by Alan Annand
In Sheridan Square, the cafés were full of well-dressed young men drinking coffee, one eye on their smart phones, another on the pedestrian parade. I saw a young Chinese dude wearing a dog collar whose leash was held by an older man in a white Stetson. The older gent wore a belt with leather holsters carrying two sizes of dildo. It was that kind of neighborhood.
Ron LeVeen’s brother Dale lived on Christopher Street. As I passed Sly’s, a popular gay bar, bass-heavy hip-hop throbbed from a doorway. It wasn’t yet noon but inside a bunch of guys were dancing under dim lights, drinking and laughing as if they didn’t have a care the city was falling apart all around them.
The brother lived in a walkup above Sly’s. I climbed four flights and looked for apartment numbers. Numbers seemed to have gone out of style. The doors were decorated with art work, ranging from paint-by-number Beardsley reproductions to blowup photographs of anonymous genitalia. If Marcel Duchamp were alive today, he’d cart the whole place off to the Met and exhibit it as found art.
Dale LeVeen was more conventional. His surname and the apartment number were etched on a small brass plaque just below the peephole. I rang his bell. Someone inside called out, “Coming!” and the door opened the width of a chain latch. A young bearded man looked at me. “Are you from Mr. London’s office? Didn’t he get my message last night? There’s been a family crisis, so I can’t finish the design until tomorrow.”
“May I come in anyway?”
“Might as well. I’ll show you what I’ve done so far.”
He opened the door to admit me. He had long hair, a neatly trimmed beard and a silk shirt partially buttoned. It was a cozy little apartment. The galley kitchen was equipped with everything, except perhaps the space to flip a pancake. Down the hall I could see a small bedroom. He beckoned me into the living room. A sofa and coffee table faced a sound system in a wall of books. The Moroccan carpet smelled of hashish.
In front of the bay window was a workstation with a large monitor and all the wireless peripherals. Onscreen was a 3-D mockup of what looked like a space craft interior. LeVeen expanded the image.
“I’ll place the control console here, so when Captain Fallik brings the Plutonian Princess aboard for the sex scene, the audience will have a clear view of both his zero-gravity bed and the monitor revealing the approaching Klaxon warship. What do you think?”
“I’m not with Mr. London’s office.” As soon as I saw the mockup, I’d realized who he was talking about. Ariel London was an avant-garde playwright whose work, even in fringe theatre, had aroused both derision and ridicule for its campy emphasis on sex and violence.
He looked at me. “You’re not the set construction coordinator?”
“A private investigator.” I gave him one of my real cards.
He stared at it. “Is this about Ron?”
“Yes. Did the police visit you?”
“Yesterday evening. They wanted to know what he was mixed up in that got him killed. But I couldn’t help them. Ron was a writer, and he lived a somewhat edgy life, but he never ran with a criminal crowd.”
I looked beyond the workstation. On the window ledge outside was a wooden platform with a small coop and a pair of dowel-rod perches. Scattered seed and bird droppings suggested I was on the right track.
“You have a pet bird?”
“A carrier pigeon. It was a hobby with me and Ron.”
“Really? What do you do with them?”
“Send messages back and forth.”
“Really? With so many other technological alternatives?”
He chewed his lip, trying to come up with a logical response.
“The birds deliver something else, right?” I said. “Drugs? I’m not a cop, so I don’t care. I just want to know what happened to your brother.”
“The guy down the hall is a small-time dealer,” he shrugged. “Whenever Ron needed a little blow, I’d buy it and the birds delivered. Saved him the trip.”
“Where’s your bird now?”
“Lindy? He was here earlier. Then Hermes dropped by and they took off together.”
“Hermes. Ron’s bird? Did you notice if he was carrying anything?”
“Yeah, but he flew away before I could coax him inside to remove it. Usually it’s a canister with a ring attached to his leg. This time it was something else, looked like a flash drive, a red one.”
Another flash drive? “Did Ron tell you he was sending it?”
