New York City has the deepest law enforcement bench on the planet, and more highly trained specialty units than any other law enforcement agency in the country—with the exception of most of the federal law enforcement agencies—and long experience handling security at large, complex, high-value sites. It’s a rare day that the NYPD isn’t blocking off a stretch of road for some visiting potentate or a posse of finance ministers.
None of which made Fisk’s job any easier. The head of every specialized unit in the NYPD outranked Fisk, and was guaranteed to be jealous of his or her turf and distrustful of Fisk’s perceived lack of a defined jurisdiction. There were a lot of egos to be juggled, a lot of phone calls to be made, a lot of memos to be sent.
On top of that, the UN is a particularly complex protection assignment. Inside the UN, protection is supposed to be provided and coordinated by the UN’s own people. This meant that every time anybody walked in or out of the UN building, a handoff had to be made between UN security and the NYPD. The personal security details of the Mexican president accompanied them onto the property, while the main shell of protection had to remain outside the perimeter of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza.
As much as Fisk looked down on this sort of assignment, it had demanded every ounce of his energy and attention over the past few days.
THERE IS MORE THAN ONE NEW YORK. Most cops live in a New York of parochial schools, family-owned garbage-hauling businesses, cars with sticky doors and dinged fenders, cramped little houses, outer borough accents.
Ocampo was not part of that New York. It was part of the other New York, the one many see only in the movies, the New York of their daydreams, the one full of hipster artists and supermodels and hedge fund managers and celebrities.
Fisk lived in an odd sort of middle ground—in both worlds—having been raised as the son of a diplomat. And yet he was not really of either world. Fisk had grown up all over the map, going to American schools full of very privileged kids who thought the world was theirs by right. It was a world Fisk could have lived in if he’d chosen to.
But for reasons he’d never quite understood, he’d walked away from that world and had chosen to work in a blue-collar world populated by people who didn’t expect the universe to shower them with glory and money, beauty and fame. The truth was, the world favors very few with all of that. For most people—even the hedge fund managers and hipster/model/actresses—life is mostly a lot of hard work, bad deli sandwiches, trips to the dentist, coaching the kid’s soccer team.
As he walked in the front door of Ocampo, he felt a bittersweet sense of recognition. The restaurant was designed to make people feel like they’d risen above all that quotidian crap and ascended into some broader, more powerful, more amped-up world. You went to Ocampo and you felt like a star, like somebody. This was the clientele they catered to. This was the experience they worked so hard to give you.
He found Dukes standing with his cadre of Secret Service agents, ready to do the technical security clearance. He did not seem very impressed with the establishment.
“You know what we call this kind of place in the Secret Service?” said Dukes, in regard to the restaurant where American president Obama and Mexican president Vargas would be dining the following evening.
“Overpriced?” Fisk said.
“A kill box,” said Dukes.
GARZA ARRIVED MINUTES LATER with a contingent of EMP agents and the agency’s head, General de Aguilar, now dressed in a dark suit rather than his military uniform.
Garza slowed a bit when she saw Fisk, and something like a look of regret passed over her face like a shadow. Fisk remained impassive. He noticed she had changed her clothes and perhaps had a shower, and wished he had done the same.
The chairs were large, the tables were heavy and very shiny, the art on the walls was just Mexican enough to feel edgy, but not so much as to make the would-be rich feel like they’d walked into something that could be described as a “Mexican restaurant.” There were plenty of those in Manhattan and across the country. Here at Ocampo, there would be no steaming fajita skillets, no spicy chorizo, and, most especially, no mariachi band crooning and bumming tips at your table. Entrées started at seventy-five bucks and went up steeply from there.
Dukes said, “What do they serve here, dollar bills?”
“A ‘kill box,’ huh?” said Fisk. Fisk was no trained bodyguard, but even he could see that the restaurant was a less than optimal place to bring someone you wanted to protect, starting with the wide span of plate-glass window in front. There was one door in front, one in the back. No internal stairs, no basement, no elevator. If things went sideways here, there was no place to run except through the kitchen and there was no place to hide.
It was four thirty—a time when most New York restaurants are empty and preparing for dinner—and yet at least half of the tables were full, diners drinking out of clay cups, munching raw shellfish artfully positioned on huge plates with Mayan-themed designs painted on them. The host was a smiling young man who seemed determined from the first moment to let you know that while he might be working the door at a restaurant right now, he had graduated from an Ivy League school and was cut out for far bigger things than this.
Dukes said, “Where’s Delgado?”
The young man picked up his phone, dialing nervously. He turned away from them, speaking in a hushed tone, then hung up, almost dropping the telephone. “Coming right now.”
Out of the darkness in back came a trim man with a thick mustache and a professionally hospitable expression.
“Agent Dukes!” he said, with a generous Mexican accent—so generous, Fisk wondered if it was less than 100 percent real. “What a great, great pleasure to see you again! And your . . . friends.”
Dukes stood with his hands on his hips and looked around the restaurant with an expression of disdain. He said, “What are these people doing here, Mr. Delgado?”
“Pardon me, sir?”
Dukes tapped his watch with his index finger. “You said this place would be empty until seven.”
Mr. Delgado smiled widely beneath his ample mustache and said, “I apologize if I conveyed that impression to you, Agent Dukes. I cannot recall my exact words, of course . . . though I am sure what I would have said is that our clientele is thin until about—”
Dukes clapped him on the shoulder, warmly but forcefully. “Nope. You said ‘empty.’ ” He smiled at the diners, some of whom were now looking at the large number of suited men—and women—in front. “Mr. Delgado, would you kindly get these fine folks out of here.”
Delgado looked appalled. “Get them . . . out? You mean . . . ?”
“I mean instruct them to leave.”
“All right, I . . . certainly. If you could give us maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, we should be able to wrap this up in a manner that’s not too egregiously—”
“Right now,” said Dukes, giving Delgado the sort of stare a man might give you in the prison weight room before he took your barbell away from you.
For a moment Delgado looked helplessly around the room. “Agent Dukes, please. Ten short minutes.”
“Mr. Delgado, you are hosting a pair of heads of state tomorrow night. It will make for a nice little photograph of you and Mr. Obama and Mr. Vargas, something that will hang on the wall here long after each man has ended his term. Unless you want to explain to the owner why this venue had to be scrapped at the last minute . . . ?”
Mr. Delgado rallied then, snapping his fingers impatiently at one of the waiters, calling him over for a quick conversation full of angry, whispered sibilance. Soon a rush of waiters emerged bearing takeout cartons and checks, followed by a parade of indignant customers.