It wasn’t clear to either Mike or Jason whether the former Mrs. DiVito was directing a question to them, so both of them left it alone. Mike decided to try to steer the conversation in a different direction. “So, Mrs. Rosen, what brings you and your husband here tonight for the ball?”
“My Allan is a big supporter. Allan is in the hedge fund business, which I don’t really understand, but he makes a boatload of money and he’s on the mayor’s committee for public housing. So he’s helping to do good things for the city and he’s always hanging out with the mayor and his boys. So, tonight I get to come along, which is so fun, don’t you think so?” Her voice reached a pitch at the end of her question so high that Mike worried that the crystal would shatter.
“That’s great. Really. Great.” Mike reached out for Mr. Rosen to shake his hand again, catching the man by surprise. “Very glad to have you as a benefactor for the city, Sir. You really have found an extraordinary woman here,” Mike motioned toward his wife, who had stopped talking momentarily and was now taking a large drink from a champagne glass that had materialized from some unknown waiter’s tray.
“Yes. Certainly. I’m a very lucky man.” Mr. Rosen said, raising an eyebrow.
“I can only imagine,” Mike replied. “Or maybe I can’t even begin to imagine.” The two men exchanged a chuckle. “I hope that you enjoy your evening.” Mike turned away from the Rosens and tried to rejoin the conversation that Michelle was still having with the film director. Before he could interject himself into that discussion, another hand reached out toward him and a deep voice called out.
“Detective Stoneman! Glad I found you.” The voice, and the extended hand, belonged to someone Mike actually recognized. Keith Harris was an Assistant District Attorney, with whom Mike had worked on several murder prosecutions over the years. Harris was about Mike’s age and had made a career out of being a prosecutor, which Mike respected. So many ADAs did their time in public service and then moved on either to higher political office or into the private legal sector, where they traded on their contacts within the criminal justice machine to get a big payday. Mike didn’t begrudge the people who cashed in after years of working on a public servant’s salary and getting little if any thanks for their hard work. But he had a special admiration for the guys like Harris who stayed put doing the important work of prosecuting criminals and directing the younger attorneys. Harris was definitely one of the good guys, in Mike’s view.
“Harris, nice to see you here!” Mike called out warmly, and not just because it gave him a diversion from the assault by the former Mrs. DiVito. Mike always referred to the ADA as “Harris.” Never Keith. It was just one of those things that grew up between them. Harris was wearing a very nice blue business suit, one of the few men in the room not decked out in a tux. He was comfortable with himself and his position and was not there to impress anyone. Mike wished he had made the same wardrobe choice.
“I didn’t want to miss you having to make a speech after everyone tells you what a big hero you are.”
Mike turned a little pale at the mention of the speech. He taught classes of cops all the time, but getting in front of the microphone tonight was not something he looked forward to. He didn’t like talking about himself. “Thanks for reminding me,” Mike said sarcastically. “Maybe I can appoint you my spokesperson for the night. Are you up for it?”
“Not me,” Harris responded quickly. “It’s your party. I’m just here for the free booze. So, is it true that you’re back in the saddle?”
“Yeah. I’m back working with Dickson.”
“Any more serial killers on your radar?”
“Not exactly,” Mike responded. This caught the ADA’s interest and he pressed Mike for details. Mike gave him a quick summary of the Christine Barker case, happy to talk shop for a few minutes. They stepped away to an alcove under a huge oil painting and Mike said that they were not getting much help from the Vice guys. Harris was intrigued and suggested that Mike talk to one of his assistants, who had a case involving a Vice task force in Brooklyn. Mike agreed that it was worth a call and told Harris to have his guy give Mike a ring.
As Harris walked away, Mike saw that Michelle was no longer talking to Robert Zemeckis, who was nowhere to be seen. Mike headed back toward her, but he was intercepted by New York Times reporter Dexter Peacock. “Detective Stoneman – Mike – can you tell me what case you were discussing with District Attorney Harris?” Peacock was wearing a standard tux. Without his usual brown tweed jacket and derby hat, Mike hardly recognized him.
“Do you just skulk about all the time waiting to eavesdrop on people?”
“Not at all, Detective. I’m here covering the gala and I just happened to be walking by. It looked like you two were having a private discussion, which means you were probably talking about a case. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.”
“Congratulations,” Mike said sarcastically. “Now, since you already know it’s private, what makes you think that I would tell you about it?”
“Because we have a special bond,” the reporter responded without any hint of irony or humor.
“Well, I’m glad you feel that way, Mister Peacock, but I must decline in this instance. When I have something public to say, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” the reporter called out as Mike walked away.
After making it back to the little table and reuniting with Michelle, Jason, and Rachel, Mike managed to accept congratulations and good wishes from a dozen more gala-goers with good-natured smiles and genuine thanks. No more Hollywood stars wandered by their table, but just before everyone was ushered out of the hall (which turned out to be only the pre-event reception area) Mike and Jason got a visit from their host.
