Kylie jammed on the brakes, stopping the RMP in the middle of one of the busier crosswalks in Manhattan. We jumped out of the car. Several uniformed officers who had seen the drone go down came racing toward us.
“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.”