“Where are you on the Davenport murder?” Cates asked.
“Closing in,” Kylie said.
“That’s not an answer I can pass up the food chain, MacDonald. I need details.”
“Sure. As soon as we’re done here, Zach and I are going to pick up a hundred thousand dollars in cash from the DA’s office, hand it over to a seventy-five-year-old man of dubious ethics, and have him deliver it to a blackmailer who may also be a murderer. Then we’ll hold our breath, keep our fingers crossed, and hope for the best.”
Cates has no patience for lame cop jokes. But this time she didn’t say a word. She knew Kylie wasn’t joking.
CHAPTER 33
Two hours later, we were back in Judge Rafferty’s chambers along with Jason White, our tech guru. Kylie gave His Honor her most endearing smile, and I gave him an attaché case packed with cash.
“There’s a microchip embedded in the bottom, so we can track the money,” I said.
“That won’t work,” Rafferty said. “There’s been a change of plans. This was delivered this morning along with some instructions.”
He held up a plastic bag that was identical to the ones we use at crime scenes to collect and preserve evidence. It was transparent, about the size of a sheet of typing paper, and, most important, it was tamperproof. Once the bag was sealed, if anyone attempted to open it, the adhesive strip at the top would read VOID.
The bags we use at NYPD are imprinted with data fields to be filled in with details relevant to a crime and the chain of custody. The printing on this one was more like a bank deposit slip. It was used by millions of small businesses to make secure cash bank deposits. The blackmailer could have picked it up at any Office Depot in the country.
“This is where he wants me to put the money,” the judge said.
“He’s smart,” Kylie said. “There’s more than enough room for twenty stacks of Benjamins, at five thousand dollars per stack, but there’s no place to hide a tracking device.”
“Your Honor,” I said, “you said it came with instructions.”
“Yes. He wants to watch me count out the money to make sure it’s real and untraceable.”
“Tell him he can pop by your office and look over your shoulder,” Kylie said.
“He’d rather Skype. Apparently, he doesn’t trust me.”
“I can trace a Skype call,” Jason said.
“Somehow I bet he knows that. This guy is not stupid,” the judge said. “He also sent this.”
He handed me a small brown paper shopping bag with a Starbucks logo on it.
“What’s that for?”
“He didn’t say, Detective. Maybe he wants me to deliver some fucking coffee along with the money.”
“Did he give you any other instructions?”
“Come alone. No cops.”
“That’s not going to happen, Your Honor,” Kylie said. “You’ll be surrounded by cops: me, Zach, and half a dozen undercover detectives who’ve worked operations like this before. We can’t tail you too closely, but you’ll be wearing an earpiece that will let us communicate with you, and a tracking device that will tell us exactly where you are.”
“That’s good,” the judge said, “because if you’re right, and this guy is also a murderer, you’ll be able to locate my body.” He lifted his arms in the air. “Wire me up.”
“It’s wireless,” Jason said, holding up a black audio-video transmitter that looked like a smartphone. “Just tuck it in the top pocket of your jacket, and we’ll be able to see what you see, hear everything you say. And when you get a call, keep your phone close to your jacket pocket, and we’ll be able to pick up everything the caller says.”
“Excellent plan,” the judge said, “but as you can see, I’m wearing this black turtleneck. I thought it was very James Bond, but alas, it has no pockets.”
“No problem,” Jason said. “The department has a fine line of menswear for every occasion. Do you have a color preference, Your Honor?”
“Surprise me,” Rafferty said, sliding into the leather chair behind his desk. He picked up a folder, began to read, and tuned us out.
He didn’t look up until his cell phone rang forty-five minutes later. He took the Skype call, which, as expected, was one-sided. The caller could see the judge, but the camera was off on the other end.
Surprisingly, the seventy-five-year-old justice was completely at ease with technology. He positioned the phone so the caller could watch, and, following instructions to the letter, he removed the band from a stack of five thousand dollars and counted out fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. Then he replaced the band and slid the five thousand into the plastic bag.
The caller picked out three more stacks at random. When they came up clean, he told Rafferty to “bag it all and seal the bag.”
By that time, Jason White had traced the Skype account and the phone the call was coming from.
He pulled me to the far side of the room and whispered in my ear, “It belongs to a high school math teacher on the West Side. I called the school security guard. She’s in class.”
“Can you pinpoint where the call is coming from?” I whispered back.
Jason shook his head. “I can narrow it down to a three-block area two miles from the school. But pinpointing is impossible. The caller is on the move.”
I looked at the judge. The hundred thousand was in the bag, and he ran his fingers over the tape, sealing it. Any thought we’d had of tracking the money was out the window. We had to rely solely on the eyes and ears of our undercover team.
“It’s still your show,” the judge said to the black screen on his side of the video call. “What now?”
“Put the money inside the Starbucks bag, take a cab to Twenty-Third Street and Tenth Avenue, get out on the southwest corner, and wait for my next call. And Judge,” the man who was calling the shots added, “at the risk of repeating myself, no cops, or I’ll kill you.”
That was followed by the familiar whoop sound of the Skype hang-up.
The judge gave the dead phone the finger.
