52.
“So that’s what happened,” I said after I finished explaining everything to Welch. He was conveniently still on the scene of the bank job, since the other two attacks had gone straight to federal jurisdiction and had the FBI crawling all over them. I suspected this one was going to get snatched up, too, as soon as they got their poop in a group. Having their New York HQ blasted to smithereens had undoubtedly put a strain on the FBI’s ability to investigate this mess, but knowing the government response, they would probably have several hundred agents converging on the city to solve the crime. As an institution, they’d take the bombing of their building personally, and they’d be coming hard after every lead they could get.
Personally, I wasn’t enthused about being anywhere near that when it happened, but I wasn’t the type of person to walk away from an open investigation, either, so it seemed likely we were going to hit a point of conflict if I didn’t hurry and solve this thing. Faces needed pounding, I was pretty sure, and there was only one woman for that job.
“This was a big fat sucker punch,” Welch pronounced. I’d laid out all we’d seen and all my suspicions about the Revelen connection, too. He’d taken it all in. “If it’s like you say, and they hired pros to do all this … why?”
“Someone had a grudge against the FBI?” I shrugged. “What I can’t figure is … why hit this bank, too? Why not just … hit the FBI and the US Attorney …” I frowned. “Wait. Why hit both of those?”
“It might be hard to tie the US Attorney attack to the FBI, except by timing,” Welch said cautiously.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it wasn’t the same MO as the FBI one,” he said uneasily. “I’ve only heard rumors but … I hear it was a meta.”
I stared at him. “And you’re just mentioning this to me now?”
“The meta got away,” he said with a shrug. “No description.”
“What kind were they?”
“Whatever kind can turn the entire building into glass,” Welch said. “Because that’s what they did, turned the building and everything in it into glass, and let it collapse under its own weight. The whole thing is just a mess of shards now, and evening rush hour is gonna be interesting, lemme tell ya.”
My eyes widened. I’d never even heard of that power before. “That’s … new.”
“Oh, we’ve stumped the expert,” he said, and scowled. “Not a great sign.”
“And no one saw—”
“No one saw,” he said, “as far as I know. The info pipeline from the FBI is gonna trickle down nothing pretty fast, though. They’ll be holding their cards close to the vest from here on out.”
“Figured they might have taken offense to this attack,” I said. “At least you’ve still got the bank heist to work. And prisoners from it.”
“They’ll go to federal custody within the hour,” he said with a grunt. “If they haven’t already. And they’re not talking in any case.”
“What about dredging up the wreck of the Hesperus?” I asked as Welch started down the street. Cleanup crews were still picking up pieces of cars and mailboxes and other stuff that the garbage truck had crashed through on its path to the river.
“I don’t think that’s something we’re going to be able to manage,” he said, now focused on the minutia of the cleanup operation. “I’d bet the feds are going to take the lead on that one.”
“Man, is this a funeral?” I asked. “Cuz there is just no joy here.”
“Tell me about it,” Welch groused. “And here I was hoping you’d solve the bank robbery problem for me and blow out of town on a high.” He looked over the scene with a wary eye. “Seems to me you’ve opened something else entirely here.”
I eyed him carefully. “You’re not blaming me for this, are you?”
“Huh?” He looked at me like I’d woken him up with a slap. “No, it was happening before I sent you down here, and I doubt we’d have stopped the robbery or saved the hostages without you and Gravity Gal, so no … I don’t blame you. I do want to get it solved, though, and it looks like I’m not gonna get my way on that one, since the FBI is hopping mad.” He ran a hand through his comb-over, messing it up further. “Life’s full of disappointments, I guess.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said, because I didn’t really know what else to say.
“Riddle me this, though,” Welch said, turning back around, frown of deep thought on his face. “If you were the type of person looking to—I dunno, blow up the FBI in New York and send a meta to destroy the US Attorney’s office … why would you rob a bank out here? Just to draw the cops away? Because … it didn’t really pull presence from either of those places.”
I settled in for a second to think. “They’d only do it if they could get something from here. Something that the bank had in common with—” I stopped. “No, that doesn’t track. Banks have nothing to do with the Justice Department.” I paused, and something occurred to me. “Did you ever figure out what happened to the SWAT team on scene?”
