Hack, p.20
Hack, page 20
“I don’t care. Write what you want.”
Izzy arrived in twenty minutes, walked through the scene and had me tell my story and then told me he had new information.
“This editor, Don Badger, is dead. He was the apparent victim of a mugger, who slit his throat open after he left the New York Mail, about an hour before this went down. He was found a few blocks from the paper but the body had no ID. His wallet was gone. Some sergeant had a copy of the Daily Press, recognized Badger’s face and called me.”
“Holy shit. There goes your prosecution of Lucky Tal,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” Izzy said. “We have you and we have all those emails, memos, recordings, whatever. I’ll bet once we start charging other staffers with crimes, they’ll line up to testify against their boss. And we have your shooter—the live one anyway. By the way, he said you were very unsporting. He’s finding it hard to talk with so many teeth missing but so far he’s cooperating. He’s an illegal, Turkish, name of Erdem Bayrak. Has quite a habit, judging from his track marks. And from his shitty aim. His dead friend with the shotgun isn’t talking, but apparently his name was Arhan Terzi.”
“Great. Will Bayrak say who hired them to go after me?”
“Yup. Told us the whole thing. You were worth $5,000 in cash.”
“Each?”
“50/50 split.”
“I’m insulted,” I said.
“He had a note in his pocket. He was supposed to leave it on your body.”
That shut me up for a few seconds.
“What does the note say?”
“It claims to be a message from the Islamic Jihad something-or-other, saying you were executed in the name of Allah for your crimes against true believers.”
“Cute. So, who hired him?”
“You won’t like it,” Izzy warned.
“Uh-oh.”
“He didn’t get a name but I showed Bayrak several pictures, some from today’s paper, and he made a positive ID.”
“Tell me.”
“Donald Badger.”
“No way.”
“Way. Can’t shake it. I think he’s telling the truth.”
“What the fuck?” I said.
“That’s what I said.”
“Don Badger hires this clown to kill me and somebody else hires another clown to kill Badger?”
“Or the Hacker got him. Sounds like a real circus,” Izzy said. “I don’t believe the robbery bullshit.”
“It’s got to be Lucky Tal,” I said. “He said he would have somebody kill me.”
“I’d bet on it but we don’t have anybody in Badger’s homicide. Waiting for autopsy and tests. Suspect at large.”
“Think Trevor Todd will hire someone to kill Lucky Tal?” I asked.
“We can hope. Clean sweep. Then God takes out the Big Boy. I think we’ll go see Mr. Lucky Tal now, see where he’s been tonight and when. If he’s alive. Maybe he’s in danger.”
“Mind if I tag along?” I asked Izzy.
“Only if you wash the blood off your hands, Shepherd.”
52.
We soon arrived at the tacky gold and glass Cushing Tower building uptown, where Tal Edgar had a $3 million condo. It obviously hadn’t bothered him to put the owner of his building’s bloody murder all over the front page. The doorman was dressed in a ridiculous red fake palace-guard uniform, complete with gold braid. We entered the glittering lobby and approached the lobby desk. The man behind it was also dressed like the flunky of an Arab prince. When Izzy told him who we were there to see, he put down his large water bottle and looked at his computer.
“Mr. Edgar is not at home.”
Izzy flashed his shield. The man shrugged.
“Mr. Edgar arrived home by car service at 9:16 p.m. According to our records he left about an hour later.”
“Where’d he go?” Izzy demanded.
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Yes you do,” Izzy pressed.
“No. No idea. But he went to the right, north.”
“What’s in that direction?” I asked. “Off the record.”
“Lots of places. Including a bar he goes to,” the man admitted, in a whisper.
“How often?” Izzy asked.
“Every night, like clockwork,” he confided. His eyes were darting around. “He walks. The Crystal Castle, two blocks up. Twenty-five-dollar Martinis, rich, famous drunks. Usually comes back about two, shitfaced.”
“But not tonight?” Izzy said.
He glanced at a fancy gilt filigree clock on the wall near the elevator bank.
“It’s 3:20 now? Nope, not yet. He’s late. Don’t tell anyone I told you anything, okay?”
