Into the Lion's Den Page 2

  I could see I was freaking her out. “I’ll write you the list of subway rules,” I said, standing up and grabbing the pole as the train slowed down, headed into the station. “C’mon. This is our stop.”

  We climbed the steps out of the subway and emerged in the middle of Foley Square, with all the courthouses around us. Liza followed me to the right, past the line of food trucks and behind the massive granite facade of the federal court.

  The modern building ahead of us was bright redbrick, fifteen stories tall, overlooking the East River. There was a guardhouse thirty feet from the entrance, and we stopped there to show our student IDs to the uniformed officer.

  “Sergeant Tapply is expecting us,” I said. “I’m Devlin Quick. He should have added us a few minutes ago.”

  “Okay, Miss Quick. He just called your names down to us,” the officer said, checking the visitors’ list on his clipboard. “You need to empty your pockets and put that backpack through the metal detector inside. Then take the elevator to fourteen.”

  “There are police everywhere,” Liza said.

  Men and women in blue uniforms were coming and going from the building like a steady swarm of ants. The men in suits were undoubtedly from the detective bureau.

  I pointed to the huge letters on the wall next to the front door. “One Police Plaza,” I said. “It’s headquarters for all of New York City.”

  More cops were inside the door to guide us through the security process. Several nodded at me as we passed through the lobby and turned into the elevator bank. I didn’t want Liza to think I was showing off, so I didn’t say anything to anyone.

  I pressed the button for the fourteenth floor. The signage everywhere in the elevator and on the walls said ONE PP.

  “PP,” Liza repeated to herself. “Police Plaza.”

  “Yeah, this is where all the good stuff happens, Liza. This is where the major cases are solved,” I said. “That’s why the cops claim that ‘PP’ really stands for the ‘Puzzle Palace.’”

  We walked down a long corridor, and I stopped in front of a glass door with large gold lettering on it.

  POLICE COMMISSIONER was printed across the top, and on the bottom were the words CITY OF NEW YORK.

  In the very middle of the glass panel was my mother’s name, in bold gold paint outlined in black: BLAINE QUICK.

  Liza grabbed my arm and read the name out loud. “That’s your mother?”

  “Pretty awesome, isn’t it? She’s the police commissioner of New York City.”

  3

  “Speak of the devil and she will indeed appear,” Andrew Tapply said, getting up from behind his desk to high-five me. “The devil Quick herself.”

  “Hey, Tapp. Thanks for letting us in,” I said. “This is my friend, Liza de Lucena.”

  Liza had broken into a sweat. The idea of being in the commissioner’s office seemed to overwhelm her more than a chase through midtown streets.

  “Good to meet you, Liza. I know all about you,” Tapp said, flashing a welcoming grin. “I’m the guy that ran the background check on your family.”

  Liza seemed startled. “All the school told my family is that your mother was a city official. We had no idea what her position was.”

  I bit my lip and shook my head.

  “Nothing personal, you understand. It’s routine for anyone coming to stay in the commissioner’s apartment.”

  “It’s why nobody except Katie wants to do sleepovers with me,” I said, glancing at Liza.

  “Your mother’s not here, Dev,” Tapp said.

  “I know. She’s been away at a two-day meeting with Homeland Security in DC. Liza hasn’t even met her yet,” I said. “She’ll be home in time to have dinner with us tonight.”

  “Did you bring Liza down to show her around the office?” Tapp asked, opening the door to my mother’s suite, with its spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge and most of New York Harbor. “You’re welcome to it.”

  But Liza was more interested in the trappings that came with the commissioner’s job than in the view. There was the large photograph of my mother that hung on the wall and in every station house in the city, the American flag flanked by the New York City colors, and the NYPD banner, too, along with pictures of Mom with all the dignitaries who passed through town on her watch. Liza ran her hand over the leather inlay on top of the enormous desk.

  “Sit down at her desk, Liza,” I said. “Really, you can.”

