bikers were crossing the steel gray span, office workers in shirtsleeves and light dresses on their lunchtime stroll. A few years back, Hauck used to work out of this building. He hadn’t been down here in years.
A slightly built, balding man in a navy police sweater waved to a coworker and came up to him, his police ID fastened to his chest.
“New York’s Finest.” The man winked, standing in front of Hauck. He sat down beside him and gave him a tap of the fist.
“Go, blue!” Hauck grinned back.
Lieutenant Joe Velko had been a young head of detectives in the 105th Precinct, and had gone on to receive a master’s degree from NYU in computer forensics. For years he and Hauck had been teammates on the department’s hockey team, Hauck a crease-clearing defenseman with gimpy knees, Joe a gritty forward who learned to use a stick on the streets of Elmhurst, Queens. Joe’s wife, Marilyn, had been a secretary at Cantor Fitzgerald and had died on 9/11. Back then it was Hauck who had organized a benefit game for Joe’s kids. Captain Joe Velko now ran one of the most important departments in the entire NYPD.
Watchdog was a state-of-the-art computer software program developed by the NCSA, powered by nine supercomputers at an underground command center across the river in Brooklyn. Basically what Watchdog did was monitor billions of bits of data over the Internet for random connections that could prove useful for security purposes. Blogs, e-mail messages, Web sites, MySpace pages—billions of bits of Internet traffic. It sought out any unusual relationships between names, dates, scheduled public events, even repeated colloquial phrases, and spit them out at the command center in daily
“alerts,” whereupon a staff of analysts pored over them, deciding if they were important enough to act on or to pass along to other security teams. A couple of years back, a plot to bomb the Citigroup Center by an antiglobalization group was uncovered by Watchdog, simply because it connected the same seemingly innocent but repeated phrase, “renewing our driver’s license,” to a random date, June 24, the day of an event there highlighted by a visit from the head of the World Bank. The connection was traced to someone on the catering team, who was an accomplice on the inside.
“So what do I owe this visit to?” Velko turned to Hauck. “I know this isn’t exactly your favorite place.”
“I need to ask you a favor, Joe.”
A seasoned cop, Velko seemed to see something in Hauck’s face that made him pause.
“I’m trying to locate someone,” Hauck explained. He removed a thin manila envelope from under his sport jacket. “I have no idea where he is. Or even what name he might be using. He’s most likely out of the country as well.” He put the envelope on Velko’s lap.
“I thought you were going to give me a challenge.” The security man chuckled, unfastening the clasp.
He slid out the contents: a copy of Charles Friedman’s passport photo, together with some things Karen had supplied him. The phrases “1966 Emberglow Mustang. GT. Pony interior. Greenwich, Connecticut.” Some place called Ragtops, in Florida, where Charles had purchased it. The Greenwich Concours Rallye, where he sometimes showcased his car. A few of what Karen remembered as Charlie’s favorite car sites. And finally a few favorite expressions he might use, like, “Lights out.” Or “It’s a home run, baby.”
“You must think just because you elbowed a few firemen out of the crease who were trying to knock the shit out of me I really owe you, huh?”
“It was more than a few, Joe.” Hauck smiled.
“A ’66 Mustang. Pony interior. Can’t you just log on to eBay for one of these things, Ty?” Velko grinned.
“Yeah, but this is far sexier,” Hauck replied. “Look, the guy may be in the Caribbean, or maybe Central America. And Joe … this is gonna come out in your search, so I might as well tell you up front now—the person I’m looking for is supposedly dead. In the Grand Central bombing.”
“Supposedly dead? As opposed to really dead?”
“Don’t make me go into it, partner. I’m just trying to find him for a friend.”
Velko slid the paper back inside the envelope. “Three hundred billion bits of data crossing the Internet every day, the city’s security squarely in our hands, and I’m looking at an Amber Alert for a dead guy’s ’66 Mustang.”
“Thank you, guy. I appreciate whatever turns up.”
“A wide goddamn hole in the Patriot Act”—Velko cleared his throat—“That’s what the hell’s going to turn up. We’re not exactly a missing-persons search system here.” He looked at Hauck, reacting to the marks on his face and neck and the stiffness in his reach.
“You still skating?”
Hauck nodded. “Local team up there. Over-forty league now. Mostly a bunch of Wall Street types and mortgage salesmen. You?”
“No.” Velko tapped his head. “They won’t let me anymore. They seem to think my brain is good for something other than getting knocked around. Too risky on the new job. Michelle is, though. You should see her. She’s a goddamn little bruiser. She plays on the boys’ team for her school.”
“I’d like to,” Hauck said with a fond smile. When Marilyn died, Michelle had been nine and Bonnie six. Hauck had organized a benefit game for them against a team of local celebrities. Afterward Joe’s family came onto the ice and received a team jersey signed by the Rangers and the Islanders.
“I know I’ve said this, Ty, but I always appreciated just what you did.”
Hauck shot Joe a wink.
“Anyway, I better get on these, right? Top secret—specialized and classified.” Joe stood up. “Is everything okay?”
Hauck nodded. His side still ached like hell. “Everything’s okay.”
“Whatever turns up,” Joe said, “I can still find you up at your office in Greenwich?”
Hauck shook his head. “I’m taking a little time. My cell number’s in the package. And Joe … I’d appreciate it if you kept this entirely between