Nikki finally felt a connection with Wilton Backhouse. His investigative process consisting of observing patterns and breaks in those patterns was what she was all about. “So, lots of cars flipping for no reason, lots of money going out.”
“That’s only part of it,” said Rook. “I’ve looked into this in my research. When there are settlements like these, the parties sign nondisclosure agreements. Let’s call them what they are, gag orders. So the companies, by paying cash settlements, are essentially buying silence. It hides the defect under a lid.”
“That’s it, totally,” agreed the whistle-blower. “What happens with this rollover protection system is this: The vehicle’s onboard computer is programmed with software that senses when it is about to tip over going around a curve and basically knocks the car back down to prevent the roll. But when these stability-control systems don’t work—for instance, when the antiroll sensors spontaneously engage a vehicle’s suspension and steering at highway speeds when it’s not in a curve, bad things happen. People have died. Lots of people.
“So my group of consulting experts studied other accidents nationwide for a year and presented our test data to our bosses, Forenetics management. We showed them incident by incident how there was a massive public safety hazard due to a defect in the software of the stability systems.”
“In which cars?” asked Heat.
“Only about three-quarters of newer cars, trucks, and high-profile SUVs, that’s all.”
The scope and gravity of that sunk in. “And Forenetics didn’t respond?” Heat asked.
“Oh, they responded,” he said. “They told us it wasn’t their responsibility. There was no commission for the study, no client. Therefore, it wasn’t sanctioned.”
Rook asked, “Is that policy, or do you think they were paid off?”
“There’s plenty of money, no doubt about that. So we said to each other, let’s be bold, and we had an off-the-record meeting with the NHTSA. They’re no longer seen as Detroit’s lackeys, yet we got nowhere. They’re concrete thinkers. They wanted more evidence. But all those lawsuit records were sealed because of the settlement gag orders. Am I a quitter? No. I took it to the next level. Right to the company responsible for the defect. Their engineering and software developers watched our presentation, asked questions, accepted copies of our findings, and told us they’d get back to us.” He paused for effect, then continued. “The next day my entire team was called into the Forenetics boardroom. The president of our company told us the developer of the defective software was threatening a major lawsuit. My boss called us an ‘unauthorized splinter group’ and warned that if we didn’t drop this, we’d be fired. So we let it go. For almost a day.
“I rented a cabin up in Rhinebeck for a weekend and called my team up there for what I dubbed the Splinter Summit. It was one rough weekend, man. I pushed them. I said this was all about lives being lost because of a failure to act. I said that if we were real about what we do and who we are, we needed to man up and walk the walk. I said, ‘Maybe the cars are rolling over, but we can’t.’ By Sunday night—thank the Lord for vodka—we voted unanimously to join together and blow the whistle.” He settled back on the bench, self-satisfied. He turned to Rook. “You shoulda been taking notes, dude.”
But Nikki had been. She glanced up from her pad and said, “I have to ask you a question. Why haven’t you blown the whistle then?”
“OK, fair enough,” he said. “First off, I am so carefully writing this report so that it is iron-fucking-clad. And I have it in the hands of my attorney. If I’m putting my nuts on the block, I don’t want to give anyone an axe. And second, I now have a problem. Since word got out about Fred today, everyone else in the Splinter Group is spooked. They’re all balking. They’re scared. It’s one thing to lose your job…you know?” He scanned 5th Avenue again and added, “And what do you suppose they’ll do when they hear that they also came after me again?”
“Explain ‘again.’ This wasn’t the first attempt on you?”
“No. One night I’m coming out of the bar at The NoMad, and the fucking CEO of that software company I investigated tries to run me down with his SL. There’s a police report. Do your homework much?”
“Thanks, Professor,” said Heat. “I’ll do some independent study. Count on it.”
Discord has a sound: a tense whispering. Captain Heat could hear it the moment she stepped into the Homicide Squad Room back at her precinct. Each unhappy workplace sounds unhappy in its own way, thought Nikki, adapting a maxim from one of her favorite novels, as she surveyed the bull pen.
