Deadfall

by Linda Fairstein

  Hillary directed the driver to stop anytime we came close to an animal we hadn’t seen before. There were gaurs—the world’s largest wild cattle—capable of killing lions because of their great size and fierce horns; several markhors—goats that were the national animal of Pakistan, with long, thick hair and fabulous antlers that curled up over their heads like corkscrews on steroids; Himalayan tahrs—ungulates that were somehow distantly related to wild goats; and hog deer, indigenous to different parts of Southeast Asia.

  “Why are they called hog deer?” Mercer asked.

  “Because they move like pigs—they’re shorter than the deer we know—and they actually put their heads down the way pigs do when they’re on the run,” Hillary said.

  “Endangered?” I asked.

  “Some of the species are, and some are doing okay—in India and Nepal and Bhutan,” she said. “But if you Google one of those Texas hunting preserves, they’re really a trophy animal down there, brought in to be bred in captivity—just to be hunted.”

  Texas again. Another wild animal smuggled in for the sport of it.

  “Can you please bring this train to a stop?” Mercer asked. He was leaning forward with his arms on the edge of the railing. He had spotted his favorite beasts—the elephants that were below us. I could see three of them, one of whom was rolling in the mud while the other two seemed not to care about our arrival.

  “These were always the animals I came to see years ago,” he said. “But they, too, used to live behind bars back then.”

  “We actually abandoned our elephant program more than a decade ago,” Hillary said, “in favor of devoting our resources to elephants in the wild.”

  “But these elephants?” Mercer asked.

  “You probably know that lady in the mud,” she said, smiling at Mercer. “Her name is Happy, and she’s about forty-five years old. I suspect you saw her when you were here as a kid.”

  “Happy and Grumpy, if I’m not mistaken,” Mercer said. “Seven elephants from Thailand—babies when they were captured, if I remember right, and all of them named for Snow White’s dwarfs.”

  “Exactly.”

  “One of those things that sticks with you from childhood.”

  “Well, it just seemed right to keep the three elephants who’d spent all their lives here with us till the end,” Hillary said. “They can live to be sixty or so. Fortunately, the circuses have stopped using them—the training always seemed to be so cruel—and now most zoos have given them up, too.”

  “How come these three don’t have tusks?” Mike asked.

  “That’s one of the differences between Asian and African elephants,” she said. “The African elephants, male and female, all have tusks. But only some of the Asian males have tusks and about half of the Asian females have short tusks. Tushes, actually, is what they’re called. Sort of like stunted tusks.”

  “And endangered of course,” I said. “The Africans.”

  “Critically so,” she responded. “Three-quarters of Africa’s forest elephants have been killed in the last dozen years. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them, in forests and on the savannas, too.”

  We were silent.

  “For their tusks,” I said.

  “Pure human greed,” Hillary said. “It’s not the animals that are trafficked, as you know. They’re just slaughtered and their carcasses left to rot. Ninety-six elephants a day—that’s how many are being killed. Just for the trade in ivory.”

  “Shot?” Mike asked. “Are most of them shot?”

  “The poachers will get them any which way they can,” she said. “In villages where people can’t afford guns—in a country like Malawi—they literally inject chemicals into things the elephants eat, like pumpkins, and poison them to death. Or they ensnare them in wire traps.”

  “What about the good people?” Mercer asked. “The locals who sign up to be wildlife rangers, to protect the animals?”

  “Here’s what happens, Mercer. The poachers who are funded—some by rebel groups and some by businessmen—sneak into a wildlife preserve. First they kill the elephants and take the ivory,” Hillary explained, talking with both hands. “Then they spread poison on the carcasses to kill vultures attracted to the dead animals.”

  “Otherwise the rangers might show up to stop them from stealing the tusks,” Mercer said.

  “Dead-on,” she said. “By the time the rangers arrive, there’s no reason to stop the bad guys from killing them, too. The ivory is way too valuable.”

  “So it’s the local governments who pay for rangers,” I said.

  “Yes, and also with some of the funding from the WCS and AWB, and other conservation groups like them.”

  “But that hasn’t done much to shut it down,” I said.

  Hillary Hawes sat up and looked at me, realizing I missed her whole point. “It’s not a local problem, Alex. It’s a worldwide criminal enterprise.”

  I apologized to her for my insensitivity, for my misunderstanding.

  “I thought the United States had adopted an ivory ban in 2016,” I said. “I thought our government had shut down the trade in it, and that in order to sell any ivory one had to be able to prove that the object—like a musical instrument—had been made before 1976, or that the antique pieces had been in this country for one hundred years.”

  “That’s a start,” Hillary said. “But it’s a bit naïve to think they’ve shut things down.”

  “Didn’t the Chinese announce that they were going to do the same kind of thing? Ban all commerce in ivory, that is,” Mercer said. “By the end of this year, I think.”

  “I’m guessing it’s lip service, if it’s even to be believed,” Hillary said. “They’re supposed to shut the trade down in phases, but something like fifty to seventy percent of all smuggled elephant ivory winds up in China—where there are still collectors and scores of master carvers.”

