by Tom Straw
“But what for then?” she asked when he set his camera back down. “Why were Mr. Hall’s two associates both tortured and killed?”
“When they find your client, I sure hope he has an answer.” After a ponder, Gunnar added, “Assuming whoever tried to kill him in jail doesn’t have him now.”
The implications of that brought Macie to a hard decision. She steeled herself and said, “I need you to do something you may not want to do.”
♢ ♢ ♢
No matter what Wild did to hold her team’s attention, their noses kept swinging like weathervanes to the ex-NYPD surveillance detective lounging against the side wall of the conference room. If Gunnar Cody felt their stolen glances, he didn’t let on, just rocked lightly in his task chair, coming a millimeter from brushing the glass-framed print of the Constitution while he listened to the defense attorney’s briefing on the body in the Bronx.
Macie delivered her recap, omitting, by preagreement with Gunnar, the iffy surveillance they had done at the burglary crew chief’s apartment. Then, taking a leap, Wild turned the floor over to him to describe the condition of Stamitz’s corpse. All studied Gunnar carefully as he spoke. He was not only a curiosity in their midst—an ex-cop whose spying they believed flew in the face of the framed document hanging on the wall behind him—his cool description of the tortured body stunned them to a queasy silence. “What kind of beast does something like that?” asked Soledad when he’d finished.
Although her question was rhetorical, he replied, “A beast who’s trained to get information.”
“Mr. Cody also has inside information that Rúben Pinto may have been tortured, as well,” added Wild, careful not to divulge that she had broken into the crime scene along with him. So many minefields in this arrangement, she reflected for the umpteenth.
“Why would they be tortured?” asked the team investigator.
“Well, Jonathan, if this were a homicide detective squad room, we’d be kicking out theories left and right about that.” His tone was inclusive, not condescending, even though Macie could still see herself and Gunnar holding their sides the day he had branded his hide with a nickname. “One I’d toss on the table is the simplest: They stole something somebody wants back.”
“Or maybe one of their victims is pissed and wants to send a message,” offered Monheit.
“Except,” said Chip. The intern looked as if he would lose nerve when they rotated toward his end of the table, but he continued. “Rúben Pinto ransomed some of the Jets player’s stolen property. If they were holding something else, and if negotiations got stalled, somebody could be taking it to the limit.”
“That’s good,” said Gunnar. “You sure you’re just the summer kid?” Wild, who had been listing the theories in a boxed section of the Case Board added, “Property Negotiation,” and asked Chip if he’d made contact with the other victims.
“I did. Spoke with all of them, except Larry Don Henkles. No contact from anyone trying to ransom back property.” And then with a skepticism that belied his Southern ways, he added, “Unless they’re lying.” The look between Macie and Gunnar spoke volumes. The most instinctive investigator on her team would be going back to school at the end of August.
“There’s one person you haven’t interviewed,” said Cody. “The owner of the apartment at The Ajax.”
Monheit said, “But they said there was no burglary.”
“Total stonewall,” said Gunnar. “At posh digs like that, they don’t like to go around advertising break-ins. What’s the apartment owner got to say, that’s what I want to know.”
“Over to me then,” said Tiger. “I got tasked with tracking the penthouse owner. It’s been like sorting out a madwoman’s breakfast, but I just got an answer.”
Macie asked, “Who owns it?”
“Nobody.” He read their faces and explained. “Nobody, as in not a person. It’s deeded to a limited liability company.”
Macie turned to Gunnar. “An LLC. Just like our horror novelist on Fifth Avenue.”
“Where it gets really cloudy,” said the paralegal, “is it’s paid up. No mortgage to trace to an individual owner. And no phone listed for the apartment. What I was able to finally suss out is a deed registered to Exurb Partners LLC.”
Rather than ask him to spell it, she had Tiger post the name on the whiteboard. “I want to talk to them,” she said. “Does this LLC have a phone number?”
“Indeed. It dumps to an automated voice mail. Very robotic.”
“OK, what about an address?”
