The Watchmaker’s Hand

The more likely danger in stakeouts is not gunplay but falling asleep and letting your subject waltz off to freedom.

She was scanning once more when she was startled by a series of shots and a ragged cry. They were coming from just outside the cemetery. “Help! Help me! Ambulance!” A man’s voice.

“Bullshit,” Pulaski said. “It’s her. A diversion.”

Sachs grabbed the radio and nearly shouted, “No one move! Stay in position!”

Damn. Too late. One of the ESU officers had risen and stepped from the brush. She dropped to cover quickly.

Instinct — and who could blame her? But the woman had, perhaps, given away the whole game.

“Ron, call the local house. They’ve probably got somebody on the way, but make sure they check it out. And have the respondings call us with what they find.”

As he made the call, Sachs lifted a pair of powerful Nikon binoculars and scanned the opposite side of the cemetery, looking for lens flare, in case Woman X was using her own pair to surveil them.

Nothing.

But of course Sachs had been careful to make sure her binoculars were shaded; why wouldn’t X do the same?

Into the radio: “Detective Five Eight Eight Five to ESU team leader. You see anybody near the gravesite?”

“Negative, Detective,” the captain radioed back. “There was a groundskeeper and an elderly couple. Nowhere near the grave. And they took off when they heard the shots.”

“K.”

Pulaski said, “Not a soul in sight. And this is probably the only stakeout in history where soul makes sense.”

She gave a faint smile and continued to scan. “Okay, Charles... Talk to me.” A whisper. Maybe the others heard, maybe not. “What’s your girlfriend up to?”

A call from the local precinct on her mobile. “Yes?”

“Five Eight Eight Five?” A man’s voice, Bronx-inflected.

“Go ahead.”

“Just heard from respondings. We’ve got him, Detective. Get this. Somebody, a woman, paid this homeless guy ten K, yeah, that’s right, ten, to fire a gun into the dirt outside the cemetery and scream for help. We found him a couple blocks away. He was just sitting on the curb drinking a malt. No resistance. Seemed pretty fucking happy.”

“He told you about her?”

“Yeah. He didn’t want us to think he’d used the piece to hurt anybody. He just needed the money. Handed the weapon over. It’s cold. No number on it.”

She sighed. “Hair in braids? Blond? Thirties?”

“That’s right. Except it was brown. Her hair.”

So Miss Clairol had paid a visit.

“And what was she wearing?”

“Something dark. That’s all he remembered.”

“The money?”

“Said he gave it to a church.”

“Yeah, right. We’ll never see it.” Sachs continued to scan the grounds. No sign of human movement.

The officer continued, “He’s got a couple priors. Drugs. Drunk and disorderly. Even if he gets time, which I doubt, he’ll do six months. Not enough leverage to give up the money.”

And even if they found it — unlikely — what would it show? Woman X wasn’t going to give anything away by touching the bills.

She disconnected, sighed.

Spencer asked, “Did she think we’d all go running to the gunshots and leave the grave unattended?”

“It was never about her getting to the grave. She ran the scam just to see if we were on stakeout.”

“Flush us.”

“Yep. She took off the minute the officer broke cover. Hell. My fault. I should’ve told everybody to expect something like that.”

Nodding at the officers, Spencer said, “Instinct. I almost went too.”

“Yeah.”

The ESU commander called in. “She’s gone, right?”

Probably, she thought. What she said was: “Maybe.”

A pause. It was her operation. He needed her okay to leave.

“Stay in position.”

Another pause, this one more irritated, if science can radiate that trait. “Roger, Five Eight Eight Five.”

Two hours later, she got the inevitable call. “ESU to Five Eight Eight Five.”

“Go ahead.”

“Detective, we’ve gotta stand down. Sorry, but my people need to get back to watch.”

“Understood.”

The woman was surely long gone. Now that she knew there’d been surveillance once, she’d assume there would always be eyes on the grave, maybe a camera, maybe plain-clothed.

The ESU team emerged from the trees and joined Sachs, Spencer and Pulaski outside the shed. They discussed who’d write the report up — ESU glancing at her in a way that said “Your op, you do the paperwork.” She agreed. They started back to where their cars and an unmarked van were parked, in the shadows of a narrow street across 233rd. On instinct, Sachs stopped abruptly. Pulaski looked her way as she turned back.

“No,” she whispered, nearly a gasp.

She, Pulaski and Spencer jogged back to the grave. There, on the plaque that was Hale’s tombstone, was a folded piece of paper, weighed down by a red-painted ring about five inches across.

They scanned about them.

“The shots...” Sachs muttered.

Pulaski nodded. “It was a diversion.”

It sure was. But not to shift attention away from the grave while Woman X slipped up to it. No, the purpose of the assault was just what they had believed: that it was a trick to flush them — to find out what the officers on surveillance duty were wearing.