“No, I hadn’t spoken to him in a week. What’s on it?”
“I don’t know, but someone wanted it badly enough they may have killed Ron trying to get it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but I’m trying to find out.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do I know it’s not you?”
“Would I tell you my name if I was the killer?”
“All you gave me was a business card.”
I showed him a few pieces of photo ID. “Satisfied? Will you help me?”
“Shouldn’t the police handle this?”
“Sure. If they had the time and resources.” I let that sink in a minute. “If Hermes and Lindy aren’t here, where’d they go?”
“Carrier pigeons are predictable. They’d be at Ron’s place, or en route.”
“What if Ron’s window was closed and Hermes couldn’t get back in?”
“He’d probably be up on the roof.”
“Does Hermes have a favorite food?”
“Rice crackers.”
“What kind?”
“I’ll give you some.” He got a bag of rice crackers from the kitchen cupboard. “You can coax him to come like this.” He made a fluttering sound with his tongue in the back of his throat.
“Thanks.” I put the crackers in my bag. “If the cops check in again, which I’m sure they have no time to do, can you keep this between us for a day or so?”
We looked at each other for a minute. His eyes rimmed with tears, and then he blinked and nodded.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” I gave him a hug. “If I find out who killed him, the police can take it from there.”
“Thank you.” He walked me to the door. “And good luck.”
Chapter 44
I drove across town to the Lower East Side. I went around Ron LeVeen’s block a few times, looking for unmarked cars, but saw nothing. I parked the car and shouldered my tote bag. Although this morning’s weather report had included a low pollution index, I pulled on my eMask. The threat of contaminated air was a perfect excuse for face concealment. It frustrated the NYPD but the public had a right to protect themselves. In a world where the state couldn’t ban the burqa, what chance did they have against the respirator?
I walked up Delancey opposite LeVeen’s apartment building. I didn’t see any plainclothes stakeout. I crossed the street and passed the entrance to circle around back. The building sharing the alley was industrial, and not a single window looked onto LeVeen’s building.
I saw no security camera. A zig-zag pattern of ladders and platforms climbed the back wall, allowing fire escape from each apartment. The lowest platform was 15 feet above me, with a counter-weighted ladder that could be lowered by a person’s weight.
From my tote bag I took out a boating line with a grappling hook. I give it a few twirls, pitched it up and hooked on. I pulled the ladder down and climbed up. The ladder rose behind me, its counterweight returning to its original position. I went all the way up the fire escape, slithered onto the rooftop and lay motionless a few moments to assess the layout.
On the roof a small superstructure with a door gave access to the interior stairway. A wooden patio had been built around it. A cluster of lawn chairs and tables with umbrellas fanned out from a BBQ unit.
I stood and walked to the patio. I’d just stepped onto the wooden deck when two pigeons took off from the table where they’d been sitting. They ascended in a half-circle and landed on the roof of the superstructure.
I looked up at the pair of them. “Hermes and Lin
dy, I presume?”
They looked at me. One of them cocked his head.
I made a throaty pigeon cooing sound. The other pigeon cocked his head. I thought I sounded pretty good. I cooed again, walked to the nearest table and sat down.
I looked up at them. They looked down at me. I took out the rice crackers. They were salty, sesame-flavored and crisp. I loudly crunched a couple and made happy cooing sounds as I ate. I looked up at the pigeons. They watched me.
I crumpled a couple of crackers in my fist and tossed them onto the deck. “Hermie, Lindy,” I cooed.
A minute later, they were on the patio deck, pecking up cracker crumbs like nobody’s business. The larger of the two pigeons had a beautiful mantle of purple feathers, and clipped to his leg was a red flash drive.
