Buzz Killer

by Tom Straw

  “So your sense of justice kicked in?”

  “No, my sense of a hot story.” Cody opened his palms to her. “I promised no bull, right? I had an opening to pitch at VICE but I needed a story that would get them excited. I dug into this prince, and it all tumbled into place. A short documentary about a spoiled, foreign, faux-royal snot nose coming to our country, kicking the crap out of it, and buying his way out of all his troubles. It had twin barrels: outrageous misbehavior and a crazy-opulent lifestyle. Hookers, fast cars, parties, clubs, all the while flipping the bird to his host city. They bought the pitch for The Devil Prince before I even finished. My cop pals were more than happy to slip me his arrest records and a list of eyewitnesses plus one or two victims who’d talk in shadow. I just needed to get some footage of the bad boy in action.” He smiled. “Kinda my wheelhouse.”

  Macie already was sorting it out. “So when I came here before and you were screening that car racing laps around Columbus Circle like the Monaco Grand Prix . . .”

  “The Príncipe do Diabo himself, in his Lamborghini Aventador. By the way, he clocked ninety-six in Central Park. Almost turned a horsie into hamburger. I have it, if you want to see it.”

  “Not if it’ll slow down your confession.”

  “Getting to your man Luka Borodin now.” He took a sip of coffee and leaned against the sink, facing her across the countertop. “So after a few days of following our prince—”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Indeed. It is Jerónimo Teixeira. It’s Portuguese derivation. Angola was once a colony of Portugal, did you know that?”

  “Remind me not to interrupt.”

  “I keep eyes on him, day and night. He’s going everywhere but to class. It’s clubs down in Meat Packing, it’s drag racing some fool on the West Side Highway, and along and along, right? Then just before dawn two weeks ago outside a strip club off the Deegan, I’m ready to pack it in when Teixeira, who’s underage, but c’mon, he’s a prince, gets his Angolan hinder tossed out into the street by a bouncer. I found out later from the club’s night manager that our testosterone-infused príncipe had forced a lap dancer into unwanted oral sex. I roll video while the lad is getting shoved against a wall by some failed defensive tackle when up walks this guy, who pulls the bouncer away from the kid and starts delivering the beatdown you just saw on that video.”

  “And that was the first time you saw Borodin?”

  He affirmed with a nod. “Tell you the truth, I didn’t know who the hell he was. What, some random citizen at that hour, in the Bronx, looking for a bouncer who telegraphs his punches? Then, after the stomping, it’s clear this guy knows Teixeira because he gives the kid his own handkerchief and drives off in the Lamborghini with the prince riding shotgun and holding his head back from his bloody nose. You don’t need a gold shield to detect that this guy is private protection, AKA: muscle. Which only juiced me up, because my VICE project had just gotten kicked to a whole new level.”

  He’d become animated by his own story and started pacing the kitchen. “So grabbing at the chance to give my documentary more investigative teeth, I e-mail a still frame of Teixeira’s chaperone to my SVU buddy from McSorley’s, who runs the face through the Real Time Crime Center’s recognition db. Out pops a name—Luka Fyodor Borodin, Russian immigrant with a repo business on Long Island (give me a fucking break). Mr. Borodin also has a police record. But there’s a wrinkle. After a decade in the US, only one arrest, five years ago, for assault and battery—he put a competitor in the hospital. Charges got dismissed with no explanation or documentation. You’re a criminal attorney. How often do you see a violent offender walk like that? And don’t be PC. How often?”

  He had her there.

  “Exactly. And also? No current address. No contacts, no more repo business, no nearest living relatives, none of that. So with only a name, I made it my project to get my own line on Luchik.” Macie thought back to how Mir greeted him in the fleabag the night before. “I looked it up. Nickname means luck in Russian. Cute, huh? Don’t you love criminals?” She gave him a look that said on with it. “Once I’d made him, I began to spot him on the fringe of my prince’s activities. I got good footage of Borodin, but I never managed to track him to an address. He’s a slippery one. But I kept on him. The other morning when you spotted me outside the crime scene in Chelsea? It’s because I was watching Borodin, not you. I didn’t know why he went to the crime scene, but there he was. And Borodin had been to the Stealer’s Wheel, too, which is why I checked it out. And that night you were attacked? It was no coincidence I was there, you already know that. But I wasn’t following you. I was keeping tabs on Luchik. Thank God.”

