“That wasn’t the good news part, was it?” I ask.
“No. Everything I found in his finances is in this file; I’ll leave it with you.”
“Can we move this along, Sam?” He has a tendency to draw these things out in a way that makes me want to kill him. Hike is rolling his eyes, though that doesn’t mean much, since Hike’s eyes are always rolling.
“I’m getting there. I also checked his phone records for the week before he was killed.”
“And?”
“Well, the business phone records do nothing for us, because there’s no way to know who within the company made each call. Wright had a private line, but he didn’t seem to use it.”
“Sam…”
“Instead he used his cell phone, so I got those records, as well as his home landline. He made quite a few calls”—he looks at his records—“a hundred and fourteen in that last week. Most of them seem as if they could have been business calls, you know, money guys. Some of it was more trivial kind of stuff. Like ordering in food, that kind of thing.”
Sam does not realize it, but he’s two boring sentences away from strangulation.
“But two of the calls stand out, one more than the other,” he says.
“With the next words out of your mouth, I want you to tell me who those calls were to,” I say.
Sam nods. “One was to a guy named Steven Thurmond. I checked him out; friends call him Stevie. He got out of prison three years ago.”
“What was he in for?”
“Hacking. He’s a master at it.”
“As good as you?” I ask.
“If he was as good as me, he wouldn’t have gone to prison. Anyway, I think it’s interesting that Wright would be talking to him. Because of his background, and because of other stuff.”
“I agree. What other stuff?”
“Well, Thurmond lives in Harbor Towers, but he doesn’t have a job.”
Harbor Towers is an exclusive apartment building in Fort Lee. “Maybe a rich uncle died and left him money.”
“Then the uncle keeps dying. Thurmond has three hundred and seventy-five grand in the only bank account I checked, and it comes in twenty-five grand at a time, through untraceable wires.”
“You hacked into his bank account?” I ask.
“I shouldn’t have?”
It’s obviously illegal, but no more so than many of Sam’s other activities on my behalf. “I approve wholeheartedly. Who is the other guy he called that you were about to mention?”
“Tony Costa.”
“The Tony Costa I just read about?” I ask. Tony Costa was Angelo Mazzi’s right-hand man, before a bunch of bullets made Mazzi no longer require either right- or left-hand men. The paper said that Costa was one of the men arrested and held by the FBI.
“The very one,” Sam says. “He made a call to Costa on the day he died. Of course, I have no way to know what he said.”
“Sam, it took a while, but you came through.”
I’m going to want to talk to Thurmond, but I’m not sure that will come to anything. Gerry Wright was in the technology business, so dealing with a computer expert, even a convicted hacker, falls into the realm of the possibly legitimate.
But Wright talking to Tony Costa is far more significant, and more interesting to me. It connects Wright to organized crime, and organized crime is full of people that a jury could reasonably see as killers.
I want to talk to Costa, and I think I might have a way in.
“Cindy, great to hear your voice. How long has it been?” I’m calling Cindy Spodek, the second in command of the Boston office of the FBI. Cindy is a friend, more Laurie’s than mine, but she has helped me on a number of cases. She’d never admit it, but I’ve helped her as well.
“Well, let’s see,” she says. “The last time we talked was the last time you needed a favor. And the time before that was the last time you needed a favor before that. I could go back farther, but I think you see the pattern.”
“Then I’ve got to start needing more favors,” I say. “Because I really miss our little talks.”
“What do you need this time, Andy?”
“Don’t you want to chitchat first?”
“No. I speak to Laurie every week, so I know how she and Ricky are doing.”
“Does she talk about me much?” I ask.
“Less than you might think. I’m busy, Andy. Can we get to it?”
“Absolutely. You, meaning the FBI, are currently holding a guy named Tony Costa. He’s the right-hand man of the recently deceased Angelo Mazzi, and was apparently present when Mazzi was shot to death in the Bronx the other night.”
“I’m in Boston, Andy. This may come as a surprise, but the Bronx isn’t in the Boston territory. If it were Queens or Staten Island, I could help you.”
“I’m aware of all that. But my hope is that because of your vast influence within your organization, you can persuade your colleagues in the Bronx to get me in to talk to Costa.”
“Why would I, or they, for that matter, want to do that?”
“Because I’m going to bring down Dominic Petrone.”
“By talking to Costa?” she asks.
“It’s a piece of the puzzle. I can’t tell you more right now because it’s privileged,” I lie.
“People that we detain aren’t open to the public. We can’t have people just walk in and chat. And he wouldn’t have to talk to you if he didn’t want to.”
“He’ll talk to me. Just have them tell him I want to talk about Dominic Petrone.”
She sighs. I know she doesn’t want to get involved, but down deep she knows that our deals have proved beneficial in the past. Unfortunately, I have much less to bargain with this time. Fortunately, she doesn’t know that.
“The FBI is a large organization,” she says. “Isn’t there someone else you can bother with this stuff?”
