Chapter 72
KIDNAPPING, CHILD MURDERS, and now plastic explosives? This nightmare case kept getting worse and worse. I unsuccessfully tried to wake myself out of it as Emily answered her encrypted cell phone.
“Hold on, Tom,” she said into it. “Let me put you on speaker.”
“We got the print back, Em,” FBI lab chief Tom Warriner said a moment later. “You’re not going to believe this. It’s a hit, but one that’s coded to COINTELPRO.”
“Cointelpro?” I said.
“The FBI’s counterintelligence program,” Emily said.
“The section attached to this was run out of the New York office,” Warriner continued. “The Domestic Terrorism Squad from the sixties. The code name attached is Shadowbox.”
“In Intelligence Squads, when the identity of a person is classified, they designate code names,” Emily explained with a roll of her eyes. “Like the CIA, the FBI spook division loves codes and passwords. James Bond, eat your heart out.”
She aimed her voice at her phone.
“So, what do you think, Tom? Our guy, this Shadowbox, was probably a confidential informant on a domestic terrorist group?”
Terrorism? I was still trying to absorb the plastic explosives angle.
“Most likely,” the FBI lab chief said.
“So, how do we get a name to match the code name?” I asked.
“I’ve tried twice to crack the old databases, but some COINTELPRO records seem to be missing,” Warriner said.
Emily snorted.
“I’ll bet. Into the ol’ memory hole you go. What the hell are we going to do? How do we get around that?”
“I’ve been asking around, and the best lead I can tell you is that you guys should go see John Browning,” Warriner said. “He’s the former agent who ran the group out of the New York office from ’sixty-eight to ’seventy-four. I tried to call him, but there’s no answer at his house up in Yonkers. I worked with Browning on a few things when I was a rookie tech. Sarcastic pain in the ass, but a mind like a steel trap. If he can’t tell you who Shadowbox is, no one can.”
THE CROWN VIC’S V8 screamed like it meant it as we zigzagged north up the crowded Saw Mill River Parkway. Danica Patrick had nothing on Emily Parker, I thought as I white-knuckled the door handle.
Browning lived on a cul-de-sac near the Dunwoodie golf course. There was a U-Haul truck in his driveway. Please don’t be moved out, I prayed as we came to a hard stop behind it.
A wiry, clean-cut sixty- or maybe seventy-something-year-old in a St. John’s University sweatshirt came out of the garage, carrying a box of model trains. I noticed he’d gotten his ashes today as well.
“Help you?” he said, his intelligent blue eyes shifting quickly from me to Emily.
“We hope so,” Emily said, showing him her tin. “Tom Warriner sent us. It’s about CO-”
He lifted a pausing finger as a woman came out of the house across the street, carrying a tray of plants.
“It’s about your, um, previous line of work,” Emily finished in a lower voice.
“I see,” he said. “Come on in, then, I guess,” he said, waving us toward the open garage door.
“Finally heading to Florida,” he said after he closed the garage door behind him. “Just sold to a rent refugee. Yuppie couple from Manhattan. Said they wanted their Yorkies to have some room to stretch out. I managed to raise four daughters here, so maybe it’ll work out for them.”
“We need your help, John,” Emily said quickly. “We need to cut through a mountain of red tape, and we’re running out of time. In ’sixty-nine, you ran a CI named Shadowbox. His print just came up in the system. We think he has something to do with these kid killings that are going on in the city.”
“I see,” he said, tapping a finger to his cheek.
“If you want, you could call Tom to confirm my ID,” Emily said.
“You kidding me?” Browning said, rolling his eyes at me. “I knew you were Government before your Mary Janes hit my driveway. Shadowbox’s name was Mooney. Francis Xavier Mooney. Pale college kid. Wore glasses. Smart, smart kid from a blue-collar family in Inwood. He went to Columbia but got in with some seriously radical people. After he got busted for dope, he advised us on a case we were building on an offshoot of the Weathermen terrorist group.”
“Shit,” I said. “There’s that T word again.”
Browning nodded.
