She moved to a graffiti-strewn pay phone mounted on a wall, only to find the receiver had been smashed long ago. There were no other pay phones in view, because so few people used them now, but there were dozens of cell phones in use all around her. Everyone she approached, asking to borrow their phone, looked at her with mild annoyance, moderate disdain, or outright disgust, if they acknowledged her at all. Skylar was beginning to dislike New York almost as much as Eddie did.
She walked to a newsstand, where she pleaded with the proprietor to borrow his phone. Engrossed in his own conversation, he pointed across the street to the dilapidated Jones Marquis Hotel. She darted through traffic and into the hotel lobby, where the elderly front-desk clerk flat-out refused Skylar’s request, even when she explained it was a police emergency. He pointed to the 1970s-era phone booth on the other side of the lobby and told her to call 911.
Skylar collapsed inside the booth and pulled the glass doors closed. She enjoyed the moment of privacy, then collected herself before calling to turn herself in. Skylar glanced out through the glass doors at the elderly clerk as she dialed 911. The clerk leaned down behind the front desk to pick up something off the floor. It turned out to be a rusty little birdcage containing a yellow parakeet, which he placed on the counter. It was apparently dinnertime for the tiny creature. It flitted about excitedly in the cage as the elderly clerk scooped out a small portion of seeds, which he poured into a rectangular dish at the bottom of the cage.
Through the phone, the police operator spoke the six words she repeated several hundred times each eight-hour shift. “Nine one one, what’s your emergency?”
Skylar hung up the receiver. She was no longer ready to give up her search for Eddie. Not yet. Skylar still had one more trick up her sleeve. She grabbed the well-worn yellow-pages book dangling from a metal chain inside the phone booth. The book was missing its cover and a considerable number of other pages. She prayed the one she needed was still intact. After flipping through the eight and a half pages of listings for “Beauty Supplies,” she came to the listings for “Bird Shops.”
In all of New York City, there were only three. Total page space was less than one-quarter. Only one of the shops, Flight, on East Eighty-Seventh, had any kind of ad at all. The other two, Give ’Em the Bird and Beautiful Birds, on Amsterdam, simply had their addresses and numbers listed. Skylar didn’t know New York all that well, so she wasn’t entirely sure which of the three shops was closest, but she thought it was the one on Amsterdam Avenue. And she had to start somewhere, so she left the hotel, after tearing out the yellow page containing the three bird shops, and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER 70
New York Office, Department of Homeland Security, May 27, 7:55 p.m.
What Skylar couldn’t have known was that the Jones Marquis had only five months ago been a popular address for prostitution. The New York City Police had successfully raided the establishment on several occasions, and had installed a camera directly across the street, providing a clear view of every individual who entered or exited. The ACLU had tried to force its removal, like they had so many others, but the matter was successfully tied up in the courts and the camera had already caught all the working girls and johns it was going to, so the matter seemed to simply fade away. While the hookers had moved on to another area, the camera remained, mostly because it was cheaper to leave it up than take it down.
The city was full of such surveillance refuse, which now included over 127,000 cameras. The law-enforcement and intelligence communities had only recently figured out how to utilize them in real time. Part of the solution was the new facial-recognition software being used inside 633 Third Avenue. Three of the eight Homeland analysts using it were currently engaged in a debate over whether a recent “catch” with a 55-percent-probable identity match for the female suspect as she entered a particular hotel several minutes ago was worth forwarding to the agents in the field.
The analysts had studied the profile image as closely as the particular camera’s resolution would allow. Three hundred and fifty horizontal television lines (TVL) was on the low end of surveillance-technology resolution, and not nearly as useful as cameras with 480 TVL or higher. The three analysts did the best they could with what they had to work with, enhancing the footage to a nominal degree. When they brought the possible catch to Max Garber, he refused to act on it. Seventy percent was their threshold. Anything less sent field agents on too many wild-goose chases.
As the three analysts continued brainstorming how to improve the image to give them an actionable probability rating, none of them did what Max Garber did, which was to simply watch the ongoing real-time footage from the same camera. The same blonde woman in the same outfit who had only been seen in profile entering the hotel a few minutes ago could now be seen exiting the hotel, hailing a cab. This image was not in profile. She was looking directly at the camera. It was only moments before 87% Probable Match—Skylar Drummond appeared across the bottom of the screen.
“Hey, guys.” He pointed to the image, leaving the other three analysts speechless. Within seconds Max was on the phone with Agent Raines, who immediately directed four field teams to go after the cab Skylar Drummond had just gotten into. They were going to form a perimeter around the moving vehicle and immediately close in as soon as it stopped moving. Max contacted the New York City cab-dispatch office, and coordinated with them to track the cab’s progress without alerting the driver. The dispatcher would also steer other cabs away from the immediate vicinity.
Agent Raines was right to have singled out Max. He was their quarterback, and the other DHS analysts were only too happy to follow his play call.
CHAPTER 71
Amsterdam Avenue, New York City, May 27, 8:03 p.m.
As Skylar’s cab pulled to the curb, she asked the driver to wait for her. She said she’d only be a minute. Before the driver could protest, she was already rushing inside Beautiful Birds. Skylar entered the store and quickly moved through the overcrowded rooms. There were cages of every conceivable size stacked on top of one another. Big ones. Small ones. Wood ones. Hanging ones. And ones that looked like modern art. Prices ranged from forty-seven dollars to several thousand dollars. There weren’t many birds, though. As far as Skylar could tell, there were three cages of canaries, two parrot cages, and several containing birds she didn’t recognize. Not finding Eddie, she quickly bypassed a line of customers waiting for the proprietor, and asked if he’d seen anyone matching Eddie’s description. The shop owner said he had not. When she asked if he was sure, he said yes, he goddamn was. And if she didn’t mind, he had paying customers to attend to.
Skylar headed back out the door. One bird shop down, two to go. She stopped suddenly on the sidewalk. On any other day, she wouldn’t have noticed them, but the black Suburbans arriving at either end of the block caught her eye. The vehicles were identical. It could be no coincidence.
She turned around and raced back inside the store. She went to the rear of the shop, passing floor-to-ceiling stacks of bird food, which looked like they were going to fall at any minute. She approached a door marked “Employees Only.” It was locked. Skylar knocked urgently, but no one answered. She was cursing to herself, when the door cracked open.
An overweight teenage boy, whom Skylar took to be the son of the owner, poked his head out of the door. “Can I help you?”
“Does this place have a rear exit?” she asked urgently.
“No.” He tried to close the door and return to playing Ultra Street Fighter II on his Nintendo Switch, but Skylar blocked the door with her foot.
“How about a bathroom? Is there one back here? I really have to go.”
“I guess.” He reluctantly opened the door and pointed inside to a bathroom. Skylar raced inside it, locked the door, and turned on the faucet full blast.
CHAPTER 72
Beautiful Birds, New York City, May 27, 8:07 p.m.
Agent Raines rushed inside the bird shop moments later. There was no sign of Skylar, so he quickly made his way toward the back and the “Employees Only” door. He banged on it loudly. After a moment, the teenage boy opened the door, clearly annoyed. “What?”
Raines flashed his badge and spoke urgently. “Homeland Security. I’m looking for a woman in her late twenties.”