by A. C. Fuller
“Didn’t you hear? Looks like that murder has been solved.”
“The dead guy on the roof?”
“So you did hear.”
“Sure, but…” She trailed off, eyebrows raised, inviting him to share her skepticism.
Goldberg considered, then leaned across the desk so their faces were only a couple feet apart. “Don’t know if this is out there yet,” he whispered conspiratorially, “but I’m hearing it was a crazy leftist. Meyers was Target-1 for the far left’s hatred of so-called ‘Corporate Dems.’ If you could kill a guy with Reddit and Twitter memes, Meyers would have been dead years ago. He sat on the boards of an oil company, a bank, and a private prison company.”
“I know all that.” Cole shook her head tightly. “But…”
“Far left hated him,” Goldberg continued. “Turned him into the symbol for everything wrong with the Democratic Party. Not a shock some nutjob went too far.” He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head. “Ask me, the far left and far right have gone—and I mean this literally—totally insane because of social media. Leaves guys like me—the guys who do the deals that actually keep this country running—wondering what the hell is going on in the world.”
“Where are you getting that? The far left stuff?”
“Can’t say because it’s a client, but it’ll likely be out soon. Hold on, I heard it would break this morning.”
He worked on his phone briefly, then passed it to Cole, who leaned toward Warren so he could read with her. “Just broke on Buzzfeed,” Goldberg said. “Not a surprise. They’re usually first on these stories that dig through a killer’s old social media posts.”
According to the report, the shooter had been identified as Baker Johnston, a former school teacher who’d been fired for refusing to make his students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in class. Screenshots of his social media accounts showed him ripping Meyers and other Democrats for caving to corporate interests.
“From Twitter it’ll filter up to the networks,” Goldberg said. “Looks like you and your research assistant”—he shot Warren a quick look—“wasted a trip to D.C.”
Cole glanced at Warren, wondering whether he believed the article, but his face was expressionless. “Can you connect me with anyone on Meyers’ staff?” she asked.
Still leaning back in his chair, Goldberg closed his eyes, then opened them. “No, but it just occurred to me why you’re here. Raj Ambani. You think there’s a connection.”
“We…” Cole faltered.
“Couple days after you get involved in the Ambani and Michael Wragg thing you show up in D.C? I feel a little insulted. Did you always think I was stupid?”
She regained her composure. “It’s my job to think there might be a connection, but it’s just a hunch. Sounds like the guy who killed Meyers was a lone nut.” She didn’t believe it, but it wasn’t a good idea to press Goldberg. The view of the White House from her seat was no accident. He’d set his office up to impress and intimidate guests—to show them he was connected, had power in this town, and that they were out of their league. She shifted gears. “I wonder if you can help with something else.”
“Will if I can.”
“You work with the DOD sometimes, right?”
He nodded.
“You know anyone who knows about military records, emails, how communications work from troops stationed overseas?”
“That’s…kinda out of left field. Never thought about it, but yeah, I’m sure I know people who know about that. Hell, I helped get votes for the ninety-billion-dollar spending bill that upgraded the communications equipment of the entire military two years ago. But what are you getting at? Something about Matt?”
He lowered his voice when he said her husband’s name, trying to sound compassionate, mournful. It unnerved her that he’d guessed what she was driving at so quickly, and there was no way she would share that Michael Wragg knew about her husband’s pet name for her. “It’s nothing. I lost all the emails from an old account. The one Matt used to email me. Was hoping they were still on a server somewhere and…never mind. We’ve taken enough of your time.”
Goldberg leaned toward them. “You guys want to know a D.C. secret?”
Cole looked at Warren, who nodded.
“Well, you know the Watergate is famous for the DNC break-in that brought Nixon down. Most people don’t know, though, that Nixon was set up by the Bushes.”
“C’mon,” Warren said.