“Our little secret,” Izzy assured him, turning away to make a call on his cell.
An hour later, uniforms had checked the bar. No one else had seen Lucky Tal this evening. If he was heading to the Crystal Castle, he never made it through the drawbridge. Izzy called the Mail City Desk, on speakerphone, but a kid who answered the phone refused to call Lucky Tal’s cell phone or home phone.
“He calls us. We can’t call him unless it’s a real big emergency,” the kid explained, like Lucky Tal was the president.
“Has he called in this evening?”
“No, sir.”
“But he usually does?”
“Every night.”
“This is an emergency. We need a number.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t do that. I’ll call Mr. Badger and ask him to call you.”
“That’s not going to work,” Izzy snapped.
“Why not?”
Izzy hesitated. Obviously, he was reluctant to give out information. And Badger’s next of kin had not yet been notified.
“This may be life and death, young man. We need to locate Mr. Edgar as soon as possible.”
“I’ll get my boss.”
A new voice on the line. One I recognized.
“Hello?”
I tapped Izzy on the shoulder, miming to hand over his phone. He did.
“Nigel, it’s Shepherd. I’m with Detective Lieutenant Izzy Negron. We’re trying to find Lucky Tal. The cops need to confirm he is safe.”
“Why?” Nigel asked suspiciously.
I had already gotten Nigel Bantock fired and then rehired on a punishment shift. I looked at Izzy to see how much I could say. He held his thumb and forefinger slightly apart. Tell him just a little.
“Izzy,” I said, “it’ll all be on the Daily Press website by now.”
Izzy gave a resigned shrug.
“What’s on the Daily Press website?” Nigel asked anxiously.
“That Don Badger was murdered and I was attacked tonight. Cops are worried about Lucky Tal.”
“Fuck!” Nigel said. “The Daily Press has this already?” He started asking questions. Lots of them.
“This is an emergency, pal,” shouted Izzy, cutting him off. “We need phone numbers for Tal Edgar right now. If you know where he is you need to tell us!”
“He didn’t call in earlier, which is very unusual,” Nigel said. “But the last person to wake Tal Edgar up late at night without a damn good reason got fired and is now selling children’s shoes in a New Jersey mall. I have no idea where he is. Hang on, I’ll get you his numbers and you can call him. Don’t tell him I gave them to you.”
Lucky Tal didn’t answer his home or cell numbers or return the voice messages Izzy left. Our new buddy refused to take us up to his condo, so Izzy called for backup.
“Listen, my friend. We are going into Mr. Edgar’s apartment—with or without you. I have reason to fear for Mr. Edgar’s safety and he cannot be located.”
“You can’t do that. I told you, he’s not here. He left.”
“Maybe you missed him coming back.”
“No way.”
“No bathroom breaks between ten o’clock and now?”
“No… well… It’s right here, I’m not gone for long,” he admitted.
“But long enough for someone to walk in and into the waiting elevator?”
“No, well, maybe, but I don’t think so.”
“Are you willing to bet this man’s life on maybe?” Izzy asked.
“And your job?” I added.
He actually gulped.
“Let’s take a look at the security videos,” Izzy said.
“My screens are live only, no playback. The camera room is locked until my boss gets here in the morning. I don’t have a key. I swear.”
Flashing red lights filled the lobby, as two cop cars arrived and the uniforms walked in. One of them was carrying a large, heavy metal cylinder with four handles—a door ram.
“Get on your phone and call whoever you have to notify but in three minutes you are either opening Mr. Edgar’s door—or we are.”
In the end the man caved and opened it with a key.
Lucky Tal’s place was luxurious, a tacky clone of the lobby, Louis the Sixteenth’s place in the city. But His Majesty was not at home. We backed out, closing the door. Two of the cops stayed to guard the door and Izzy called the DA’s office as he drove me to Jane’s.
“What’s next?” I asked.
“We’ll babysit the apartment until Lucky Tal shows up or I get a search warrant.” He sighed. “Call me immediately if you hear from Edgar or Forsythe. Remember, the last time you went off for a secret meeting it didn’t go so well.”
