• 123 •

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car with a forklift or—worse yet—dump a couple of tons of metal on top of it.

“Well, we could go for typecasting,” Watts suggested helpfully.

“You could be the bad cop, and I’ll be the good cop.”

Rebecca ß icked him a glance, and he looked back, perfectly straight-faced. She grinned. “What’s your next idea.”

“Why not tell this guy we’re just following up on the homicide investigation because Horton and Marks ran out of steam. Since Jeff was one of ours, that would make sense.”

“Yeah. And we just came across these notes and are tying off loose ends. That plays.” Rebecca pulled into a space in a small employee lot in front of an eight-foot chain-link fence that ran parallel to the water as far as the eye could see in both directions. Beyond it, sheet-metal-covered warehouses as big as airplane hangars lined the waterfront.

“Guess we go on foot from here.”

“Christ, it looks like it’s a mile away.” Watts lit a cigarette the instant he stepped from the car.

“At least you’ll get some exercise.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Rebecca watched as a decktop crane on an enormous cargo ship pivoted over the water with a container as big as a Cape Cod cottage swinging from its massive arm. With surprising precision, the operator lowered the loaded storage crate onto the dock at the end of a row of a dozen others exactly like it.

“It’s amazing how they can keep track of anything here. All these cargo ships, hundreds of containers.” Rebecca shook her head. “What a perfect way to smuggle contraband.”

“Special delivery, right to your door,” Watts agreed.

Pointing to one of half a dozen identical buildings distinguished only by six-foot red letters painted on the front of each one, Rebecca said, “This way.”

After they stopped a harried dockworker to ask where the ofÞ ce was, they were directed to a side door leading into the warehouse. Once inside, they followed an unadorned corridor lit by bare ß uorescent tubes dangling on chains toward the interior of the building. Just before the passageway opened into a cavernous space Þ lled with pallets of boxes and more containers, they found the ofÞ ce. The door was open, and Rebecca and Watts stepped inside.

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The top half of one wall of the twenty-by-twenty-foot room was glass, affording anyone inside a view of the interior of the warehouse beyond. File cabinets lined the opposite wall, a metal desk sat in the center of the room, and a small TV stand in one corner held a water-stained coffee machine. A single monitor displaying a view of the dock immediately in front of the building was mounted high in one corner opposite the desk. An African American woman in a spotless uniform sat behind the desk.

She studied them with an expression of curious interest. “Can I help you two?”

“Captain Reiser?” Rebecca asked.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Detective Lieutenant Rebecca Frye, and this is Detective Watts. PPD.”

Reiser pushed back her chair and stood in one ß uid motion, extending her hand. “Detectives,” she said, as she shook each of their hands in turn. Indicating a stack of metal chairs along one wall, she said ruefully, “Grab yourself a seat.”

“Thank you, we’re Þ ne,” Rebecca said.

Seated again, Reiser nodded. “Same question. How can I help you two?”

“We wanted to ask you some questions about Detective Jimmy Hogan.”

Reiser’s expression didn’t change. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Somebody put a bullet in his head down here about six months ago,” Watts said conversationally.

“Ah, yes. Him and another police ofÞ cer. I’m sorry.”

“We thought you might be able to tell us what he was doing down here.” Rebecca’s tone was casual. Friendly. But her ice blue eyes were sharply appraising.

“Is there some reason you think I might know?” Reiser replied, her expression equally relaxed and her deep chocolate eyes just as intent as she scrutinized Rebecca.

“Watts,” Rebecca said softly.

Watts reached into his rumpled tweed jacket and extracted three creased sheets of paper. Wordlessly, he leaned forward and deposited them in the center of Captain Reiser’s desk.

After only an instant’s hesitation, the Port Authority captain

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picked up the pages and scanned each one in turn. Then she read them again. Finally, she placed them back in the same position that Watts had deposited them. “He called on the phone. Said he was working with the Harbor Patrol and that they were trying to track ships suspected of illegally dumping waste after they’d left port. Garbage mostly, sometimes industrial items.” Frowning, she swiveled her chair and stared through the glass partition into the dimly lit, crowded warehouse beyond. “I think he had a list of ships—he wanted their schedules, port-of-origin information, and manifests.”

