There are a few locations maintained by the New York police that
are neither known nor open to the public. These are the place from which
special task forces operate. Control units direct undercover operations
from these sites. In order to conduct their business with reasonable
security, these operations are often conducted out of apartment buildings or,
in some cases, residential homes. A very small number of workers come and
go on a daily basis, often through concealed entrances. Rarely does
anyone actually walk up to the front door.
It was at exactly one such residence on a quiet street in Brooklyn
that Paul Gorman walked up and rang the doorbell at one minute after nine on a
Monday morning. The lawn was well kept, the hedges trimmed to mechanical
precision, and the small flowerbeds obsessively weeded. Those
observations told Gorman quite a bit about the man that he was there to see.
He wondered if whoever was observing him through some peephole, as
someone must be, was learning as much. Paul had tried harder than usual
to tame his lion’s mane of thick black hair this morning, but the autumn wind
had brought it back to life during his walk from the bus stop. His heavy
hounds tooth overcoat should have taken him out of the salesman class.
His well-shined black shoes were solid, not flashy, as was the style. His
big hands, neither in gloves nor in his pockets, might hint at a military
background.
Could the observer see the frustration in the creases of his
face? Gorman had gotten up early that morning and left the house before
his beloved Patsy even stirred. He chose to ride the bus so that he could
work undisturbed. Work in this case meant pencil work on a yellow pad,
continually reconfiguring the snippets of data he had gathered from his agents
in the previous forty-eight hours. He was not liking the configuration of
the cases they were running. Most importantly, he didn’t like the fact
that all of them seemed to be coming to a head on the same day. He wanted
to coordinate his resources better, perhaps defuse some and delay others, so
that the cases could be wound up in a more orderly manner. Sadly, the
world was rarely as orderly as Paul Gorman thought it should be. That was
why he had walked the neighborhood for nearly thirty minutes, pushing people
around in his head like the multicolored squares on a Rubik’s Cube until a
pattern emerged that he could live with.
Gorman allowed one minute to pass after ringing the bell, then
pressed the button again. Nearly a minute later he heard a chain slide
out of its place, and two bolts getting thrown. A young blonde woman in
jeans and a halter-top opened the door and smiled up at him.
“Can I help you?”
“They let you come to work like that?” Gorman asked. “Oh, of
course they do. Paul Gorman to see Mr. – or is it Captain? – Victor Warner.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong address,” the woman
said. “I’m just the babysitter, but this is the Winters residence.”
“Uh-huh. Look, you’d be better calling yourself the au pair
in this neighborhood. Go tell Warner that I’m here about Lorenzo Lucania,
and that my next stop is the Mayor’s office. Make sure he gets my name
too, okay? Paul Gorman.”
“I think you’d better go, Mister,” the girl said, affecting a
passable degree of discomfort. She closed the door and Gorman
waited. He waited two long minutes and was just contemplating the long
bus ride to City Hall when the door opened again. The man in the doorway
had a great hawk nose and small, dangerous eyes. He reminded Gorman of
the picture on the front of old paperback novels of The Shadow except that,
instead of a black mantle he wore a gray wool suit cut sharp as a razor.
After a few seconds of appraisal he flashed a shark’s grin.
“You’re him?” he asked in an old school Brooklyn accent.
“I’m me,” Gorman said. “Presumably, you are you, and would
be Mr. Victor Warner. Or…”
“Captain,” Warner said. “But you can call me Vic.”
“Then I’ll be Paul. May I come in?”
Warner waved Gorman into a medium sized living room that was
furnished for comfort and showed signs of being dusted and vacuumed every
day. Warner stepped past him and headed for the kitchen.
“The operation is downstairs. You want coffee?”
Gorman nodded, and Warner poured into two big black mugs.
His assumption that Gorman wanted no cream or sugar implied either great
confidence in his own judgment or deep research into Gorman’s habits. The
coffee was strong and hot and Gorman was content to learn more about Warner’s
motivations later.
They proceeded down a narrow flight of stairs to what the people
there probably called the nerve center when they spoke to less elite
officers. The large finished basement had been divided up into a prairie
dog city of cubicles. The hum of electronics and the banks of flashing
lights and screens made Gorman wonder if he was at risk from the massive
electromagnetic field that this place must generate. He had visited NASA
once, and this place rivaled anything he saw there. It made him realize
just how low tech his own operation remained.
“People!” Warner called out, and a dozen faces spun to focus on
him. “I know you’re all working hard, but I wanted you to know that
you’re in the presence of a legend. This is Paul Gorman. After a
brilliant Army career in the Military Police he retired and created a second
brilliant career in civilian law enforcement. He ran at least three major
metropolitan police forces and was consulted by just about every police chief
or commissioner in the country. And today…” Warner stopped and turned to
Gorman as if he expected him to address the group of younger officers.
Instead he spoke directly to Warner.
“Today I’m a private consultant, and manage a local detective
agency. Guess that makes me semi-retired,” he said with a
self-deprecating smile.
