by Paul Batista
Everything about his frequent use of prostitutes had worked out, or so he thought. If any of the sophisticated young women knew who he was, no one ever let on. The names and identities of their clients clearly were of no interest to them; their interest was cash. Since all of his transactions were in cash, the agency had no record of his name. He had a code name with the agency that employed these women, Billy the Kidd. His only reputation for special status in that world was that he had picked up a reputation for never using a condom. The original Billy the Kid was reckless in 19th-century America. So was Hunter Decker as Billy the Kidd in the 21st century.
To rest after intense laps in his pool, he floated on his back. In the deepening and darkening blue of the evening sky—an almost full moon was reflected on the refracting waters of the pool’s surface—he felt aroused again, this time not by the memory of the long-ago swimming with Carolyn in this pool but by the weeklong memory of Lori in the afternoon at the new, chic Ailo Hotel on Greenwich Street, in the old warehouse district now completely renovated into expensive apartments inside the structures of the century-old warehouses.
Lori was black. Hunter Decker had discovered a special liking for black women.
As the pool water lapped at his ears and caressed his neck and shoulders, he recognized yet again how fortunate he had been in life. Born to wealth and an adoring mother and father, treated like young royalty at Choate and Yale, privileged as soon as he left law school by a clerkship with Antonin Scalia, endowed with a partnership at one of the city’s oldest firms, and then anointed by President Spellman as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he thought of himself now as the fortunate son. He had even been fortunate in carrying out his multiple encounters with young prostitutes, which he knew was risky but well worth it for him. He sensed he was the fortunate son not with a sense of self-satisfaction or pride, but with a sense of gratitude. Tremendous athletes like the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt are born with power and grace and go forward in life to fulfill that gift of birth. Hunter Decker was born to become a kind of great athlete of a life widely admired.
Except for rare moments, he had managed to forget the long-ago visit from Robert Calvaro or, to the extent he ever thought about the visit now, he saw it as a ruse or a gambit by Calvaro and Baldesteri that failed. Instead, he focused on the joyfulness of life.
CHAPTER 43
MONTHS EARLIER, NOT long after the announcement of Senator Baldesteri’s indictment, one of his assistants surprised him when she said, “Robert Calvaro wants to meet you. Should we ignore him?”
“No,” Hunter Decker had answered. “Call him and ask him when he would like to meet.”
Robert Calvaro arranged to meet Hunter in the fortress-like building in Lower Manhattan that housed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. All that Hunter knew about Robert Calvaro at that point, although Hunter learned far more later, was that Calvaro was the central money man collecting and disbursing funds for Angelina Baldesteri through the recently formed super PAC America Renewed.
Decker was intrigued by the fact that Calvaro wanted to see him so soon after the Senator’s indictment. Like any skilled prosecutor, he thought it was important to keep his door open to people like Calvaro if they knocked on it. They might have information, and information and evidence were the coin of the realm for prosecutors. And sometimes people like Calvaro wanted to turn on their partners, associates, friends, and at times family members in exchange for leniency. Decker was prepared to listen. In fact, his appetite was whetted by the key connections he knew Calvaro had with the Senator.
Calvaro had conditions to the meeting. No one else could be present, no recordings made, no interruptions allowed, no checking of anything he carried, no security scanning or pat-downs performed on him, no notes taken. Always confident, Decker told his assistants to agree to the conditions. Given what he then knew of Calvaro, he had no reason to fear him. After all, Calvaro was the son of an old, wealthy Jewish South American family; he was a graduate of St. Paul’s and Yale; he had made a fortune in the South American oil business; he was a naturalized United States citizen; and he owned and operated a hedge fund. He was a vocal advocate of left-leaning causes.
