When this whole mess started, I had no idea that it might be the most intriguing case that would come across my desk. Eight months ago, on August 3rd, Israel's Ambassador to the United States blasted into the precinct in a tornado of rage demanding to see Chief Platz, head of the NYPD's detective division. During a long conversation that consisted mostly of my boss trying to get the Ambassador to stop screaming at him, my partner, Leon Kale, and I chatted across my desk.
“Leon, you’ve been pretty grumpy lately. What’s up?”
“I’m exhausted. I’m taking online classes in graphic design at night. After Iraq, the NYPD was a perfect fit for me, but now that my wife’s pregnant, she doesn’t want me being a cop forever. This job's just too risky. Jack, bet you’ve never even thought of quitting. You’re the best New York’s ever seen, just like your dad, so I hear. How’s he doing?”
“My dad’s still kicking – practically blind, but sharp as a knife. Retired to Florida. Wish I could be half as good as he was. Hey, I could talk to your wife if you want, or I could ask my wife to talk to her. I’ve got two teenage boys. Online classes? Are you sure it's legit? Lots of online scams have come across my desk in the last few years.”
“Of course it’s legit. I’m not gullible like you. Only kidding!! In fact, the professor’s very successful. He’s even a consultant for the New York Times. Besides, what better way to learn graphics than on a computer? And the prof’s even given me a few freelance jobs. Every dollar helps."
Finally, the Ambassador stormed out and the Chief filled us in. “The Ambassador received a text that read: “U will never get back 2 Israel alive. We will hunt u and kill u. Nothing can stop us.” Mossad traced the text to a cell phone issued to this precinct. Barnes, Kale, I’m assigning this one to you two. Forensics has already determined that someone hacked into the phone and is tracing the hacker. We'll find these jokers and get'em off the streets.”
Suddenly, the Chief’s phone buzzed with a text, in the classic direct manner of our forensics people: “263 Orchard Street”. “Okay, you two, get vests and weapons and get to that address! I’ll have a SWAT team standing by in case these guys are better than I expect.”
Leon and I ran to the garage and jumped into the nearest cruiser. I hit the siren button, slammed on the gas, and we raced across the city toward the building, like a starving cheetah after its prey. When we were about eight blocks away, I turned the siren off and slowed down so that we didn’t scare the perps out. We wanted them alive and talking. As I drove up, I instinctively surveyed for exit points. The place was an old, two story pile of bricks with cracked windows and a chipped wood door with flimsy, rusty hinges and a broken, detached lock. It looked like it would fall over with a single round from my sidearm.
“Looks like this place has a front and back door. I’ll go in the front, you go down that alleyway and in the back door. Don’t go all trigger-happy on me like you did last time. This isn’t Iraq!” I instructed Leon. “Tell me when you’re there, and we’ll go in on my mark.” We dashed to the building wall, where we would be out of range of a sniper in the upper windows.
A minute and a half later, Leon whispered over the radio, “Ready.”
“Okay, doors in five, four, three, two, one, GO!” I knocked in the door with the stock of my gun and charged into the building. I heard the crash of a falling door and assumed that Leon would be right behind me. I sprinted up the stairs to the first floor, which had only one door, and knocked it open with a vicious shoulder, receiving a face full of dust, and pointed my gun in. “First floor room CLEAR!” I yelled into my radio. Then, I heard screeching tires that could have only come from a heavily loaded van. “What the #@$&! How did they get past both of us?” Suddenly, I saw it, the bomb cleverly disguised by the broken, rotting boards on the floor. “BOMB! RUN!!” I raced down the stairs, sometimes jumping down as much many as six steps at a time. Incredibly, I made it out of the building and to the other side of the street. BOOM! My hearing was temporarily erased vaporized? by a ringing noise. A fireball exploded out of the windows ripping and ripped through the walls. The building fell in all directions, like the pigs’ towers like that game Angry Birds which my kids play, and a huge cloud of dark black smoke billowed out of the burning rubble. My hearing returned suddenly, like someone had pulled a giant muzzle off the city, and my head was full of people screaming.
I automatically pulled out my radio and yelled, “JACK BARNES AT 263 ORCHARD. NEED BACKUP! BOMB! POSSIBLE OFFICER DOWN!"
Chief Platz responded, “Backup and emergency crews on the way,” but I didn’t pay much attention. I needed to find Leon and ran back to the ruins, shouting, “KALE!”
Suddenly, I heard Leon over my radio, “Jack, you okay? I got out and away. Just kept running like a jackrabbit. ‘Bout a block away. Be right there.” He showed up at about the same time as the EMTs, who quickly checked us out.
When the Chief arrived on the scene, I filled him in on what I knew, including that the perps had left after we went in. Chief Platz told us, “We’ll get the building plan, if there is one. Must have been a trap door or a room under the stairs where they were hiding. Too late to check for that now.”