Her team’s body language told her everything that no one was saying out loud. Detectives Feller, Rhymer, and Aguinaldo looked up as she entered. But Raley and Ochoa not only both kept their gaze down, they had shifted their chairs apart from the side-by-side position they usually adopted for a squad briefing. There it was: Trouble with the Roach. A split of the Spliff.
For now, Heat decided to ignore whatever beef Sean and Miguel were dealing with. “Quite a day in the great outdoors,” she said when she got up to the Murder Board.
Feller said, “Yeah, understand you took up a new hobby.”
“Dodgedrone,” added Rook as he rolled over his orphan chair with the crappy wheel.
During the chuckles that followed, Heat turned to write “Drone” on the whiteboard under the “Lon King’s Mode of Death” heading but saw that it had already been posted in Ochoa’s handwriting. She made a quick scan of the boardscape and saw that Miguel had updated numerous items. There was no visible ink from Detective Raley, his squad co-leader. She tapped the MOD entry and said, “As usual, I see Roach is way ahead of me. Nice going, you two.” Both nodded joylessly. “Of course it’s not a lock yet, but a shot from the drone logically tops the list.”
Detective Aguinaldo said, “Plus that would account for the mystery lubricant on the deck of the kayak. I called Forensics, and they said it could definitely be a match for the weight and viscosity of oil used on a quadcopter to lube motor bearings and the driveshaft.”
“Mmm,” said Rook. “Lubricant.”
Heat gave him an admonishing glance. “Rook.”
“But I’m talking about shafts.”
Without missing a beat, Feller and Rhymer chimed in with, “Then we can dig it.”
Their laughter faded to background noise for Nikki, whose memory of her own encounter with the drone that day made her reflect upon the last moments of Lon King’s life. She imagined him alone, enjoying a splendid evening on the water, seeking that elusive equipoise, the state in which a tranquil outdoor setting matches a feeling of inner peace. Then the quiet hum of the drone. Soft, as it approached. A strange sight, at first. Then, knowing Lon King as she did, he would not feel fear but an odd fascination as he watched the craft draw nearer and nearer to him and hover a few feet from his face. Heat saw in her mind’s eye the small muzzle beside the camera lens and wondered if he had even heard the shot that killed him.
Nikki briefed her team on the events in Washington Square and her interview with Wilton Backhouse, who had accepted a patrol to monitor his apartment and workplace. “Detectives Raley and Ochoa,” she said, seeming to startle them both. “Did you make contact with the remaining members of Backhouse’s so-called Splinter Group whose names I texted you?”
“In process,” said Raley.
“Speed it up. They are likely under threat, so offer protection. I’d also like them interviewed, and soon. Also make the usual checks of drone sales and local quadcopter clubs. See if any familiar names stand out.”
“All over it,” said Ochoa, jumping in ahead of his partner, as if they were in some sort of competition for Heat’s attention. Raley lowered his head and gave it an exasperated shake.
“So what do you think?” asked Detective Rhymer. “Is this smelling like a contract hit from that software developer to keep the whistle from blowing, or what?”
“Of course, it’s an obvious possibility,” she said. “I’ll te
ll you this for sure: I want some face time with the CEO of that company.”
Rook scoffed. “You’ll never get it. I’ve been banging on that door for the past month. Tangier Swift has got more stone walls around him than Fortunato.” As he surveyed a sea of blank stares, he added, “‘The Cask of Amontillado’? Edgar Allen Poe? Anyone?”
“Breaking news.” Nikki turned around from stuffing files into a shoulder bag to find Randall Feller wandering into her fishbowl office, reading something on his cell phone. “This a bad time?” asked the detective.
“Not for breaking news.” She slid her laptop into its neoprene sleeve. “I’m off to One PP in a few minutes. My first CompStat review.”
“And not in uniform. Bold start, Captain Heat.”