From the beginning, Decker knew that Calvaro and America Renewed were at the heart of the case against Baldesteri. Vast amounts of money had passed into America Renewed from anonymous donors; much of the money was traceable, through intricate accounting by Government experts, to prohibited foreign sources. Calvaro was not only the Chief Executive Officer but he was also in effect the alter ego of America Renewed. He had managed to attract prominent names of company executives to the Board of Directors, which never met, and, for an annual honorarium of $150,000, to appoint the legendary Leon Stanski as the “Chair” of America Renewed.
What Hunter didn’t then know was that Robert Calvaro in his real life was Oscar Caliente. Despite its sprawling reach, the Government had never been able to locate measurable and accurate samples of the DNA of the wily Oscar Caliente or his doppelganger, Robert Calvaro. But eventually there would be old-fashioned investigation work that established it.
It might be, Hunter told his assistants, that Calvaro wanted to cooperate, to “spill his guts,” so as to avoid a future indictment. Turning Calvaro against Baldesteri would make it one, two, three work to convict the Senator.
When Calvaro entered Hunter’s huge office, with its windows overlooking the glittering waters of the East River and the 19th-century grandeur of the ornate Brooklyn Bridge, Hunter was struck by how much Calvaro had the appearance and mannerisms, even with his South American nuances, of the adult versions of the boys who were Hunter’s classmates at Choate.
Calvaro sat at one of the wooden chairs facing Hunter’s desk. He balanced on his knees the slim Hermes briefcase that he had carried into the office. “I’m glad,” Calvaro said, “that you were willing to see me.”
“I don’t meet often, Señor Calvaro, with people who want to see me. They’re first vetted by my assistants and security people. But you are, after all, Robert Calvaro, a financial wizard and frankly from my standpoint a benefactor of Angelina Baldesteri. All of which makes you very interesting to me.”
“And all of that is very gracious for you to say, Mr. Decker. But I need to get to the point. You must either drop the case against Senator Baldesteri or lose the trial.”
Calmly and steadily, Hunter said, “Do you understand who I am?”
“Certainly, I do. You can decide over the next few months that there is insufficient evidence to proceed against her or, if there is a trial, withdraw the case midway by announcing that the evidence, as it turns out, can’t support a conviction. That you in good conscience can’t allow the case to reach the jury.”
At that moment, Hunter sensed the stirrings of anger, concern, fear, amazement. It struck him that this slender, well-dressed man wearing flesh-colored glasses for which he plainly had no need, never touched the doorknob, the chair in which he sat, or anything else. It was obvious he was avoiding coming into contact with anything from which his DNA could be isolated.
“Did Baldesteri send you here?”
“Nobody ever tells me what to do.”
“So this stupidity is all your idea?”
Almost daintily crossing his legs, Calvaro said, “I never do anything stupid.” He paused, staring at Hunter without blinking: his eyes were green, startlingly so. “But you do stupid things, Mr. Decker.”
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Calvaro, that you don’t understand. Right now you are committing a crime. Telling me to drop a criminal case or throw a trial is obstruction of justice. It’s a felony. I could have you arrested now.”
“Is that right? Well, I need to show you something that makes it clear there are two people in this room who commit crimes.”
“You need to leave now. Or I’ll have my Marshals drag you out by the heels.”
“You know Lori Givens?”
Hunter Decke
r froze. “No, I don’t,” he lied.
“She’s the $5,000 a night hooker you prefer.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“And do the names Gail Abernathy, Veronica Silva, Maia Alexander ring a bell?”
“Whoever they are,” Hunter said, his voice with a faint tremor, “they are as crazy as you are. By the way, who are you really?”
Calvaro ignored him. He took from his valise an iPad. He placed it carefully in his lap, saying, “Take out your cell phone. I know your private email address. In a second you will receive a gallery of pictures featuring you. And, in each one, a different young woman.”
Hesitantly, Decker removed his iPhone from the interior pocket of his suit jacket. He saw a new Inbox entry from [email protected]. He pressed the icon.
There on the vivid screen was a gallery of pictures with him undressed and with naked women, some of them obviously as young as sixteen.
