Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(40)

Hirsch sat there, mouth open, head cocked, eyes squinting. “What…what do you mean?”

“Bombs have signatures,” she said. “The ones that killed your partners are the handiwork of a man named Flynn Samuels, who is also locked up in Thailand, and who may have taught Segura the tricks of his trade.”

Hirsch’s pasty-white face turned an even ghostlier shade of pale. “But…but Geraldo is in prison.”

“That might slow him down, but it won’t stop him. If Geraldo Segura has the motive and the method, the only thing he would need to actually pull off the bombings is an accomplice in New York.”

“Like who?”

“We don’t think his grandmother infiltrated The Pierre hotel, but you’d be amazed at the kind of freelance talent that’s available for the right price.”

“Segura is dirt-poor, and his family…” Hirsch stopped. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Silver Bullet has been sending the grandmother money. It was Princeton’s idea. He told her it was a privilege to be able to help Geraldo’s family, but in reality, it’s just blood money.”

“How much?”

“Fifty thousand a year…for the past twenty years.”

“So let’s see,” Kylie said. “Fifty thousand times twenty—wow, you better hope that Granny isn’t the vindictive type. Because a million dollars would buy her a hell of a lot of firepower.” She nodded to me. “Let’s go, Zach.”

“Wait!” Hirsch said. “What do I do?”

Kylie handed him her business card. “Call us if you think of something. We can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.”

She turned, and the two of us left his office and walked to the elevator.

“So how’d I do?” she said.

“A refresher course in sensitivity training couldn’t hurt,” I said, “but one thing’s for sure: Nathan Hirsch is never going to lie to you again.”





CHAPTER 38



Even with light traffic on the FDR Drive it took us more than half an hour to get to Princeton Wells’s mansion on Central Park West.

“You realize he knows we’re coming,” Kylie said. “Hirsch probably called him the minute we left, so he’s had more than enough time to rehearse his answers.”

“Since when do people need time to rehearse the truth?” I said, ringing the front doorbell.

“Since when have any of these people been remotely truthful?”

I could see that Wells had a change in attitude as soon as he opened the door. The preppy billionaire was wearing jeans, a faded work shirt, a perfectly wrinkled hunter-green cashmere V-neck sweater, and bright red Nikes. But not a trace of a smile.

“I spoke to Nathan,” he grumbled, leading us up the stairs to his office. “He’s out of his mind.”

“Understandable,” I said. “He’s afraid he’s next on the killer’s hit list.”

“I didn’t say he’s out of his mind with fear,” Wells snapped. “I’m saying the man is out of his fucking mind. What was he thinking, sending you off to accuse Malique La Grande of those murders?”

“You don’t think Malique is responsible?”

We entered Wells’s office. “No,” he said, slamming the door shut. “I have no doubt that if Malique were in charge twenty years ago, he’d have killed us all. Luckily for us, Dingo called the shots. But I knew Dingo wouldn’t be around forever, so I reached out to Malique—quietly, privately—and over time we reached a peaceful accord. A détente, if you will.”

“So are we talking about a handshake agreement here?” Kylie asked.

Wells finally cracked a faint smile. “I didn’t so much shake his hand as grease his palm. Regularly.”

“You pay him not to kill you.”

“It’s basic street economics—the same as the local pizza parlor paying the mob for protection. It was an insurance policy in case Malique ever got to be the boss.”

“And now that he is, do you think he kept his word?” I asked.

“Yes. I don’t think he killed Arnie or Del, but now that Nathan has gone and sicced the cops on him, I hope he doesn’t go off the deep end and kill us for lack of respect. The Zoes are bad to the bone. They don’t resolve problems. They eliminate them. Malique’s son killed a total stranger in a bar just for looking at him funny.”

“Tell us about your friend Geraldo Segura,” Kylie said.

“Friend,” Wells said, spitting out the word. “More like a hustler, but none of us knew it at the time. He was the scrappy little scholarship kid from El Barrio, and we were the hot shit Upper East Side rich kids. You’d think that he’d idolize us—that he’d want what we had—but that’s not the way it played out. It wasn’t long before we all wanted to be him.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re nineteen, being rich and white with your future all planned out for you is like a death sentence. Geraldo lived on the edge. He was a street fighter, fast on his feet, and even faster with his fists. The girls loved him. When he was fifteen he was banging this eighteen-year-old, and her two brothers jumped him. They both wound up eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner through a straw for the better part of a year.”