  “I guess I’ve had my head in the sand,” I said. “I don’t understand how these treasures—whether elephant tusks or pangolin scales or rhino horns—get from the heart of Africa to America . . . or to China, for that matter. There are oceans between them, and laws now, that make it a pretty dangerous game.”

  “It’s not too hard to get,” Hillary said, snapping at me.

  “Well, you’ve given us the image of the impoverished Congolese miner who’s trying to keep himself alive in the forest by eating bushmeat, or a poacher from a small village putting poison in a pumpkin. What’s behind this? I think we all get a sense that it’s pretty big, but no idea of how it works.”

  “What do you know about human trafficking?” Hillary asked.

  “There’s nothing Coop doesn’t know,” Mike said. “That’s her territory.”

  “Well, then, it’s just like trafficking in humans,” she said, “or in heroin. It’s organized crime that moves the goods. They get them past government agencies that are weak or corrupt—or both—and they go to sell them in whatever places yield the highest profits.”

  “What kind of profit?” Mercer asked.

  “A large elephant, with tusks that weigh two hundred fifty pounds each,” Hillary said, driving home her point with a terribly sad image, “figure he’s worth three hundred fifty thousand dollars dead, for the tusks that get to market.”

  “That’s a fortune,” Mike said.

  “If perspective helps,” she said, “the rangers make about eight dollars a day. They risk their lives for that.”

  I was racing away from what my own narrow focus had been—small bundles of rhino horns like Battaglia had intercepted in Operation Crash, which were brought across the border by a loose cohort of amateurs—and thinking instead about the financial opportunities this bloody business offered its takers.

  “Humans, heroin, and wildlife,” I said. “Trafficked globally by a large organization.”

  “I
can see just where you’re going with this, Coop.”

  “And I’ll bet that Paul Battaglia got there first.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “The Baboon Café,” Mike said.

  “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

  “That’s what it’s called, Coop. Let’s sit down, have a coffee, put our next steps together.”

  We walked past Tiger Mountain, where the six Siberian cats were taking in the afternoon sun.

  Again, no bars. They were enclosed behind a two-inch-thick glass wall, encircling three acres that—according to the signs—was their own personal habitat.

  “You’re not wearing Calvin Klein’s perfume, are you?” Mike asked. “Obsession.”

  “Strictly Chanel, as you ought to know by now.”

  “One of the things I remember from hanging out with these guys when I was in college is that when the keepers wanted to attract them back to the corrals to groom or feed them, they’d douse rags in Obsession.”

  “What was it about that particular perfume?”

  “The musk in the scent mixed with vanilla and some of the other ingredients.”

  “A good reminder to stick to my floral notes,” I said, sitting down at a table, waiting as Mercer went to get three coffees.

  Mike turned on his phone and held it to his ear to pick up his messages, listening for three or four minutes before relaying the ones that were meant for me.

  “Absence is making their hearts grow fonder,” Mike said.

  “Whose?”

  “A whole list of people jamming up my phone. You need to call your mother tonight. She won’t be happy until she hears your voice,” he said. “Catherine checked in on behalf of all the girls at the office. Everybody’s coping. The place is wild with rumors about who’ll replace the DA, and half the line assistants are sure it’s going to be you.”

  “They’ll be disappointed, won’t they?”

  “She didn’t say they want you to be the boss of them, kid. Just that the gov is going to lean on you.”

  I put my elbows on the table and rested my face in my hands. “And I’d say that there’s more than a reasonable doubt about that verdict, Mike. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hope springs eternal, Coop. I think the governor is kind of sweet on you.”

  “Who else?”

  “Laura.”

  Laura Wilkie had been my secretary—an executive assistant, really—for a very long time.

  “I’ve got to call her. I think she’s the most loyal person on the planet,” I said, lifting my head. “What now?”

  “Laura rambled off a list of names of callers. You can play it back yourself to see who you want to talk to,” Mike said. “And she’s messengering up a stack of mail and some packages that have come to the office.”

  “Packages? What kind of packages?”

  “She didn’t open any. That can be your bedtime project,” he said.

  Mercer set the steaming-hot cups down in front of us.

  “Who would be sending me things to the office?”

  “If you get any pumpkins, Coop, I’d suggest you don’t eat them.”

  “My canines aren’t all that valuable.”

  “But your brain is,” Mike said. “Traffickers could crush it to bits and feed it to baby girls. Traditional medicine. Make them snarky and acid tongued, fond of ballet, with deep knowledge of Victorian English lit and romantic poetry, a strong sense of justice, refined taste in wine and a particular amber-colored alcohol—”

  “Don’t forget the courage,” Mercer said. “Give her cred for that.”

  “Snarky brave girls,” Mike said. “I like that. An entire subspecies of Coopsters.”

  “I’m craving their company,” I said. “You haven’t mentioned media calls.”

  “That’s because Laura’s required to pass them all on to the press office—there are tons of them—and not to tell you who they are.”

