“The white drone,” one of them said. “Is it carrying a bomb?”
“No,” Kylie said. “Stolen money. Did you see where it went?”
“It flew under this overhang and disappeared,” the cop said.
“Find it,” Kylie barked at the growing cadre of men and women in uniform.
The lot of us stampeded down the steps into the massive underground catacomb that sits below Madison Square Garden. Unlike its east side sister, Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station is devoid of charm. Its main claim to fame is its capacity.
I looked up at the departures board. Trains were coming and going minutes apart. Over half a million passengers a day pass through the vast space, tens of thousands of them with rolling suitcases, any one of which could have contained the UAV and the ransom money.
“Detective,” our eyewitness cop said, “I saw that drone fly in here, and I know for sure it didn’t fly out. It’s got to be somewhere inside the station.”
“Somewhere inside the station,” Kylie said, looking at me. “That’s good news. Now all we have to do is find something the size of a couple of coat hangers inside the biggest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.”
CHAPTER 36
Success has many fathers. When a police action goes down perfectly, there’s never a shortage of people ready to take credit for it. That’s why there’s always a crowd of high-ranking cops standing behind the podium when the PC holds a press conference announcing the department’s latest triumph over crime.
Failure, on the other hand, is an orphan, and the top brass is notorious for pointing fingers and assigning blame.
One of the things that makes Delia Cates a great boss is her willingness to stand back-to-back with her team—even when the wheels come flying off the wagon.
She was at her computer when we got to her office. The door was open, and Kylie rapped on the glass. “Captain, can we have—”
“Sit down,” Cates said without looking up from the keyboard. “I’m just answering my fan mail. It’s amazing how my inbox fills up when a hundred thousand dollars of the DA’s money flies off into the sunset.”
“Ma’am, you don’t have to fall on your sword for us,” Kylie said. “We lost the money and the perp. We’ll take the heat.”
Cates lifted her head up. “MacDonald, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m black, I’m a woman, and I’m on the fast track. I don’t have to fall on swords. There are plenty of white men in white shirts who are happy to throw me on the nearest one if they think it will help a horse they have in the race.”
She slid the keyboard tray under her desktop. “Besides, as the DA’s latest email just reminded me, I’m the one who called, asked for the money, and practically promised him we’d all live happily ever after.”
“How did you respond?”
“My first draft said, ‘Dear Mick, Shit happens.’ The version I ultimately sent said the same thing, but it benefited from time well spent during my youth in the writing program at Columbia.”
“Have you heard from the chief of d’s or the PC?” Kylie asked.
“All of the above and many of those below. Listen to me, MacDonald: Running a high-profile squad is like coaching in the Super Bowl. Everybody is rooting for you until you make one bonehead play. I can go from deep shit to high glory overnight, then back to the crapper before lunch. But that’s my job. Yours is to catch bad guys. So stop asking about the politics and start clearing cases.”
“That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We need your approval to put Troy Marschand and Dylan Freemont on round-the-clock surveillance.”
“And who are they?”
“Marschand was Aubrey Davenport’s assistant. Mr. Freemont is his fiancé.”
“What do you have on them?”
“Nothing yet,” I said. “Marschand has been very helpful. If you remember, Aubrey Davenport’s computer was missing, and he’s the one who retrieved her files from—”
Cates held up a hand. “I remember the missing computer all too well, Jordan. Catch the blackmailer; find the computer. We all know how that worked out. Get to the part where you explain why you want to tail these two men.”
“The day we met Troy Marschand he told us that Aubrey was obsessed with two things: sex and filmmaking. When he retrieved her files from the cloud, we figured there’d be dozens of explicit videos, but it was all vanilla. Naked selfies between her and Janek don’t exactly qualify as an obsession with sex and filmmaking.”
“What about Aubrey’s romp with the judge?” Cates said. “I’d say that qualifies.”
“Yes, ma’am, but we got that video from Q. There were no sex films in any of the files Marschand gave us.”
Cates sat back in her chair, and I could see the realization spread across her face. “Then how did Mr. Marschand even know that these dirty movies existed?” she said.
“That’s the lightbulb that just went off in our heads. We think Marschand and Freemont got hold of Aubrey’s computer and decided to go into the blackmail business.”
“They could be a lot more than blackmailers,” Cates said. “Do they have an alibi for the night of the murder?”
I responded with half a shrug. “We…um…we never asked.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Captain, you saw the photos from Roosevelt Island,” Kylie said, jumping in. “It was a sex crime. Chuck Dryden, who almost never goes out on a limb without hard evidence, said that the killer was ‘most likely a man.’ I guess we made the natural logic leap to heterosexual man.”
“So you profiled them,” Cates said, “and you decided that being gay was an alibi.”
“Not our finest moment,” Kylie said. “But in our defense, it was the end of a grueling night that started out with a bomb blast and went downhill from there.”
“If you’re right,” Cates said, “and the blackmail scheme was a crime of opportunity, then it makes sense that Marschand and Freemont are the opportunists who pulled it off. They’ve already had one major score, and since the judge probably isn’t the only one caught on camera with his pants down, they’ll probably go after the other potential blackmail targets next.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kylie said. “So can you approve a budget to tail them?”
