Cross Fire

with
have
to break the law from time to time just to get by. If any of them see me talking to you —”
    “This can stay a private conversation,” I told her. “Nobody has to know about it. That is, assuming we can get on with this. Do you know this man?”
    After another long pause and a few more drags, she said, “I guess it was last week. They picked up their papers on Wednesday, like everyone else.”
    “‘They’?” I asked.
    “Yeah. Mitch and his friend Denny. They’re kind of like a —”
    She stopped short then and turned slowly to look at me. It seemed maybe she’d just put two and two together about something. Or maybe I should say one and one.
    “Oh God,” she said. “They’re kind of like a team. They’re the ones, aren’t they?”
    I could feel that mental click, when something falls into place. Had I just found my Steven Hennessey?
    “What’s Denny’s last name?” I asked her.
    “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He’s white, tall, and thin. He’s got lots of stubble, and kind of a —” She waved her hand under her jaw. “Like a sunken chin, I guess you could call it. He sort of leads Mitch around.”
    “And you say they pick up papers on Wednesday?”
    She nodded. “Sometimes they come back for more if they sell out, but I haven’t seen them lately. I swear. I know this is serious now.”
    “I believe you,” I said. Everything about her demeanor had changed. Now she looked more sad than anything. “Any idea where I might look for the two of them?”
    “All over. Denny has this old white Suburban he drives around, when he can get gas. I know they sleep in there sometimes.” The Suburban was a dead end now, but I didn’t say anything about it to Ms. Brophy.
    “And you can try the shelters. There’s a list of them in the back of the paper.” She took a copy off the top of her stack and handed it to me. “God, you know, I hate myself for telling you all this.”
    “Don’t,” I said, and paid her a dollar for the paper. “You’re doing the right thing.”
    Finally.

Chapter 82

    AFTER A LONG DAY of canvassing homeless shelters and soup kitchens, I wasn’t any further along than I’d been that morning. For all I knew, Talley and Hennessey were still in New Jersey. Or gone to Canada. Or up in smoke.
    But when I went back to the office for some files to bring home, Jerome Thurman caught me at the elevator with some news.
    “Alex! You heading out?”
    “I was,” I said.
    “Maybe not anymore.”
    He held up a page from some kind of printout. “I think maybe we’ve got something here. Could be good stuff.”
    Normally, Jerome works out of First District, but I’d gotten him a space in the Auto Theft Unit down the hall, where he could monitor vehicle leads for me. And by “space,” I mean a stack of crates in their Records Room where he could set up his laptop, but Jerome’s never been a complainer.
    What he had was a list of hot license plate numbers from an NCIC database. One of the entries was circled in blue pen.
    NJ — DCY 488.
    “It’s a Lexus ES, reported stolen from an apartment complex in Colliers Mills, New Jersey,” he said. “That’s, like, two, three miles down the road from where your white Suburban went into the water.”
    I risked a half smile. “Tell me there’s more, Jerome,” I said. “There’s more, right?”
    “Best part, actually. An LPR camera picked up the same plate number coming into long-term parking out at National on Saturday morning at four forty-five.”
    LPR stands for License Plate Reader. It uses optical scanning software to read the tag numbers on passing cars and then compares those numbers against lists of wanted and stolen vehicles. It’s an amazing bit of technology, even if all the kinks haven’t quite been worked out yet.
    “Any reason we’re just finding out about this now?” I asked. “That’s well over forty-eight hours ago. What was the problem?”
    “The system isn’t live at the airport,” Jerome said. “There’s a manual download once a day, Monday to Friday. I just got this a few minutes ago. But, bottom line, Alex? I’m guessing your little birdies came home to roost.”
    “I’m guessing you’re right,” I said, and turned back toward the office.
    Even before I got to my desk, though, my excitement started turning into something else. This was a double-edged sword, at best. Considering the heat on Talley and Hennessey right now, I couldn’t imagine too many reasons why