Now it all came into focus. After cloning Jordan’s phone, Jack had learned that a DMV informant was sending a data stick to LeVeen containing evidence of collusion between corrupt city officials and Russian mafia. Tipped off by Jack, Tatiana had come to retrieve the DMV data stick before LeVeen could write his story. But when she’d asked him to surrender it, probably at gunpoint, LeVeen gave her the blue flash drive instead, the one Marielle had mailed to Crabner the month before. And somehow he’d managed to clip the red DMV drive onto Hermie before things got ugly and Tatiana shot him…
I crushed another two crackers, and tossed them onto the table beside me. In a minute both pigeons were up on the table. I cooed some more and offered bits of cracker directly from my hand. By now we were friends, and when I reached out to stroke Hermie’s back, he didn’t flinch.
I picked him up and cradled him in my lap. In a moment I had the ring unclasped, and the red flash drive in my hand. I released him and he stayed there a moment, not budging until I stood up.
I took the fire escape down to the ground. Five minutes later I was back in my car with the doors locked. I didn’t have a device in the car to access what was on the flash drive, so I headed straight to my office.
As I drove up Fourth Avenue, I noticed I was being tailed by a dark blue van, the same one that had tried to follow me from Globik’s clinic. I veered off into Chelsea and ran a zig-zag path toward Midtown but the van stuck with me at every turn. Except for when I turned onto a one-way street, mounted the sidewalk and scared the shit out of fifty pedestrians. My escapade left an irate cop at the intersection blowing his frustration out on a whistle. My tail man chose not to follow me.
I parked the car at Mr. Kim’s and went to my office. My phone had rung while I was driving, so when I got inside I checked my voice-mail for messages. Detective Mundt had called to tell me I was wanted for questioning in connection with Nick Walker’s death and I should turn myself in. Sure. I’d like to turn myself into the Invisible Man. For the time being, I settled for locking the door.
I powered up my laptop and plugged the flash drive into the USB port. There were only four files on the drive – a JPEG, an XLS, and two MP3 files.
I opened the JPEG first. A detailed map of the five boroughs showed a spider’s web of colored lines, and multiple nexus points where they met. I scrolled around, trying to make sense of it. There was no legend so it was impossible to know what either the lines or nexus points represented.
I opened the XLS file, and saw more than a thousand rows of data. A header line indicated each record contained: a 17-digit VIN, make of vehicle, model and year; registrant name, license plate and address; a date and time for an originating address; date and time for a waypoint address; date and time for a destination address; total elapsed time and mileage.
Several pages in the XLS file appeared to be summaries on people in the main data set. I recognized a few names, all politicians within the five boroughs, Harris Jordan among them. I also saw a lot of Russian names, but none I recognized. There were graphs for each of the summaries, showing which of the politicos and Russians were most connected to other members of the data set.
Other summary pages seemed to focus on locations. Some were restaurants and bars, others were public parks, some service stations at major intersections. Again, a series of graphs indicated which locations were most frequented by people in the data set, and similarly, which locations were favored by key people.
I opened the smaller of the MP3 files. A man’s voice spoke haltingly with a metallic intonation. He sounded like someone who’d lost his larynx to cigarette smoking and had to speak through a throat mike, although probably it was just a filter to disguise his identity.
“These two files contain... everything you need... to write your story. The data set represents... two years of activity...”
I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall. I clicked pause on the media player and held my breath.
Chapter 45
A key turned in the lock and the door banged open. Detective-Sergeants Boyle and Mundt charged in, guns in hand, panting like feral dogs who’d just cornered a cat. Boyle closed the door behind them. Mundt came around the desk, lifted me from my chair and threw me face-first against the wall. I turned around slowly. He wagged his gun at me to keep me in place.
Boyle plucked my iFocals from my face and tossed them on the desk. He frisked me and took my pistol. He yanked my chair away from the desk and thrust me into it, putting the laptop out of my reach. He looked at the screen where the media player had paused over a background of spreadsheet data. “What’s that?”
I felt my nose, which was bleeding after its encounter with the wall. I took out a tissue and staunched the ooze. “I want to call my lawyer.”
Mundt emptied my tote bag onto the desk. He pawed among my various tools and accessories, spreading them out to isolate a Beretta Bobcat in the midst of it all. He pointed it out to Boyle.
