Tick Tock - James Patterson [11]
“For a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, you’re not too bad at throwing the blarney around when you have to,” I said. “Seriously, two chiefs? Why all the heavies on a Sunday?”
“The lab came back on the explosive. It’s T-four from Europe—from Italy apparently. You know how squirrelly the commissioner gets about anything remotely terrorist-related.”
The new commissioner, Ken Rodin, was a pugnacious, old-school former beat cop who still wore a .38 in an ankle holster above his Italian wingtips. With crime down in the city, his primary directive—some said his obsession—was to prevent another terrorist act during his watch. Which wasn’t as paranoid as it might sound, considering NYC was still terrorist organizations’ Top of the Pops, so to speak.
“Though it’s still far from conclusive that this is a terrorist thing, we have to go through the DEFCON One motions for the time being. There’s been smoke coming out of my BlackBerry all night.”
“Is McGirth going to be there?”
Tom McGinnis, or McGirth, as he was more casually known due to his not-so-girlish figure, was the department’s chief of detectives, Miriam’s boss and perhaps the most egregious power-hungry ballbuster in the NYPD.
Miriam rolled her eyes in affirmation.
“What’s up with bullshit internal politics?” I said. “What happened to the commissioner’s pep talk last month about how the mayor wanted a new role for Major Case? ‘Kick ass, no politics, just results?’ Ring a bell?”
“Yeah, well, the mayor and the commish aren’t going to be at the meeting, unfortunately,” Miriam said. “It’s our sorry lot to deal with the department’s evil henchmen. Why am I saying we? It’s your job, Mike, since you’re the briefing DT.”
“Well, lucky old me,” I said, sipping my coffee as the sun crested over the crushed cars outside the window.
Chapter 11
THE NYPD’S COUNTERTERRORISM BUREAU was extremely impressive. Outside, it looked like a faceless office building in the middle of a crappy industrial neighborhood. Inside, it looked like the set of 24.
There were electronic maps, intense-looking cops at glass desks, and more flat-screen TVs than in the new Yankee Stadium. Walking through the center behind my boss, I felt disappointed that we hadn’t been able to enter through a trick manhole and down a slide, like James Bond or Perry the Platypus.
I began to realize why there was so much heat on the library threat. The last thing the commissioner wanted was to have his big, new, expensive initiative to protect the city fail in some capacity.
The meeting was held in a glass fishbowl conference room next to something called the Global Intelligence Room. I immediately spotted the assistant commissioner and the Counterterrorism chief. Though they wore similar golfing attire, their physical contrast was pretty comical. Flaum was tall and thin, while Ciardi was short and stocky. Rocky and Bullwinkle, I thought. Laurel and Hardy.
Unfortunately, I also spotted Miriam’s boss, McGirth, who, with his puffy, pasty face, looked like a not-so-cute reincarnation of Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed. Beside him were Cell from the Bomb Squad and the two superfit Feds who had been at the library the day before. Intelligence briefings about the most recent terrorist bombings across the globe were stacked at the center of the long table. I took one as I found a seat.
“Why don’t you start with what you’ve got, Mike?” Miriam said the second my ass hit the cushion.
“Uh, sure,” I said, giving her a dirty look as I stood back up. “Basically, sometime yesterday afternoon, a bomb was left in the main reading room at the main branch of the New York City Public Library. It looked like a Macintosh laptop wired to plastic explosives. It was a sophisticated device, capable of killing dozens of people. A cryptic electronic note left on the laptop stated that the device wasn’t intended to go off, but the next one would, sworn ‘on poor Lawrence’s eyes,’ whatever that means. There were no witnesses, as far as we can tell at this point.