by Fynn Perry
The desk sergeant informed David that Detective Lazlo was indeed on duty today, but she wasn’t sure if he was out on a case. The waiting area was full and, given that David and Jennifer looked harmless and respectable, she let them into the detective pen and said they should ask for him there.
The pen consisted of twelve desks paired up and facing each other. About a third were occupied by men in suits, speaking on phones or staring into PC screens. The atmosphere was like most places of businesses where people sat together: the air was buzzing with conversations––some lively, some mundane, occasional jokes and inevitable groans referencing burdensome paperwork.
David asked one of the detectives for the whereabouts of Lazlo and was told he had been called to a homicide several hours ago, but there was a good chance he would be back soon. A couple of seats at Lazlo’s desk, together with an advance apology for the quality of the vending machine coffee, were offered. Jennifer and David accepted both.
After an hour, a man—clearly an NYPD detective—blustered through the pen toward his desk. He stopped momentarily to exchange comments with the other detectives. With his tall and wiry frame, dark hair, and olive skin, he stood out.
“That’s Lazlo!” Jennifer whispered, recognizing him from a photo she had seen in the online news article.
David regarded Lazlo as the detective approached. There seemed to be a nervous energy about him. He’d wager the guy was someone who got things done, and fast. David had met this type of cop before— they were keen to close cases, but rarely did so by the book.
Lazlo was surprised to find someone waiting for him. He had just come back from a murder scene and had seen the aftermath of a particularly gruesome, execution-style killing. He had concluded that a soft-nosed bullet had been used––clean in entry but creating a mess on exit––to blow the victim’s face off with a shot to the back of the head. The sight of a faceless victim was something he would never get used to. It was such a personal violation, and left nothing for the next of kin to say good-bye to. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the body had also been burnt.
CSU had taken partial fingerprints from the corpse and would run them through the database. Identification might also be possible from dental records. The whole process meant a lot of detailed paperwork for Lazlo to get through, so the visitors at his desk were not a welcome sight.
As he approached his desk, he smiled and asked what he could do to help. He had always been courteous. Good manners cost nothing. Besides, he was sure he could offload these visitors onto one of his colleagues. Whatever they had going on couldn’t possibly be worth him getting distracted from the case he was working on.
Lazlo took his jacket off and sat down opposite them. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing small tattoos evenly spaced along his forearms: a pistol, flowers, a skull, a heart, and a dagger—follies from his youth and of poor quality––over the years the ink had gradually bled and the skin had slackened, making the images blurred.
David introduced Jennifer and himself. “We’re concerned about the safety of someone you know, the journalist Paul Hamilton,” he said in a low voice.
Lazlo tilted his head as if appraising the father and daughter before him. If Hamilton was in trouble, Lazlo wanted to know about it. The journalist had been very helpful in putting pressure on the mayor’s and the governor’s offices to publicly draw attention in the press to the current under-resourcing of detective squads, which was allowing gangs to thrive. And Hamilton’s efforts had worked. Lazlo had got extra officers allocated to his team. This had allowed him to take down some smaller Ukrainian and Haitian crime rings dealing with drugs and prostitution.
“Come with me,” Lazlo said quietly and invited them into a meeting room.
David kept the details of his previous friendship with Hamilton to a minimum, avoiding mentioning his past life as state prosecutor for Miami. He fabricated a story, which he claimed to have also told Hamilton, about a worker who was being forced to work at a secret drug-manufacturing facility, packing pills inside consumer goods for transportation, hidden beneath a respectable-looking fulfillment center and apparently owned by the same people who distributed the manufactured drugs. David continued to elaborate the fictitious story. The worker, he lied, had come in to see him at the legal clinic for advice. He had declined to give his own name or that of his employers, despite the information being subject to attorney-client privilege. Lazlo listened carefully. David continued, stating that Hamilton had later gone out to do his own research and had summarized it in an email with photos that he had sent to David’s daughter’s email account. He decided to leave out the part, for now at least, about the fantastical-sounding brewing of the drugs. His ‘client’ wouldn’t be privy to how the pills were being made and it would be better to have the detective onboard first with the existence of a hidden drug-manufacturing center, which he could back up with Hamilton’s photos.