“Seriously. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Bushes were some shady folks. And a lot better at politics than Nixon. George Senior didn’t get to be head of the CIA by accident. Don’t get me wrong, Nixon was guilty, but the only reason we know about it was because the Bushes made it happen, leaked it. Forty-five years later and we all get to sleep at night telling ourselves the fairy tale of two dogged reporters—Woodward and Bernstein—bringing down a president.”
Cole felt a knot in her stomach. Woodward and Bernstein had been heroes of hers since J-School. “Why are you telling us this?”
“No reason.” He smiled strangely. “Cole, how about a drink tonight? I’m sorry I can’t help you more on Meyers, but let me buy you a drink and teach you more about D.C.”
“Find out whether emails from deceased military personnel are available somewhere, and how I’d go about getting them. Do that, and I’ll have a drink with you.”
Warren frowned.
Goldberg stood. “Consider it done. I’ll text you later.”
14
The first snowflakes drifted to the ground as they walked the circular path around the statue in the center of Farragut Square. “It’s supposed to be a few inches by the end of the day,” Cole said.
“How’d you know?”
Cole turned her phone towards him, open to the weather app.
“Let’s get somewhere warm.”
They crossed the square and Cole bought them coffees while Warren secured a table in the back of a crowded café. When she joined him, Warren was reading something on his phone. She slid a paper cup of coffee across the table. “They said they didn’t have any burnt coffee. Store policy to dump it out after sixty minutes. I got you a dark roast.”
“Thanks anyway,” Warren said, but he didn’t look up. He looked concerned.
“What is it?”
“Text from Gabriela. Says Mazzalano is being investigated.”
“For the rape?”
“No, for providing police protection to dropgangs in the city.”
“What the hell is a dropgang?” she asked.
“New kind of crime that’s sprung up recently. If you want to buy drugs or weapons—usually drugs—you can do it using Bitcoin or other digital currencies, all anonymously online. But you have to pick up the drugs somewhere, right? That’s where the dropgangs come in. It’s the criminal version of Uber or TaskRabbit. Each member handles a piece of the overall transaction, then one leaves the drugs in a location in the city. For example, in an empty soda can in a particular bush in Central Park. It’s pinged with a GPS tracker so the buyer can locate it using a smartphone. No one ever meets. And the key for the gang is that each person handles a different part of the transaction, and no one knows everything, so it’s much harder to track. Almost impossible to prosecute.”
“Holy shit. How did I not know about this?”
Warren took a long swig of coffee and frowned. “Not burnt enough.”
“Seriously, how did I not know about this?”
“Like I said, it’s pretty new. The internet made shopping and everything else we do anonymous and faceless, why not drugs and guns, too?”
Cole stood and walked a lap around the table, sipping her vanilla latte. “So if Mazzalano is being investigated for providing protection, he…what? What does that mean, exactly? Maybe he makes sure certain areas are unpatrolled for drops?”
“Maybe, or it’s even possible he has a larger role—a more direct role.”
“Like what?”
/> “Coordinating with a leader, leaking information about investigations, making sure they know in advance about busts—though busts are rare in this game. Or…” He trailed off, his forehead wrinkled.
“What?” Cole asked.
“Michael Wragg. The JTTF guys. Nah...”
Cole saw where he was going. “You think Wragg’s purchase of the nine weapons could have been a dropgang thing?”
“Possibly. If I was going to spend a hundred grand on nine weapons online, I’d want them dropped in a secure location, and any buyer or seller would want extra protection for a purchase that big.”
Cole agreed. Wragg had purchased nine rifles, and used one to murder Raj Ambani. But that left a major question. “If Wragg bought nine weapons and picked them up in New York City, maybe with protection from Mazzalano or someone in his crew—assuming he has a crew—how did he distribute the other eight weapons? Assuming the nine cities on the map are all going to see murders with the nine rifles, he’d have to get those weapons there somehow. So how? Another dropgang?”
“Probably not. Once Wragg had the weapons, he likely distributed them himself. Possibly through the mail. On one hand, it’s riskier. On the other, if he’d paid the seller to deliver the rifles to their final destinations, and the seller had been caught, the seller then could have blown up the whole plan by giving up all nine locations.”