  “I’ll get you each a soda,” Tapp said.

  “I also came to pick your brain, Tapp, if you don’t mind.”

  “A little late in the day to try to harvest anything up there, Dev,” he said, pointing to the side of his head.

  Andy Tapply was the best-natured guy I knew, hand-chosen by my mother to cover her back. He was overweight so he didn’t look like everybody’s idea of a supercop. But Tapp had a really big brain and was so trustworthy that he helped guard her post in the palace and oversee her team.

  “We’ve got a class project, Tapp. Summer school at the Ditch. I’ve got an assignment we need some professional help with, okay?”

  “When’s the last time I said no to you, Dev? Whatever you need.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  He walked off as Liza pulled the chair out and sat down, ogling all the objects and memorabilia in front of her.

  “Do you know who Teddy Roosevelt was?” I asked. “He was our—”

  “Of course I do. He was your twenty-sixth president, and he also came to South America to explore the River of Doubt,” Liza said. “You’ve got to get over this idea that you think you’re the only one who knows anything, Dev.”

  That was another one of my faults, as my mother frequently reminded me.

  “Sorry. I didn’t imagine you’d have any reason to learn he had once been the police commissioner of New York City, in 1895,” I said. “That’s actually TR’s desk that you’re leaning on. For real.”

  Liza sat up straight in the chair and lifted her arms off the desk, like it might shock her.

  “It’s okay. We’re allowed to be here.”

  “But what did you tell the sergeant?” Liza asked. “Is the school project you’re talking about actually the library thief?”

  “Sort of. Tapp will be cool with that.”

  “But it’s a lie, Dev.”

  I turned to the window and rolled my eyes. “No, it’s not what you think, Liza. It’s only a fiblet.”

  “A what? “

  “Fiblet” was a word my friends and I used, not likely to be on the agenda at Liza’s school.

  “Look, Liza,” I said, “a lie would be a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive, right?”

  “Exactly. So what’s a fiblet?”

  “I’m not trying to deceive Tapp, that’s for sure,” I said. “It’s a very innocent exaggeration to enlist his help for what started as your library project for the Ditch. A fiblet is just a harmless misstatement of fact. Can you live with that? Can you please just live with that for today?”

  She fidgeted in her chair. “I think what we’re doing to try to catch the thief is a very good thing, Dev. I just don’t want to get you in trouble with your mother.”

  “She really values outside-the-box thinking, Liza. She’s going to love it when I tell her how brave you were to call out that man.”

  Tapp came back in the room with cold drinks, and he and I seated ourselves opposite Liza. “What’s the gig, Dev?”

  I leaned in and pulled up my pictures on the cell phone. “So we were at the library this afternoon, working on something for school. Liza thinks she saw—”

  “Thinks?” Tapp asked.

  “My slip. Liza saw a man slice a page out of a rare book. We’d actually like to catch him, because defacing a book—maybe even a rare one—is a horrible thing to do. That’s where I need your help.”

  “What did the librarian say? Or security? They’ve got a big force.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone inside,” Liza sa
id. “I only told Devlin.”

  “Look, young lady,” Tapp said to me, “you need to march back to the folks in charge and tell them exactly what happened. We got armed robbers and burglars and miscreants of every shape and size to deal with here at headquarters. A single page of literature, Dev? Not exactly my thing.”

  “Single pages of literature have changed history, Tapp. Think of Harriet Beecher Stowe or Karl Marx or Tom Paine.”

  “Yeah, those were game changers, all right. But maybe this one was a blank page. Maybe the guy ripped it out of the book because there was nothing on it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “We are going back to the library, of course. Right after class tomorrow. But I thought if you could apply the department’s facial recognition software program to my photograph, maybe we could really surprise my mother when she gets home tonight.”

  Tapp held out his hand to take my phone. “One thing about Dev’s mother, Liza, she’s a lady who doesn’t take much to surprises. Keep that in mind.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you two know about facial recognition systems?” Tapp asked.

