“Wasn’t Battaglia one of the early proponents of RICO laws, back when he was a rookie prosecutor?” Mercer asked.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—a set of laws promulgated in the 1970s under President Nixon—was meant to be a powerful tool targeting groups of criminals, so that when a low-level thug was arrested and charged, the government could also nab the leaders of the faction, the ones who were usually insulated.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s why he knew how to step all over Prescott about rhinos with such ease.”
“So now that the ivory ban is in force,” Mike said, “you think he found a way to keep himself in this effort?”
“If the target was big enough,” I said. “I mean, not just some day laborers hauling horns across the border and up to a Manhattan hotel room. Really big.”
“Like organized crime,” Mike said. “Like global.”
“There’s been a movement to extend RICO to state laws,” I said. “It would be so like Battaglia to push it to the limit—nab some humongous international cartel—to prove the need to do that.”
“Think of it,” Mike said. “The appointment of a citywide Special Narcotics prosecutor has stripped him of the power to go after drug dealers who bring large quantities of the stuff in from overseas, so he doesn’t get any of the headlines that he loved so much—none of the big nabs.”
“You’re so right. We took the lead on human trafficking with our Hell Gate case,” I said, “but as soon as Prescott woke up to the political potential on that issue, he slipped that subject away from Battaglia, too.”
“You’d think the old man was still planning a Senate run,” Mercer said. “Almost eighty, and boots on, ready to rumble.”
“No term limits on pushing for his star-power position in the Fraternal Order of DAs in the Afterlife,” I said. “He’s always wanted to be the emperor. If not here, maybe at heaven’s gate.”
“So think like Battaglia, Coop,” Mike said. “What would he have done?”
I was twisting and turning to come up with his interior mind-set. There was a point in time when I would have arrived at the goal before Battaglia did.
“Did Deirdre Wright give you the name of an expert to talk to?” Mercer asked. “From Animals Without Borders, I mean. Not in development, but someone with field experience and knowledge.”
I nodded.
“Why don’t you give him a call?”
I was headed out of the café to the exit. “Because I’d just rather show up at his doorstep. Give him no time to plan a strategy. No time to reach out to a supervisor,” I said. “I want the unedited version. I want to know how tusks get from Africa to China, and why our government wants its fingers in the pie.”
TWENTY-SIX
“I’m Detective Mercer Wallace.”
The man who had buzzed us into a brownstone on West Ninety-Fourth Street was staring at the blue-and-gold badge that Mercer presented to him. Since Mike had taken some days off and I was on official leave, Mercer offered to be the legit NYPD representative, leaving out the fact that his command assignment was sexual assault.
“How do you do?” the bespectacled man said, holding out his hand. “Is there a problem of some kind?”
“No, sir,” Mercer said. “But we’d like some help from you. We have some pretty urgent questions about trafficking. Wildlife trafficking.”
The stenciled black-ink letters on the glass door had Liebman’s name written under the initials of the organization. He ushered us into a cramped room and we each took a seat, barely able to see Liebman over the stacks of papers on his desk.
“I’m Mike Chapman. Also a detective.”
“And I’m Alex Cooper. I’m a p—”
“I know who you are, young lady,” Liebman said. “I read the newspapers.”
Liebman’s title was president of AWB’s Africa Program. A quick Google check on our way back to Manhattan confirmed that he had a PhD in biology from Yale, working at the intersection of science and conservation policy before overseeing AWB’s portfolio of programs across forty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas for the last two decades. There was a hint of an accent in his voice—maybe South African, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Does this unexpected mission have something to do with the district attorney’s death?” he asked.
“It might,” I said. “We’re all still in the dark.”
“You’re working on the case, Ms. Cooper? I would have thought you’d be kept at arm’s length, being a witness and all that.”
“I am at arm’s length,” I said. “And we’re certainly not running the investigation. Both Mike and I are witnesses, as you probably noted from the news.”
“What, then?” Liebman asked, picking up a carved stone paperweight—shaped like a penguin—and rolling it between the fingers of both hands like Captain Queeg’s steel balls.
“It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing,” Mike said.
Mercer put his arm out in front of Mike’s chest, suggesting he lean back. “Better if I explain.”
“Do try,” Liebman said, looking from face to face to face as though it would help him understand the disarray in our approach.
“There’s a task force handling this case, as the papers have reported,” Mercer said. “I’ve got a piece of that work, and we’re looking for your guidance.”
Liebman kept rolling the penguin, which was upside down in his hands.
“I have to tell you that Alex Cooper knew her boss as well as anyone in his professional life,” Mercer said. “She studied his connection to your organization and the great work it does.”
Liebman looked at me and bowed his head.
“We’d like you to tell us more about the trafficking of animals from the wild,” Mercer said. “We think there may be a connection to something Paul Battaglia was working on.”
“I imagine you have colleagues who would know about that,” Liebman said.
“I’m really of the view that my boss stumbled onto something,” I said. “That he crossed paths, perhaps, into a territory where he didn’t belong—wrong place, wrong time—rather than that he was deep into a case.”
It was difficult—maybe impossible—to explain to an outsider how secretive the district attorney could be, how he didn’t trust people, even his closest aides, for fear that they would leak word of a matter that would be picked up by another jurisdiction. Most of all, it was hard to explain how he hated James Prescott and feared the feds would steal his thunder once again by running off with one of his projects. The older Battaglia got, the more selfish he grew to be about grooming a successor, the more he wanted the glory to reflect entirely on his own individual brilliance.
“What territory would that be?” Liebman asked, replacing the penguin on top of some pamphlets and reaching for a wooden object, also carved, in the form of a monkey.