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I’d had enough. I gave the man a hard look and said, “You have the right to get on with your life. I would recommend you exercise that right as soon as possible. Frankly, I’ve heard all the shit I want to out of you.”
The man started walking away on the sidewalk, muttering to himself. He stopped twenty feet away and shouted, “Cops suck!”
It wasn’t original, but he got his point across.
Hollis looked at me and said, “What now?”
“We work with what we have. I was chasing ghosts beneath the library. At least you got to talk to a real person.”
“Enduring that conversation was more painful than breaking my nose,” Hollis said, and I laughed.
“Now we need to meet with library IT so that we can check the video surveillance to see if our runner shows up.”
Chapter 51
Hollis and I turned the corner from the library entrance to find a coffee shop on 41st, just off Fifth Avenue. The place was nearly empty of customers. We headed toward the rear and commandeered two wide tables, where we spread out our papers.
I had a cup of plain black coffee and some kind of cruller. Hollis opted for a healthy and hydrating bottle of water. He never would’ve made the grade when I was a rookie. Back then, drinking coffee during our shifts and alcohol in the evenings felt mandatory. Frankly, I don’t miss the old days.
We’d spent more than an hour talking with the head of library security and his IT guy. We’d searched through the available video feeds. I’d noted the dummy cameras, but I was still surprised at how few active feeds they actually maintained.
The head of security had looked at me and shrugged. “We’re a library, not a central bank. We have a decent budget, but it’s not spent on security cameras. Our biggest expense is staffing exhibits of our permanent collections. Some of the items—like first-edition books by famous authors, or one-of-a-kind photographs and artwork—are quite valuable. We have to prevent tourists from trying to steal a piece of library history. On the flip side, we also need to patrol the quiet spaces where homeless people sneak in to sleep during the day and overnight. But if the guy you’re looking for passed by any of the display areas, we may have captured his image.”
Not likely, I thought, but I thanked the security head for his time.
At least we had a little more information to work with.
The outburst from the concerned citizen outside the library underscored my biggest worry. New Yorkers aren’t shy about criticizing the police, and that guy had felt free to curse us out. God knows an ass like John Macy would use any public outcry as a reason to screw with me, especially as the unsolved murders kept mounting.
I slapped a legal pad down on the table and started writing. The lists of what we were missing and what we still needed to do were far longer than the list of what we had.
When I wondered out loud if I’d caught a glimpse of the killer at the library, Hollis talked me down, reminding me that there was no reason to assume the killer had even been there today, only a case of mistaken identity with the vending machine rep.
With an audible sigh, I conceded his point and then said, “So what’s our next move?”
“Maybe the answer lies in the earlier murders. We need to work those connections until we forge a clear link.”
It was as good a plan as any. And one that would take us back to the office.
As we started to gather up our stuff, the manager of the coffee shop, a well-built young black man, approached. He said, “I noticed your badges. I was wondering if you guys might help me out.”
I said, “What’s the problem?”
“There’s a homeless guy who sits for hours right in the doorway of my shop. The guy’s killing my afternoon business. I called the local precinct a couple of times, but one of the cops I talked to said that the truth is, they don’t consider loitering or harassing my customers for change enough of a crime to warrant an arrest.”
The manager blew out a frustrated breath, admitting, “I once made the mistake of paying him off. I gave him five dollars to find another spot. But he was back the next day, and he told me it would take ten if I wanted him to move again. He just sat down now. Is there anything you guys can do?”
I looked past the manager to see a white guy with a scraggly gray beard who’d propped himself right in the coffee shop’s doorway. He wore an old olive-drab army-surplus jacket. As I watched, two different customers walked toward the front door. First one, then the other, turned away and left rather than step over the man’s legs. I could see the manager’s point.
I turned to Hollis and said, “This is a good lesson for us as members of the NYPD. The store’s owner has made a legitimate request, and I’d like you to handle it. The faster it’s taken care of, the faster we can get back on our case.”
I purposely hadn’t offered any advice to Hollis, and he didn’t say a word. He simply jumped to his feet and headed to the door of the coffee shop.
So far, I’d been impressed at how Hollis handled difficult coworkers and even an ass like John Macy, but I wanted to see more of how he dealt with the public. This was a sensitive, potentially volatile situation. He was on his own. I just hoped his solution wasn’t too harsh.
The way he barreled through the front door and spun on the sidewalk to confront the man didn’t give me much hope. Then the homeless man stood up and faced Hollis. I wondered if I might need to go defuse the situation. But I waited.
Just as he had done with Van Fleet, Hollis put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He spoke to him quietly. I saw the man’s head nod, and then he shook Hollis’s hand. I also noticed something Hollis probably didn’t want me to see: my young partner slipping the man a card for the VA New York Regional Office on Houston Street and some cash as he was walking away.
