“For what?”
“A drug-dealing zookeeper of Nigerian parents, a sheep-hunting Hispanic with a narcotics history too, and a Chinese American importer who used to run with the Ghost Shadows.”
“You’d do better looking at the United Nations than in NYPD rap sheets,” Mike said.
I reached over and grabbed a couple of Mike’s home fries.
“Finish that omelet, kid. I’ve got to get you back to the convent.”
“I’d be so much more useful running down this list of things to do with Mercer than I am just sitting in my straitjacket up there.”
“You keep behaving like you’re the fourth sister and Prescott will parole you before too long.”
We paid the bill and said good-bye to Mercer. Mike called Jimmy North to tell him that we might not make it back to Three Sisters by our noon curfew, but we were getting on the road shortly and wouldn’t be too late.
The ride up the highway was restful. It was a beautiful October afternoon, sunny and mild, and the fall foliage was putting on a great show as we got north of the city. My favorite soft rock station was playing on the radio and I was as close to relaxing as I’d been in weeks. My stomach didn’t start to knot up until we turned into the gates of the property at about one o’clock and I spotted Kate Tinsley’s car.
Tinsley walked out to greet us. “You gave me quite a fright until Jimmy called me with the news,” she said. “I got here early but there was no sign of you.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “My luggage is still here. I didn’t have the early-checkout option.”
Mike walked me inside, while Tinsley went over to the main house to get herself some lunch.
Mike’s cell rang. “Chapman,” he said. Then he listened. “Let me put it on speakerphone.”
He pressed the controls and held the phone in the palm of his hand.
“You wanted a denominator, Alex,” Mercer said, “and I don’t think it’s such a common one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Henry Dibaba’s drug collar was right like Mike remembered. About two blocks away from the shuttle tracks, not far from the overpass of the Bronx River Parkway.”
“It’s pretty deserted there,” Mike said. “Once you get away from the station itself—which is pretty small—you’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. I think there’s a rail yard where they keep old trains that are out of service.”
“That’s the spot,” Mercer said. We had a good cell connection and I could hear him clearly. “The old NYW&B tracks.”
“I’ve never heard of that, either,” I said.
“The New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad,” Mercer said. He had deep knowledge of transportation history—both from his father’s interest in it and from his work at the nearby airport. “It ran from the Harlem River in the South Bronx right up to Boston. An electric commuter train.”
“They went out of business in the 1930s, didn’t they?” Mike said.
“Yes, but there are miles of abandoned track from here—like you mentioned—all the way up to Connecticut. Metro-North and the MTA store a lot of equipment there.”
“Good place to keep a stash of drugs,” I said. “An old train that isn’t going anywhere. Did Dibaba have any codefendants locked up with him? Guys we can try to turn? Maybe get the address from the girlfriend he used to live with?”
“No luck on the codefendant front,” Mercer said. “There actually was another perp on the scene with Dibaba—a lookout—who split when the cops charged after Dibaba. Got away clean.”
“Go for the girlfriend,” I said. “Take a snake with you, in case she misses Henry’s.”
“Here’s the good news,” Mercer said. “You asked me to get Pedro Echevarria’s arrest record, too.”
“Yes.”
“It goes back ten years, Alex, but Special Narcotics busted Echevarria on a decommissioned redbird that was sitting on the tracks in the rail yard—about a quarter of a mile away from where Dibaba bit the dust a decade later.”
Everybody in New York used to love redbirds—which were retired from the system in 2003, replaced by an all–stainless steel fleet. They were great-looking subway cars painted deep red, with silver roofs and black end caps—the last trains to have individual handholds overhead, instead of long bars. I remembered my first rides as a child, hanging on to my father’s hand while he reached up to steady himself with the metal grabber.
“Did you hear me?” Mercer asked.
Mike moved the phone in my direction.
“I did,” I said, distracted by visuals—thoughts of the handsome old redbirds left out in the elements to rot. I had driven past that huge rail yard hundreds and hundreds of times and looked down from the Bronx River Parkway as I rode over it, seeing it covered with hundreds of rusted trains. “I’m just thinking. Maybe they can do a reverse search. Check the location for the number of drug arrests, before I get my hopes too high. There must be scores of them there over the years—it’s such a desolate area, especially at night.”
“Good idea,” Mercer said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Mike ended the call. “I might as well stick around till he calls. I hate leaving you without a phone.”
“Just give me yours,” I said, holding out my hand. “You can pick up a new one in the city.”
“My incomings will make you jealous, babe.”
“I hardly think so, Detective.”
Mike’s cell rang again. “See? It’s a steady stream of callers.” He winked at me and answered it. “Chapman.”
Again, he listened.
“Are you sure you don’t want me?” he said. “Okay, okay. She’s right here.”
This time he passed me the phone. “It’s Catherine, for you.”
“Like I said, Detective, you’re not as universally desirable as you think.” I put the phone to my ear. “Nice of you to call.”
“How are you doing?” Catherine asked.
“If I wasn’t crazy when I got here, I will be in another few days.”
“Maybe I can get your spirit powered up.”
“Try me,” I said.
“Mercer called and told me you were looking for juvie records on an Asian kid named Ko-Lin Kwan,” Catherine said.
“Look, I don’t want to burn you, but if he’s got an arrest way back when, I’d like you to make a quiet approach to the judge who likes you best, flutter your eyelashes or kick him in the balls, but I’m begging you—if something’s there—to get it unsealed.”
“I’m not sure I didn’t like it better when you were off your game this last month, Alex. You were a lot less pushy then.”
“I’m back in my badassery mode.”
“You don’t need to press me on this. It was easier than that.”
“Done?” I asked. “You’ve gotten it done on a Sunday?”
“Ko-Lin Kwan would have been sealed up for eternity if he’d come to court,” Catherine said, “and there aren’t that many judges who like me enough to have done that kind of favor on short notice. But as it happens, Ko-Lin was arrested, thirty years ago, when he was fifteen, and he decided to jump bail instead of coming to court to face the music. Who is this guy?”