A Smudge of Gray: A Novel Read online

  A bushy fifty-something custodial worker whistled the theme song to his favorite television show, The Jeffersons, to keep his mind off the crisp morning air. He had a perfectly sculpted mustache that kept his upper lip warm as he cleaned the windows to one of the tallest office buildings in the downtown. He had about twenty minutes of washing left and picked up his pace, because in twenty minutes the first wave of business professionals would swarm the building, punching the clock at 6:30. The chipper man worked like an assembly line worker performing the same duty repeatedly without thought. The man used a long sponge, dabbed it into soapy water, smothered the glass, and then used a long black squeegee to reveal a brilliant shine. The glass was like a mirror, which prevented his view to the inside of the building, but it gave him immediate recognition of his glimmering work. As he continued the theme song from the beginning, the front door opened. The worker’s gaze was at the bottom of the glass, which caused him to take in the exiting person from the bottom up. He noticed the shining charcoal gray dress shoes, black dress slacks perfectly creased, leather glove holding a briefcase, and the trench coat wrapping the man walking from the building he had been paid to maintain. Reaching the man’s face, the memory bank of the custodial worker’s brain immediately recognized him.

  “Good morning, Mister Malloy. You’re going the wrong way,” the man joked.

  Trevor offered the sometimes-disrespected man a smile and a moment of his time as a gesture of respect.

  “I have a subway train to catch,” he replied, and then he looked up at the blue sky. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  “Yes, Mister Malloy. You have a safe day, sir,” the custodial worker responded as he continued washing and wiping.

  Trevor embraced the fresh morning air still victim to the coldness of night. The sun warmed his face as he strolled down the sidewalk with his hand firmly around the handle of his briefcase. As he crossed the street, the thick morning crowd surrounded him. While the other black suits and briefcases masked Trevor, his shoes made the deepest clink off the concrete.

  Chapter 24

  The chirpy custodial worker whistled the theme song to his second favorite TV show, The Brady Bunch. He took his last swipe of the glass and stood back admiring his reflection. Business professionals increased on the street exponentially as the custodial worker knew he had finished just in time. Dress shoes, high heels, trench coats, scarves, and leather gloves protected the people like boots, moccasins, chaps, handkerchiefs, and hats on cowboys in a Wild West town. On the street, cabs and buses sped like horses transporting the animal herders to their respective ranches. In the mess, the roar of 300 horses filled the road. It was a V8 engine, the sheriff’s mustang in the Wild West town.

  Brian steered his 300-horsepower ride through the activity. The spiraling light on the roof seemed to clear a path, but all it really did was extend the disorder. Brian dodged a bus, and then saw the sun reflecting off the sparkling building he had programmed into his laptop’s GPS. He looked for a place to park, a place to rest his horse while he rushed the saloon. Brian saw the entrance to an alley next to the building. He sped into the tight space and ground his ride to a stop as the animal let out a bellow.

  The detective jumped out into the cold morning air and clicked his car alarm. He still wore the blue dress shirt, now covered with nearly 24 hours of sweat and grime, and his hair had lost its natural volume and the part. Brian rolled up his sleeves again as he darted toward the building’s entrance. He hugged the glass of the entryway attempting to avoid the briefcases and handbags of the army of suits. Brian saw an opening in the crowd. He ran even faster, the cold air pelting his face. After a dozen strides, Brian kicked a bucket with his brown imitation leather shoes, which sent soapy water onto his dress slacks. Several in the crowd turned to the explosion, including the chipper custodial worker who lost his chip. But none of that stopped Brian’s drive. He continued into the belly of the building.

  Inside, the city’s workforce filled the entryway and waited for the elevators like cowboys waiting for their turn at the rodeo. Brian checked the directory on the wall and scanned through the entries. He saw “Center City Consulting” and “Mason Data Processing” in the mix, but then his eyes took in the entry that made his hand clench, “Malloy Consulting Service – Suite 312.” Brian pushed through the crowd toward the elevators.