Jason handed him a tan corduroy jacket with the camera peeking just above the breast pocket.
Rafferty put on the jacket and dropped the sealed packet of money into the Starbucks mini–shopping bag. “Come on,” he said, looking at Kylie and me and heading out the door. “Let’s go catch this flaming asshole.”
CHAPTER 34
Malique La Grande was right. Street-smart New Yorkers, especially those who are looking to steer clear of the law, can practically smell an unmarked police car. That’s why NYPD has a mini-fleet of Ford Interceptors that are painted yellow and tricked out to look exactly like the city’s thirteen thousand licensed taxis.
We call them cop cabs, and they’re perfect for running surveillance in heavy crime neighborhoods, where a squad car, or even an unmarked, would be a dead giveaway. They also come in handy when you’re tailing a blackmail victim on his way to make a hundred-thousand-dollar ransom drop.
Judge Rafferty left the courthouse and hailed a legitimate taxi, and Kylie got behind the wheel of the decoy. I was about to get in the front passenger seat when she stopped me.
“Sorry, dude,” she said, “but if you want this to look authentic, you’re going to have to sit in the back.”
“If I wanted this to look authentic, I’d get someone a little less blond and a lot less hot to do the driving. Guys will be flagging you down, even if they have no place to go.”
“Please don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she purred, her green eyes wide and soulful, her lips in a mock pout. Then came the more familiar Kylie MacDonald wiseass smirk. “Now get in the back, or find another taxi.”
I got in the back, and she pulled onto Centre Street. A few blocks later she turned onto Canal, and we blended into the rolling sea of yellow cabs.
His Honor had a knack for undercover work. A few minutes into the ride, he engaged the driver in classic idle taxi chitchat. Where are you from? How long have you been driv
ing? How ’bout those Mets? Then he aimed the pocket cam at the man’s hack license. By the time they reached their destination, we knew all we needed to know about the driver. Most important, he wasn’t part of the shakedown. It had been a random pickup.
The judge got out of the cab and stood on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 23rd Street.
“I don’t like it,” Kylie said, parking in a bus stop on the opposite side of the avenue. “The nearest subway is on Seventh, which is a solid half-mile walk from here. That means whoever is coming for the money is going to be on wheels.”
“So what part don’t you like?”
“The judge is too vulnerable standing there. We should move in on foot and get closer to him just in case a van swoops in and tries to pick up the old man along with the money.”
I was about to get out of the cab when Rafferty’s cell phone rang. Kylie and I listened as he took the call.
“I’m on the damn street corner,” he barked at the caller. “Now what?”
“Walk west on Twenty-Third,” the voice said.
We watched as the judge headed west. “I’ve got a bum knee,” he said. “How far do I have to walk?”
“Half a block. That big green box in the middle of the sidewalk is an elevator. Take it up to the second floor.”
“Son of a bitch,” Kylie said, pointing at the trestle thirty feet above the street. “He’s meeting the judge on the High Line.”
The High Line is one of New York City’s most inspired public parks. It’s the brainchild of two men who saw an unused elevated railroad spur and helped convert it into a mile-and-a-half-long aerial garden that winds above the city from Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district to Hudson Yards on 34th Street.
I radioed Danny Corcoran. “The drop is on the High Line at Twenty-Third. We need to block off the closest exits so the perp can’t get back down to street level. Kylie and I have this one covered. Get a team to cut him off at Twentieth and another at Twenty-Sixth.”
“Box him in,” Corcoran said. “I’m on it.”
“One more thing,” I said. “Get a bird up there. We need eyes in the sky.”
I turned to Kylie. “Take the stairs. I’ll meet you up top.”
I ran toward the elevator. It was the slowest way to get where I wanted to go, but I had to make sure that the money that had just gone up wasn’t already on the way down.
It wasn’t. The elevator was empty, and I got on. Kylie was waiting for me at the top. Even though I was in full-blown cop-in-pursuit mode, I couldn’t help but be dazzled by the beautiful greenway floating above Manhattan’s west side. It was a triumph of urban development that attracted five million tourists a year. I took Kylie by the hand, and we pretended to be two of them.
“Start walking north,” the voice on the judge’s phone ordered.
His Honor, who was only fifty yards away, saw us, nodded, and started walking. We did the same, walking at his pace, pretending to admire the vegetation as we went.
“Red Leader,” Danny said over the radio. “Aviation is on the way, and backup is in place. Do you want them to close in?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Judge is headed north. Keep a tight lock on the exit at Twenty-Sixth. Backup at Twentieth can start moving uptown.”
The judge was almost at 25th Street when the voice came back. “There’s a bench up ahead. When you get there, I want you to set your little shopping bag on it, and keep walking.”
Not only could Kylie and I see the judge from a safe distance, but we could also look at my iPhone and see exactly what his pocket cam was seeing. There was a beautifully crafted teak bench nestled in front of a thick patch of greenery. The judge slowed down as he approached the bench, lowered the bag with the extortion money onto the seat, and then kept walking.
I radioed Danny, gave him the exact drop location, and told him to position his remaining backup team on the avenue directly below us.
“Do you see anybody?” Kylie asked.