  “I’m fine with that,” I said. “Let’s think about the late DA and the subject of wildlife trafficking.”

  “Ready,” Mercer said.

  “Go back to Operation Crash. Battaglia jumped in—for the press attention and acclaim it got him—when James Prescott turned his back on the rhino-horn smuggling. How deep do you think this goes?”

  “Wasn’t Battaglia one of the early proponents of RICO laws, back when he was a rookie prosecutor?” Mercer asked.

  The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—a set of laws promulgated in the 1970s under President Nixon—was meant to be a powerful tool targeting groups of criminals, so that when a low-level thug was arrested and charged, the government could also nab the leaders of the faction, the ones who were usually insulated.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s why he knew how to step all over Prescott about rhinos with such ease.”

  “So now that the ivory ban is in force,” Mike said, “you think he found a way to keep himself in this effort?”

  “If the target was big enough,” I said. “I mean, not just some day laborers hauling horns across the border and up to a Manhattan hotel room. Really big.”

  “Like organized crime,” Mike said. “Like global.”

  “There’s been a movement to extend RICO to state laws,” I said. “It would be so like Battaglia to push it to the limit—nab some humongous international cartel—to prove the need to do that.”

  “Think of it,” Mike said. “The appointment of a citywide Special Narcotics prosecutor has stripped him of the power to go after drug dealers who bring large quantities of the stuff in from overseas, so he doesn’t get any of the headlines that he loved so much—none of the big nabs.”

  “You’re so right. We took the lead on human trafficking with our Hell Gate case,” I said, “but as soon as Prescott woke up to the political potential on that issue, he slipped that subject away from Battaglia, too.”

  “You’d think the old man was still planning a Senate run,” Mercer said. “Almost eighty, and boots on, ready to rumble.”

  “No term limits on pushing for his star-power position in the Fraternal Order of DAs in the Afterlife,” I said. “He’s always wanted to be the emperor. If not here, maybe at heaven’s gate.”

  “So think like Battaglia, Coop,” Mike said. “What would he have done?”

  I was twisting and turning to come up with his interior mind-set. There was a point in time when I would have arrived at the goal before Battaglia did.

  “Did Deirdre Wright give you the name of an expert to talk to?” Mercer asked. “From Animals Without Borders, I mean. Not in development, but someone with field experience and knowledge.”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t you give him a call?”

  I was headed out of the café to the exit. “Because I’d just rather show up at his doorstep. Give him no time to plan a strategy. No time to reach out to a supervisor,” I said. “I want the unedited version. I want to know how tusks get from Africa to China, and why our government wants its fingers in the pie.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “I’m Detective Mercer Wallace.”

  The man who had buzzed us into a brownstone on West Ninety-Fourth Street was staring at the blue-and-gold badge that Mercer presented to him. Since Mike had taken some days off and I was on official leave, Mercer offered to be the legit NYPD representative, leaving out the fact that his command assignment was sexual assault.

  “How do you do?” the bespectacled man said, holding out his hand. “Is there a problem of some kind?”

  “No, sir,” Mercer said. “But we’d like some help from you. We have some pretty urgent questions about trafficking. Wildlife trafficking.”

  The stenciled black-ink letters on the glass door had Liebman’s name written under the initials of the organization. He ushered us into a cramped room and we each took a seat, barely able to
see Liebman over the stacks of papers on his desk.

  “I’m Mike Chapman. Also a detective.”

  “And I’m Alex Cooper. I’m a p—”

  “I know who you are, young lady,” Liebman said. “I read the newspapers.”

  Liebman’s title was president of AWB’s Africa Program. A quick Google check on our way back to Manhattan confirmed that he had a PhD in biology from Yale, working at the intersection of science and conservation policy before overseeing AWB’s portfolio of programs across forty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas for the last two decades. There was a hint of an accent in his voice—maybe South African, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “Does this unexpected mission have something to do with the district attorney’s death?” he asked.

  “It might,” I said. “We’re all still in the dark.”

  “You’re working on the case, Ms. Cooper? I would have thought you’d be kept at arm’s length, being a witness and all that.”

  “I am at arm’s length,” I said. “And we’re certainly not running the investigation. Both Mike and I are witnesses, as you probably noted from the news.”

  “What, then?” Liebman asked, picking up a carved stone paperweight—shaped like a penguin—and rolling it between the fingers of both hands like Captain Queeg’s steel balls.

  “It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing,” Mike said.

  Mercer put his arm out in front of Mike’s chest, suggesting he lean back. “Better if I explain.”

  “Do try,” Liebman said, looking from face to face to face as though it would help him understand the disarray in our approach.

  “There’s a task force handling this case, as the papers have reported,” Mercer said. “I’ve got a piece of that work, and we’re looking for your guidance.”

  Liebman kept rolling the penguin, which was upside down in his hands.

  “I have to tell you that Alex Cooper knew her boss as well as anyone in his professional life,” Mercer said. “She studied his connection to your organization and the great work it does.”