Black Midnight Read online

  “Hello, Spinrad.”

  He turned at the woman’s voice. She walked toward him amid the sea of rubble, her eyes fixed on his. Spinrad squinted, then nodded in recognition. She stepped carefully over the third rail, the stench assaulting her. Nearby, a youthful patrolman stood white with nausea. He wiped stinging eyes with a dirty handkerchief, stuffed it back into his pocket. He seemed puzzled by the appearance of the woman. Spinrad wasn’t.

  She was wearing a stylish raincoat, he noted, her gold detective’s shield pinned unobtrusively to her collar. Her boots were knee-high, made of good leather, soles and heels caked with mud. A blue scarf covered shortish tawny hair. Winter-blue large eyes gazed from behind oversized tortoise shell glasses, rose tinted. She wasn’t very tall, nor totally striking.

  The curve of her calves, however, hinted at a well-toned and shapely body beneath the layers of clothes. Definitely attractive, Spinrad decided, even if in a cold businesslike way. Showed a definite degree of sophistication and class. The more time you were around her, the more her femininity showed, he recalled. In Spinrad’s vernacular, Yvonne DiPalma was the kind that grew on you.

  “Surprised to see me here?”

  “Surprised it took you so long to arrive.” He brushed back the side of his thinning gray hair. She had not changed very much since he saw her last. That had been when? At least two years. She still looked precisely the same. Little more than a college kid, very much out of place. Yvonne was a few years the wrong side of thirty, he knew, but she could pass for younger.

  “Half the department has already come and gone. Time your people showed up.”

  “I’d have been here an hour ago but Downtown wanted me to get a preliminary from HQ.”

  “You people work in mysterious ways.”

  She showed the faintest of smiles. “Is Warren down here?”

  She was asking about her former partner. “Warren’s on leave. They owed him about six months’ worth.”

  “More like two years, if I recall. It’s long overdue. Give him my best, okay?”

  “Will do.” Spinrad wondered for a moment if the rumors were true; that detectives DiPalma and Resnick once had a thing for each other.

  Yvonne glanced around casually, her vision only now becoming adjusted to the underground light. Spinrad watched her with a cop’s eye for detail; her stance as she peeled off her gloves, the quick, searching glances as she took in the magnitude of what had happened. The tiny frown she betrayed didn’t begin to show the revulsion she felt. The same horror Spinrad had felt. Horror or no, Yvonne DiPalma was a professional at her trade, just as Spinrad was, just as her former partner Warren Resnick was. You learned not to show it.

  During Yvonne’s nine years with the department she’d run the gamut. Rookie on the streets, plainclothes decoy, eighteen months with Anti-Crime up in the Bronx. If Spinrad recalled correctly, her work in Narcotics gave her the promotion to detective. Third grade.

  It was at Citywide Homicide that he’d first met her. Yvonne was a good cop. He couldn’t argue with that. Evidently an ambitious one also. At last count she had gained sergeant’s rank, serving at the commissioner’s pleasure with the special unit known simply as TTF. Terrorist Task Force. Not bad for a wide-eyed kid out of college with a degree in psychology. After twenty years on the job, Spinrad had finally achieved the rank of first grade detective — and not going higher. Yvonne DiPalma would, probably much higher. She’d moved up quickly, and not because she’d been sleeping with the right people, either. She was what he called high powered. Gutsy. Even aggressive. Constantly having to prove herself to be a little bit smarter and a little bit harder working than her male counterparts. But if she was smarter and better, then maybe it had hurt as much as it had helped. If memory served, her career had cost her a marriage.

  Hell, what did that mean, though? Being a cop had cost Spinrad three marriages. A three time loser. Wedded bliss and the rigors of policework never did mix very well. Divorce rates were among the highest for any occupation. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if Yvonne might have been better off remaining with him and Warren in Homicide. TTF was not the sort of assignment many relished.