“I’ll pay for the manpower,” Cates said. “But it doesn’t warrant round-the-clock. One team, twelve hours a day. And when the ransom demands come in, don’t ask me for another nickel. After what went down this morning, if you told me the perp was in Jersey, I wouldn’t pay your tolls for the trip over the George Washington Bridge.”
CHAPTER 37
As soon as Kylie and I broke the news to Corcoran and Fischer that they were the designated hitters to shadow the two suspects in the drone heist, we were able to pick up where we’d left off after our predawn meeting with Malique La Grande.
Thirty minutes later, we walked into the lobby of a forty-story green glass tower on Maiden Lane in the financial district.
“You know what I hate about this job?” Kylie asked as we stepped into an elevator.
“I’m sure you’ve got a list,” I said. “But since we’re only going to the twelfth floor, how about you just give me your bitch du jour?”
“Ass-kissing,” she said as soon as the elevator door closed.
“Can you elaborate?”
“Nathan Hirsch came to us with his big confession about running drugs for Zoe Pound, but he left out the most important part,” she said. “I mean, why tell us the whole truth when all he wanted us to do was arrest Malique?”
“The guy is a slimeball with a wife and kids in Queens and a hooker on call in Jersey,” I said. “Are you surprised that he lied to you?”
“No. They all lie, Zach. But if Hirsch were a run-of-the-mill asshole, we’d drag him into an interview room and scare the crap out of him. But since he’s a privileged asshole, we’re heading upstairs to his office, and we’ve got to smile politely, pucker up, and kiss his butt while he keeps lying to us.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” she said. “I’ll give it a shot. Let me do the talking.”
The elevator door opened on twelve. There were five names on the wall, one of which was Hirsch’s.
We went through the standard meet and greet with the receptionist. No, we didn’t have an appointment, but tell Mr. Hirsch that Detectives Jordan and MacDonald are here, and we’re sure he’ll find the time.
In less than a minute, we were sitting in Hirsch’s office, where the familiar aroma of cigar smoke and flop sweat permeated the air.
“Did you arrest La Grande?” he asked.
“He said he didn’t do it,” Kylie said.
“There’s a shocker,” Hirsch said. “A drug dealer who lies to the cops.”
“Was he lying about Geraldo Segura?” she snapped, neither smiling nor puckering up.
“Is that why you’re here?” he said, raising his voice. “La Grande told you about Segura, and I didn’t, so you’ve come to the erroneous conclusion that I have something to hide.”
“Do you?”
“No. But the fact that Segura is in prison is irrelevant.”
“Not to us,” Kylie said. “According to La Grande, Segura was innocent. You brought him along to take the fall if the drug run went south.”
“I brought him along?” Hirsch said, his fists clenched, his face turning red. “The entire operation, start to finish, was Princeton’s. He set up the deal with Dingo, he provided the plane, and the rest of us didn’t even know Segura was coming along for the ride until he showed up at the hangar. I was a kid, I was stoned half the time, and if Segura was set up to take the fall, blame Princeton Wells. He was the mastermind.”
“And what if Segura doesn’t know that?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“What if he blames all four of you? Wouldn’t that make him a prime suspect?”
“No. It makes him someone who might want to kill us, not someone who can actually pull off the bombings. In case you forgot, Detective, Geraldo Segura is serving fifty years in a prison in Thailand.”
“You know who else is doing time in a prison in Thailand?” Kylie said. “The man who designed the bombs that killed Del Fairfax and Arnie Zimmer.”
Hirsch sat there, mouth open, head cocked, eyes squinting. “What…what do you mean?”
“Bombs have signatures,” she said. “The ones that killed your partners are the handiwork of a man named Flynn Samuels, who is also locked up in Thailand, and who may have taught Segura the tricks of his trade.”
Hirsch’s pasty-white face turned an even ghostlier shade of pale. “But…but Geraldo is in prison.”
“That might slow him down, but it won’t stop him. If Geraldo Segura has the motive and the method, the only thing he would need to actually pull off the bombings is an accomplice in New York.”
“Like who?”
“We don’t think his grandmother infiltrated The Pierre hotel, but you’d be amazed at the kind of freelance talent that’s available for the right price.”
“Segura is dirt-poor, and his family…” Hirsch stopped. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Silver Bullet has been sending the grandmother money. It was Princeton’s idea. He told her it was a privilege to be able to help Geraldo’s family, but in reality, it’s just blood money.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand a year…for the past twenty years.”
“So let’s see,” Kylie said. “Fifty thousand times twenty—wow, you better hope that Granny isn’t the vindictive type. Because a million dollars would buy her a hell of a lot of firepower.” She nodded to me. “Let’s go, Zach.”
“Wait!” Hirsch said. “What do I do?”
Kylie handed him her business card. “Call us if you think of something. We can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.”
She turned, and the two of us left his office and walked to the elevator.
“So how’d I do?” she said.
“A refresher course in sensitivity training couldn’t hurt,” I said, “but one thing’s for sure: Nathan Hirsch is never going to lie to you again.”
