Vendetta (8 page)

After a couple of minutes, the red-haired female security staffer met them at a freight elevator. Her name was Claudia McEvers. She was stiff-backed and waves of apprehension rolled off her like flop sweat as she was introduced to Tess and Cat. She approached a retinal scanner and the doors opened; then she went inside with Cat, Tess, and Roberston, and used her key card to activate the elevator.

“So you work for Mr. DeMarco,” Cat said. “Were you on duty when the kidnapping occurred?”

The woman hesitated. “No. I was called in shortly before you arrived. I’ve given a full statement to the agents.” She made eye contact with Roberston, but barely.

Either they know each other or something’s up
, Cat mused.
She’s not going to speak freely in front of him.

They got to the sub-basement and stepped into a workspace dominated by a wrap-around computer station abutting a vast wall of monitors. Dressed in gray trousers and a chambray shirt rolled up to the elbows, Bailey Hart was an amazing piece of techno eye candy, a man who believed in lifting weights and doing sit-ups as much as Vincent did. He looked like one of the super-hunky firefighters who appeared in the annual FDNY pin-up calendar. Mr… what month was this? This was Mr.
Year
.

“Okay, so hi,” he said breathlessly. He was holding a ballpoint pen and he clicked it a few times. A few more times. It was obviously a nervous habit. On the desk was an ink blotter that he had scribbled and doodled on so much there was no white space left. There were pieces of graph paper, a Styrofoam plate containing some pizza crust, more pens, and a tablet. He glanced at Robertson and completely avoided eye contact with McEvers. “Let me run you through our backup security operation.”

The monitors revealed different sections of the house, and each screen was packed with people milling around in the rooms. Cat caught a glimpse of Hallie DeMarco in the kitchen, pouring herself another glass of bourbon as she chatted with a young man in an FBI windbreaker. Robertson’s face hardened as he watched her.

“This is custom, in-house stuff,” Hart said. “I didn’t buy anything off the shelf, and no one who worked on it besides me had access to all the components. The brains are in here.”

He walked them down a flight of stairs into what could only be described as a bunker designed to withstand a nuclear blast. It was guarded by two men in olive-green uniforms who were holding sub-machineguns across their chests. They stood to attention as he presented his eye to a retinal scanner and placed his hand on a print reader. Then he keyed an elaborate code into a shielded box, so that no one else could see.

A steel door at least two inches thick clicked and slowly swung open. The interior was softly lit, and as he ushered them in, the two guards turned toward them and raised their weapons.

“This is not cool,” Tess said.

“It’s all right. It’s just a precaution,” Hart said.

“It’s not all right,” Cat insisted. “They need to lower their weapons
now.
”

“All right. Okay,” Hart murmured. He said to one of the guards, “Alpha niner zulu.”

Both guards lowered their weapons to their sides. Then they executed a smart half-turn and faced outward once more.

A small box about the size of a microwave sat on a black pedestal. Hart came forward and stared into another scanner, tapped in more secret code on a keypad, and the box door opened. The unit inside was a very small cube of matte charcoal-gray with no buttons or switches to mar its sleek surface. The magic was in the computer chips, to which Cat and Tess were not privy. They could only take his word that it did what he said. But give that box to J.T., and it would be like unlocking a universe.

As for what Hart said it could do: it could lock all doors, windows, safes, and computer hard drives, freeze all elevators, and activate motion-sensitive lasers in any or all of the designated “zones” throughout the house.

“No one should be able to get in or out,” he finished.
Click-click, click-click.
“But someone did.”

“And this comes on when the primary security system backup doesn’t activate?” Tess asked.

He pulled his pen out of his pocket.
Click-click.
“It’s supposed to. But it didn’t. From what I can figure out, the kidnappers reprogrammed my code so that it thought the primary backup
did
go on. So that would keep my system from activating.”

“So what would be a reasonable point of entry,” Tess began, “to reprogram your code?”

“Well,” he said. “I’ve initiated a debugger, and—”

“We’re interviewing the entire security staff,” Robertson cut in. “We’ll let you know what we find.” He waved a silencing hand at Cat as she prepared to protest. “Surely you can understand Mr. DeMarco’s reluctance to share the workings of his private security system with New York’s finest, some of whom are not so fine. No offense intended to present company.”