  “Hey! Watch it!” a well-dressed man with a shaved skull barked.

  Brian stopped cold. He wondered whether he should erect his spiraling light to clear a path, but he realized that the elevators would not speed up at the sight of the sheriff. He glanced at the side. A door stood all by itself labeled “Stairs.” Brian conceded and hustled toward the human-powered elevator.

  On the third floor, Brian exploded from the stairwell door and plowed into a young man with bottle-cap glasses attaching letters to a door.

  “Sorry. Police business,” Brian yelled as he hustled down the hallway, his shoes pounding the floor.

  “Yeah, right, asshole,” the man said, clutching letters to his chest.

  Suites filled the hall. Brian saw “324,” and then “322.” He realized the numbers were getting smaller. The hallway was bare except for the body near the stairwell that Brian had taken out. Most of the offices appeared vacant even though names were displayed on the distorted glass windows. It was still early, he figured, and the mess in the lobby must have been for other floors. The stench of cigar smoke hung in the air as Brian passed suite “320.” He saw the name on the door, “Albert Bernstein – Attorney at Law,” and knew by the “stein” in the name that the smell probably belonged to the stogie of an old Jewish lawyer.

  Brian turned the corner. He saw the same hallway except it was darker as if a few lights were out. Brian passed suite “314,” and then he stopped as his eyes beheld “312.” He lurked toward the door, careful to conceal his footsteps. He eyed the letters in Times New Roman font spelling “Malloy Consulting Service.” It was dark behind the door, but that didn’t slow Brian’s pounding heart. He unbuttoned his holster and placed his hand on the cold metal of his 9mm. He slid toward the door, and then paused. Brian waited, listened, but heard the sound of nothing. He gripped the door’s handle with his left hand. It felt cold like ice from an iceberg buried deep in the darkest part of the ocean. As Brian held his breath, ready to pounce, he flexed the muscles in his left hand and twisted, but the handle didn’t budge.

  Suddenly, he heard footsteps swirling through the perpendicular hallway. He pondered whether the rhythmic steps sounded friendly or deadly. Brian had to think fast. The pulsating increased, louder and louder. Brian drew his weapon and prepared to see the face of Trevor Malloy—the face of death. The impending pace reached a breaking point, and then in a flash, the figure revealed itself. Brian raised his weapon and saw a man in navy overalls.

  “Whoa, I give up!” one of the building’s custodial workers yelped, holding two fluorescent lights.

  “I’m looking for Trevor Malloy,” Brian said as he holstered his weapon and flipped his badge.

  “Uh, who?”

  “Trevor Malloy! Do you know where he is?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “The guy in this office.”

  “Sorry,” the worker replied.

  “Get me in there,” Brian demanded as he pounded on the door.

  “I can’t do that,” the worker said.

  Brian waved his gun and badge.

  The worker grabbed the ring of keys from his belt. His hands trembled as he fumbled with the lock. Brian waited as the jingle mocked him.

  “Come on!” Brian yelled.

  “None of them work. Maybe the locks were changed.”

  Brian pushed the worker aside and used his foot to strike the door. The first attempt failed, but Brian dug deeper and unleashed his anger onto the wood. It cracked as the door flung open.

  The darkness hit Brian. He entered as the smell of flowers tried to slow him, but it didn’t; the thing that cau
sed Brian to stop, caused his muscles to tense up, was The Scream on the wall. The worker turned on the lights as Brian saw the door to the back office, which offered the words “Trevor Malloy – President.” Brian looked at the stout wood protected by a lock far greater than any lock he had ever seen. Brian glanced at his brown shoes; he knew he would lose.

  “What are you looking for?” the custodial worker asked.

  “Him.”

  Brian saw the office assistant’s desk and checked the papers on top. He saw receipts and purchase orders. Brian threw them aside. He felt lost, trapped inside the confines of a coffin.

  “Hey, Bobby. Can you bring me another squeegee?” the worker’s walkie-talkie said.

  “Who’s that?” Brian asked.

  “He’s the guy washing the windows in front of the building.”