“Why involve your daughter?” Lazlo asked.
It was a good question and one for which David didn’t have a suitable answer. “We’re family. We share all our problems,” he said rather weakly.
Lazlo shrugged. He wondered if he had stumbled upon some kind of family of conspiracy theorists for a second, but the guy was supposedly a lawyer, and if Hamilton was looking into it, the story must have some merit. “Show me the mail and the photos,” he said, wrinkling his brow.
Jennifer pulled out her laptop from her bag and placed it on the table, opening it with the back of the screen facing Lazlo. He watched her wait as it powered up and then type in a password. As she peered intently at the screen, he noticed her expression of deep concentration, gradually change to one of increasing concern. “It’s not here!” she panicked. “It was sent at around four this morning, but it’s gone. Wait—there is a later mail from Paul. That’s strange, it’s blank. But there’s an attachment…” she said, clicking on it.
“Don’t open it!” John and Lazlo shouted, almost in unison. But she had already done so.
“Oh, shit!” Jennifer exclaimed as the screen went blank except for a small alert window, which popped open in the middle. In it were three words: WIPING IN PROCESS!!!
The alert was accompanied by the image of a creepy-looking, pink cartoon rabbit’s head, which tilted from side to side and appeared to be laughing as it moved around the screen silently. There were no buttons to press in the window and it couldn’t be closed. Nothing else was accessible on the display. “Shit! Shit! What’s happening?” she screamed, now highly alarmed.
“Quick, give it to me!” Lazlo grabbed the laptop and ran out of the meeting room.
John followed Lazlo down the corridor and through a door with a small sign bearing the words IT Dept. Beneath this was a worn sticker with the words Genius at work.
“Check if this is a legit virus, will you, Harry?” he shouted to the only person in the room, a skinny guy sitting hunched over a laptop. The specialist had red-framed glasses and a mop of brown hair. He didn’t look up as he reached out for the laptop. He seemed to be impervious to any stress or urgency as he methodically connected another laptop to Jennifer’s machine and started calmly, but quickly, typing away. As he typed, he periodically shook his head slightly from side to side as if to say, ‘Well, that didn’t work.’
David and Jennifer had now joined Lazlo and were standing in the doorway.
The IT guy turned around in his chair to face them. “Your laptop?”
Jennifer nodded.
“No go,” he said very calmly, and continued in a dull monotone. “You’ve been attacked by a virus. This one is fast, efficient, and tailored to the recipient. Whoever made it is a pro.” He shrugged and glanced at Jennifer and David.
Jennifer went pale. “It came from Paul’s email,” she blurted to Lazlo. “He wouldn’t do that! What does it mean?”
The computer nerd swiveled back to look at his screen again as he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, “It could be a remote hacking of this guy’s email account or
the guy could have given access to this hacker directly.”
Jennifer tried Paul’s number on her mobile again. “There’s no response! What if someone has got to him and killed him?”
David put his arm around her and gestured to Lazlo that they needed a moment.
“Take Meeting Room Two,” Lazlo said, pointing to a door on the opposite side of the corridor, after noticing someone had just occupied the meeting room they had previously used.
They entered the room and sat down. Jennifer was badly shaken. David assumed that although he couldn’t see him, John was talking to Jennifer now, given that she was nodding as she sat there. He said nothing, staring blankly, excluded by another plane of existence.
John’s voice was velvety and reassuring. “All that has happened is that Hamilton’s computer has been hacked. It doesn’t mean that El Gordito is somehow onto us, Jen. It could be completely unrelated to the research Hamilton was doing on the fulfillment center. I’m sure he’s just keeping his phone off while he tries again to interview one of the Mexican workers. He could call us back any moment.”