“You’ll be my first call if they get in touch.”
“Remember what my grandmother used to say,” Izzy continued, throwing a Spanish phrase at me.
“You know I don’t speak Spanish or Yiddish, Izzy.”
“It means ‘never get into a tight spot with a crazy person.’ Good advice.”
* * *
I got out at Jane’s, slowly, in pain, my arm and legs sore beyond belief. I woke Jane and Skippy up because I didn’t have a key.
“I just fell asleep,” she said, hugging me. “Thank God you’re okay.”
“You’re not… religious, are you?”
“God no,” she laughed. “It’s just an expression. Like when you sneeze I say God bless you because, in the Dark Ages, people thought your soul left your body when you sneezed and you needed divine intercession to prevent demons from jumping down your throat. I don’t believe that, either.”
“You use a lot of big words for someone who just woke up,” I observed.
“Tell me everything that happened,” she said.
“Too tired. Short version now. Lucky Tal seems to be missing. He’s not at home and he missed happy hour at his nightly watering hole.”
“You think someone got him, too?” she asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe he took off.”
“You mean jumped bail?”
“Possible. We don’t know yet. Stay tuned. I’ve got to crash. We can talk in the morning, okay?”
“It is morning.”
“Later morning,” I mumbled, falling onto her lovely bed.
53.
In the afternoon I stopped by the double desk Izzy shared with Phil at the precinct. According to Izzy, Lucky Tal was in the wind. It was a difficult image to process—the bulky editor being blown about by a breeze. Outside, it was unseasonably warm and there was no breeze at all, just heat baking off the pavement. Lucky Tal did not come home, turn up dead, or go to work. I guessed the staff at the Mail were grateful for the temporary relief.
Izzy was unhappy. He had placed a call to the New York Mail demanding to speak to the publisher, Trevor Todd, only to be informed that the billionaire had jetted off to New Zealand in his private plane.
“As long as the only evidence I have on Don Badger points to a robbery homicide, we are stalled,” Izzy complained.
“What’s your guess?” I asked him.
“Izzy does not guess,” Phil interjected. “He theorizes.”
“Right,” I said. “What’s your theory?”
“I think the big bad guys bumped off the little bad guys, took off and left me holding an empty sack,” Izzy said. “The DA says the prosecution of Badger is moot and they can’t do a fucking thing to Lucky Tal—unless or until he fails to show up for his next court date, which is next month.”
“Moot?” I asked.
“Lawyer word for ‘pointless,’” Phil said.
“Oh, right.”
“I have some news,” Izzy said. “The CSI guys, always eager to live up to the high standard of their TV counterparts, have done a Sherlock. They matched the soles of the shoes Jack Leslie was wearing when he died with footprint casts taken from the scene of Pookie Piccarelli’s murder in Central Park.”
“That is good news,” I said. “So you can tie them to at least one of the killings.”
“Yep. They have another set that may be Matt Molloy’s but he and his shoes are not available for comparison. Yet. That reminds me. You, your cameraman and your girlfriend need to give us the shoes you were wearing at the scene—so the techies can eliminate them.”
“They need our shoes?”
“Yeah, easier that way. Ask your girlfriend and the Mail photographer.”
“I don’t work there anymore. He’ll be the giant footprints.”
“Okay, thanks for not making me get a warrant.”
“No problem,” I said, yawning. “You see Trevor Todd’s printed statement in the Mail today?”
“He said he knows nothing about nothing,” Izzy scoffed. “That’s not what their own memos say. The lawsuits are already starting.”
“It will be a tsunami,” I predicted.
“That’s probably why they’ve all fled the jurisdiction,” said Phil.
“What have you got on Don Badger’s murder?” I asked.
Izzy pulled out a file and spread several glossy eight-by-ten photographs across his desk. They showed Badger on his back on a dirty pavement, a yawning gap at the base of his throat. He was covered in blood. Everywhere, as if someone had poured buckets of it onto him. His usual smirk was fixed forever.
“It’s sort of like Neil Leonardi and Nolan Cushing,” I said. “But bloodier.”
“Sort of. Different weapon, though,” Izzy said.