  “We were right there in the precinct, and you never told the police?”

  “Not with you there. Too much splainin’—and not the optimal moment to drop this on you. But as soon as we split up that night, I put him out there to my NYPD boys and girls. Trust me, Luka Fyodor Borodin’s name is now in all the Be On the Look Out advisories.”

  “You could have told me last night when he was in that flophouse and I wanted to call it in. Or how about when we were chasing him all over the Lower East Side, including the sewer?”

  “Let’s not embellish. It was exciting enough.”

  “Stop it. Give me a straight answer. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I started to last night. Afterward. Then things got pissy.”

  “Pissy?!”

  “You went over the top. Remember? Someone, could be you, slugged me.” He moved closer to face her across the counter. “But it’s been tearing me up since. That’s why I came to your office first thing this morning. But you killed that, so I invited you here.”

  “To go through Pinto’s files.”

  “To get you alone. But then I didn’t know how to broach it.” Wild recalled the unusual tension she’d heard in his voice when she got there that she had ascribed to work stress. “I was afraid of how you’d react. And you can’t deny I was kind of right.” She couldn’t. “At least you didn’t slug me again.”

  “Don’t even,” said Macie. “So not there yet.”

  He came around and sat on the stool beside her. “I admit it. I screwed this up. But, truly, I need you to believe me, I meant to be righteous here, Macie. I kept it a secret at first because I needed to protect my project. When you showed up here, I didn’t know you. So I held my cards. But I’ve grown to . . . respect you. And like you. Unexpectedly. And that left me in a deep hole I had to dig out of. I guess I still am.” He paused and tried to read her. “And I hope I have.”

  Wild believed him. Maybe because she wanted to. Maybe because he had given her a viable story and a convincing apology. In fact, he had been more than just convincing. Cody had made himself vulnerable in a way she found touching.

  She stood and started for the editing bay. “Show me everything you’ve got on this Borodin. Now that I know why you were following him, I want to know why he was following me. And how he connects to Jackson Hall.”

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  The remainder of the strip club footage played out just as Cody had described it, right down to the unintentionally comic exit of the thug motoring away in a Lamborghini with the prince nursing a nosebleed in the passenger seat. After that Cody loaded up a series of other shots he’d hosed on consecutive late nights outside clubs. His lens found Borodin lurking at the perimeters but always within striking distance. Waiting limo drivers occasionally tried to engage him in small talk but always retreated after a frosty look or something he said. The video dimmed and glowed green for the next setup: night-vision surveillance of Jerónimo Teixeira making a cocaine buy uptown in Saint Nicholas Park. A sure sign of a rip-off, a figure worked his way up behind the Angolan prince. Only to be taken down by one forearm hammer and a single kick by Borodin, whose limbs streaked phosphorescent trails with each blow.

  Cody’s video from Chelsea looked familiar to Wild, however not the perspective. From West Sixteenth, across from the Pinto
crime scene, Macie saw herself pass through the shot. But the lens didn’t react to her, lending credence to Cody’s assertion that she wasn’t the subject of his attention. The Russian smoking a cigar at the corner, watching her, was. The same man who, in the subsequent shots, came and went from the Stealer’s Wheel in Harlem the same day that Cody went in to ask some questions and leave his card.

  Next up in the queue, a certain evening on West Seventy-Eighth. Macie felt her throat constrict as the camera shadowed Borodin, who was walking the sycamore-lined sidewalk past the brownstones. Out of caution or because he heard something, the man stopped. The camera tilted and yawed as Cody sought cover behind a parked car. The footage dipped to black for a second then resumed, with the perspective now from a low crouch, pointing toward Amsterdam. But Borodin was nowhere to be seen. Then Wild heard her own distant shouts. The shot pitched down to Cody’s running feet, jostling as he called, “NYPD, freeze,” before it all went black.

  “All right,” said Macie turning from the monitor. “We know why you were following Borodin. The question is . . .” She left it hanging, an invitation for him to engage, and he picked it right up.