  Brian grabbed the radio. “Have you seen Trevor Malloy? He owns Malloy Consulting Service on the third floor.”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. Not too long ago. About twenty minutes.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “He was walking toward the subway. Said he had to catch a subway train.”

  Brian’s eyes widened. He tossed the walkie-talkie back. He removed his gaze from the man in blue and focused on the man in black staring at him in his mind. As the custodial worker stood in disarray, Brian scampered past him toward the stairwell. This time, the young man attaching letters moved clear of Brian’s charge.

  Moments later, Brian barged through the door and into the dense crowd. He was tired of the drones blocking his way as if he were just a blue-collar worker. He waved his badge like the light on the roof of his SUV.

  “Police! Clear a path!”

  The suits moved aside as Brian commanded them like the sheriff. He rushed toward the side alley and saw his SUV still parked haphazardly. Two men in black work uniforms stood next to it. The one with the potbelly used both of his hands to look inside as the scrawny one scowled behind him with his hands crossed. Brian removed his keys and pressed the unlock button. His SUV chirped twice. The fat man jumped back and into the skinny one.

  “Move!” Brian commanded as he waved his badge and moved to the driver’s side.

  “Sorry, sir,” the chubby man said.

  “We get a lot of parking violations here,” his half-weighted counterpart added.

  Brian opened the door and hopped on his horse, but before he planted himself fully in the saddle, he looked at the harelip on the chubby worker. “Hey, what’s the best way to get to the subway from here?”

  “Actually, there’s an entrance right over there. It’s closer to get there on foot,” the chubby man replied gesturing down the street.

  “I’m going to have to leave this here,” Brian said.

  Both men shrugged. Brian got out and noticed the patch on each man’s chest—“Shipping & Receiving.”

  “Hey, man. I don’t wanna mess with the cops,” the skinny man replied staring at the back of the hustling detective.

  Brian enabled the alarm again on his SUV and removed his cell phone from his belt clip. He entered the middle of the sidewalk, the heart of the chaos. He flipped open the cell phone with one hand and held the number “one” key, which speed-dialed his boss.

  A quarter mile from Brian’s precinct, the cell phone signal entered a moving SUV and into the right breast pocket of Lt. Foster. He grabbed his phone. “This is Foster.”

  “Lieutenant, this is Brian. Did you get the information I left for you?” Brian huffed as he ran through the mess.

  “I haven’t been in yet. But I just called Forensics and they confirmed the shoe polish matches the smudge found at the past crime scenes, including the elevator door.”

  “Well, that corroborates we have the right guy.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m heading into the subway. Malloy was just seen on his way there. Whoa!” Brian bumped into a man bundled in a scarf.

  “That photo they said you left. I haven’t seen it yet, but how did you get a picture of the perp?”

  “Long story. I need your help,” Brian asked.

  “Shoot.”

  “I need some techs to run his face and check it against the Subway F.R. System,” Brian said as he saw the sign reading “Subway Entrance.”

  “Already done. I have two techs working on it as we speak,” Lt. Foster whipped back. “Let me patch you into the tactical room now.” Lt. Foster pressed a few buttons on his phone.

  The cell phone signal transferred from the racing SUV, breached the police station, cut through the musty air, entered the room with large clear glass labeled “Tactical Room 1,” and then incited the conference phone on a workbench. Two techs commanded quad-core powered computer systems. Both looked barely out of high school because they were. Glasses and pimples covered one and the other suffered from a high metabolism outwardly apparent with his pencil-thin arms. Two 55” flat-screen monitors hung on the wall stealing the focus of both techs as wires, bugs, and micro-cameras were scattered across workbenches. The room was a treasure trove of technology and housed the state-of-the-art in law enforcement gadgets managed by a team of geeks.

  The tech with glasses pressed a button and connected the call. “Tac Room One.”

  “Hey. This is Lieutenant Foster. I have the pursing detective on the line.”

  “This is Detective Brian Boise. Did you receive the photograph that was checked in this morning?”