“Who says?”
“The M.E. He says number one and number two—Leonardi and Cushing—were killed with identical edged blades but number three—Pookie Piccarelli—was different. And Don Badger was killed with yet another type of blade, but similar to that used on Piccarelli. That is, if you believe they can guess a weapon from the wound.”
“Can they?” I asked.
Izzy and Phil both shrugged.
“Who knows?” Izzy said. “It’s whatever you can get a jury to believe. The commissioner—who reads the papers and watches too many movies—wants us to psychologically profile the Hacker. He actually wants to invite the freaking FBI in to put the killer on the couch.”
“You don’t believe in profiling, I take it?”
“It’s a crock of shit,” Izzy snorted. “Fortune telling. Never caught a single fucking killer. Not one. Makes great TV, though.”
“The killer is disturbed and resentful,” Phil intoned in a goofy voice. “He is a male between the ages of twenty-one and ninety-nine, living in America, who likes to kill people. You can’t miss him.”
“I will believe profilers when they give me the name and address of a killer,” Izzy declared. “Or winning Lotto numbers.”
“So, what you’re saying,” I said, “is that profiling is moot.”
We all laughed but not for long.
“I don’t see any Altoid next to Badger in this shot,” I said.
“Nope,” said Izzy, “that’s another difference. But they’re small things. Maybe the CSIs on the scene missed it because they had no idea at the time that the death was linked to the Hacker case. Badger wasn’t identified until later.”
“Is his blood work back yet?” I asked.
“Preliminary,” Phil said. “No indication of drugs, but he had been drinking. His B.A.C. was point two nine. Drunk. Full tox will take longer.”
“So,” I ventured, “victims one and two were killed indoors and they were doped up. Either they took it themselves or someone drugged them, right?”
“Right,” Izzy replied.
“But victims three and four were outside and not so drugged, just hacked,” I said.
“Uh-huh. Maybe the later murders were rushed because it was in public,” Izzy replied.
I thought about it. They thought about it. I looked at the pictures. Izzy told me he and Phil had places to go and people to see. We walked out of the precinct together. It was raining lightly and a steamy gray breeze was pushing dirt around. A pedal-cab rickshaw rolled by, pulled by a wiry guy in red, white and blue coveralls. Two Asian tourists in the back took our photos on separate cameras.
“Can I ask a dumb question?” I asked.
“That was a dumb question,” Phil chuckled.
“Seriously,” I continued, “just for the sake of argument, what if the last two killings, Pookie and Badger, were done by different people?”
Izzy and Phil looked at each other.
“That wasn’t dumb, it was sadistic,” Izzy moaned.
“Because it would mean three different killers, the Hacker, plus the Molloy/Leslie double act. Or five, counting the gunmen—Erdem Bayrak and Arhan Terzi—at my place. Maybe Badger wasn’t killed by Molloy. What if what Bayrak said about Badger hiring him was a lie? Maybe he was hired by someone else higher up the tree to kill Badger first, then me? Do Badger and make people think I did it, then waste me and blame it on Islamic extremists, case closed?”
“You’re complicating things,” Phil said. “Jack Leslie and probably his partner, Matt Molloy, were at the Pookie Piccarelli scene, and there’s a video that appears to show them taking her off the street. They killed Pookie in a manner similar to the previous two Hacker homicides, which they also committed. If we assume that the Human Resources crew killed three celebs to boost circulation, it fits. They then tried to do you, because you were onto them, but Leslie got dead and Molloy vanished. His disappearance after trying to snuff you demonstrates consciousness of guilt. The Hacker murders are over. The attempted hit on you was to shut you up and cover up the motivation behind the Hacker killings, as was the murder of Don Badger, which was probably Molloy. It didn’t matter if Don Badger was killed in a different way—it was meant to look like a mugging, not fit in with the Hacker deaths. So the score is three dead Hacker victims, Leonardi, Cushing and Piccarelli, probably by Leslie and Molloy, two missing bad guys—Molloy and Edgar, and three dead bad guys—Arhan Terzi, Don Badger and Jack Leslie. And Erdem Bayrak in custody.”