  “Why was Borodin following you?” Cody flipped off a few switches and they sat a moment in silence but for the cooling fans on the equipment.

  “Ever since that,” Wild indicated the dormant monitor that had just replayed her assault, “I’ve been tossing old cases I’ve handled, racking my brain for clients with an ax to grind. Even my dad asked me about that as a possible motive.”

  “That’s fine, you know, Detective 101 stuff.”

  She studied him. “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “Because if you felt a genuine threat from an old client, you wouldn’t be wondering. I’m old school about these things. I subscribe to a scientific rule known as Occam’s Razor.”

  “Purporting that convoluted theories should be set aside in favor of the simplest one.” She raised a brow at him. “Detectives aren’t the only crime solvers, Mr. Cody.”

  He gave her a warm look, a mute appreciation of the easing tensions. “So if we’re so smart, let’s burn some brain cells. Let’s examine why my thing with Borodin brought me to you.”

  “Right. We’re looking for a nexus. Something—whatever it is—connects, and Borodin is the glue.”

  “There ya go.” He began to pace again. “Let’s try this. Leave you in the mix—after all, he did stalk and attack you—but let’s shift you from the center of this. Put Borodin there instead. And, except for providing muscle for the prince, where else have we tracked him?”

  “There’s the strip club. The drug deal . . .”

  “Outliers. The things that connect are all about your client, Jackson Hall.” He counted each off on a finger. “Pinto’s crime scene: Jackson Hall. Stealer’s Wheel: Jackson Hall. Your assault: Jackson Hall. He and Fabio talked about him last night. So that’s all tight. But why? Why does Borodin care about Jackson Hall?”

  “He killed Pinto?”

  “Little doubt,” said the ex-detective. “But there’s more to this. Like why?”

  Wild reflected. “Could Borodin be the burglary crew chief?”

  “Mm, not bad. Très Occam of you. But you know what else is even a more direct A-to-B? Jackson Hall, Rúben Pinto, and the elusive crew chief did what? Burglarized high-end apartments. What does our naughty prince have? A high-end apartment.”

  “So you’re theorizing Hall and his crew ripped off the prince, and, assuming he is not the crew chief, Borodin, his goon, is now dealing out payback?”

  “Or trying to retrieve Teixeira’s stolen goods, who knows?”

  Macie thought back to her interview with Hall at Rikers, and how he wouldn’t specify the places they’d hit, except for The Barksdale. “I want to know if Teixeira’s apartment was hit.”

  “Why don’t we find out?”

  Now Macie paced. “Great. Do you have somebody at NYPD you can call?” Then she saw his wheels turning. “I’ve only known you, what, three days? But I know that look. . . . What?”

  “I need to reserve my IOUs.” He checked his watch. “Screw calling. Let’s pay a royal visit.”

  C H A P T E R • 17

  * * *

  Cody followed his GPS to the transponder he had planted weeks before under the prince’s Lamborghini. It led them to Pier 40, the sprawling recreational complex built out over the Hudson River on top of a former marine terminal. At that hour, just after ten p.m., the parking lot was sparsely occupied as they cruised it, scouting for his sports car. They found it angled piggishly across two spaces near the Village Boathouse. Cody got out and went to the rail to survey the dock. Finding it empty, he drove across the concrete to the rugby pitch, backed into a space, and killed the engine.

  They sat in silence as he got out his Steiners, first to scan the area for Borodin, then to scan the river. From across the field they could hear diehards at the trapeze school squeezing in their last few skinners before it closed. “All right to talk?”

  “You are go to talk,” he said, binocs fixed on the water.

  “Now that we have video of this Luka Fyodor Borodin, we should see if Rúben Pinto’s neighbor can ID him as the man she saw running up the hall.”

  “Great idea. So great that I already did it this morning.” He lowered the glasses. “Well, it’s a logical lead to follow, and I wasn’t going to lose time waiting for you. I stopped by to see Dr. McBlaine right after you shooed me out of your office.”

  “And?”

  “She even used a lighted magnifier. You know, like old folks use to blind you across restaurants?”

  “Once more. And?”