Because the FBI is so much more ethical
, Cat thought.
Offense definitely intended to present company.

Bailey Hart clicked his pen like crazy. He was monumentally uneasy—no; he was
frightened
. Take the situation and multiply it by DeMarco’s temper, and it was clear why.

“I’m the only one with direct access to its programming. As you can see, I have a retinal scanner, a print reader, and a secret code when I program it.” He swallowed hard. Of course suspicion now focused on him.

“There
are
work-arounds for scans and prints,” Robertson said, as if to reassure him. Cat knew this from personal experience—Tori Windsor had successfully opened a secret vault that had belonged to her father with her retinal scan, which was of course was programmed to recognize his DNA, and Cat had read about cases where criminals had created fake readable fingerprints off glass and other smooth, hard surfaces.

They left the bunker with its two armed guards and walked back upstairs into what could only be termed Hart’s lair. Cat opened her purse, grabbed a business card, and handed it to him. “Anything you can share with us that you think would be useful, we’d appreciate hearing from you.”

Looking flustered, Hart glanced at Robertson and murmured, “I’ll see what I can do.” He sat down, his way of ending the interview.

There’s another dead end
, Cat thought.
He’s not going to talk to us
.

Suddenly, red lights began to spin and alarms whooped at ear-splitting decibels. Cat, Tess, Robertson, and McEvers all pulled their weapons. Hart was so startled he fell backward in his chair as his pens and papers skittered to the floor. He hit the deck just as the alarms cut off.

The two guards appeared at the end of the room, weapons out. Tess and Cat raised their hands.

“Code one-two, code one-two,” Hart cried. “Stand down, stand down! False alarm!”

“We’re NYPD,” Cat said. “Stand down.”

Neither of the guards cracked an expression. As robotic as ever, they re-shouldered their weapons but didn’t leave the room.

Cat bent down to help Hart back up and her business card holder and a couple of pens tumbled out of her purse, which had snapped open. Tess gathered up the scattered belongings while Cat hoisted a shaken Hart to his feet. Their weapons still out, McEvers and Robertson carefully watched. Then their radiophones rang and both of them answered in unison as a landline phone on the wrap-around desk rang as well. Hart grabbed it.

“Hello, yes, false alarm,” Hart said. “Code seven-foxtrot. Seven-foxtrot. Yes, sir. I think they implemented a time delay. Rather than fool the system into not going off, they programmed it to go off later.”

Someone on the other end spoke.

“I don’t know.” Hart thought hard. “Maybe they didn’t mean to. Or they did it to cause confusion.” He looked at McEvers and Robertson, then pivoted and stared at the two guards. “Maybe they were hoping someone would shoot me when it went off. No, sir, I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I’m genuinely afraid here.”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” Tess said to Cat as she closed Cat’s purse and handed it to her. Cat slung the strap over her shoulder.

“Yes, I did take them into the vault. I thought… oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. DeMarco. I thought… yes, of course,” Hart said, hanging up the phone. The blood had drained from his face. “Mr. DeMarco has asked me to terminate the, ah, tour.” His hands were shaking. “So, ah, if you would please…” He gestured to the elevator.

He showed us more than he was supposed to
, Cat thought.

They went back up to the penthouse level. Cat was glad to see that equipment had been set up to listen in on and trace any calls DeMarco received. Since Angelo had a serious medical condition, it had to be assumed that a call would come in soon.

“Okay, so now the club?” Robertson prompted. “You want to give it a shot?”

“Do you have someone out in the field who would be closer?” Cat asked. The longer they took processing the crime scene to develop leads, the colder the trail would grow. It was common knowledge that the first twenty-four hours in a kidnapping investigation were the most crucial.

“You’re probably our best choice.” He pulled out his business cards and handed one to Cat and one to Tess. They reciprocated. He gave both cards a nonchalant glance and then placed them in his wallet.

“We’ll stay in contact,” Cat said.

“You do that.” He fluttered his fingers as if to say, “Off you go,” dismissing them in the most condescending way possible.