“This is extortion,” Hunter said.
“No, no,” Calvaro answered. “It’s information. The information may give you time to think about the wisdom of dropping the indictment or throwing the trial. Not just your beautiful wife would be interested in these pictures. So would the world.”
“How did you get these?”
“I take an interest in owning large parts of many businesses that interest me: polo horses, brokerage houses, restaurants, casinos, classy hotels. And I own the escort service you prefer.”
“You’re sick.”
“And what are you? Several of these girls are as young as sixteen. You are a man headed for disgrace, Mr. Decker, or worse, such as statutory rape, if you ignore me.”
“Just leave before I have you thrown out.”
Calvaro snapped his iPad shut and slipped it into his valise. He said, “You’ve really impressed me and the Senator in one way. For a WASP, you are remarkably well endowed. Congratulations on joining my club. The women were all impressed by you, they all told me that.”
* * *
Hunter Decker dropped his iPhone into the Tiffany pitcher of water on his desk, and within seconds the phone was ruined. Then he put his personal iPad and laptop into the classically scuffed leather litigation briefcase he always carried. There was a dump not far from the Harrison estate where he would throw them away that evening. The iMac computer on his desk was programmed to receive and send only Government emails.
* * *
Two weeks later, and still several months before the Baldesteri trial started, Curnin and Giordano reported to him that there was indeed a Robert Calvaro. He was born in 1965 and so was roughly the same age as the Robert Calvaro who had visited Hunter’s office with the revealing iPad pictures, about which Hunter said nothing to anyone. According to Giordano, Robert Calvaro had come from a wealthy Argentinian family. He had attended St. Paul’s and graduated from Yale and was from age twenty a member of the New York Athletic Club, a legacy member since his grandfather and father had been lifetime members. Giordano and Curnin showed Hunter an old Polaroid photo of Robert Calvaro, at age twenty-eight, bare-chested and his features clearly visible as he handled ropes on a classic sailboat off the coast of Maine. Ocean waters and small pine islands shimmered in sunlight on the Atlantic behind the joyful, vigorous young man. Years had passed, but that young man with a body and vigor of youth, had, in Hunter’s eyes, grown essentially into the Robert Calvaro he had recently seen.
But the real Robert Calvaro had died in 1989 while climbing the sheer wall of a high mountain in the Himalayas. His body was never found.
There was not a trace of the DNA or fingerprints of the dead Robert Calvaro, or of the Robert Calvaro who had sat so carefully in Hunter Decker’s office.
Curnin asked, “Want us to arrest him?”
“No.”
CHAPTER 44
WHILE STILL ON his back and resting on the gentle swells of the water, Hunter for the first time noticed the man standing on the edge of the pool. He was in silhouette, entirely in black, in the darkening, gentle air. Because the man’s face was shadowed by the swiftly oncoming night, Hunter didn’t recognize him.
His first reaction, as he floated on his back with his chest and naked loins exposed, was embarrassment. And then anger at the brazen intrusion. And then utter vulnerability.
“What’s up, Jack?” Hunter asked, raising his voice, trying to sound angry and commanding.
“One name I’ve never had, Señor Decker, is Jack.” He had a steady baritone voice, tinged with a Spanish accent. Hunter recognized that he was not Robert Calvaro, whose voice was reedy, almost effeminate. The only time Hunter had ever been in Calvaro’s presence was months earlier, at the unsettling meeting in the U.S. Attorney’s office. Hunter had, except for a few unpredictable moments on those rare occasions when he forgot the good fortunes of his life, remembered Calvaro and the distinct pictures on Calvaro’s iPad. During those lapses, Hunter sometimes thought the encounter with Calvaro was a ruse or an illusion or even a rare bad dream. He once looked at the rigorously maintained log book of his visitors: there was no record of anyone named Robert Calvaro who had ever visited him. In fact, on that day, the log revealed no visitors. Calvaro was a phantom. And Hunter had utterly destroyed the photographs Calvaro had forwarded to his electronic objects.