I looked around. Not many people. And those who were there were strolling, oblivious to the mini–shopping bag sitting on a bench, tucked into a quiet nook, surrounded by nature.
“Nobody,” I said, looking left, right, north, and south.
What I didn’t do was look up. So I didn’t see the quadcopter as it stealthily moved in on its target. I didn’t hear the buzz of the tiny rotors slicing through the air until it was too late.
The drone swooped down from the sky and hovered over the bench. Within seconds, a grappling hook that was suspended from the landing gear latched onto the handles of the Starbucks bag, lifted it up, and banked west.
“Aviation!” I yelled, keying my radio. “Red Leader on the High Line. Where are you? We need air support, and we need it now!”
“Zach, what’s going on?” It was Danny Corcoran.
“We got sucker punched,” I said as I watched a hundred thousand dollars of district attorney Mick Wilson’s money fly low over the Hudson River and make its way uptown.
CHAPTER 35
Ordinary mortals watching all that cash disappear into thin air might shake their fists at the sky and give up.
Not cops. Especially not me or Kylie.
We ran after it. Instinctively we both headed toward the 26th Street exit. It wasn’t where our car was, but it was the fastest way to the ground.
By the time we got there, Judge Rafferty was surrounded by six cops: Danny Corcoran; his partner, Tommy Fischer; and four uniforms.
“I’ve got the chopper pilot on the radio,” Corcoran said. “He’s tracking the drone. It looked like a flyspeck at first, but he finally got his camera locked in on it.”
“We’re going after it,” I said. “You and Tommy get the judge out of here fast.”
“I’m fine, Detective,” Rafferty said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not worried about you, Your Honor. I’m worried about your picture being all over the internet in the next five minutes.” I swept my hand in an arc around the growing crowd that had come to take in the beauty of the High Line and got the extra added bonus of being in the middle of a police action. Most of their cell phone cameras were still pointed skyward, but some of them started to advance on the cluster of cops at the top of the stairs.
“We need wheels,” Kylie yelled. “Who’s got an RMP?”
One of the uniforms reached into his pocket and pulled out a key fob. Contrary to what you see in the movies, cops don’t bolt from their cars and leave their motors running. The vehicle is their responsibility, so when it’s unattended, most of them lock it.
He tossed Kylie the keys, clearly not happy about giving up his ride. “And who are you?” He grinned. “Get the name, share the blame, Detective.”
“Kylie MacDonald, Red unit. I’ve got a decoy cop cab parked at Twenty-Three and Ten. It’s all yours”—she read the name on his uniform—“Officer Pendleton.” She gave him her keys, and the two of us flew down the stairs.
Within seconds we were tear-assing up Tenth Avenue. I got the chopper pilot on the radio. “Aviation, this is Red Leader. What’s the twenty on that drone?”
“The UAV—unmanned aerial vehicle,” he said, correcting me, “is about eight hundred feet over Thirtieth and Ninth and headed east. He’s only poking along at about twenty miles an hour. My kid has one that goes faster.”
“This one is carrying a hundred thousand dollars in cash,” I said.
“That wouldn’t slow my kid down, but…Red Leader, do not—repeat, do not—turn onto Thirtieth. There’s an eighteen-wheeler backing into a loading dock. He’s jamming up the whole street. Head east on Thirty-Fourth.”
Kylie slowed down just enough to hang a hard right onto Thirty-Fourth. It’s a wide, busy crosstown thoroughfare, four lanes with two-way traffic. But at least it was moving. Cars, trucks, buses, and pedestrians all got out of our way as she barreled down the street, lights flashing, siren wailing, creating a center lane of her own.
“UAV is descending,” the pilot said. “Th
at will cut his speed dramatically. He’s at Thirty-First and Seventh Avenue. I have you in the RMP at Thirty-Fourth crossing Eighth.”
By the time he finished his sentence, Kylie had whizzed past an accordion-fold articulated bus, and we were halfway to Seventh.
“Red Leader, the UAV is at three hundred feet and dropping,” the pilot said. “Looks like he’s going to set it down. The avenue is crowded. I may lose him. You’re going to need eyes on the ground.”
I radioed Central, told them the drone was hovering over Penn Station, and asked for every cop in the area to start looking up. “It’s carrying a hundred thousand dollars of department funds,” I added. “Arrest anyone who touches it.”
“Turn right, turn right,” our eyes in the sky said.
The traffic in front of us was stopped for a red light, so Kylie yanked the car to the left and hopped over the double yellow line into the westbound lane. Then she blasted a couple of whoop-whoops on the siren, made a sharp right across two lanes of eastbound traffic, and skidded onto Seventh Avenue.
I bent down low in the front seat and looked up through the canyon of skyscrapers. Nothing. “Aviation, I still don’t have a visual,” I yelled into the mic. “Where is he?”
“He’s at your twelve o’clock headed straight toward you over Penn Station and still descending. He’s at fifty feet, forty, thirty, and…camera lost him. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“He dipped under the canopy at Thirty-Second and Seventh—the one over the entrance to Penn Station that cuts through to Madison Square Garden. Stop your car. Right there by that taxi rank.”
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.