Frederick Douglass was the second Black mayor of New York, and he was determined to leave his mark on the city. He had initiated plans for an overhaul of the public housing system, thrown support for a significant increase in the minimum wage, advocated for many other programs to aid poor and underprivileged citizens, and had only barely disguised ambitions for higher office. The Hero’s Ball was not only an opportunity to honor New Yorkers whose contributions to public welfare were laudable, it was also a fundraiser for the mayor’s pet programs, a time to make political connections, and a chance to see and be seen. The mayor’s public relations office invited not only the big papers but also the gossip columnists, entertainment networks, and fringe internet publications.
When he walked over to Mike’s and Jason’s table, the mayor was accompanied by an entourage of people, including Police Commissioner Earl Ward. Ward was his usual dapper self, sporting a European-styled all-black tux with a silk vest. There were also two photographers and several members of the press orbiting around the mayor.
“Detective Mike Stoneman,” Douglass said, somehow still keeping the focus on himself.
Mike stepped forward and shook the mayor’s hand, then stepped aside so that Jason could do the same. The flashes from the cameras were significantly brighter during this encounter, as the mayor threw an arm around the taller detective and mugged for the photographers. It was a rare chance for him to be seen in a tux along with a similarly dressed, Black, hero cop. His PR people salivated at the prospects for such pictures to appear in the New York papers and on the 11:00 news. The mayor said a few words praising Dickson and Stoneman, although Mike could not hear most of them. After a quick wave good-bye, the mayor and his procession continued to the next table of guests.
Later, when it was time to recognize the guests of honor, local weather man and master-of-ceremonies Irv Gikofsky, better known as “Mr. G,” introduced Mike and Jason together. He praised the “hero cops” who had doggedly investigated the case of the Righteous Assassin, and brought the now infamous Ronald Randall to justice, preventing more murders in the Big Apple. Mike was happy to let Jason take the microphone to express his thanks to the mayor and the commissioner, and to praise the efforts of all the off
icers and other detectives who helped in the investigation. When Jason stepped aside, Mike was able to add his thanks to the FBI and Special Agent Angela Manning, who was the Bureau’s key resource during the four months that their joint task force had tracked the elusive killer. With that, Mr. G. stepped in, shook their hands again, and proceeded to the next award recipient’s introduction.
Mike and Jason walked down from the improvised stage, waving at the photographers and carrying their medals in decorative red-and-black cases. Michelle and Rachel met them at their front table with kisses and hugs. Rachel insisted on one more group selfie with the newly-minted heroes and their medals. Mike exhaled and relaxed for the first time all evening.
Later, as they were sharing a cab, Rachel pulled out her cell phone to show Michelle all the photos she took during the ball. When she got to the selfie she had taken of the four of them during the cocktail hour, Michelle asked to see the phone. “Look,” she said, pointing to the background of the photo, “I think that’s Robert DeNiro.” They all looked and all agreed that it was, in fact, the actor.
“You see,” Rachel beamed, “you never know what you might get if you take enough pictures.”
Chapter 33 – New Directions
Monday, April 1
ON MONDAY, AFTER MIKE FINISHED UP his “Physical Torture,” he and Jason went to meet with Keith Harris and his colleague, David Zimmerman, at the district attorney’s office downtown. They left Lucas back at Internal Affairs, since there was no particular reason the DA should know that IA was involved. Zimmerman was a bookish-looking lawyer with a thin, wiry frame, steel-rimmed glasses, and tussled black hair. He was wearing a drab, dark suit with a thin black tie and a white shirt. Jason thought he looked like a wannabe extra from a Men in Black movie. But once they started talking, they discovered that his unassuming appearance masked a fiery prosecutor.
Zimmerman explained that he had a case that was connected to a team of NYPD Vice cops in Brooklyn. They had been trying to gather evidence on an organized prostitution operation run by Robert Sawyer, who was connected to the Gallata crime family. The investigation had been derailed after Sawyer and Slick Mick Gallata were murdered. But after Fat Albert Gallata took over the organization, the sex ring was back in business.
“You can’t keep a business down when they have a product that people want to buy,” Jason observed.
“You got that right,” Zimmerman agreed in his Long Island accent. “The case that bothers me involved a woman we prosecuted in November. She was picked up for solicitation and drug possession. She resisted arrest and slashed a cop with a knife, so she got booked on assault, too. She told us the men who ran the sex business told the girls that if they got out of line or tried to run away, they would turn them over to the cops and have them sent to prison. She said that the bosses were not afraid of the cops. Of course, she didn’t have a lot of credibility. So, we tried to see if we could get her to identify the bosses, but she refused to name names or wear a wire unless she got a deal.”
“That sounds pretty standard,” Mike said.
“Yeah. You would think. We were ready to cut the deal and send her back in with a spy cam hidden in her purse, but the cops on the task force didn’t want to work with her. They said she was unreliable and too strung out to be a good witness. The cop who was slashed insisted on pressing his charges and demanded that she do some serious time. It didn’t make much sense to me, but our hands were tied. We were ready to run it up the chain of command to see if somebody higher up would overrule the boys on the task force. But before we could do it, our witness got herself killed in Riker’s Island.”