Jennifer nodded again. She put her hand on her father’s. “Ask the detective to come in,” she asked, still a little shaken.
Lazlo returned to the room. “I’m so sorry, but your computer has been completely wiped. All your data has gone. Our guy’s running a few more checks, but it looks like all traces of the virus have disappeared, too, so we can’t track it back to its source.”
“Right now, I’m more worried about what has happened to Paul Hamilton!” Jennifer exclaimed.
Lazlo put a hand up to calm her. “Officially, Paul won’t become a missing person for another forty-eight hours. Unofficially, I will send a patrol to check out his home. Just so you know, I’ve known him to go offline for days at a time when working on a case, and this could just be an unrelated and random virus attack with nothing to do with what Paul was working on.”
“It’s no coincidence,” Jennifer said, handing Lazlo her portable hard drive.
“What’s this?” he asked, surprised.
“I saved the photos Paul sent me. I save all photos on here to free up my hard drive,” she said.
“Good girl!” Lazlo said enthusiastically and Jennifer could tell by his expression that his response had unintentionally come out in a way that was condescending.
Lazlo went out of the room and came back with one of the department’s spare laptops. He motioned that he wanted to sit between Jennifer and David, and they made space for him. Lazlo opened up the computer, switched it on and connected Jennifer’s drive to it. “I suspect you have a lot of private stuff here as well as the evidence, so be warned if these photos do turn out to be part of a crime, the entire drive will need to be kept as evidence.”
Jennifer glanced at David, who nodded. She leaned over and used the trackpad on Lazlo’s laptop to locate and open the relevant folder. The thumbnails of the photos appeared, and Lazlo opened each image in sequence.
“Well, this is Hamilton’s work alright—he never skimped on equipment and detail,” the detective said, giving a series of small nods in confirmation.
Lazlo noticed the partial image of the armed guard amongst the photos. As he continued through the file, he saw shots of the back of the workers’ heads and noted they were poorly dressed. Next were the photos of the outgoing shift. Full frontal face shots. All the workers had Hispanic features.
“Illegal immigrants, easy to control and in need of money,” Lazlo commented.
“That’s what Paul wrote in his email,” confirmed Jennifer.
“Do you have an address for the fulfillment center?” he asked her.
“Bellevue Logistics Park. Enterprise Lane, Newstone, New Jersey.”
“New Jersey? That’s outside my jurisdiction, but I’ll take a look.”
Lazlo opened up Google Earth and typed in the address and found the pixelated area where the building should have been. He tried the ‘Street View’ function, but it wasn’t available.
“Zoom down to the neighboring buildings and go into 3D if you can.” Jennifer instructed.
He did and got a three-dimensional, almost photographic, representation of the surrounding buildings in the park.
“Now compare that with some of the photos that Paul took.”
Lazlo pulled up the images and rotated the satellite view until the angles looked similar. The elevations and names on the buildings matched. It was the same park, without a doubt. Then he opened up again the photos of the workers in the setting of the housing complex. There were a few headshots of the same people, and five of one woman who appeared to be in her thirties.
“Why do you think he took as many as five photos of her in particular?” Lazlo asked.
“Perhaps he wanted to talk to her,” David answered.
“Maybe,” Lazlo replied.
“Maybe because of that he disappeared,” Jennifer challenged, still nervous about why Hamilton hadn’t called back.
Lazlo said nothing and then took out his phone. “Are these the pills your source said were being made at this place?” He showed David a photograph of the two pills with the spider logo that he had given to Richard Genna for testing.
“Yes,” confirmed David and Jennifer together. “I read they’re called Spider’s Bite on the streets,” Jennifer added.
Lazlo nodded thoughtfully. “Did Hamilton find out who owns the fulfillment center?”