“I Street Viewed it just before we met.” Tiger showed his laptop. The screen displayed a ramshackle storefront in Queens with a neon sign: “Checks Cashed – Mailbox Rentals.”
After the meeting, Macie invited Gunnar to her office to do some brainstorming on next moves. He said fine, but after a minute to use the gents. She couldn’t resist. “That’s the difference between your office and mine. Here, you don’t have to use a milk jug.”
“Crude” was all he said before he took his leave. For the first time since she got to the MCPD that morning, Macie felt her muscles unclench. Maybe it was from having him join in with the team. Maybe it was the baby step toward transparency that brightened her conscience. With a few relaxed seconds alone, Wild phoned her father and arranged a quick lunch. As she hung up, Rick Whittinghill came in without knocking and made himself at home in a guest chair. The sight of her former investigator—whom she had asked to run a check on ex-Detective Cody through some old pals from Internal Affairs—jarred her with panic. She bolted to her feet.
“Rick.”
“This a bad time?”
“Uh, could be better.”
He waved an envelope. “Just came by to get HR to pay out my unused vay-cay. And while I was here, I thought I’d update you on that IA check you wanted.” No sooner had the retired cop said the words than Gunnar rounded the open doorway from the hall. The Popeye Doyle saw her reaction and hauled himself out of his chair. “Hey, Detective Cody.” He thrust out his hand and they shook. “Rick Whittinghill.”
Gunnar took his measure. “We met?”
“No doubt. I worked Burglary out of Midtown South forever.”
“You say so. Rick, is it?”
Smooth as could be, Whittinghill fanned his vacation pay envelope and said, “I was just stopping by to gas about old times while I picked up a check from these cheap pinkos.” He chuckled and slid by Gunnar to the hallway. “Hey, Mace, we’ll be talking.” With a pleasant nod to the other ex-cop, he left.
By his expression as he sat in the chair Whittinghill had just vacated, Macie couldn’t be sure whether Gunnar heard the comment about the Internal Affairs background check. Or, if he had, whether he would even relate it to himself. It appeared as if she had dodged one. Or Gunnar Cody was just that good at poker.
They rehashed the meeting, starting with her appreciation for how he eased into her group. “Even though I’m the poster boy for human rights violations?” he asked.
“You flatter yourself. Nobody’d put you on a poster. A dartboard, maybe.”
They agreed that the hot lead to follow was the mystery around what did-slash-did-not happen at The Ajax, including who really owned it. Macie was already on that, and told him she had booked a lunch with her father so he could take her to school on LLCs. “Oh, so I’m not invited? Not the first woman I’ve known who wanted to hide me from the parents.” He rose. “Actually that gives me some time to do some field work on the case with mi amigo, the CyberGauchito.”
“Field work?” It rattled her that he would be out doing something on his own. “Like what?”
He smiled. “You really wanna know? I didn’t think so.” He paused at the doorway. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never seen anyone with so many misgivings.”
“Good. They’re a sign I may still have some morals.”
♢ ♢ ♢
“And here I thought you just wanted some face time with your dear old dad.” Jansen Wild helped
himself to the bottle of Asahi on the waitress’s serving tray and poured. His loving concentration on the rising head kindled a familiar heartache in Macie. “It’s an old trick,” he said as the server departed. “Lunch in exchange for free legal advice. At my hourly rate, I don’t blame my clients for trying. Cheers.”
She saluted with her iced tea; he took a long pull on his Dry. “Hourly rate? That’s bull, Dad. Who do you handle that isn’t on retainer?”
“The ones who take me to lunch thinking they’re getting freebies. Then the monthly comes and they usually can’t sign a retainer fast enough.” Her father, a popular former state senator who left politics to resume his law practice full time, serially turned down important appointments to political posts and judgeships. He still did a lot of pro bono work, but threw himself into expanding his firm, already one of the most lucrative and influential in New York, by opening Seventh Street offices in Washington, DC. “Hmm, am I required to answer the question of a public defender of limited means when I’m paying for the sushi too?”
“Send me an invoice. I dare you,” she said with a laugh.