That morning when she got dressed, Nikki had shrugged off the worry about going to her inaugural CompStat in civvies. She decided that her casework for the day, not some administrative meeting, however venerated by the brass, should dictate her wardrobe. Besides, she had heard how stressful the CompStat gatherings were and wanted to be comfortable. They involved more than just reporting figures: you had to defend your numbers as a yardstick of accountability for performance. Rumor had it that a precinct commander had fainted the year before while being harangued by the commissioner about insufficient activity in some of his arrest categories. Forty-eight hours in, Heat didn’t own the Twentieth’s performance numbers yet, and therefore she wasn’t stressed enough to pass out. But if she were to faint, better to suffer the indignity of being revived in jeans and a sweater than in uniform. “If I get fired, it’s been a great two days. Whatcha got?”
“Our Forensics team at the Staten Island test facility says the test-car misfire is looking good for sabotage.” While he read, Feller’s fingers sprang up one after another to enumerate each bullet point. “One: car was seated and locked into firing brackets on catapult, against procedure. Two: catapult monitor showed a false Safe Mode reading on the master control panel. Three: color-coded wires were apparently tampered with and reversed. When Fred Lobbrecht plugged the blue one in, it ignited the nitro and fired the vehicle, turning him into a human crash test dummy.”
Heat knocked on her window. All heads turned in the bull pen, but she beckoned only to Raley and Ochoa to come in. When they had joined the meeting, she said, “I want you to assign someone to get to Fred Lobbrecht’s home immediately. Do a search for anything related to this rollover investigation.”
“Done,” said Raley. “You go, Feller.”
Heat gestured to the door, sending Feller scooting off on his assignment.
“And I have the DA cutting a warrant for his office and lab at Forenetics,” said Ochoa, with an inflection that to Heat’s ear suggested competition rather than teamwork.
“Sounds like you two have it worked out.” She paused, appraising the pair. “Why don’t you work out whatever else you need to work out?” With that, she slung her bag over her shoulder and strode out past them.
Detective Aguinaldo called Heat’s name when she was halfway through the precinct lobby on her way downtown. “Kind of on a mission, Inez.”
“You’re going to want to hear this, Captain. I had an idea about Tangier Swift. I didn’t want to speak up until I had something.”
The weight of bagfull of CompStat files was digging into Heat’s shoulder, so she set it on one of the cheap plastic chairs near the soda machine and gave the detective her full attention.
“He used to own a mega-estate in Southampton,” Aguinaldo continued. “My old stomping grounds. One of those humongous seaside honkers near Beckett’s Neck off Gin Lane?”
Nikki recalled her visits there prior to Hurricane Sandy. To this day, she wondered who had the money to afford those American versions of Downton Abbey.
“Well, a gal friend of mine’s a real estate broker out there and, last year, she managed the sale of Tangier Swift’s property. In the process, they sort of had a little thing—it happens—never to me, but it does. One of those romances that’s over, then it’s not over—you get the idea. Anyway, they still keep in touch, and so I phoned her just now.”
“Tell me. You got a line on Tangier Swift?”
Inez Aguinaldo simply smiled.
Thirty minutes later, standing in the shadow of Gracie Mansion on an eight-by-twenty-foot slab of concrete sticking out into the East River at Ninetieth Street, Nikki gazed anxiously upstream. Rook leaned in, blocking her field of view, and asked, “One more time before it’s too late. Are you sure it’s smart to skip your CompStat?”
“Of course it’s not smart. But I am. It’s called following the hot lead.”
“But couldn’t you send Roach?”
“Rook, will you stop?”
“It’s divide and conquer. You perform your sworn duty as precinct commander; they get a field trip to rebond and work out the kinks in their relationship. If you ask me, those two lugs need some us-time.”
“You do know that if I sent Raley and Ochoa to do this, you couldn’t ride along.”
That stopped him. He turned and craned around to look upriver, too. “Command decision. I fully support you.” But then he seemed to have second thoughts. “Is your plan even going to work? It could be a lot of One PP risk for zero NH reward.”
