Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(30)

I played along. “Did you come up with anything else on the Silver Bullet case?” I said.

“Alas, not a thing.”

He looked out the window and then tapped his driver on the shoulder. “Rodrigo, we’re almost done here. Why don’t you swing up to Fifth and head back downtown.”

There was a black briefcase on the seat next to him. He picked it up and put it on his lap. “Ostrich,” he said, stroking the leather.

He opened the case and pulled out a silver MacBook Air. “You remember yesterday I told you that a member of the judiciary accused me of blackmail?”

“Judge Rafferty,” I said.

“He’s a longtime client who enjoys role-playing. What I have here on my computer is a video of His Honor doling out some punishment to a lovely felon, who apparently showed up in his chambers wearing nothing but a pair of handcuffs. It’s only a three-minute clip, apparently just a trailer for the feature presentation. Would you like to see it? Spoiler alert: Rafferty is, like, a hundred years old, and as ugly as he can be in court, he’s even more grotesque without his robes on.”

“Spare us,” I said. “Just tell us what we can do.”

“The flash drive with the video was delivered to Rafferty anonymously with a note—‘$100,000 or it goes public.’ He immediately rushed to judgment and accused me of being the blackmailer.”

“That’s not your style,” I said.

“That is precisely what I told His Honor. In addition, the woman in the video is not one of my girls. I didn’t know who she was, and I didn’t care who she was. Until this morning when I picked up the Post. I know you don’t want to screen the video, but I do have to subject you to a single screenshot.”

He tapped a key on the laptop, and a picture popped onto the screen. It was definitely not the kind of porn anyone would pay for. It was a naked couple going at it doggy-style. The man, his chalk-white skin wrinkled, sagging, and liver-spotted, had rear-mounted a much younger woman.

“Holy shit,” Kylie said. Not because she recognized Michael J. Rafferty. We’d been prepared for that. What we hadn’t expected was the woman bent over the judge’s desk, cuffs around her wrists.

“I take it you recognize her,” Q said.

“Hell, yeah,” Kylie said. “We met her a few nights ago on Roosevelt Island. Her name is Aubrey Davenport.”





CHAPTER 29



“Men and their dicks,” Kylie said after we’d screened a dupe of the Rafferty-Davenport sex video.

“Yeah, well, women and their…” I groped for a passable retort.

“Evil, scheming, blackmailing ways?” Kylie said, helping me out.

“Technically, Aubrey’s not the blackmailer,” I said. “She was probably going to use it as leverage against the judge, but he didn’t get the extortion demands until a full day after she was found tied up in knots.”

“So Janek killed her, took her computer, found the video, and saw an opportunity to cash in.”

“No,” I said. “His brain is too fried to pull this off. Plus Q told us that the judge got a phone call late last night with instructions for delivering the money. By that time, Janek was already in lockup.”

Kylie took a few seconds to let it sink in. “So either Janek is our killer, and somebody else is our blackmailer, or…someone else is behind it all, and we arrested the wrong man.”

“Let’s not take all the credit,” I said. “Mayor Sykes and ADA Kaplan helped.”

“We better take this to Cates. I’ll grab the video. Why don’t you make us some popcorn?”

“Shit floats up,” Cates said as soon as we stuck our heads into her office. “And from the looks on your faces, you’re here with a lapful.”

“Have you got a couple of minutes to screen a short film?” Kylie asked.

“What’s the subject?”

“Geriatric porn.”

We filled her in on our meeting with Q and then ran the video.

“Good Lord,” Cates said when it was over. “If that old buzzard won’t pay the hundred thousand, we should pass the hat around the department just to keep young people from ever seeing it. If I were a teenager, I think it would scare me into a lifetime of abstinence.”

“He’s pretty scary from the bench, too,” Kylie said. “I’ve testified in front of him more than a few times. He’s got this lecherous stare that creeps women out. He’s smarmy, and he doesn’t try to hide it.”

“It looks like he doesn’t care about hiding anything,” Cates said. “He was right there in his chambers, going to town on that woman like a rutting pig.”

“According to Q,” I said, “Rafferty confines all of his sexual dalliances to the courthouse after hours. It’s not as crazy as you might think. A hotel is public, very high-risk. His office is safe. At least that’s what he thought.”

“So clearly he had no idea he was being recorded,” Cates said.

“None. Aubrey must have hidden a minicam in her purse.”

“And we know she didn’t shoot it so she could post it on Instagram,” Cates said. “This has classic extortion racket written all over it.”

“Except that in this case, somebody murdered Aubrey before she could ask for hush money,” Kylie said, “and either the killer or someone else saw the value of the video and decided to cash in.”