  “Nothing,” Liza said.

  “Only what I’ve heard Mom talk about,” I said. “That it’s a computer application to automatically identify a person from a digital image. I think it compares facial features to a database in the department. Like from all the mug shots on file.”

  “That’ll work for starters, Dev,” Tapp said. “Law enforcement agencies all over the world have tried to use it, but most of the results have been disappointing. For example, it can be good at full-frontal face photos, with maybe a few degrees off the angle of the shot, but once you get away from that direction, it’s not so good. Even a picture of you, with that serious expression on your mug that you got going on right now, won’t necessarily match up with a photo taken of you when you’re smiling.”

  He looked down at the photograph for several seconds, then shook his head. “They got a course at your school in photography, Dev? Sign up for it next semester. That’s what you need a lesson or two in. Hard to know what we’re looking at here.”

  “It’s the man’s face all right. It’s just that I slipped on the floor of the main concourse at Grand Central and wound up on my back.”

  “So I’m looking up at a pointy chin, the bottom of the nose of an angry rhino, and a pair of glasses? You can’t see anything of his face.”

  “I would recognize him the minute I saw him again,” Liza said.

  That’s the spirit. Tapp won’t want to let you down.

  “The first thing we’d need to do is to normalize things to represent the face in a frontal orientation. The tilt or lean of the head here, well, we just won’t have anything like that in our system.”

  “But you’ll make a copy of my photo and stick it in your computer, Tapp? Won’t you? Just give it a try, running it against thieves known to the department?”

  “If that makes you happy, kid, I’ll start my day with it tomorrow. Right after the commissioner gives me her permission.”

  “Here I thought you said you’d do anything for me.”

  “You’ve got no official police report, no real description of the criminal, and no good reason to put my head on the chopping block with my boss. Talk it over with your mother.”

  “I knew it was a long shot. I just don’t want to leave any stone unturned in the investigation,” I said. “And I wanted Liza to see the inner sanctum of the Puzzle Palace.”

  I forwarded the photos to Tapp’s e-mail address before standing up.

  “Thanks for being so gracious to us,” Liza said.

  “Next time I’ll give you a tour of the whole place—the palace. For now, I’ll walk you to the elevator, Dev.”

  Andrew Tapply gave me a hug, and the doors closed behind us.

  “Good try, Dev,” Liza said. “That was a really good idea.”

  “I’m not out of them yet. Good ideas, that is. When we go back to the library after school tomorrow, we can figure out a way to get the perp’s DNA off something in the Map Division.”

  “DNA?” Liza asked. “But there wasn’t any blood, thank goodness.”

  “Yes, but there’s likely to be what they call trace evidence in that room where the thief was working.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Things he touched, Liza. Particles of DNA come off in the oils that are deposited on surfaces of things.”

  “He wore cotton gloves, Dev. The librarian gave them to him. Don’t you remember I told you that?”

  I pursed my lips and had to admit to Liza that I had forgotten that fact in my excitement. But I was an optimist and always ready for a challenge. “The man must have touched something before he put the gloves on—one of those globes or other books or a sign-in register. He didn’t walk down Fifth Avenue and into the library wearing white gloves. He’s bound to have left some evidence behind.”

  4

  “Mom, is that you?” I took my key out of the lock, pushed the door open, and ran toward the kitchen, where I heard voices.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she said, opening her arms to embrace me and kiss me on top of my head while our dog rubbed against my legs, wagging her tail furiously. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too,” I said, wrapping my arms around my mother’s waist. I could pretend to be as cool as the next guy when I was talking about her, but I couldn’t stand going very long without her. We’d been a tight pair all my life.

  She reached over my shoulder and extended her hand. “You must be Liza. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to meet you when you arrived, but I’ll make up for that during the rest of your stay.”

  “Thank you so much, Ms. Quick. I’m very grateful to you for hosting me. It’s such an honor to be with you.”