  “Said she couldn’t be sure. In court, a cutthroat defense lawyer like you would reduce the poor woman to a Depends fail.” He resumed his surveillance, but this time panning his binoculars along the parking lot and the river walk behind them, still keeping watch for Borodin. The roar of an approaching speedboat brought their attention back to the Hudson. A quarter mile out, one green and one red running light pinpointed a vessel as it bounced in the chop. “That’ll be his X-35,” said Cody, handing her the Steiners. She gave a look and picked out its lurching silhouette in the surface reflection of the Jersey City skyline.

  Wild lowered the sun visor to check her reflection in the mirror. “You know, I think blonde’s an option you should consider permanently,” he said as she fussed with the wig they agreed she’d wear when they formulated their plan. “And relax, you’re going to do fine. Nothing to worry about.” Then he slid his Beretta Jetfire into its ankle holster. “Ready?”

  They waited at the bottom of the gangway for the boat to arrive. Macie strained to see if Borodin was aboard, but he wasn’t. It came in at a reckless speed that made Wild brace for a collision, but Jerónimo Teixeira, standing at the controls in ironic surf jams and a neoprene vest, laughed at the screams of the three young women with him, reversed thrust, and the MasterCraft sat down in its own wake, barely nudging the dock. One of his companions hopped out and cleated the bowline while the prince sized up the strangers approaching him across the float.

  “Nice boat, Mr. Teixeira,” said Macie. Hearing her use his name threw him off, as Cody said it would. They both watched him scan the parking area above for some kind of trouble. Or maybe for his Russian babysitter. Cody angled himself behind the prince so he could keep an eye on both him and the gangway, which seemed to unnerve Teixeira even more, which wasn’t a bad thing. He already seemed off. Either drunk or high or both.

  “I know you?” he said, forced to turn to face him. “If not, take a walk.”

  “No need to be testy, sir. Here, let me help.” Cody tied off the stern line and held on to the slack end in case their man got any ideas about a water exit. “In fact, helping is why we’re here.”

  One of the women, who was lounging on a padded bench, moaned. “I think I should go to the ER.”

  “She all right?” asked Wild.

  “Not your deal, bitch.” Thi
s prince didn’t seem regal at all. In decades past, he’d be called a punk, and it would fit.

  Macie addressed the young woman directly. “You hurt?”

  “My leg. We were waterboarding, and I hit something.”

  “Waveboarding,” corrected Teixeira. “Fuck me.”

  “Waveboarding at night?” Cody shook his head. “On the Hudson?”

  “I’ve got plenty of situation here, doucher. So why don’t you just be the fuck gone.” He spoke with a slight accent. A little bit of Portuguese that might have sounded charming from someone else.

  “Not looking to hassle you, seriously.” Cody stepped forward and handed a fake business card over the gunwale to him. “I’m Jim Cagney and this is my associate, Beth Lacey. Reliant Insurance.”

  “This about the guy with the Audi? Fucker cut me off, man.”

  “No, we’re not involved in that, Mr. Teixeira.” Now that he’d bought the role, Macie played it. “We’re investigators looking into a series of burglaries in your neighborhood. I understand from a neighbor of yours on Bethune Street that you were also a victim?” His face puzzled, giving him a naive look. For the first time, the twenty-year-old kid looked his age.

  One of the other women called, “Jerónimo, she might need some ice.”

  “Yeah, we’ll get some ice. Later, later.” Then he said to Macie, “Look, I don’t know shit about any burglary. I’m not missing anything. ’Less I got popped tonight.”

  “No, this would have been within the last month.”

  “Not me.” He flipped the card into the drink. “We done?”

  “Almost.” Cody took out some photos. One of Jackson Hall, one of Rúben Pinto. “These might be the burglars. Take a look and see if you’ve seen them before.”

  He gave the pics a look and handed them back with a shake of his head.

  “Just one more, and we’re done.”

  Teixeira studied that one a bit longer than the others, then gave Cody a smirk. “No, not this one either. But tell you what. I’d do her, for sure.” Then he handed back the photo of Macie. He obviously didn’t recognize her, either as a target or as the woman standing six feet away in the blonde wig and the oversized smart glasses.