“If there was, I would. And maybe they would even be properly grateful.”
“Sit tight,” she says. “I’ll get back to you.”
I’m not really sure how one “sits tight,” but I use the time to go through the information that Sam brought me. It’s mostly financial, and as Sam said, Gerry Wright was a rich man. I notice that all of his personal investments were with a particular hedge fund, and I’ve got a hunch that his trades went through his own company’s servers. He’s done well in the market, but not extraordinarily so.
Three hours after Cindy instructed me to sit tight, she calls back. “He’s being held in the federal jail in the Lower Manhattan courthouse. For some reason, he’s willing to talk to you.”
“I’m a good conversationalist.”
“Yeah,” she says. “A real treat. Be there at nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Cindy, believe it or not, I do appreciate this.”
“Show your appreciation by giving us Petrone. We want him badly.”
Her comment, and especially the tone of it, surprises me. “Why?” I ask.
“Because he’s a criminal. We like to catch criminals.”
“Oh.”
If you want to impress someone, but live in New Jersey … Okay, I get it. If your goal in choosing a place to live is to impress someone, then you wouldn’t be living in New Jersey at all. But if you did, then you’d do well to choose Harbor Towers.
It’s forty-one stories of modern elegance, sitting about a mile upriver along the coast from former Starlight technology head Jason Mathers’s apartment, with a view of New York that is every bit as good.
It’s the perfect location to get into the city or to the shopping malls in Paramus. And if some future governor of New Jersey again decides to close the George Washington Bridge to traffic, residents of Harbor Towers will once again have a great view of the whole thing.
You don’t just walk into a building like this; you have to pass muster with the doorman. This particular one doesn’t smile; his demeanor is that of a bouncer at the hottest nightclub in town. The people who live in this building are
better than the visitors, he reasons, and because he is their representative, he is also of a higher class.
I could have called ahead and asked Steven Thurmond to meet with me, but I always prefer not to give people that much lead time to prepare. I recognize I might not get past the doorman, but I figure I’ll give it a shot.
“I’m here to see Steven Thurmond.”
“He expecting you?”
“No. I’m here on a legal matter.”
“Is that right?” he asks. “You wouldn’t by any chance be the police, would you?”
It’s an interesting conversation starter, that’s for sure, and one to be pursued. “No, but I’m a lawyer, and I sure know a lot of cops.” I don’t mention the fact that except for Pete, they all despise me.
That seems to have made at least a modest impact; I can see him considering his options.
“Does Steven Thurmond have a lot of dealings with the police?” I ask.
“Not enough. Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Maybe. My name’s Andy Carpenter; you’ve probably seen me on television.” A number of my cases have been high profile, so I have been prominent in the media pretty often. It often can work in my favor to open doors, a timely benefit since I’m trying to get by a doorman.
“You think the police should be paying more attention to Steven Thurmond?” I ask. “Maybe I can help with that.”
“He throws loud parties, the neighbors complain. I call the cops, they talk to him, and nothing happens.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say, which is, of course, complete nonsense. But nonsense spouted by someone who is always on television can sometimes seem credible. If you don’t believe me, watch the Sunday-morning news shows.
“You want me to call up and tell him you’re here?” he asks.
“Actually, I’d rather take him by surprise.” I smile, but avoid winking. That would seem a bit over the top.
He returns the smile. “Twenty-six B,” he says.
“You sure? I don’t want you to get in trouble,” I say.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not the first time I’ve surprised him and sent up someone he doesn’t want to see. Just say I wasn’t here when you came by.”
“Nice not to see you again,” I say.
I take the elevator up to the twenty-sixth floor, and Thurmond’s apartment is the second farthest down on the left off the elevator. It’s not the corner apartment, but it’s close.
I ring the bell, expecting someone on the other side to warily ask who’s there. Since the process is usually for the doorman to ring up, I would think that unannounced visitors must be few and far between.
Instead the door just opens, and a man who couldn’t be more than thirty stands there, holding a half-eaten apple. He’s wearing either a sweat suit or pajamas; it’s hard to tell which. His hair is longish, and he’s got an earring in his left ear. This cannot be a guy with a connection to Dominic Petrone. He may not even have a connection to reality.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“My name is Andy Carpenter. I’m a lawyer, and I want to talk to you about a case I’m working on.”
He shrugs, apparently indifferent to the entire matter. “What kind of case? Come on in.”
I enter an apartment that will never be featured in Better Homes and Gardens magazine. It is a filthy mess; I’m a slob, and it makes my office look like a hospital operating room.
“You want anything to drink?” he asks. Without waiting for an answer, he points to what I assume is a couch buried under discarded clothing, and says, “Just sit anywhere.”
“No, thanks,” I say, which is an answer referring to both the drink and the seat. “How did you know Gerry Wright?”
The change in attitude is immediate; it’s as if someone went over him with an “indifference remover.”
“Who?”
“Gerry Wright.”
“I don’t know him.”
