stop-”
“One second.” She left-clicked the mouse on a pad to her right and a few seconds later Noah’s photo appeared within an onscreen form on one of the monitors. There were still some blanks in the form but most of the information fields were already filled in.
“Now hold on a minute,” he said.
“Just a few questions, all right? It’s just routine, and it’s required.”
He blinked, and sat back. “Could you show me some identification?”
“Of course.” She took out a leather wallet, flipped it open, and held it out under the desk light so he could see. No actual badge, but the gilded crest from the side of the van was there again on her card, along with her embossed name and a title of Senior Field Investigator. And then he remembered where he’d seen that logo before.
Several months earlier Doyle & Merchant had pitched for the international PR business of this company. They’d been in the market for a complete image makeover in the face of some major allegations in the news, the growing list of which ranged from plain-vanilla war profiteering, graft, and smuggling all the way up to serial rape and murder. Noah and his creative team hadn’t won the account, but ever since the pitch he’d followed the developments when related stories happened to hit the Internet.
This woman, her hairdo, and her truck were from Talion, the most well-connected private military consulting firm in the foreign and domestic arsenal of the U.S. government.
“Look,” Noah said, “I’m aware of who’s in town tonight, and I know the whole tristate area’s on red alert or whatever, but I was a passenger in a taxi with an overzealous driver, and that’s it. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“Are you acquainted with this man who was driving?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“I don’t know anything about him. There are twenty thousand cabs in this city. I hailed one and he pulled over.”
The woman was taking her notes on a keyboard beneath the desk with her eyes on one of the monitors. “And where were you coming from tonight?”
“From work.”
“And where were you going?”
His heart rate was picking up; adrenaline will do that whether you like it or not. Before he’d been afraid, but now he was getting angry. He didn’t answer right away, waiting until she acknowledged the silence and looked over to him. Then he spoke. “Do I need to call an attorney?”
“I don’t see why you’d want to do that.”
“Am I being detained here?”
“Well…”
“Am I being detained.”
“No.”
“So I’m free to go, then.”
“I’m not sure I understand your reluctance to speak with us-”
“Thanks for everything,” Noah said, and he got up. “Good night.”
“Is this where you’re headed this evening?”
She held out the meeting announcement from the break room that he’d folded up and brought along in his pocket.
From some lecture in his first doomed semester of pre-law at NYU, a wise bit of counsel came back very clearly: The first thing you tell your clients when they call you from custody, innocent or guilty, is don’t say a word: never, ever talk to the cops. But for good advice to work, you’ve got to take it. And besides, this stiff was no cop.
“I’m just dropping in to meet someone there, and then we’re going somewhere else.”
“What do you know about this group, Mr. Gardner?”
“Absolutely nothing at all. Like I told you-”
“They have ties to the Aryan Brotherhood,” she said, having begun to thumb through a file folder on her desk, “and the Lone Star Militia, the National Labor Committee, the Common Law Coalition, the Earth Liberation Front-”
“Hold it, wait up,” Noah said. “The National Labor Committee? The National Labor Committee is a little shoestring nonprofit that busts sweatshops and child-labor operations. You want my advice, lady? You people had better update your watch list if you don’t want to get laughed out of this nice truck. And, like I told you, I don’t know anything about this group or what they do or who you think you’ve linked them to. I’m meeting someone there and then we’re going somewhere else. Believe me, I wouldn’t have many friends in the Aryan Brotherhood.” He pointed to her computer screen. “But you’ve probably checked out my record by now, and you know that already.”
“We know who you are, Mr. Gardner.”
“By that, I think you mean you know who my father is.”
“All right.”
“Good. So unless there’s anything else, I’m going to leave now.”
She nodded, then gestured to the evidence bag of his belongings on the desk. He picked up the bag, plucked the flier from her hand, and left without another word.
As Noah hit the street the rain had subsided again to a chilly drizzle. He walked away, refilling his pockets with his things as he went. Halfway down the block he heard someone calling out behind him. It was the cabbie being manhandled toward the truck by two guys who were each at least twice his size.
Their eyes met, Noah and that driver. What he was yelling now wasn’t hard to understand, probably words he’d practiced from a phrase book for some bad night that might come along when he’d need them.
Help me, my friend.
That’s what he was saying, over and over in simple variations, as if maybe with the next repetition Noah would understand that this guy was in serious trouble and just needed someone to step up and vouch for him so he could get out of this mess and maybe get back to his family tonight.
But what could Noah do? You can’t get involved with every unfortunate situation. It wasn’t his place to intercede. For all he knew, the guy was the leader of a major terrorist cell. And besides, he was late for an appointment with a certain young woman who was in dire need of a dose of reality.
Noah turned away and kept on walking, letting the man’s pleas fade away and then disappear behind him. It wasn’t nearly as hard to do as it should have been.
CHAPTER 7
A lot of empty cabs had passed by on his walk downtown but Noah hadn’t been able to bring himself to raise a hand and flag another one down. The gridlock was still a citywide nightmare, and despite the sporadic rainfall it just seemed like a better idea to suck it up and hoof it rather than risk another ill-fated ride. In any case, in keeping with the evening’s unbroken run of bad decisions, walking was what he’d decided to do.
Eyes down, shields up, keep a brisk steady pace, and you can get almost anywhere on this island in a reasonable amount of time. Focus is the key. It’s not that New Yorkers set out to be rude as they walk along; they simply want to get where they’re going. With seventy thousand people coming at you per square mile, the only way to try to keep a schedule is to avoid connecting with random strangers.
But, try as you might, you can’t always avoid making contact.
The look on that driver’s face earlier, it hadn’t really registered until Noah had fully turned his back on the guy, and by then it seemed like it was too late to turn around. It was dark enough and he’d been far enough away that the picture of that hopeful, desperate face should have been too dim to recall, but it was somehow zoomed in close and crystal clear in his memory.
