Ghost of a Chance

He wasn’t sure that he could get the police to help him recover Leroy, even with Danny’s assistance. He needed to get his head clear. The way things were going, this might be his only chance to find Hannah’s missing husband.

He decided that in addition to clearing his head, he needed something for his nerves. He took out one of his two remaining cigarettes and lit it.

“I thought I might find you here,” Danny’s said when Alex stepped up to the dog wagon.

Alex must have needed the coffee more than he thought. Danny stood back from the street, leaning against the corner of the building. He wasn’t hidden at all and yet Alex had missed him.

“Coffee,” he told the man working the dog wagon.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about now?” Danny asked as Alex paid for his drink.

“Remember my theory from the other day,” he said, sipping the scalding liquid as fast as he dared.

Danny nodded.

“You thought my thieves were actually bank robbers trying to tunnel into an underground vault.”

“I was right.”

Danny raised an eyebrow at that.

“As I remember it,” Danny said, pulling out his notebook and flipping it open, “you called an expert on mining who told you that my thieves would need a special mining engine to make that work. One that would make far too much noise and probably asphyxiate the people using it.”

Alex nodded. He hoped it didn’t sound that impossible when Danny told Callahan.

“That’s where the Barton Electric truck comes in,” he said. “That truck was carrying an experimental electric motor that Barton developed to pull trains.”

Danny didn’t seem sure what to make of that.

“So,” he said after a long silence. “You think the thieves are using the Lightning Lord’s motor to turn the boring bits to dig a tunnel.”

“Think about it,” Alex said. “Electric motors are quiet and they don’t have exhaust. Whoever stole all that stuff has everything they need to tunnel from the basement of one building into a bank vault. Even one across a street.”

Danny hesitated, flipping to his notes on the things that had been stolen.

“It’s crazy,” he said after a moment. “But you’re right, whoever stole the trucks has everything they’d need to dig a tunnel. Callahan is not going to like this.”

Alex knew Danny was right, but he pressed on anyway.

“He’s going to like a Manhattan bank getting robbed a whole lot less,” he pointed out.

“True,” Danny said, flipping his notebook closed.

“So, are you with me on this?” Alex asked with a smile.

Danny rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“I must be out of my mind.”

* * *

“Are you out of your mind?” Callahan roared at Alex. The usual look of casual disdain he wore when Alex was around had been replaced by something perilously close to naked hatred. “It’s bad enough you’re sneaking around behind Detweiler’s back and feeding information to the tabloids, but now you drag my detective in here to sell me some cock and bull story about a bunch of penny-ante gangsters tunneling into a bank? Get out of my office.”

“Lieutenant,” Danny began but Callahan silenced him with a look.

“If you keep listening to this guy, he’s going to drag you down with him. I’m not going to let that happen to me.”

Alex forced himself not to blush under Callahan’s tirade. Truth be told, he did worry that sooner or later he’d steer Danny wrong and cost his friend his job. Or worse, his life.

“Lieutenant!” Danny interrupted. “I know how this sounds, but you should know by now, I wouldn’t have brought this to you if I didn’t think there was something to it.”

Callahan swelled up with fury and Alex wondered if he’d pop his collar button. After a long, pregnant moment, however, he sat back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him.

“Do you have any idea what bank these guys are planning to hit?” he asked, his voice calm and even.

“No,” Danny admitted.

Alex just shook his head when Callahan looked at him.

“Do you know how many banks there are in Manhattan?”

“No,” Danny was forced to admit.

“Do you know?” Alex asked, speaking before he thought better of it.

Callahan glared at him.

“I know it’s more than fifty,” he said. “And since you don’t know which bank is the target of this master plan, you’re asking me to send out officers to look in the basement of every adjacent building for some lowlifes digging a tunnel.”

Alex had to admit, it sounded crazy when put like that.

“Forget the fact that the Captain will never go for this,” Callahan said. “Just tell me how, in your little scenario, these bank robbers are going to power that electric train motor?”

“Most of the banks worth all this trouble are in the Inner and Mid-rings,” Danny said. “Power shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Except when you dig a tunnel, you do it underground,” Callahan said. “Radiated power doesn’t do well underground, that’s why magelights have to be wired to the building in most basements.”

“Very good, Lieutenant,” Alex said. “The field generated by Empire Tower is based on magic and magic doesn’t penetrate the ground well.”