In the pool, Hunter lowered his long legs and torso below the surface of the water, peering at the unfamiliar silhouette of the powerfully built man towering above him as if on a museum pedestal.
Hunter asked, panting slightly from his long vigorous swim and his treading movements in the water, “Who are you?”
“A friend of Señor Calvaro. You haven’t forgotten Señor Calvaro, have you?”
Hunter, still gazing upward, a position of acute disadvantage, didn’t speak.
The man standing at the edge of the pool glanced briefly to the leafy trees and shrubbery that separated the pool from the mansion. “Jesus, you live really well, Señor Decker, I mean, really well.”
Hunter continued to tread water, only his shoulders and head above the surface. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“Let’s just say I’m a ghost. I pass through walls, gates, trees.”
Hunter then had a flash of recognition. The man, he now knew, was Hugo Salazar, or Juan Suarez, or another elusive pseudonym. Hunter had never seen this man in person, only in photographs and surveillance tapes, usually with the man Hunter knew as Robert Calvaro and, more recently, as in Government Exhibit 673, as the man talking to Angelina Baldesteri. Hugo’s dense black hair, drawn into a sleek ponytail, was unmistakable. It was his signature. Hunter was able to see it because Hugo inexplicably again stared at the carefully maintained shrubbery, as if he recognized something or someone impossible to see clearly.
“Did you know we have a few things in common, Señor Decker? Did you know that?” It was a soothingly calm voice, even though its message made Hunter’s submerged groin tighten with fear.
“You need to leave. And now.”
“One of the things we have in common,” Hugo Salazar said as if speaking confidentially, “is making love to women. As many as possible. Except I don’t have to pay for it.”
“I need you to leave. Don’t forget who I am. I can have you arrested any time I want. And I always have guards. You see them in the bushes right now, don’t you? They have you in their sights. Their work is to protect me.”
Again, Hugo bypassed Hunter’s words. “Another thing we have in common, Señor Decker, is the foolish hope that we can ever outrun Oscar Caliente.”
Hunter said, “I don’t take orders from Robert Calvaro or Oscar Caliente or whoever that faggot is.”
“You met with him, my friend, remember? Señor Caliente told you what to do. You didn’t do it. That’s not healthy. You may not take anything seriously—look, Señor Decker, at the way you live; men who live like you never do take anything seriously except maybe losing a fraction of their money—but Oscar Caliente always takes things seriously and seriously punishes diso
bedience. He told you to find a way to let Baldesteri go. And you didn’t. And now you say you won’t. And you’re humiliating Señor Calvaro. That does not please him. That’s not healthy.”
“As I said, I don’t take orders from Robert Calvaro or Oscar Caliente imitating Robert Calvaro. And did you know Robert Calvaro died years ago?”
“Oscar Caliente, Señor Decker, has been many people. So have I.”
Hunter said, “But you are a nobody. You’re nothing.”
Night had come on rapidly. In his black clothing, Hugo Salazar was almost invisible. The underwater lights that illuminated the pool suddenly spread their attractive glow precisely when the automatic timer sensed the right level of darkness. When the lights rose through the water, shimmering, they shone on Hunter Decker’s naked body. He was very pale underwater.
From the darkness Hugo finally said, ignoring the insult, “Señor Caliente knows you enjoy giving orders. Just the same way he does.”
“He’s a creep. I’m not. He knows nothing about me.”
“He knows that you had Lydia Guzman killed by your people.”
“That’s bullshit, Jack.”
Hugo said, “And you tried to have me killed, too. Who did you have put ricin in the coke I gave Lydia? I was supposed to take care of her, and you had her killed when I was supposed to be taking care of her. Señor Caliente was, and still is, really angry with me. Your people killed Lydia. And now his people intend to kill me. So you, Señor Decker, are putting me in danger.”