She left the bedroom and approached the narrow staircase to the left of the front door. She ducked down as a car passed by outside. She cut off her light, stole to the window, and peered out. The car was already gone. The fog was thicker, and she could see no one passing by on foot. She clicked her light back on and took the stairs up.
The half-story must have been put on later, concluded Pine, because it was drywall instead of plaster, and the finishes looked more modern. There were two small bedrooms and a full bath up here, the latter with a one-piece fiberglass shower and double sinks. In one of the bedrooms, Pine found where Vincenzo was staying. A large duffel was on the floor, and clothes and remnants of fast-food meals were strewn all over. The stink of stale French fries assailed her nostrils. She searched through the duffel and found a nine-millimeter Sig. She popped the magazine, took out all the bullets, and cleared the breach before putting it back. If things went sideways later, Old Tony would be reaching for a useless weapon.
There was a smaller pink roller suitcase. She nudged it open. Inside were women’s clothes, a box of tampons, and a fingernail file set in a small leather case. Inside the closet were about a half-dozen women’s outfits on hangers. On the floor were three pairs of women’s shoes, from heels to flats.
Okay, he was shacking up with a girl. Pine wondered who that might be.
On the nightstand was a bottle of Oxycontin that, despite the label, didn’t look to be prescription. Probably street made with other shit in it, like fentanyl that could send you to the hereafter faster than any other synthetic drug known. There was also a wad of cash bigger than her fist, and two burner phones. And a bong with a full baggie of weed sat next to the phones.
Pine looked up and saw the dangling rope. She pulled on it and a set of folding wooden stairs came down, revealing the attic access.
She didn’t expect Vincenzo to be hiding up there, but she wouldn’t know until she checked. Still, she doubted he would have left his gun down here if he was up there.
She mounted the steps and shone her light around. There was no floor, only ceiling joists with pink insulation in between. But as she kept shining her light around, she saw that some large pieces of plywood had been laid over some of the joists. And there were some cardboard boxes stacked there.
The place smelled starkly of age, mold, and mildew, and Pine covered her mouth as she tread carefully over the joists to the boxes.
Sitting on her haunches she eyed the four boxes.
She opened the first one and saw that it contained nothing but old, mildewed clothes.
The next box was full of old photo albums. She quickly looked through them and saw a history of the Vincenzo family from the generation preceding Ito and his brother, Bruno, all the way to Teddy’s time. Evie had been pretty and vivacious. Ito looked reserved and disengaged. Bruno, decked out in a three-piece suit with a yellow pocket square in one photo, looked larger than life, his smile huge, his eyes bulging with delight, his burly arm around his brother, who looked like he would rather be hugged by a python.
The next box contained business papers and copies of old tax returns from the ice creamery business.
The contents of the last box stopped Pine dead in her tracks.
Chapter 55
ROBERT PULLER SAT IN THE OFFICE behind a large desk with a computer screen that seemed even bigger. The building was a secure one, the room was windowless, the insides of the walls were coated with a material that would block exterior electronic surveillance, so it qualified as a SCIF. Access to the place was restricted by RF badges, with certain rooms, including this one, requiring retinal portals.
Not many people could get into this building, and even fewer into this room.
Robert Puller was obviously one of them.
He had created algorithms—five of them, in fact—and unleashed them on all the databases at his disposal, which were some of the most exclusive ones in the world. He had also sent his search formulas, like charging armies, into every other database he could think of.
He sipped on a Coke and let both the carbonation and the sugar wash over him. He had been at this for a while now. It was something he was used to doing, but not for the purposes for which he was now doing it.
He stretched, stood, and did some light calisthenics. Though not yet forty, sometimes he felt twice that age. The pressure of his job, plus the countless hours bent over a computer, did not equate to a healthy posture.
His phone buzzed and he frowned. It was his brother.
He said, “What the hell are you doing using your phone?”
“I promised the nurse to be off in under a minute and she told me in no uncertain terms that she was coming to check, so talk fast. Anything yet?”
“If I had I would have contacted you. Now turn the phone off and go to sleep.”
“I got a text from Carol Blum a little while ago. She’s watching a building right now.”
“Why would she text you?”
“She said she wanted to keep me in the loop.”
“Why is she watching the building?”
“Because our shooter is in there.”
“Shooter?”
“The guy impersonating a cop who killed Jerome Blake. His real name is Adam Gorman. He’s head of security for a congresswoman named Nora Franklin.”
“Nora?”
“You know her?”
“Just in her official capacity. She’s the ranking member on Ways and Means. I’ve testified before that committee.”
“What’s your call on her?”
“Smart, dedicated, committed, patriotic.”
“Which begs the question of why she’s got a murderer as head of security. Can you dig up what you can on Gorman? Pine apparently did a fast and dirty, but we need more.”
“Okay. And where is Pine?”
“In her text Carol said Pine’s in Manasquan, New Jersey. She got a line on Tony Vincenzo and is running it down.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find while I’m waiting for my algorithms to do their thing. Now, your sixty seconds are up.”
“I know, Nurse Ratched just stormed into my room with duct tape.”
The line went dead.
Robert Puller turned back to his computer screen and typed in a search on Adam Gorman. He didn’t expect to find much. The man would have been thoroughly vetted before landing a position with a congressperson. But background checks had been known to miss things. And the government had grown lax with doing them and allowed a backlog to accumulate. So maybe there was something useful that had slipped through.
His first search brought up the basics. Name, rank, and serial number. Puller did think it odd that the man had been a member of the intelligence services for another country before coming here. It was true that Austria wasn’t exactly Russia, China, or Iran. It was a member of both the UN and the EU. A federal republic with a parliamentary-style government, Austria had proclaimed itself politically permanently neutral back in 1955. They obviously did not want a repeat of the Third Reich.
However, a country wasn’t a person, and who knew where Gorman’s true allegiances lay?
He did another search, read over the results, and then noticed something curious buried in the timeline background info on Gorman. He made a phone call to someone he knew in the State Department.
“Hey, Don, it’s Robert Puller. Yeah, it’s been a while. Look, I’ve been doing some digging on something and an issue popped up that I think you might be able to help me with.”