  Every cop considers himself a breed apart from the rest of the human race. Perhaps none more than those assigned to Homicide, the cream of the detective division. They were specialists; the best trained, motivated, brightest. In the city of New York murder was anything but unusual. Statistics put the number of annual homicides at about two thousand. In raw numbers, the highest of any metropolitan area in the United States. Most killings, however, were acts of spontaneous violence. Sudden and terrible deaths to be sure, but rarely planned. Guns, knives, brutal force used in acts of passion mostly. Committed during moments of blind rage by relatives or friends of the victim. Of course there were also the perennial gangland rubouts the newspapers were so fond of recounting. Crime bosses and the like. Even these, though, if you thought about it, had a sort of perverted justice of their own. Punishment for betrayal. Vendetta. Sometimes strictly business.

  What had happened today on the Broadway Line was different, Spinrad knew. Sickeningly different. An act meticulously planned and executed by an entirely particular breed than he was used to dealing with. An act of savagery. Committed not out of anger or hatred for anyone in particular, certainly not against the poor souls on the train, but an act against society itself. Not the sort of thing Spinrad considered Homicide turf. No, this did belong to the likes of TTF, he knew. To someone like Yvonne DiPalma.

  “No one else from my group show up yet?” she asked.

  A patrolman’s flashlight crossed quickly over Spinrad’s face, making him squint. “Not that I saw. But from the look of things I’d guess TTF will be crawling down here soon.”

  She seemed to be listening with disinterest, staring down at a section of buckled track. It was smeared with blood.

  “One of the passengers managed to crawl his way out of the second car,” Spinrad said in explanation.

  “Collapsed over there.” He gestured in the general direction.

  Yvonne nodded. She tilted her head upward. Wispy dark smoke clung to the concave ceiling. The explosion had caused a brief flash fire, searing the tunnel walls as it whipped toward One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street station. It would take many days, perhaps weeks, before the Transit Authority opened it up to normal operation. Even then, scrubbed and freshly painted, the odor of smoke would linger. It always did.

  “Anything else you can give me, Martin?”

  “Not much. We’re still sorting out IDs on everyone. We have makes on only a few so far. The motorman, and the transit cop.”

  Yvonne shot him a hard glance. “A cop was on the train?”

  “Yeah. Just a kid. Eight month rookie. Twenty-six years old. Both legs sheared off. Glass through his eyes. Think he’s permanently blinded. Has a wife and two kids. Third on the way, they said. P.D.’s breaking the news to them now.” Spinrad’s lips pulled back in a grimace of anger and frustration. He shuddered at the thought of having to be the one to break the news to the rookie’s wife. “Morning, ma’am. Your husband’s been blinded and crippled … ”

  Jesus, he felt hatred for this act. For the filthy job cops — all cops — were paid to do. All in a day’s work for the good and ungrateful citizens of this city. People who really didn’t seem to care a damn about the town they called home. Or even had an inkling that it was men and women like himself, Yvonne DiPalma, Warren Resnick, and that poor rookie that kept them safe enough to sleep in their beds.

  “Any trace of gas or combustibles?”

  The questions pulled Spinrad from his grim thoughts. “None. Power crews have gone over this place three times and counting. The closest repair crew was nearly a mile down track when the blast occurred. Nearly knocked them off their feet. That’s how powerful.”

  Yvonne was kneeling now, brushing her fingertips against the blood-smeared rail. A cursory glance around assured her that the blast had not been due to a ruptured mai
n or carelessly left equipment by a tunnel crew. Neglect could be ruled out. Yvonne knew this not out of evidence or clever sleuthing, but rather out of instinct. What Captain Winnegar referred to as “staying on your toes.”

  Spinrad chewed on a toothpick. “You can imagine the power of the charge,” he said, looking at the train’s front car. It had jumped the rail, slammed head-on into the tunnel wall. It lay lopsided, front squashed like an accordion. “We think the bomb or bombs detonated about two seconds before the train reached it. Track was blasted off its spikes from here to there. Could have been a vibration device, probably a timer. God knows. If the blast had come beneath the train instead of directly in front, some of the impact might have been absorbed. Maybe cut down the number of casualties.”