Cat bit the inside of her cheek to keep from herself from saying anything else she would regret and they crossed back into Angelo’s room. Gonzales was examining another notebook and Cat would have given anything to take a peek at it. Instead she and Tess walked by themselves into the hall, which was still flooded with private security and FBI personnel. Claudia McEvers was among them. She looked left and right, then hailed them over.

Cat and Tess walked up to her, and she opened a door that led into Mr. DeMarco’s office from the back way. Cat hadn’t even noticed it when they’d been inside the room before. Raised brows and a headshake from Tess indicated that she hadn’t seen it before, either. The place was like a funhouse.

Or a safe house. There was probably a panic room, too, in case of home invasion. Maybe more than one.

McEvers murmured, “Watch out for those two Feebs, detectives.”

“Feebs” was another term for FBI. So this woman didn’t like Robertson and Gonzales either.

Cat indicated to McEvers that she’d been heard and she and Tess walked into DeMarco’s study. He was sitting alone with an open bottle of a scotch and a half-f glass.

“I haven’t had the pleasure of working with you before,” he said. “I want you to know what a lot of cops who’ve made my acquaintance already know: if you find Angelo, you will share in my joy. Generously.”

Bribes
, Cat translated.

“That’s not necessary, Mr. DeMarco,” she said.

He tsked. “You don’t need to worry. Downtown has given their stamp of approval. I pay my taxes, sure, but a man in my position creates a lot of work for you hardworking city employees.”

He waited. Cat said nothing more. There really wasn’t anything to say.

“However.” He held up a finger. “If you do anything to screw up this investigation, you will share in my dismay. Also generously.”

“No worries,” Tess said.

“Robertson and Gonzales are good guys,” he went on. “They know what they’re doing. I hope the same can be said of you.”

“It can,” Cat assured him.

But as they walked out of the office, Tess gave her a look that told her she understood what the redheaded security guard had warned them about: if the FBI agents did make any mistakes, they’d try their hardest to lay them at the door of someone else.

Guess who.

T
ess and Cat called ahead to the club and verified that it was closed. No one answered repeated calls and given the gridlock, they decided to table a visit for now. The traffic had gotten worse, and it would take them forever to return to the precinct, so with Captain Ward’s blessing they assisted in minimizing the looting in the vicinity of the DeMarco Building. Interestingly enough, the looting already
was
minimal—further evidence of the powerful reach of the DeMarco crime family.

They decided to patrol a few blocks northeast of the DeMarco Plaza, away from the glitz and glam and into an older neighborhood. There were fewer businesses and more residential blocks. Their flashlights traveled over shabby buildings fronted with tidy squares of snow-covered ground. Lights flickered in windows—candles, lanterns. A sign over a padlocked gate announced that this was the DeMarco Community Garden, for local residents only.

Snowflakes drifted down. Cat hoped no one was burning charcoal indoors to stay warm. That would lead to death by carbon monoxide poisoning, and she and Tess had observed more than one of those sad scenes.

They continued northeast. The buildings became progressively shabbier and many of them looked completely abandoned. They had reached the outskirts of civilization and by tacit agreement were about to turn back when Cat heard the trill of some kind of flute. Disconnected notes hopped up and down the scale. The tuneless playing made a counterpoint to the slightly fainter but still incessant honking of car horns a few blocks away.

Beyond the garden, several rusted-out cars created something of a wall; the flicker of orange flames was visible in the spaces between the metal hulks. It was a campfire, Cat guessed. The flute “song” was coming from there.

They moved around to the right, to see an old man seated in a rotting beach chair with a blanket draped over his shoulders. He had long, scraggly gray hair that had been combed away from his face, and he was playing what appeared to be a pennywhistle. In his large ham hock hands, the metallic cylinder looked as tiny as a pencil.

When Cat and Tess stepped into the firelight, he stopped playing. Then he laughed and said, “Well, hello, angels.”

“Hey,” Cat said affably. “How are you doing?”

“Fine, fine.” He scratched his cheek with the plastic mouthpiece of the pennywhistle. “You’re
here
, right? I haven’t had my medication in a while. I want to be sure I’m not dreaming.”