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As he walked east, his eyes were across the street, perhaps on Dalton; that side was not visible to the camera.
The man’s hand was at his side—and once, he tapped his pocket. This he might have done for any number of reasons, but one would have been to make sure his gun was there, safely tucked away.
He was then out of sight. Fifteen minutes later he returned, quickly, and Pulaski formulated a theory of what had happened: somewhere along this street Dalton had witnessed something. It could not have been a recognizable crime; had it been, the trader would have called 911. Pulaski had checked: the only calls from this neighborhood that day had been reports of two heart attacks and a bad fall.
Whatever the crime was, Blue Hat could not afford to let Dalton live.
Pulaski called the DAS people back and asked if there were other cameras in the vicinity.
No, none.
Then he had an idea. He’d try something that he was sure would not work.
But he did it anyway.
He gave the DAS officer the time stamp of the tape where one could see Blue Hat’s face the most clearly, and told him to take a screen capture and send it to another alphabet operation of the NYPD.
The department’s FIS—Facial Identification Section—is not nearly the invasive operation that people believe it is. Its mission is to match pictures of possible suspects taken from securitycameras in the field—or occasional bad-idea selfies—with mug shots or wanted-poster pictures in order to establish identities.
Pulaski had submitted about sixty images over his career, and no matches had been returned.
This one was different.
The officer he was on the line with said, “Well, guess what, Ron. That picture? FIS returned a ninety-two percent likely match.”
“Is that good?”
“Ninety-two’s pretty much gold.” He laughed. “And I’ll give you gold for another reason too. You’re not going to believe who your suspect is. You sitting down?”
•••
“Good morning, this is up-to-the-minute business news with WKDP. Investors came down with a bad case of the jitters following the collapse this morning of a crane at a construction site on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. One worker was killed and a half-dozen injured. Evans Development and Moynahan Construction are the companies involved in building the luxury seventy-eight-story high-rise, where units will start at five million dollars. City officials report that the inspection certificates of all the tower cranes operating in New York are current, but federal regulators have urged that construction at those jobsites be suspended pending an investigation by the Department of Buildings and the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST has investigated the World Trade Center collapses and Pentagon attack on 9/11, and the Champlain Towers South building collapse in Miami. Stock in Evans Development, a publicly traded company, fell to an all-time low.”
6.
THE LIGHTS LEFTlittle doubt as to where the incident had happened.
Hundreds of them, white, blue, red.
Sachs piloted her ancient Ford Torino, painted an urgent crimson, fast along the cross street toward the macabre spectacle, whipping through and around traffic. She nearly resorted to the sidewalk when several trucks refused to part and let her pass. At Third Avenue, the impatient honking resulted in a man’s raised middle finger, which was instantly joined by its three companions and thumb to offer friendly greeting—the sort you’d give to a baby—when he saw the portable blue flasher unit and the NYPD placard on the dash.
Finally, a vehicular break, thanks to uniforms diverting cars and trucks elsewhere. She gunned the engine and made the finish line, skidding to a stop at the edge of the massive construction site on East 89th Street.
The vids on the news hadn’t come close to depicting the carnage. The crane—made of blue pipes, much thicker than theyappeared from a distance—lay between the two buildings it had narrowly missed, a tornado track of debris and damage extending from the base—a slab of concrete—to the park, where the tip of the boom had dug itself deep into the earth. Everything beneath it was flattened. The strip of disaster was a clutter of piping, metal parts, papers, slabs of cement, machinery, girders, concrete dust, bits of plastic, wire and cables, bent ladders and twisted stairs and landings. Apparently you didn’t climb straight up to the top of a crane but ascended a ladder twenty feet or so, then turned and climbed once more, the rungs staggered so a slip-and-fall would be injurious but not fatal.
She looked at the cab, metal crushed and glass shattered. The damage was extensive. The operator would have died instantly—impact must have been at a hundred miles an hour—but what a terrible last few seconds he must have had, thinking of his fate as he saw the ground race toward him through the large windows.
Smoke rose, though there did not seem to have been a fire.
Like all New Yorkers, Sachs had seen hundreds of cranes in her years in the city, but had paid little attention to them. She’d heard of some accidents, but they were rare. To her, the machinery signaled another problem: they were flags of construction sites, which meant street lanes would be closed, further slowing the city’s already decelerated traffic.
Another fact she knew about cranes from her job: they were referred to by organized crime triggermen and bosses as “headstones,” because they rose over construction sites, which were popular places to dump hit victims when concrete was being poured.
She retrieved her crime scene gear from the trunk and started into the site, passing onlookers and a homeless man in a filthy brown three-quarter-length overcoat. On his head was perched a fuzzy hat, dark brown and orange, in the shape of those worn by Taliban warlords. Oblivious to the loss of life, he was nosing along the yellow tape, pointing his blue-and-white coffee cup toward thegrowing crowd and begging for change. But only half-heartedly. He spent more time looking over the debris. A scavenger, probably happy to pocket the dead operator’s wallet or cash that had fallen from his pocket. Pathetic.
He glanced her way briefly, noting the badge and her cold glare, and moved on.
Sachs ducked under the tape and oriented herself, finding the base of the crane. Before she started toward it, a large woman in a yellow vest that readSafety Supervisorapproached and handed her a white hard hat. She shook her head, thinking that the hat would, even if in a small way, contaminate the scene. “I don’t—”