“Really?” Mike said. “What was the cause of death?”
“She was supposed to be in isolation, but they sent her to shower and there were some other detainees there. There was only one female guard, apparently. There was a fight, and our witness ended up with her skull split open. There’s no video in the shower, of course.”
“Do we think it was a setup?” Jason asked.
“It’s quite a coincidence. We tried looking into it. There were a few different guards and shift supervisors who could have been involved, but regardless of that, our potential witness was toast.”
“It’s certainly possible that there might have been cops involved,” Mike suggested. “Cops who had a motive to protect the scumbags running a prostitution ring. Cops who would have access to inside police information. Have you shared this with Internal Affairs?”
“We did,” Zimmerman said, “but they didn’t seem very interested in a hooker arrested for assaulting an officer who kicked it before she could go to prison.”
“Tell me, who was the head of the Vice task force involved in this situation?”
“A lieutenant named Magnan. He’s been around since the Pilgrims. I spoke with him a bunch of times and he seemed to be fully in charge. I never seemed to tell him anything he didn’t already know. I have no reason not to trust him, but I have to tell you, Detective, I don’t trust him.”
“I think I know someone in IA who might be interested,” Mike said, looking at Jason, who gave him a silent nod.
Ж Ж Ж
Mike and Jason stopped in at Internal Affairs to brief Lucas on their discussion with ADA Zimmerman. It turned out that he had news as well. After much digging, Lucas had tracked down the security video from the precinct in Brooklyn where Connie Sykes had been interrogated by the mysterious Darren Curran. The archive had been deleted.
“I thought they retained those tapes for six months,” Mike said.
“They’re supposed to,” Lucas agreed. “But the tape for September was apparently used to record the video for last month, instead of being saved until April. It’s a clerical mistake. Nothing suspicious, right?”
“Like Hell,” Jason exclaimed. “I don’t believe in those kinds of coincidences.”
“Regardless,” Mike said, “if it’s gone, then it’s gone. We can speculate all day about what the tape would have shown and who might have arranged for it to disappear, but it won’t help us.”
“If I were a corrupt cop,” Lucas mused, “I would cover my tracks.”
“But if the guy was using a false identity, why worry about the security tape?” Jason tossed the question out.
“Because he’s very careful,” Mike responded, “or because he’s feeling some heat.”
Lucas stood up and pressed both palms onto the conference table around which they were all sitting. “If these guys are that aware and that paranoid, they are going to be very hard to catch.”
Ж Ж Ж
That evening, during dinner, Michelle said that she had an idea about their suspect, Ricky the Runner. Mike and Jason had been trying to track him down using conventional methods, but without success. They were able to rule out all but one of the known Richard Spezios with New York roots based on their driver’s license photos and their birth dates. The one remaining Richard Spezio did not seem to have a driver’s license, which was not entirely unusual for residents of New York City. He had two credit cards, but neither one had been used in the past year and both were listed with a P.O. Box as the billing address, which was consistent with somebody who was living off the grid. They had a social security number, but he had not filed any taxes, ever, and had no current employer they could track down based on tax withholdings. There were no images of him on the internet that they could find. They continued to work other city records, but had been striking out. The unknown Ricky had no criminal record. Jason joked that he must have outrun all the officers trying to bust him.
“I told Rachel about the runner, and she asked whether you had checked the NYC Runners website.”
“What’s that going to tell us?”
“Well, Rachel runs in all the big New York City races – the 10Ks and half-marathons and whatnot. She even ran the NYC Marathon last year. She’s a wonder. But anyway, those races are organized mostly by the NYC Runners. They keep track of all the names of the runners, and they take photos
of all the runners when they cross the finish line.” Michelle watched as Mike absorbed this information and a spark of recognition passed over his face.
“So we could ask the running organizers to share the names and photos.”
“You don’t even need to ask, it’s all on their website.” Michelle beamed with satisfaction for being able to give Mike an idea he had not thought of.
“OK. We can look for his photo, assuming that he hasn’t been running in a disguise. Do you think he used his real name?”
“You never know.”
Mike paused to take a bite of his pasta primavera. “Could it be possible for us to wait for him to cross the finish line of a race and arrest him?”
“Why not? The New York Half-Marathon is coming up next Sunday. If the guy is a real runner, he’ll be running that one.”
“It’s certainly worth looking into. Tell Rachel that I’m very grateful for the suggestion.”
“Oh, I will certainly tell her,” Michelle smiled. “I think that she’ll be giving the same suggestion directly to Jason.”
“Really?” Mike said, raising an eyebrow. “Are they seeing each other tonight?”
“She said that they had a date planned. I’m really hoping that they get together. She’s such a great woman and I think they’d be really good together.”
“Are you sure you want that responsibility?”
“Just call me a Yenta,” Michelle said with a smirk.
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