“If you took Orem Diner’s offer you could treat me for once.” With a twinkle, he added, “By the way, I told that shyster he was wasting his time trying to recruit a true believer like you.” Their miso soups arrived. He set his to the side, cued the waitress with a finger twirl over his beer glass, and said, “Why do you want to know about LLCs? Is this related to your Buzz Killer?” He enjoyed her reaction and added, “Hate the tabloids, love the headlines.” She acknowledged that it was connected and gave him a thumbnail synopsis, after which he polished off his Asahi and said, “So you still don’t have any idea what’s what? Did it ever occur to you that your client may have snowed you, and you should cut your losses? He sure cut his, breaking out of the jail ward.”
“Thank you for continuing to treat me like I’m eight years old, but I can handle this, and that does not mean cutting any losses. I don’t do that. Besides, I may be onto something.” Wild filled him in on The Ajax and how Jackson Hall said his crew had burglarized it but she couldn’t interview the owner, who was hidden behind an LLC. Jansen Wild nodded and said, “LLCs never used to be a specialty for us. We do them now, of course, because they’re becoming so prevalent. Especially here in Manhattan. You probably don’t want to get back in touch with him, but the top attorney for shell corporations is sitting a block and a half from here. Orem Diner gets so much LLC business, I’m getting rich on the overflow that he tosses my way. But I could certainly give you a thumbnail.”
The daughter knew the father’s understatement when she heard it. Thumbnail from him would be a full course at NYU. “Just the basics will work. Starting with, why so many LLCs for residential real estate?”
“It’s in the name. Limited Liability. Many of the property owners—OK, most of them on this island—are hugely wealthy. Those deep pockets spell legal exposure. Everything from personal injury suits from slips and falls to property damage actions from other tenants for water leaks, fires, noise . . . lots of noise litigation. Then there’s environmental lawsuits: the building creates too much shade, the foundation settled and cracked someone’s wall, the whole panorama. Residential owners are going for LLCs for the same reason celebrities form personal services corporations. Sure, there are tax and accounting advantages, but mainly, it shelters their personal wealth from lawsuits. Especially from the litigation trollers.”
Macie told him about Holland Bridgewater, the horror writer. “I guess privacy is part of it too.”
“I’m smiling because I set up Holland’s LLC for her. That’s privileged, of course.”
“Hang on, I have to make a call to Page Six.”
“Smartass.” Their food came, along with his beer. His third, observed Wild, who tried not to count, but did. “Wealthy folk just can’t get enough privacy,” he said after a bite of toro. “It’s not only the actors, sports stars, celebrity chefs, and dot-com-billionaires. There are plenty of brick-and-mortar CEOs who don’t like to have their personal addresses out there for anyone to find with a visit to the City Registrar.
“Let me give you one more broad category of use for these shell corporations. A lot of these big money people, especially foreigners, operate under corporate budgets. Their accountants and lawyers handle their bills and property docs so they don’t have to concern themselves with the drudgery of life’s logistics. And if they don’t care a whit for their hundred-foot yachts or their private islands, why should they for something as trivial as their third or fourth home—a getaway pad in Manhattan?”
Macie finished her last shrimp tempura roll and asked, “Then if it’s some blah-blah LLC, how does a developer or real estate broker know who he or she is selling to?”
“Most times they don’t. It’s all handled through attorneys. The LLCs can be everything from subsidiary companies to paper holdings or can be listed under names of distant relatives, mistresses, even a favorite pet.”
“I’m surprised hiding under a basket like that is legal.”
“Perfectly.”
“And don’t the property sellers want to know who’s buying?”
Jansen Wild dabbed his eel sushi in the ceramic bowl of soy sauce and scoffed. “Here’s the only thing the brokers ever want to know. Ready?—‘Do you have the cash?’ Any other questions are just an obstacle to profit.” He ate one more piece of sashimi, leaving the rest, and waited while she made some notes. When she finished, he was studying her gravely. “I want you to assure me you’ll be careful. One street attack is enough for a lifetime, young lady. And Orem told me about this ex-cop, what’s his name? Cody? I crossed paths in court with this asshole a few years back. Steer clear of him. I’m told people get hurt when he’s around.” Mr. Wild peered into the froth in the bottom of his glass and said, “I lost a kid already. No more, promise?”