  Yvonne knew exactly what he was thinking: that maybe the rookie might not have been so badly maimed, maybe at least kept his sight. Her features tightened ever so slightly as Spinrad drew his verbal images. These days it took a great deal to make her recoil. Ever since her very first exposure to this kind of planned mayhem.

  That initial exposure had occurred at a restaurant called Mario’s Seafood & Chowder. A fancy little place tucked in the shadows of Wall Street, catering after the stock market close to a monied crowd of stockbrokers. The blast at Mario’s had been vicious and deadly. Three patrons killed on the spot, a passerby fatally mutilated by an eruption of double-thick flying shards of window glass. Just blocks from Central Division, she’d arrived on the scene only minutes after the explosion. She saw the lifeless corpse of one patron still sitting at what was left of a sidewalk table. He was bent over his Caesar salad, blood oozing over the bowl like some exotic dressing. The sight of it had left her physically sick. Given her nightmares for a month. A radical South American group had taken responsibility for that little coup. Proclaiming they had acted in the name of all subjugated peoples everywhere.

  The names of the killers were well enough known to every large police department and federal agency, but to this day none were caught. Still underground. Still active. Until Mario’s she’d believed working Homicide had made her tough. Invulnerable to displays of emotion. Mario’s showed her she was wrong. Nothing before could compare — until now.

  It was only two years earlier that word had been passed down from Central about the new unit being formed. A hand-picked, flexible task force with wide autonomy. A team that was to be made up of the finest and best skilled investigators, ready to assist established resident squads when needed, or to handle cases totally on their own without bureaucratic interference. TTF, they dubbed it. Terrorist Task Force. An elite corps. Formed in conjunction with, and largely trained by, the FBI.

  Yvonne had been the first woman to apply for consideration and assignment. Captain Winnegar of Citywide had been placed in overall command. Her first chief from her Homicide days.

  “An assignment like this will bust your ass, DiPalma,” Winnegar had warned during the initial interview. Yvonne knew full well that it would. She wasn’t put off. Quite the contrary, she was relentless in pursuing the assignment. A minimum of three commanding officer recommendations were required: Yvonne DiPalma had five. “And besides,” she’d assured Winnegar wryly, “I know how to type.”

  Several long months of impatient waiting had passed. Finally word came down from Central. Captain Winnegar had accepted her for the team. And with acceptance came the sergeant’s grade.

  After that came nine months of grueling, intensive training. First in New York, then with the FBI in Washington. A menu of courses that assured very little sleep and maximum studying. Terror tactics, insurgency, counterinsurgency, SWAT, hostage negotiations, psychology profiles, on and on. Her psych background had been a definite plus, she was well aware. This perhaps had been what finally tilted Winnegar in her favor. She’d long before become familiar with the backgrounds on all the known major organized terrorist groups, local and international, large and small. Islamic Jihad, I.R.A. The infamous Red Brigade, the Japanese Red Army. P.L.O. and most of its splinter factions. Also tiny but vocal groups like the S.L.A., B.L.A. The list was endless. Hit teams from around the world, bearing grudges against nearly every nation on every continent. She spent a month working in Paris with Interpol, and then back to Washington to focus on homespun radicals like the F.A.L.N. and the Ku Klux Klan.

  When this phase was complete she was mentally and physically exhausted, but her skills finely honed, and ready to begin the exhaustive task of tracking, rooting out, and combating any anarchist whose own life only had meaning in martyrdom to further their cause. She learned how to weave in and out of subterranean cultures and worlds that even most streetwise cops didn’t know existed. Hard, dirty, and dangerous work. Long hours, no glory, no medals. Just a few scars.

  For the past few months Yvonne was removed from undercover, found herself back topside, working out of a tiny office in the TTF backroom at Central. Off-field investigations. Routine mostly, following leads. A welcome respite. At least until 4:30 this morning when the phone call had shaken her out of bed.

  “Anyone claim responsibility yet?” she asked.