Crime scene teams showed up minutes later and salvaged what looked like the fender of a car after a five -car accident, but the teams identified it as the remains of advanced computer technology that could be used to hack cellphones. (Of course, I can’t share all the details because they would be a hacker’s handbook.) Our teams also found destroyed boxes containing ammo and what might have been a few rockets for an rocket launcher. Our office, together with the Feds and Mossad, continued to pursue all leads, but these guys were good. When our investigation went dry within a month, we handed it over to the Feds. It was soon forgotten by most in our office, like last year’s winner of Celebrity Apprentice.
Fast-forward about three months to a Saturday in November 2011. My dad was visiting. He was sitting with my kids at the breakfast table, trying to read the New York Times, wearing his thick glasses, as always. I noticed that he was still squinting at the paper, trying to read a caption.
He turned to my son Jake and asked, “Jake, help your grandpa out and read me this caption, please. My eyes get worse and worse every day.”
Jake stood up abruptly strode over to a drawer in the kitchen counter, opening it and pulling out an old magnifying glass. He slammed it down on the table in front of my dad and growled, “Use this. Dad, I’m going to my room.”
I spun around and yelled after him, “Get back here and apologize, NOW! And no Call of Duty for a week.” I couldn’t believe how rude Jake had been.
Unsurprisingly, Jake did not respond. My dad glanced at the doorway Jake walked through and frowned. “Don’t worry about it son,” he remarked, “you were sometimes like that at his age too. Need me to talk to him?”
I simply shook my head no. My dad then got up and walked out of the kitchen to the guest room, leaving his glasses and the magnifying glass on top of the Times. I happened to glance down and saw the headline article about Occupy Wall Street. I felt for the officers who worked there to keep the protesters from further messing up the lives of those who live near Zuccotti Park. The place was a sty and smelled even worse, and there was so much illegal activity that we couldn’t even begin to try to stop it. But that’s not the point. Using the glasses and magnifier, I tried to identify which of my buddies had been punished with that post when I noticed cryptic words embedded in the pixels of the photo like a puzzle.... A few short sentences in a tiny font that read: “text to: Israeli US Amb., from: US State Department, ‘Israel can go to hell. U, ur president and the rest of ur govt. can die in a hole... and u will.’” I had had a late night, and it took a few seconds for the importance of the message to hit me. Whoever planted it must have been involved with the threat to the Ambassador three months earlier.
In my mind, I replayed the building raid and finally remembered something that should have struck me as odd at the time, but that I had overlooked in the stress of the moment. I drove to the building site, now just a charred, blackened hole in the ground, opening up the stopwatch function on my phone. The building's outline was still clear in my mind. I walked to the empty site and began to reenact the events of the raid from Leon’s perspective, starting the stopwatch as soon as I moved around to the back of the building. It took me only 30 seconds to make it to the place where the back door had been... but it had taken Leon a minute longer. I then ran around in circles for a few seconds, trying to get my vitals up to the levels at which Leon’s would been during the raid. Restarting the stop watch, I ran as fast as I could to the end of the block, where Leon claimed he was when the place blew up. It took me two and half minutes. Only about thirty seconds had passed between the time I saw the bomb and the explosion, and I was wearing running shoes, not heavy police boots, and was in far better shape than overtired, grumpy Leon had been. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get my brain to believe what my gut was telling me... yet. I had to check one more thing in order to be sure.
On the way home, I called my indispensable, genius friend Steve from the forensics division. “Steve, I need a favor. Can you check if Leon made any cellphone calls at around 3:30 PM on August 3rd?”
“WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT AT 10:30 ON A SATURDAY MORNING?? How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t wake up until after 2:30 on Saturdays?! Hold on, I’m checking it.... Okay... got it. He called a prepaid phone purchased using cash at 10:30 am on April 3rd at Orchard Grocery. The prepaid phone was somewhere within ten blocks of that store when Leon called it. If you can give me about a half hour, I can retrieve a full recording of the call.
“I’ll be right over.” I wasn’t shocked as much by the fact that my partner was probably a criminal as by the fact that I spent so much time with him, but failed to realize that he wasn’t who he seemed to be. When I arrived at Steve’s apartment, he was typing at seemingly supersonic speeds.
Five minutes later, he exclaimed, “I’ve got the call. Here we go,” and pressed a play button on his screen:
“Leon: ‘Get out now! Cops. I’ll stall as long as I can. Set the device and GO.’
Other person: ‘Two minutes and counting. RUN! The prof’s gonna be pretty pissed about losing this equipment.’
Leon: Just get to the van and go. The prof will be really mad if he loses all of his men.’
Other person: ‘Got it.’”
Steve reported after a moment, “I’d say... voice of Middle Eastern male, mid-thirties, and maybe six foot something, two hundred plus pounds.”