Cole considered this. It was still hard for her to believe Mazzalano provided protection for the delivery of the weapons, but it explained why he’d avoided talking about the DNA testing of Wragg’s hair. Twenty-four hours earlier she’d thought of him as a sleazy but basically harmless source, now he was something much worse. “So we have two threads here. Track the actual weapons, or investigate the killing of Meyers.”
“Let’s do both at the same time.” Warren stood. “I’ll call the two guys from JTTF, the dark web guys we met. You see what’s happening with the Meyers investigation. What’s been leaked.”
“You weren’t buying that radical lefty thing, were you?”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d say it was possible. Dude had motive. In this case, seems like a misdirection or frame job.” He waved his phone at her. “I’m gonna do my cop thing. You use your reporter magic to read through the lines of what’s out there and figure out what’s actually going on.”
After Warren left, Cole opened Chandler Price’s financial records on her phone. In New York, they’d found the payment to Michael Wragg fairly quickly, but she hadn’t been back to his records since. She looked for unusual transactions. Maybe she’d get lucky and find something that stood out, like a large payment to someone in D.C., Vegas, Miami, or another of the cities on the map.
She looked for transactions over a thousand dollars, wire transfers, suspicious purchases. Nothing. Price spent a lot of money, but most of it was travel, shopping, and everyday stuff. They’d found the Wragg transaction quickly because it was unique. Chandler Price had paid Wragg for the rifles, but if his financial statements were any indicator, he hadn’t paid anyone else. It was possible he wasn’t aware of the entire plot. As far as Cole knew, he was out of the country. Chances were low he’d be in the U.S. any time soon.
Next, she scanned Twitter for news on the murder of the former VP. Suspicions were surfacing that his murder was connected to Raj Ambani, but they were still rumors. Nothing official. On Twitter—a platform where everyone gets a voice—there were rumors about almost everything. There were equally-credible theories connecting Meyers’ assassination to the killings of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Tupac Shakur, and Sharon Tate. It was enough to shake Cole’s faith in the actual evidence she’d seen, at least momentarily.
She studied the helicopter footage of the body on the hotel rooftop, the body of the alleged killer. Next to his still form was a black, stick-shaped thing—likely the gun—but there was no way of telling whether it matched the gun used by Wragg. Local TV news had reported that “police sources” said the shooter had “probably used a fifty-caliber rifle.” That fit with the weapons they knew were out there, but was far from proof. And it wasn’t clear whether the reports were based on eyewitness accounts, or just speculation that it must have been a fifty-caliber because of the distance of the shot.
Additional cell phone video clips had been released, and she watched them all. The great thing about Twitter was that it was often hours ahead of the news networks, even the police. The terrible thing was that much of the “information” on the app couldn’t be trusted. Half the clips claiming to show the shooting were fake—they led to random YouTube videos or porn sites. Many of the others didn’t show anything new. One was a blurry five-second clip from the street below, showing people looking up after hearing screams from the rooftop. Another was from a few minutes before the shooting, according to the message that accompanied the tweet, and showed the guests, including the former VP, mingling at the bar. Cole saved the tweet to study later. It might be useful to put together a list of everyone who attended the event.
She was about to stop scrolling when she found another video. It was shot from the window of an apartment building near the Watergate and, for the first few seconds, the Potomac was visible through an open window, a couch in the foreground. Then the video zoomed in on a long, narrow boat on the river, crewed by four women. After following the boat for a few seconds, the video panned up on the far side of the river. A tall building with black mirrored glass filled the frame. Panning up, the video passed a sign that read Potomac View Hotel. About twenty stories up, at the top of the building, it panned right to another rooftop, where a small group of birds took off. A second later, faint screams rang out. The shot had been fired. The birds had been reacting to the gunshot, which couldn’t be heard in the video.