“Twenty-five caliber, same as the gun that killed LeVeen.” Mundt leaned in over the desk, and made a show of sniffing the muzzle. “Been fired recently too.”
“That’s not my gun,” I said, realizing how lame the truth sounded in this situation.
But better yet, it wasn’t Tatiana’s gun either. This one had a blue-grey finish with a black plastic hand-grip. Mundt had obviously brought it along to frame me, and slipped it into the mix when he dumped the contents of my tote bag.
Not that being framed was a cheery scenario, but assuming I even lived to make it into court, Lutz should be able to dismiss this particular smoking gun. I hadn’t seen a warrant yet.
“You’re up to your eyeballs in shit, snooper,” Mundt told me. “Someone saw you in Ron LeVeen’s apartment building yesterday.”
“Let’s see what’s on this laptop,” Boyle said.
He clicked the play button and moved the MP3 slider back to the beginning. Mr. Metal-Vox, the deep throat of the DMV, resumed his robotic account of what was contained on the flash drive.
“These two files contain everything you need to write your story. The data set represents two years of activity, specifically the movements of city officials throughout the five boroughs, and known members of the Russian mafia. The map shows their most common meeting spots over the same time span. The spreadsheet contains all the raw data downloaded from the DMV’s GPS database, while several pages contain...”
The narration continued for another minute. The gist of it was, the files on the flash drive provided evidence of regular, if not systemic, meetings between New York area bureaucrats with known members of the Russian mafia over the previous two years. Although it was impossible to know whether money or information had been exchanged, the sheer frequency of clandestine meetings would be enough to launch a criminal investigation into influence peddling, with all the financial forensics that would accompany such an inquiry.
Obviously, heads would roll and careers would crash and burn. Virtually everyone in the database was a valid suspect to have killed LeVeen. No wonder the DMV informant was keeping his identity secret.
“Jackpot,” Mundt said. “I think we just found our retirement plan, Boyle.”
There was a brief moment of silence in
which the two detectives gave thanks to the ancient gods of venality, still as active as ever in this modern era. Just then my iFocals vibrated with an incoming call. Mundt prodded me with his gun behind my ear.
“Go ahead. Answer. Switch on Bluetooth so we can share.”
I slipped on my goggles and saw 888-888-8888 on the incoming. It was Finder’s digital equivalent of the Lone Ranger’s mask. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything incriminating.
Mundt’s muzzle jabbed me harder. I enabled Bluetooth. The muzzle patted me on the head, good boy. I looked at Boyle and he nodded encouragement, his hand making puppet-mouth motions.
“Savage. What’s up, bro?”
“Those two audio files you sent me last night? I ran them through a voice analyzer. That screamer is one and the same.”
I started to sweat. I didn’t want the detectives to know I’d acquired Tatiana’s scream by nearly tearing her nose off. Or admit to recording a kidnapping demand: when the Russian had scheduled a ransom dropoff, Vivien had asked about Marielle, and someone at the Russian’s end had screamed.
“Okay. What about the other file?” I said, referring to the encrypted item on the blue flash drive Marielle had mailed to Crabner last month. The drive LeVeen had given Tatiana in lieu of the DMV data stick.
“I cracked the password,” Finder said. “Turns out it was an MP3 created a month ago. Only a couple of minutes long, but it’s a nasty little audio scene. Like to give it a listen right now?”
The gun muzzle at my ear reminded me of an eager audience.
“Sure.”
A slow-tempo blues song came over our headsets – a simple walking bass and jazzy chords on a piano. The singer had a fine voice but the lyrics were silly – something about having the Ladybug Blues. Mundt snorted. Boyle gestured with his hand to be quiet.
On the MP3 we heard a door open and close. The girl stopped singing and the piano walked only another measure before dragging to a halt.
“Jack, what are you doing up here?”
“Hi, kiddo, don’t stop singing. I just came up to listen.”