“That would have been a good answer if I had asked, ‘Do you know Gerry Wright?’ But what I asked is how you knew him. I already know that you did.”
“I helped him with some computer stuff,” he says, admitting in the process that he lied about saying he didn’t know him. If there is a God, he will let me cross-examine this person in front of a jury.
“What kind of computer stuff?” I ask. “And why you? He owned a company full of nerds that could have helped him.”
“I got nothing to say to you.”
“Does the name Dominic Petrone mean anything to you?”
He reacts, almost doing a double take, but simply repeats, “I got nothing to say to you.”
“You’re going to be talking to me in court anyway, so it might make sense to start now. You know, give you an idea of what you’re going to be faced with.”
“Why did the doorman let you in?”
“You have a doorman? Wow, ritzy building. You must have a really good job to afford an expensive place like this. Or maybe you get money from somewhere else.”
“Get outta here.”
“You’ve been in prison once, Steven. The way to avoid going back is to talk to me.”
He walks over and opens the door, just in case I hadn’t gotten the hint. But I had, so I smile my most winning smile and leave.
This is a solemn occasion, part of a decades-long passing of the torch. I am taking Ricky to a Giants game, the third one we have attended together this year. The season tickets have been in our family forever, and it seems like yesterday that my father was taking me. But, of course, it wasn’t yesterday. Not even close.
The first time I brought Ricky, he was dazzled by the entire experience. The massive crowd, the incredibly green field, the noise and intensity when an important play was about to take place … it literally left him openmouthed in amazement.
But now he’s an old-timer, and it’s much more about the game than the experience. He’s become a passionate Giants fan and, like the rest of us, dedicated to their success but intolerant of their failures. They are one and one in the two games he’s attended, so he’s already experienced both.
Since Barry Leonard and Pete have my regular seats, I’ve purchased tickets on the open market. We’re on the thirty yard line instead of the forty-five, but Ricky seems fine with the new location. It’s a four o’clock start, so it’s going to be quite cold by the time we get to evening, and we’ve dressed warmly.
The Giants are playing the Eagles, a team I would have trouble rooting for if they were playing Al Qaeda. Pretty much the nicest thing I can say about the Eagles is that they are not as evil as the Cowboys.
“You think we’re going to win?” Ricky asks, once we’re settled in our seats.
“Absolutely.”
“What’s the spread?”
I cringe at the question; I have created a nine-year-old bookie. I can say that I don’t know the answer, but he’ll know I’m lying. “Giants by two and a half,” I say.
He nods wisely. “It’s a lock.”
Unfortunately, he forgot to clear his lock prediction with Eli Manning, who throws two interceptions, both of which the Eagles capitalize on. At the half the Giants are down twenty-one to ten, still within range but with a pretty big hill to climb.
Ricky and I head to the concession stands to get sustenance for the second half ahead. We’re both going to get hot chocolate, while he has chicken fingers and I have a hamburger.
My seats are in the club section, which has its own private concession stands, but today’s seats are not, so we find ourselves on a line at least ten people deep. Ricky wants to go back to the seats himself so as not to miss the start of the second half, but there’s no way I’m letting him out of my sight.
“Looks like a long day, huh?”
I don’t recognize the voice, so I look back and see that the man behind us is talking to me. He’s at least six three and two hundred and forty pounds, and looks to be in great shape. The Giants could have used him at middle linebacker in the
first half.
“So far,” I say.
“Your son a Giants fan?”
Something about the way he says it gives me a bit of the creeps, which is somehow enhanced when I notice that he’s not alone, and that he is standing with a friend who is at least as large as he is, though not as well proportioned.
“We both are,” I say, and look away, hoping to end the conversation. My instincts are alerting me to a problem, and I generally like to trust them.
“Hopefully you can both be Giants fans for a long time. All you got to do is make sure you don’t bother the wrong people.”
I now have no doubt this was not a chance meeting, and my hand protectively goes on Ricky’s shoulder. “I’ll take that into consideration,” I say, and turn away as he replies, “You do that. You better do that.”
It takes about five minutes to reach the front of the line, though it seems like five hours. I’m in a bit of a panic here; I think it has just been a warning to deter my future actions, but I can’t be positive.
We reach the front of the line and place our order. The guy behind me has been talking to his friend about how we’re ignoring him, in the process mocking my fear. I take my phone out, and get it ready. When we get our food, I wait a moment, leaving the tray on the counter. I turn and raise the phone. “Smile,” I say, and snap a picture of the guy who has been talking to me.
“What the…” he starts to say, but I grab the food and usher Ricky back to our seats. It’s not easy to get there, because my legs are shaking.
Once we get to the seats, I call Laurie and describe everything that has just taken place. I have to talk softly, so that Ricky can’t hear me, and I have to pause occasionally when the crowd cheers and makes communication impossible.
After I’ve told her everything I can remember, I say, “I could be wrong about this, but I really don’t think so.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “We have to assume you’re right.”
“Should we leave now?”
Outfoxed Page 9