  “Dev and I are the lucky ones to have you here. It seems like you’re enjoying each other’s company,” she said. “It’s almost six thirty. You’ll have to tell us all about your long day. Please wash up for dinner, pronto.”

  “Sam!” I said, turning to face the man leaning against the kitchen counter. “Are you staying for dinner?”

  “He’s off-duty, Dev,” my mother said. “We’ve been going nonstop for days, so just let him relax.”

  Sam Cody, the homicide detective who had been assigned to bodyguard my mother a few years ago, switched his cocktail to his left hand and high-fived me with his right.

  “Just so long as your mother didn’t cook it, I’m in.”

  The table was set for four of us. “Where’s Natasha? I texted her and told her we wouldn’t be home until after six. I took Liza to see your office.”

  “She’s gone out with friends. And yes, she told me you’d checked in and would be late. And yes, she walked the dog for you. Your dog. She also made a meat loaf for us this afternoon. And mashed potatoes. I’m just heating it up.”

  “Sam’s favorite meal,” I said to Liza. “Let’s clean up.”

  We’d been living in our apartment on the Upper East Side since I was five years old. It had three bedrooms—my mother’s, the one that Liza was sharing with me, and Natasha’s room. I don’t even remember what was in there before she came to live with us seven years ago.

  I dropped my things on my bed and went into the bathroom. Asta, a very affectionate spaniel terrier mix we rescued from a shelter for my tenth birthday, followed me in. Sam had named her Asta after the dog owned by Nora and Nick Charles, the private detectives in The Thin Man books and movies. He liked to tease my mother that her sleuthing was about as professional as Nora Charles’s.

  “Your mother’s so—well, pretty, so soft-looking.”

  “What were you expecting? Teddy Roosevelt and his mustache?” I started to scrub my face and hands.

  “She must have a very tough job, being police commissioner. I was thinking she’d look older and serious,” Liza said. “You don’t look anything like her.”

  “I won’t take that as an insult, okay? Everyone says that I’m pretty much
a carbon copy of my dad. Black hair and green eyes, slender and wiry,” I said. “But he died before I was born, so I only know what people tell me, and what he looks like in photographs.”

  “I’m sorry, I knew your mother was a single mom. I didn’t mean to—”

  “No reason you should have known anything else.” I dried my face on the towel and left the room, closing the bathroom door behind me.

  There was a picture of my father on my dresser. He was a very handsome man—dashing, my grandmother always said—and very kind, according to everyone who knew him. His name was Devlin, too. Every time I looked at his face I tried to imagine what he would have been like in my life.

  And every day there were two things I tried to do to live up to his name. One was to take care of my mother as best as I could. Fortunately there were people like Natasha and Sam and Tapp, as well as all her friends, to help me with that. The other was to do things that I thought would have made him proud to have me as a daughter.

  “Let’s go, girls,” my mother called out. “Everything’s hot.”

  Liza followed me down the hall to the table in our kitchen. There was an actual dining room in the apartment, but it had been turned into my mother’s home office years ago, with one corner of the table open so I could keep my laptop there when she was working. It was swamped with her papers, case reports, mayoral directives, and printed-out e-mails from every law enforcement agency in the country.

  My mother was pouring wine for Sam and for herself. I reached into the refrigerator for a bottle of milk when she served up the dinner plates.

  “Tell us about your first impressions of New York, Liza,” she said. “How do you like it?”

  “It’s fascinating, Ms. Quick,” Liza said. She was happy and animated and eager to answer all the questions my mother asked. They talked about school and family and Liza’s first two subway rides. “I really think I’m going to like it here.”

  “What happened at your meeting in DC, Mom?”

  “I’m not sure she can tell you without violating protocol, Devlin. Top secret,” Sam said, winking at me. He was one of the few people who called me by my full name, and I liked that. “Wait till you get your gold shield. Then we’ll see that you get top security clearance.”