“Says the man who waved the white flag about meeting Tangier Swift.”
“I did not surrender. I merely pointed out that our elusive billionaire CEO was heavily insulated. I had not given up.”
“I won’t, either. And since Mr. Swift’s corporate handlers blocked all my straightforward approaches, it’s time to innovate.” She tipped her forehead northward; Rook turned again. This time he saw the NYPD patrol/rescue vessel passing under the Wards Island Bridge and heading toward them.
The boat throttled down to a stop, sat down in the water, then drifted neatly to the edge of their small dock, where two Harbor Unit officers helped first Heat, then Rook aboard before the captain engaged the twin ten-cylinder diesels again and the craft continued downriver.
Heat and Rook donned their life vests and stepped to the rail, admiring the sixty-one-foot Gladding-Hearn craft, one of the biggest in the Harbor Unit’s fleet. “Didn’t they have anything smaller?” Rook asked. “This is one big boat.”
“It’s a ship,” corrected Heat. “A boat can fit on a ship. A ship can launch a boat.”
“You’re making my point. If we show up on something this size, won’t it be overkill?”
She didn’t answer, just smiled at something private and watched the FDR go by. A lone runner pounding out his miles on the East Side recreational path held a hand waist high in a too-cool-for-school wave, which Nikki returned. Then she grew somber as she reflected on Sampson Stallings making that very circuit sorrowfully past his murdered partner’s medical building.
“You know how you pissed me off by holding back?” she asked as they passed the UN, where protesters, probably the same ones from Washington Square, were shouting and waving Syrian flags, red-white-and-black-striped with two green stars.
He stroked his chin. “I seem to have a vague recollection.”
“Good. You can make it up to me by briefing me on Tangier Swift.”
“And that’ll make it up to you?” he said with a smirk.
“Call it a start. If I know you, writer boy, you’ve obviously done some research on him.”
“I have. This will be without notes, though, so apologies in advance for any rambling.” He crossed his arms and leaned against a bulkhead door, rough-drafting from memory.
“Let’s see, Tangier Swift. First name given by his parents in honor of one of the early settlers of New Amsterdam—that would be Manhattan—apparently an ancestor. Harvard wunderkind. Rare combo of gaming-obsessed funster and MBA standout. Made his first half billion, that’s with a b, at age twenty-two, developing an eponymous app named SwiftMoji, which morphed user photos into cartoon images they could use as emojis.
“In his thirties, he expanded his company—SwiftRageous
—from gaming to industrial software design and struck platinum again with the automobile stability-control application his company developed.
“He’s forty now and obsessed with pushing limits. He’s driven to be the next Bill Gates or Paul Allen and obsessed with making Steve Jobs into Steve Who? A disciple of the management cult of poster motivation—that’s my own term for MBAs who love them some homilies—who are obsessively guided by the kind of inspirational motivational quotes you see on posters, usually involving soaring eagles and mountaintops. He’s all Malcolm Gladwell, Franklin Covey, and Googlisciousness.”
Heat flipped her notebook closed. “I can now see very clearly what Tangier Swift is all about.”
“Why, thank you. At my second Pulitzer ceremony the presenter did say I was known for daubing tight lines and shadows with a painter’s eye for prose.”
“No, Rook. Your rundown was OK. What I mean is, I can actually see what he’s all about.” He turned to follow her gaze. Rook’s jaw didn’t exactly drop, but there was definitely some involuntary hinge action when he reacted to what she was indicating.
Ahead of them to starboard, just beyond the Circle Line docks and the Intrepid, one of the largest private motor yachts Rook had ever seen sat berthed at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. The SwiftRageous, which Rook estimated to be over three hundred feet long, was docked at Pier 90, which was normally reserved for cruise ships. As their captain dropped speed to approach the wharf, Heat and Rook tilted their heads back to look up at the pair of MD600N helicopters looming four stories above them from the stern helipads of the SwiftRageous. Rook rubbed the kink out of the back of his neck and turned to Nikki. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Driving Heat Page 13