I yelled as I ran out the door, “Call the Chief and tell him about this. Gotta go. I think I know how I can find the new base of the nuts who blew up 263 Orchard.” As soon as I got home, I pulled up all front pages of the Times for two weeks before and after the building blew up and studied the photo from each day’s headline article. First, I found instructions relating to the August 3 plot. After they blew up their first base, they needed a new one, and I realized the address was probably hidden in one of the photos.... The answer was in the last one: “# 301, Sheraton, Dwntwn.” “Unbelievable!” I thought, “These nuts are communicating through the New York Times!” Then, I remembered what Leon had told me about his online classes. ‘The prof had a gig with the New York Times. The messages were hidden in the Times. It was almost too simple to be true. “Seems like ‘the prof’ knows how to use computers for more than just graphic design.” I bolted upstairs, grabbed my gun, badge, and a few sets of handcuffs, and texted the address to the Chief. When I got to the hotel, I left my car idling under the portico at the main entrance and shoved a few people out of the way to enter the building because, under no circumstances, could I take out my badge. ‘The prof’ probably had stationed people in the lobby to look out for cops. As I ran to the elevators, I noticed a room service cart with a receipt for room 301... the perps’ room. Everything was going perfectly until I had to wait for the elevator. As I waited, I looked around for any possible sentries. My gut told me it wasn’t the maid, doorman, receptionist, or a guest, which left only the guard, the only person who could carry a gun without arousing suspicion. Plus, he matched Steve’s description of the person on the phone with Leon. When the elevator finally showed, I jumped in, pounding on the door close button. The ride up seemed interminable. Room 301 was adjacent to the elevators and stairwell: perfect for a quick escape. I knocked while pulling out my gun, staying out of the view of the peep hole.
“Who is it?” asked a man inside.
“Room service,” I responded calmly. The door opened and I came around and leveled my gun at the man’s face. “Whatever weapon you’ve got, place it on the floor and kick it to me.”
“Please, don’t shoot! I’m unarmed!” the man screamed. I knocked him unconscious with a quick blow to the head with my gun butt and moved down the short hallway, stopping before it opened up into the dimly lit, smelly living room. Someone walked towards the door, attempting to be stealthy, but failing miserably. Just as I saw the front of his AK-47 emerge from around the corner, I grabbed the barrel and, with a sharp jerk, knocked my attacker against the cream colored wall, and he crashed to the floor. I holstered my sidearm and relieved the man of his machine gun. Turning the corner into the room, I began shooting the guards in retaliation. I don’t remember how many of them there were, but there were a lot. As soon as they heard the shots, more perps came pouring out of the bedroom. I don’t know how I managed to avoid being shot, but I did. Pretty soon, the flow of men stopped, and I bolted for the bedroom door. As I entered the room, the first thing I noticed were wires and computers strewn all over the floor and bed, along with a few large, open weapons cases shoved halfway into the closet. Then, I saw Leon, but by that point, it was far too late. He brought up his pistol and opened fire, knocking my gun out of my hand. I darted back into the living room, and when he stopped shooting to reload, I charged into the room, only to be shot in my shoulder. As I lay on the floor, pretending to be dead, I wondered which one was ‘the prof.’
My thoughts flashed to my family. Had I been too hard on Jake this morning? His last memory of me would be me yelling at him. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to survive this, for him, and for my other kids. I bit down hard on my tongue to stop myself from screaming in pain and showing Leon I was still alive.
Leon soon turned away from me, believing I was dead, and went to the closet, removing a rocket launcher. “Who’s gullible now... and, more importantly, what does he need that for?” I asked myself. “Leon, Iraq must have really messed you up to get you involved with people like this. This is one heck of a ‘freelance job’ that ‘the prof’ has you doing.” He stepped on me as he walked towards the window, which he proceeded to open. He hefted the launcher onto his shoulder and stuck the business end out of the open window.
I heard approaching sirens and assumed that the Chief had arrived with backup, but Leon muttered, “Hello, Mr. Ambassador. Ready for some fireworks?” and the truth dawned on me. He was about to blow up the Ambassador’s convoy. I began to pull out my gun, and brought it up to shoot, but someone else fired a two shots, directly into Leon’s head. He toppled over, spraying red blood all over the light tan carpeting. I rolled over and saw... Chief Platz.
“BARNES, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING! ALONE ON A RAID WHERE YOU KNEW THERE WOULD BE HEAVILY ARMED GUARDS! I’m not sure if you felt that it was your personal responsibility to stop him, or if you’re just a total moron. Anyway, are you okay? And how the hell did you figure this out?”
“Well Chief, the question I’m asking myself is, ‘Why did it take me so long to figure it out?’ That guy sat across my desk every day, and I never noticed anything seriously strange about him. Once again, my dad is a hero. Nearly blind and in retirement, he still saves the day, but he doesn’t even know it! I’ll explain that later.”
While I recuperated, I contemplated all of the other cases that have crossed my desk. What else wasn’t as it seemed to be?