“It took him a while to get through a complex ownership structure, but ultimately it’s owned by Miguel Vargas, also known as El Gordito,” David replied.
Lazlo immediately glanced up at him. His expression had changed. “I’m not surprised to hear that El Gordito is involved. All drug distribution in NYC is controlled by him, including any new product. I thought this new pill with the spider logo, which I came across just recently, was just another hyped-up newcomer.” His tone was more brusque than usual. “Hold on a moment.” He looked up at the surveillance camera in the corner of the room. The red recording light was on.
Lazlo left the room and returned in less than a minute with a pen drive. He plugged into the other port of the laptop and started transferring the photos onto the pen drive. A window opened on the screen showing a progress bar. It stated the transfer would take about fifteen minutes.
“Our conversation isn’t being recorded anymore,” he said pointing at the camera in the corner of the room, which now had its red recording light extinguished. “You were right to bring this to me. El Gordito is a cunning criminal. I’ve been trying to pin something on him for years, but he has connections all over the city, and his lawyer is one of the best. I can’t rule out he may have someone on his payroll at this precinct so I switched the camera off to prevent anyone who has access to the footage from knowing my suspicions. Every time we’ve planned a raid, he’s been tipped off.” He sighed. “I’m also more concerned about Hamilton now that you’ve shown me all this. Wait here and don’t talk to anybody. I will be back before the photos finish downloading. I’m putting the recording camera back on.”
David and Jennifer said nothing. They just nodded.
Lazlo had no reservations about leaving them there with the equipment. They had offered the material voluntarily, and he had switched the ceiling security camera back on. They weren’t going to tamper with anything.
John, using his invisibility, passed through the door and headed after Lazlo. He found him sitting at his desk, talking on his landline phone. John moved closer to the earpiece to listen.
“Karl, anything back from the lab on the identity of the burnt body with the gunshot wound to the head from this morning?”
“We sent out for the DNA tests and fingerprints on the little we could get, but we’ve canceled them,” the voice on the other end said.
“Why?”
“Because we got lucky. The body had a titanium surgical implant which survived the fire. As you know every implant has a unique serial number so the manufacturer can contact the p
atient in case of any production faults.
“Do you have a name yet from the manufacturer?”
“Yes. It’s Paul Hamilton, and the manufacturer just sent me the social security number. I’ll send you the precise match from the social security database now, by mail,” the voice on the other end said.
Lazlo hung up without saying good-bye. He just sat there, staring into space.
John watched the detective and wondered how he could be so calm at this news. Perhaps he felt there was a chance it could be another Paul Hamilton.
Lazlo opened his email on his desktop PC. John looked at his inbox. An email had just come in from Karl Hessenmeir, Medical Examiner. The title of the message was: Case 1372: West Bronx Homicide: Positive match found.
Lazlo opened the mail. There were some lines of text, but it was the photograph of Paul Hamilton, acquired from the press database, that caught his and John’s attention. It confirmed it was the same Paul Hamilton.
John stood motionless, unable to process the information; the sounds of the busy workplace suddenly became quiet and indistinct, as if a thick bubble of shock had surrounded him. Hamilton hadn’t gone missing, he had been silenced––shot in the head and his body burnt. And the email virus had been sent to Jennifer’s email account to destroy evidence of what the journalist had seen at the fulfillment center and the workers’ village. El Gordito had to be behind it all. But what if he had tortured Hamilton and the journalist had given up Jennifer’s and her father’s names?
He tried to calm himself with the thought that if that was the case, Jennifer and her father would already be dead. Especially if, as he suspected, Santiago’s spirit was possessing El Gordito for the purposes of The Game. Jennifer’s email address didn’t have her surname in it and that fact alone might be enough to mask her identity. El Gordito would probably be satisfied, at least for now, that Hamilton’s evidence had been destroyed. More importantly, the journalist’s gruesome death, once it was on the police’s radar, would serve as a deterrent to anyone wanting to stick their nose in his business.