She rewound a few seconds.
Just as the video hit the top of the Potomac View Hotel, visible for only a few seconds, was a person. Not a person. A head.
A head poking out of a low window, then withdrawing quickly.
She rewound again. If the dead man on the roof wasn’t the real shooter, maybe this guy was.
Outside, Warren pulled up the collar of his leather jacket against the snow. Dialing Norris Ubwe, he walked to the middle of the block, away from the stream of people coming in and out of the café.
Ubwe was the more assertive member of the two-man crew he’d shadowed at JTTF. Back in New York, Warren had convinced Ubwe to get Chandler Price’s bank records by using a threat. That information led to Michael Wragg, had cracked the case. He didn’t expect the dark web expert to be happy to hear from him.
Ubwe answered right away. “Hello?”
“It’s Robert Warren. Remember me?”
“Yes.”
Warren paced to keep warm. “I owe you thanks, Norris. Your help led us to Michael Wragg and, well, you probably heard how that went.”
After a long pause, Ubwe said, “I do not know what you are talking about.” Warren’s guess was that he’d studied English for years before moving to the United States because he spoke impeccable, by-the-book English with a slight Nigerian accent.
“Chandler Price?” Warren reminded him. The line was silent. Warren had screwed up. Of course Ubwe wouldn’t want to confirm that he’d pulled Price’s bank records. “Look,” he continued, “I need your help again.”
“Oh.” Ubwe’s tone was noncommittal.
Warren assumed that even though Wragg had accepted a wire transfer from Price, he likely would have used cash or a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to send the other eight weapons around the world. But it was worth a shot. “Can you get me the financial records of Michael Wragg, the dude who shot Raj Ambani?”
“No.” The word was clipped and firm.
“From your surveillance of the dark web, can you tell where and how a transaction is going to go down?”
“Sometimes.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“Once a transaction begins, it often moves to a private chat room. In general, different p
ieces of a transaction are handled by different members of a crew, each digitally walled off from all the others. So it is difficult to track.”
“But it’s possible?” Warren asked.
“Sometimes, but we only do so in important cases.”
“The sale of rifles I witnessed was not one of the important ones?”
Ubwe was silent. He didn’t want to say anything that would acknowledge their earlier interaction. Maybe Ubwe was being paranoid, or maybe someone was listening. Either way, he respected the man’s caution. “So, theoretically, let’s say I buy a pile of weapons on the dark web. I’m then routed to another person who takes the payment via Bitcoin, then another person who works with me to arrange a drop-off. Then yet another who actually does the drop. And if we assume I have an NYPD officer on the take, might such an officer, hypothetically, be used to protect large transactions?”
“It is possible.”
“So, a JTTF unit could, theoretically, have watched those transactions go down, if they’d followed the leads diligently from the first posting about the sale? Then—and I’m just spitballing here—they could have prevented the purchase of those weapons and any past or future murders they were used in.”
Ubwe cleared his throat. “Mr. Warren, my understanding is that you will no longer be a member of the NYPD in a matter of days. Do not speak to me this way.”
The line went dead. Threatening Ubwe had been a risk, and Warren felt bad for doing it. He hadn’t thought it would work anyway, and Ubwe had called his bluff. Word was out in the department that Warren was on his way out. Any clout he’d ever had was gone.
He stared across the street to the square, where snow was accumulating on the statue. Warren hated the cold. He’d grown up in the Bay Area and hadn’t seen snow in person until he’d moved east for college.
A car slid across a lane of traffic, almost hitting a man crossing the street. Horns blared, then traffic continued.
As he walked back to the café, he noticed a white man with a black beard reading a newspaper in the front seat of a gray SUV parked across the street. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have seen the SUV circling the block while he was on the phone. He should have been more alert. He was sure they hadn’t been tailed after leaving the storage unit, but it was possible a tracking device had been placed on his car, or that they’d been picked up since arriving in D.C. He stared at the man, who seemed engrossed in the newspaper.