Page 70 of Crosshairs

CHAPTER 87

I WANTED TO see if there was some way to confirm that Rob Trilling was at his apartment on the night Gus Querva was shot. Things were moving quickly now, and I decided to forgo the surreptitious route and talk to Trilling directly. I had a few more questions to ask him.

I drove directly to Trilling’s apartment. The small, older building was just as I remembered from my previous visit. I didn’t buzz him. I knew the apartment number and was able to enter the building when another tenant came out. I walked inside and up to the second floor. The stairway’s banister was missing six spindles and its carpet was clean but fraying down the center—in need of enough repair that the building was obviously not run by a corporation. I checked apartment doors until I found Trilling’s and knocked. I could hear someone moving around behind the wooden door. Maybe more than one person. I hadn’t pried muchinto Trilling’s personal life, but I sort of assumed he didn’t have a girlfriend. At least that’s the impression I’d gotten from my daughter Juliana.

I waited about fifteen seconds, then knocked again. I called out, “Rob, it’s Mike Bennett. I gotta talk to you for just a minute.” I heard some more rustling in the apartment. Now it sounded like there were half a dozen people in there.

The door opened about two inches, and three separate safety chains caught it. I took a step to the side to look into the apartment. All I saw was a veil of long brown hair.

Without thinking, I called out, “Juliana?” I couldn’t see her face. She moved away from the door quickly. I took a step back from the door. Maybe, somewhere in the back of my head, I was considering kicking the door in. You never know how you’ll react if you think your child is in some sort of dangerous situation. This time I called out a little more forcefully, “Juliana!” I really couldn’t tell if it was my daughter inside or not. But no one was speaking to me, and I was starting to get nervous. I rechecked the number on the door to make sure it was the right apartment. There was no mistake. This was Rob Trilling’s place.

This time I called out, “Rob, are you in there?”

The brown hair appeared at the door again. This time I could see a little of the young woman’s face. It wasn’t Juliana. She said, “Rob not here.” Her accent was thick, but I could understand her.

“When will he be back?”

“I say Rob not here.” Her voice had risen in volume. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or frustrated that I wasn’t listening to her.

I said, “Look, I really need to talk to Rob.”

There was a long silence. I reached for the door and grabbed its edge so she couldn’t close it easily. Then I felt a sharp painshoot through my hand. I jerked it away from the door. I had a gash across my index and middle fingers. Blood started to seep between my fingers and down the back of my hand.

I mumbled, “What the …”

A four-inch blade popped out of the opening in the door. The hand tightly gripped the knife, pointing it right in front of my face. I could see her knuckles turn white from the pressure.

This time, speaking slowly and concentrating on each word, the woman said, “I say Rob not here. Go away. Go away right now.”

“I’m Mike Ben …”

The door slammed shut and the dead bolt twisted into position.

I went outside, wiping the blood from my hand with a paper bag I’d found in the hall. It didn’t look like the wound needed stitches. But I didn’t intend to put my hand on that door again.

As I walked toward my car, a heavyset man with the thickest mustache I’d ever seen looked over at me. He was cleaning out some buckets with a hose. I guessed he was the super Wu had spoken to. I went over to talk to him, and he confirmed that he’d run the building for nearly sixteen years.

I explained that I was Trilling’s partner at the NYPD.

“I love having a cop in the building. Especially one like Rob. Very levelheaded, that one.”

I didn’t need Dennis Wu to tell me the super’s nationality. I could tell by the super’s accent he was Armenian. He could’ve been a commercial for hardworking Armenians in the US. He probably wore size 45 work pants to fit his belly. But he was friendly, and I decided to not waste the opportunity to talk to him. I said, “The girl in his apartment didn’t sound like she spoke much English.”

“She has not been there long. I’ve never spoken to her. I seen her walk out one day and that was it. They’re a little loud now and then. Sounds like a soccer team from the apartment underneath. But I said something, and Rob told me they would try to keep it down.”

I looked up and noticed several cameras around the building. “Looks like you have a pretty good security system.”

The super smiled. He had a gold crown on one tooth. “No one can come or go without my system recording it. Haven’t had anything stolen in three years. That’s got to be some kind of record here in New York.”

It didn’t take any effort at all to convince him to show me his security system. The system was everything the super had said. Four cameras on the building periphery, two cameras in the lobby, and one in each hallway and stairwell. Very impressive.

I said, “Can I test it out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me pick a day and I’ll count how many times I see Trilling.”

The super was intrigued to have a law enforcement professional evaluate his system. He took a moment to show me how it worked on a simple Windows operating system.