This isn’t good, I thought as I radioed aviation to hit the roof of the building on the Jersey side to see what they could see.
“Mike, you really think this is the guy who killed the mayor?” asked Brooklyn as she stood over the body.
I nodded.
“And who killed him?” asked Arturo.
I stared out the window as the chopper appeared overhead on its way across the Hudson. The sound of the rotors was almost deafening through the broken glass.
“The nut job who’s trying to show us how smart he is,” I yelled.
Chapter 22
At exactly 1:23 p.m., thirty-seven minutes after the mayor’s assassination, a hundred blocks almost directly south, a white delivery van turned west onto 81st Street from York Avenue on Manhattan’s famous Upper East Side.
“Dude, four-two-one. That’s it. Up there,” said the preppy white college kid in the van’s passenger seat.
The handsome young Hispanic driver beside him squinted ahead out the windshield.
“That old church there?” he said.
“No, stupid,” said the white guy. “The church? How we gonna put it on the pointy roof of a church? Next to the church there. That crappy white brick building.”
The white guy’s name was Gregg Bentivengo. His handsome Hispanic buddy was Julio Torrone. They were recently graduated New York University students, now roommates and partners in a start-up marketing and promotional firm they’d dubbed Emerald Marketing Solutions.
“A church?” Gregg said again, rolling his eyes. “There’s even a picture of the building on the instructions. Didn’t you see the picture of it?”
“That’s your job,” Julio said, coming to a dead stop as a green pickup two cars ahead parallel-parked. “You’re the navigator, bro. I’m the pilot. Where should I park us, anyway? This block is jammed.”
“Too bad we didn’t pick one of those blocks where it’s easy to park,” said Gregg, rolling down his window and sticking his head out. “The building’s got an underground garage. Maybe they’ll let us leave the van off to the side in the driveway there for a second while we unload. You know, I would have asked for more if I’d known how bulky these damn things are. Plus they weigh a ton.”
“You can say that again. I’m not lugging it across the street again, especially the way you almost let it bail when we were getting it over the curb.”
“I almost let it bail? I beg to differ, my friend. You’re the one who didn’t tighten the hand truck’s strap,” Gregg said as he rolled the window back up and removed a small navel orange from the pocket of his white North Face shell.
Gregg was always doing that, thought Julio, annoyed. Grossly hoarding food in his pockets like a squirrel or something. Peanuts, little candies. Drove him nuts all through school.
“Besides, you’re the muscle in this little caper,” Gregg said as he began peeling. “I’m the sweet-talking, persuasive guy.”
“The what?” Julio said. “You were tripping over your tongue with the concierge mama at the last place so much I thought you were doing an impression of that ‘That’s all, folks’ pig dude in that old-timey cartoon.”
“Screw you,” Gregg said, flicking a piece of orange peel at him. “When she looked up, she was so hot that I got a little startled is all. I was lovestruck. Besides, I recovered quick enough.”
“That’s true,” said Julio, smiling. “I almost pissed myself laughing when you told her it was the new flux capacitor for the roof, and she was like, ‘Oh, okay, elevator back to your right.’”
“Hey, you know my motto. If you can’t bowl them over with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit.”
“Hey, traffic’s moving now,” Julio said. “Let’s get this over with.”
It was even easier than the last drop. The middle-aged Asian guy at the garage must have been new or something, because not only did he let them park in the driveway, he also let them into the side door of the building with his key without calling the super or even seeming interested in what the hell they were doing there.
It took them exactly eleven minutes to position the green metal box that was about the size and weight of a large filing cabinet on the southeast corner of the six-story building’s roof, as per the instructions.
It must have some internal battery or something, Gregg thought idly as they were leaving the roof, because, like the first metal box they’d dropped off at the hotel on Lexington and 56th, it didn’t need to be plugged in or turned on or anything.
“What do you think they are, anyway?” Julio said as they got back into the van.
“Weren’t you listening? They’re carbon meters,” said Gregg, picking up the half-peeled orange he’d left on the dashboard. “The clients are environmental activists who want to take readings of this one-percent-filled area but were denied by the city and the building boards. Enter us, underground marketing heroes extraordinaire, to the rescue.”