He stared off into the distance. “No … no, I never heard …” He blinked a few times. “You don’t think—”
“If they were hitting the FBI building … would the NYPD SWAT team van get them access?” I asked. “Because, otherwise, they might be holding onto it for future plans.”
“I think it’s entirely possible it would get them access, yes,” Welch said. “We work with the Bureau on … things.” I liked the sound of vague there. “It could get them in the door, at least.”
“Shooting their way in from there … might have allowed them to finish the job,” I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek as I spoke. “And bring a bomb in to send the building to the ground. But … why not just use the meta with the glass powers to wreck the place from the get go? Why go through with mercenaries at all?”
“If it’s a revenge plot, the US Attorney prosecutes federal crimes,” Welch said, spitballing with me. “Some con could have a grudge. Someone … currently under indictment could be pissed off—”
I frowned as that tripped something for me. “Where do they keep evidence for current prosecutions?” Welch stared at me flatly. “Because it seems to me if someone wanted to trash their case—”
“They’d blow up and smash all the evidence while making it look like something else,” Welch said, nodding along. “That’s … that’s nasty. A lot of people died to pull that one off.” He shuddered. “Who would be that damned callous?”
“A lot of criminals, if they could,” I said with bracing honesty, drawing a nod from him. “The real question is … who could afford it? Because gun-thugs, at least foreign ones with military experience like these guys, plus rifles, specially-outfitted garbage trucks with mini-subs, and super-powered metas? They don’t tend to come at discount prices.”
Welch nodded. “Someone put a lot of bucks behind this.”
“So I guess the question is,” I said, thinking it over, “who’s the richest, most vicious person that you’ve seen the FBI and US Attorney go after?”
“That’s a long list,” he said, cringing. “Mafiosos, politicians, heads of corporations caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, polluters, real estate developers caught up in bribery schemes—”
“Okay, so, yeah … long list,” I said. “We can probably rule out all but the richest, though.”
Welch thought it over. “There is one name that’s coming right to mind, probably because I just ran across her yesterday—Nadine Griffin.”
“The Queen of Wall Street?” I asked. “She’s a white collar princess.”
“There’s some darkness in that lady,” Welch said with a shake of his head. “I got a bad feeling about her. She’s a real nasty piece of work.”
“She’s a scammy insider trader who stole from her clients,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met all sorts of scuzzbuckets, but the leap from money-grubbing thief to … planning on this scale …” I just shook my hand. “That would just about require flight powers. Of sociopathy.”
“Ehh, you think what you want,” he said, “but I’ve met this broad, and she’s bad news of the sort—”
“If you say ‘broad’ and ‘bad news’ in the same sentence, I think you hit pulp novel bingo.”
He smiled faintly. “She was giving me an itch in a bad place.”
“Your taint?”
“I don’t know what that is,” Welch said. “But she triggered my instincts—”
“Frost triggered your instincts, and he’s a moron.”
“But a dangerous moron.”
“To impressionable twenty-something women who want to remain syphilis-free, maybe,” I cracked. “To the rest of us, he’s just another goober whose primary use in life is to ice a drink.” I gave it a moment’s thought and started to lift off into the air. “Still … maybe I could pay a visit to this Nadine Griffin. Where do you think she is?”
“Her office is on Wall Street,” he said. “Look for the building with the big hole in the side where a window ought to be.” He glanced at his watch. “If she’s at home, she’s got a mansion out on Long Island. I’ll text you the address.”
“Grazie,” I said, taking off. “I’ll rattle a few bushes of my own and see what I can come up with.”
“I thought you already gave me everything you h—” I lost his words to the wind. It didn’t really matter; I needed to talk to Nadine Griffin and one other person before I had anything else for him, anyway.
I’d read all about Nadine Griffin, and she sounded like a real ball buster. As someone who had busted a few of those myself, I was looking forward to meeting her. I took to the air and cleared the buildings, heading south for Wall Street, figuring I’d check her office first. Who went home at two in the afternoon on a weekday, anyway?