  “Affirmative. We have it loaded into our system now, detective.”

  “He’s in the subway. I’m on my way under the city. Find this asshole!” Brian demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” the tech replied.

  On one of the monitors was the picture of Brian from the photograph transferred from pigments to pixels. Another had a grid of the city running from Google Earth. The pimply-faced geek changed the screen from the city view and launched the intricate program that tapped into the subway system. His counterpart, the skinny one, kept his focus on tweaking the image recognition system that was checking Brian’s photograph.

  Brian entered the pathway into the subway system. His nostrils filled with the smell of bodily fluids mixed with stale air. “I’ll keep my phone on. Call me with updates,” Brian said as he closed his phone, tossed it for quick access into his shirt pocket, and entered the mouth of the underground.

  Lt. Foster squealed to a stop in a space outside his precinct. He still held his phone. “I’ll be there in two minutes.” Although he had no clue what these two techs were doing, he had faith in them. “Kindergarten’s over, guys. This is one of the biggest cases this department has ever seen. Don’t fuck it up because you’re new.”

  The two techs were sweating, as if they were taking their final exams in their hardest computer science class. Live footage from the subway broken up into eight boxes from eight different feeds displayed on one of the flat-screens. The place looked like hell, overcrowded with Homines sapientes walking, running, and waiting for trains.

  The other flat-screen still showed Brian’s grim mug. The scrawny tech positioned his software over Brian’s face as the detective now displayed in all 55 inches of glory. Both techs communicated discreetly in hand gestures.

  Lt. Foster surged into the room. The techs didn’t even turn around. The lieutenant watched as the feeds highlighted face after face of human life in the subway for a fraction of a second while blocks covered the face of Brian. The computer compared the faces in lightning speed, blowing through a hundred in a second, all unbeknown to the unsuspecting commuters.

  The lieutenant squinted his eyes. “Where’s the photograph?”

  The tech with glasses handed him the photo that Brian had delivered. As the lieutenant held the thick glossy paper in his hands, his heart stopped.

  Chapter 25

  Thousands of humans filled the underground subway. The sound of their chatter echoed inside the belly of the Earth. The screech of metal on metal cut through their collective voices. The stink of sweat pe
lted the humans’ noses; most accepted it as they had every morning. Graffiti-sprayed stainless steel zipped by in all directions like binary digits navigating through the grid of a computer’s CPU.

  A crowd collected near one of the train stops. The business suits enveloping the professionals were all crisp, clean, and lint free. They were at the top of their game because they were all freshly showered and newly dressed, but at the end of a long day, wrinkles and filth would taint their clothes.

  A train approached—the one the isolated crowd craved. Their shoes stood on top of the burgundy floor tiles covered with dried urine and fornicating germs. Chocolate Hush Puppies, black closed-toed heels, navy men’s tassel slip-ons all waited among the twenty pairs of footwear. All of them had a certain style, a certain shine, but one stood out of the pack like the diamond among talc. It was a deeply polished charcoal gray with a small accent of white below its five laced holes. They were shoes for a man who knew what shoes were. And other pieces of the businessman’s attire stood out of the crowd. His black pants were crisper, his black trench coat richer, his black leather gloves suppler, his briefcase sturdier, and his eyes more alluring.

  * * *

  Through the maze of tunnels and into a different station stop, a man appeared to be in a grave hurry as he thrust down an escalator through the dense crowd. It was Detective Brian Boise. He tried to cut through the tight space, but bodies were everywhere.

  “Police! Move aside!” Brian shouted, but the crowd didn’t budge.

  In fact, the men and women pushed him back, some harder than others, but one thing was for sure, there was no way to clear a path. Brian rolled onto the smooth metal in the center of the escalator and road it down on his backside. He bypassed a dozen robots and flew out at the bottom as a man engrossed in a music player cushioned his fall.

  The detective saw a new obstacle, a dozen turnstiles. He darted to the far end and jumped over one of the metal gates. A buzzer blasted as the crowd watched him.