CHAPTER 38
Even with light traffic on the FDR Drive it took us more than half an hour to get to Princeton Wells’s mansion on Central Park West.
“You realize he knows we’re coming,” Kylie said. “Hirsch probably called him the minute we left, so he’s had more than enough time to rehearse his answers.”
“Since when do people need time to rehearse the truth?” I said, ringing the front doorbell.
“Since when have any of these people been remotely truthful?”
I could see that Wells had a change in attitude as soon as he opened the door. The preppy billionaire was wearing jeans, a faded work shirt, a perfectly wrinkled hunter-green cashmere V-neck sweater, and bright red Nikes. But not a trace of a smile.
“I spoke to Nathan,” he grumbled, leading us up the stairs to his office. “He’s out of his mind.”
“Understandable,” I said. “He’s afraid he’s next on the killer’s hit list.”
“I didn’t say he’s out of his mind with fear,” Wells snapped. “I’m saying the man is out of his fucking mind. What was he thinking, sending you off to accuse Malique La Grande of those murders?”
“You don’t think Malique is responsible?”
We entered Wells’s office. “No,” he said, slamming the door shut. “I have no doubt that if Malique were in charge twenty years ago, he’d have killed us all. Luckily for us, Dingo called the shots. But I knew Dingo wouldn’t be around forever, so I reached out to Malique—quietly, privately—and over time we reached a peaceful accord. A détente, if you will.”
“So are we talking about a handshake agreement here?” Kylie asked.
Wells finally cracked a faint smile. “I didn’t so much shake his hand as grease his palm. Regularly.”
“You pay him not to kill you.”
“It’s basic street economics—the same as the local pizza parlor paying the mob for protection. It was an insurance policy in case Malique ever got to be the boss.”
“And now that he is, do you think he kept his word?” I asked.
“Yes. I don’t think he killed Arnie or Del, but now that Nathan has gone and sicced the cops on him, I hope he doesn’t go off the deep end and kill us for lack of respect. The Zoes are bad to the bone. They don’t resolve problems. They eliminate them. Malique’s son killed a total stranger in a bar just for looking at him funny.”
“Tell us about your friend Geraldo Segura,” Kylie said.
“Friend,” Wells said, spitting out the word. “More like a hustler, but none of us knew it at the time. He was the scrappy little scholarship kid from El Barrio, and we were the hot shit Upper East Side rich kids. You’d think that he’d idolize us—that he’d want what we had—but that’s not the way it played out. It wasn’t long before we all wanted to be him.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you’re nineteen, being rich and white with your future all planned out for you is like a death sentence. Geraldo lived on the edge. He was a street fighter, fast on his feet, and even faster with his fists. The girls loved him. When he was fifteen he was banging this eighteen-year-old, and her two brothers jumped him. They both wound up eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner through a straw for the better part of a year.”
“And you wanted to be him?” I said.
He nodded. “I’m guessing you were never a big fan of gangsta rap, were you, Detective?”
“Not my kind of music,” I said.
“It was mine—N.W.A., Tupac, Wu-Tang. It’s about struggling against life in the ghetto, and I identified. Geraldo and I just came from different ghettos.”
“Tell us about the drug run for Dingo Slide,” I said.
“We were coming up on Ch
ristmas break. I told Geraldo we were going to Bangkok on my father’s plane and asked if he wanted to come along. He said no. I said we’re gonna get drunk, we’re gonna get stoned, we’re gonna get laid, and he said, ‘Me too, and I don’t have to go halfway around the world to do it.’ The next day, he went from no to maybe. He knew Dingo was our dealer, and he told us he knew how we could get three, four months’ supply of coke free. All we had to do was bring back a small package from Thailand.”
“And you knew what was in the package.”
“Hell, yeah. That’s what made it exciting. I wouldn’t pick up somebody’s laundry for free cocaine. But smuggling heroin from Thailand? Do you have any idea what kind of a rush that was?”
“Malique said you’re the one who cut the deal with Dingo.”
“Dingo knew me. I was a good customer. I guess he trusted me as much as any Haitian drug lord can trust a rich white kid. It was all Geraldo’s idea, but I got to be the front man. I loved it.”
“How come he’s in prison, and you’re not?”
“My father paid the Thais a fortune to let us go. But they would only release four of us. They needed someone to stay behind. It’s their perverted way of showing their justice system works. The last thing I did before I left Geraldo was make a promise that we’d take care of his family. We have.”
“Did Nathan Hirsch tell you that Segura may have crossed paths with the man who designed the bombs?”
“Yes, but Nathan is an idiot if he thinks Geraldo’s abuela is funding these bombings.”
“Can you think of anyone here in the States who might be acting on his behalf?”
“No, but I’m not the right person to ask.”
“Who is?”
“Geraldo Segura.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Bullshit. Two of my partners are dead, and I’m starting to believe Nathan that he and I are next on the list. So do me a favor: get your glorified supercop asses on the next plane to Bangkok, and keep that from happening.”
“I don’t know what that would cost,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure the department isn’t going to shell out the kind of money it would take to fly us to Thailand.”
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