♢ ♢ ♢
Parking her car Midtown was an extravagance she would have to defend when she submitted her expense report to the MCPD business manager, but Wild balanced the cost of staying above ground to receive calls against strap hanging, incommunicado, on the 4 Train to the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall stop for nearly a half hour. That was all it took to sell herself. Now if she could only sell the bean counter in three weeks when her EXR-100 came back with a stripe of yellow highlighter and a pink “See me” Post-it attached. Macie tipped the attendant when he delivered her old Corolla between a Mercedes and a Tesla, then pulled out into traffic. She glanced at the door of Restaurant Nippon as she passed, wondering if her father had really stayed behind “just to use the loo,” or was it to find a spot at the bar?
The lunch reminded her that closure is not only overrated, it’s a delusion. The murder of her brother—of his son—lived as a constancy, a bruise upon every day and wakeful night. Macie coped her own way through her work, her kick boxing, and probably some unassessed behaviors that were subversively destructive. Meanwhile her dad grew remote and started drinking. Her mom took more dangerous assignments in Doctors Without Borders, preferring the hellfire of Aleppo to the living hell of her solitude. Macie always had given her dad a pass on the alcohol. She made no comment today, but came close. His need had lost its social masking and become too obvious. A conversation with her mother was definitely in the offing—whenever she got back from her field hospital in another war zone.
Wild’s iPhone sounded an incoming e-mail, but she waited until the long light on Forty-Second, her last chance to check it before the FDR downtown. Macie’s breath caught when she saw the sender. It was from Jackson Hall.
Nearly poking a finger through her brand-new screen, she tapped it open and read. “I need your help. I’m cribbing uptown.” He gave an address in the Bronx and finished with, “Don’t be pissed. Just come. Just you.” A long blast of horn behind her brought Macie’s head up to a green light. Wild drove but not to the FDR. She made an illegal left, heading uptown.
On the Willis Bridge, crossing the Harlem River, she relent
ed to her instincts and called Gunnar Cody. She got voice mail and only said she’d heard from Hall, then hung up. Working with him had made her sufficiently paranoid not to commit her client’s location to a phone message. Even his. He’d hear it and be in touch. That would suffice. It would have to.
Google Maps led her under the RFK-Triboro into a mix of slender clapboard duplexes squeezed between no-frills industrials of stucco and painted brick. Rounding the corner onto East 134th Street, she went right by the address Hall had given her. The place was that nondescript: a two-story cinder-block cube with no signage sitting next to a scaffolding company. Wild found a spot up the block and got out. Even in this industrialized zone, broad daylight under puffy white clouds bleached the spare building and gave it a folksy, Edward Hopper feel. There was no traffic; the only vehicles on this road were clunkers parked in front of the various hardscrabble businesses. She saw no pedestrians either. The sole sign of life was the occasional clang of metal pipe ringing out of the scaffolding company garage entrance. If you wanted to lose yourself from a manhunt, she decided, this would be a serviceable place, at least for a while.
Macie circled around a tow truck parked on the driveway, then replied to Hall’s e-mail. “I’m here.” She waited. There were no windows on the ground floor, so she scanned the two on the upper, wondering if he was watching for her. A deadbolt snapped and the metal front door swung open. What someone wisely coined as the gift of fear rose in her and, instead of approaching, she took a few steps backward.
And bumped into a man who had silently come up behind her.
On her turn to him, he stifled her scream by clamping a cloth over her mouth and nose with one hand while he locked her arms to her sides with a sharp, wraparound bear hug. Then he slackened his lock on her ribs, allowing her to gulp for air. The intake tasted like a cleaning solvent, but cloyingly sweet. Her head grew light and her vision fogged. The next breath burned the back of her throat and her knees went slack. The last thing Macie remembered was the face of the man hauling her into the open door. She tried to say, “Pipe Wrench,” but was unconscious before the words could form.