  The burly homicide detective shook his head. “Nothing so far. No doubt a dozen lunatics will be calling the press and claiming it.” They always did. TTF would be the ones to sort them out, he knew. Draw real connections with this feat and those who might have masterminded it. Few of the civilian population were remotely aware of the huge underside of America; groups and individuals who had decided the best way to air their grievances — real or imagined — was by wantonly killing and maiming as many innocents as possible. The number of deaths was unimportant. It was the event, the happening itself, and the vast media coverage it would draw that counted.

  “Any witnesses?” said Yvonne. Detectives were instructed in their basic ABCs much like newspaper reporters. Only instead of asking, “who, what, where, when, and why,” a cop is trained to ask, “when, where, who, what, and how.” A subtle difference, maybe, but an important one. The “why” and “who” always the most difficult to solve.

  “Only witness in sight was the token booth attendant on duty. Claims he heard nothing, saw nothing, knows nothing. Said nobody even passed through the turnstile for nearly an hour before the explosion. Assured us he was wide awake and alert all the time, too.” Spinrad grimaced, scratched an itch behind his ear. “Bomb probably woke the sonofabitch from the deepest sleep of his life.”

  Yvonne let out a long breath. There it all was. Nothing. Total zero. There were a hundred ways to gain access to a subway tunnel: from the street, manholes, power company diggings, not to mention by buying a subway token and boarding a train. Boarding which train, though? From what station? This one, or another? Two million passengers rode the subways every day. Some even loved to roam the tunnels. They did it for kicks, curiosity, to commit suicide, or maybe just to take an offbeat and forbidden tour. Almost as many possibilities as there were riders.

  Yvonne pushed her glasses firmly up against the bridge of her nose and sighed. Up on Broadway the first field investigations would already be underway. Knocking on doors, questioning the neighborhood vagrants, hookers, addicts, and anyone else that might have been wandering the streets at three in the morning. Hoping against hope that someone, somehow, might recall something worth following up. It might be a longshot, but nevertheless an important one. Whole batteries of cops asking thousands of questions. A canvass like this could take a week, more. A cop needs hard knuckles, strong legs, and patience that would tax even a priest. And although the cumulative results would produce a book thicker than a telephone directory, this procedure remained a vital and essential part of police work.

  She glanced at her watch. It was nearly 7:00 AM. She heard cars honking on Broadway, could picture the lines of frustrated motorists steaming and cursing at the massive detours. Morning rush hour was already getting underway, the flow of traffic steadily increasing. An eleven block radius of One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street had been cordoned off. By now, large crow
ds would have gathered behind the police barricades. The curious gawking at the sea of blue uniforms, staring, waving at the television cameras. This afternoon’s newspaper would run extra editions and special sections devoted to the disaster. Photos of the wreckage splashed across the front page. Radios speaking of nothing else, televisions interrupting regular broadcasts with constant updates. In every workplace the tragedy would be the topic of speculation. With so many using mass transit daily — tens of thousands on the Broadway Line alone — who wouldn’t wonder if another station, another line, might be next. No subway tunnel could be considered safe. Hysteria could take over. Trouble was, as Yvonne saw it, they were right. If it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.

  The bomber or bombers certainly got what they were after, Yvonne thought bitterly. Publicity, and lots of it. Never mind the ruined lives, the innocent victims. This was the event of the decade. It fit a terrorist pattern perfectly.

  Sort of. Yvonne wondered why this way and not another? The target had been a deserted tunnel at nearly 3:00 AM. The perpetrators could have selected a more public place, or more heavily traveled time for it. Say the explosion had occurred during morning rush hour. What then? The train jammed with passengers. What might the fatality count have been? Scores of dead obviously. Enough to make this event look puny by comparison. And why here, One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street? A mostly Spanish-speaking area of poor working class people. They weren’t typical examples of radical hatred. Certainly not representative of the oppressive classes.

  Or perhaps in some peculiar way to the bombers they were; a mindless animosity against Hispanics, perhaps? If so, was it all Hispanics — or selective? Against Puerto Ricans? Cubans? Colombians? There were a thousand related questions racing through Yvonne s mind. She stood in silence beside Martin Spinrad and surveyed the scene. She slowly and sadly shook her head, began to move off toward the light of One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street station.