“One night he calls me late and tells me about a bomb-making factory his boys got going in an apartment in the Village. Said his buddies were about to blow up Grand Central Terminal. We go to raid the place and baboom! One of the jackasses running for the back window knocked over something he shouldn’t have and the place went up. Took down half the building. Four of them died. Mooney was torn up over it. Like he blamed himself. We took him out of the program after that. Last I heard of him.”
“When was this?”
“Oh…,” the retired agent said, looking up at his garage ceiling. “It was in nineteen seventy. What’s that? Almost forty years ago?”
His expression changed. He actually looked a little ruffled for a moment.
“It was Ash Wednesday nineteen seventy. We called it the Ash Wednesday bombing. Terrorists and anniversaries. Not good.”
I beat Emily by half a thumb press of my cell phone.
“Get on this,” I told Schultz as he picked up at the task force. “The suspect’s name is Francis Xavier Mooney. Address most likely in Manhattan. He might have explosives. Tell them to beef up security at Grand Central. It may be a potential target. Call me back the second you have this guy’s address.”
“How many he kill?” Browning said as we waited for his rattling garage door to go back up.
“Two, maybe three kids,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Not surprised. Frigging nut case. Even after we hosed his friends from the rubble, he was going on about that freegan, tree-hugging crap. Be careful. Mooney’s an idealist. One thing I learned during my illustrious career is that they’re always the ones you have to watch the closest.”
THE SKIES OPENED up as we tore back to the highway from the former FBI agent’s house. The thump of the speeding wipers almost managed to keep time with my racing heart. My adrenaline was jacked. Closing in on Mooney was better than drinking a case of Red Bull.
My cell rang as we hydroplaned onto the parkway entrance.
“Mike,” Chief Fleming said. “We just got the ten-seven on Mooney. He lives in Chelsea. Four-four-eight West Twenty-fifth. That’s between Ninth and Tenth about three blocks from the Fashion Institute of Technology.”
“Finally!” I screamed. I repeated the address to Emily. After all the dead ends and frustration, for the first time in the case, we were on the hunt.
“Since Mooney might still have a hold of Dan Hastings,” my boss continued, “the ADIC from the New York FBI office just authorized the Hostage Rescue Team to do the assault. They’re en route to Chelsea right now along with our bomb guys.
“We’re still working on the no-knock warrant. Harry Dobbins, chief of the DA’s Homicide Division, wrote it up himself and is going to call me from Centre Street the second he can find a judge to sign it. Where are you?”
“About thirty minutes out,” I said. “Where’d you get Mooney’s address? From a criminal record?”
“No, get this,” the chief said. “His name popped up in the city social workers registration database. I just got off the phone with them. He’s part-time, and his record says that he’s an attorney with Ericsson, Weymouth and Roth, on Lexington. I’ve heard of them. A top-flight corporate firm. ESU’s on its way over there.”
“Do you have their number?” I said.
As I dialed the firm, I spotted the agonizingly distant Manhattan skyline through a break of parkway trees. Goddammit. We needed to be there yesterday. Had Mooney struck yet? Would he hit his office? Were we too late?
“Ericsson, Weymouth and Roth. May I put you on hold?” said a pleasant female voice.
“Hell, no!” I yelled. “This is Detective Mike Bennett of the NYPD. This is extremely urgent. I need to know if Francis X. Mooney came to work today.”
“Mr. Mooney? He’s one of our senior partners. I can patch you through to his voice mail,” the voice said.
“Listen to me!” I screamed. “We have reason to believe Mr. Mooney is armed and extremely dangerous, suicidal, and homicidal. Has he come in? Yes or no?”
“Oh, my God!” the woman said. “I’m not sure.”
“Check now!” I yelled.
The phone thumped down.
“I just spoke to his secretary,” the receptionist said. “He’s not here. The office manager is right here, though.”
“This is Ted Provencal,” said a man a moment later.
“Mike Bennett from the NYPD. We have reason to believe that your coworker Francis Mooney is responsible for the rash of recent teenage killings.”
I heard the man breathing heavily. He seemed stunned.