Rebecca felt a spark of excitement. Hogan had been on to something down here. Almost certainly something involving cargo, since the Harbor Patrol story was completely fabricated. While technically a division of the PPD, the men and women who policed the waterways were much more closely tied to the Port Authority than to the city police. There was very little overlap in assignments.

“Any reason you didn’t report this before?” Watts questioned, his voice rough with irritation.

Reiser met his gaze steadily. “I didn’t make the connection. I remember the call now that you show me the list, because at the time I thought it was an unusual request. Usually the Harbor Patrol is more interested in civilian waterway violations, not commercial.” She frowned. “I recall pulling some of the manifests. But, for some reason, the name Hogan doesn’t ring a bell.” She shook her head. “No—I think I would have put it together when those two cops were gunned down.

So maybe it wasn’t him.”

“Your name’s in those reports, Captain.”

“Yes. I see that.” She still seemed more curious than alarmed.

“What’s this all about?”

Rebecca studied the other woman. Reiser looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, tall and solidly built. Her attitude was one of quiet conÞ dence, and Rebecca didn’t get the sense that she was hiding anything from them or was even particularly concerned about their visit. Rebecca made a decision. “We think something Hogan stumbled onto down here got him killed.”

Immediately, Reiser sat forward, her hands clasped on the desk, her face severely intent. “What kind of thing?”

Rebecca shook her head. “We don’t know. We were hoping that you would.”

• 126 •

Justice Served

“Maybe the three of us should take a walk.” Without waiting for their answer, she stood and pulled a black wool overcoat from an aluminum coat stand in the corner. Shrugging into it, she eyed Watts’s sport coat and Rebecca’s silk blazer. “You two are going to freeze out there. The wind off the water is going to make it feel like twenty degrees.”

“We’ll be Þ ne,” Rebecca assured her. Watts just grunted.

“Good enough.”

Watts and Rebecca followed Reiser as she led them from the ofÞ ce, through the warehouse, and out the rear to a loading dock. She hadn’t exaggerated. A brisk wind blew off the water, whipping their clothes and penetrating to skin with the ease of a knife blade. A cargo ship blocked their view of the river as it rode low in the water, laden with containers stacked ten high on the deck.

“Three thousand ships load and off-load at the Port of Philadelphia every year.” Reiser shouted to be heard above the wind. “We handle more than one quarter of the entire North Atlantic District’s annual tonnage, making us the fourth-largest port in the U.S. for imported merchandise.”

As she spoke, another container swung out from the deck of the ship on the end of the crane arm toward a waiting truck. Reiser pointed up at the crane.

“That’s a three-hundred-seventy-Þ ve-ton container crane—one of the largest in use anywhere. We handle bulk merchandise, containers, automobiles, perishable goods—a broader range of imports than almost any other U.S. port.” She hunched her shoulders inside her heavy regulation coat. “Four hundred and twenty-Þ ve trucking companies pick up and transport out of here on a regular basis.”

She led them back under the shelter of the warehouse eaves. “Do a few crates fall off the back of a truck now and then? Probably. We have a central computer system with a staff of ten who do nothing but cross-check bills of lading, ports of origin, and destinations against incoming and outgoing manifests. Do we check each barrel, crate, and container?

No. They’ve been cleared by Customs at the point of origin, and U.S.

Customs agents do visual inspections upon arrival.”

“We’re not suggesting any of your people are at fault, Captain,”

Rebecca interjected.

Reiser scanned the area. They were surrounded by dockworkers,

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but no one paid them any attention. “The majority of personnel you see are civilians—longshoremen, teamsters, truckers. They don’t work for or answer to me.”

“Who do they work for?” Watts questioned.

“The unions.” Reiser held Watts’s gaze. “Supposedly.”

“Huh.” Watts looked as if he smelled something unpleasant. “And we know who they answer to.”

Rebecca made no comment, watching Reiser, attempting to decipher just how much the captain really knew of organized crime’s presence on the waterfront. Or how much of what she knew she would share. But she clearly had not wanted to have this conversation in plain sight of the workers in the warehouse. So there’s something she suspects, at least.

“I don’t know what your man found, Lieutenant,” Reiser said empathically, Þ nally turning to Rebecca. “If anything. I’m not saying there’s nothing to Þ nd. What I am saying is if there’s anything big to Þ nd, we would know.”