Red Alert(NYPD Red #5)(58)

“So Troy Marschand had Aubrey’s laptop all along.”

“No. That’s still missing. Troy says he was cleaning the office one day, and he stumbled on an external hard drive. He didn’t know what it was, so he and Dylan screened the contents. Turns out that Aubrey spent over a year shooting this secret documentary. She wanted to expose these upstanding princes of industry as liars, cheaters, and sexual deviants.”

“You mean she wanted to blackmail them.”

“No. She was a dedicated filmmaker. She wasn’t thinking about money. She wanted an Oscar. It was only after she was murdered that those two clowns realized they were sitting on a gold mine and went into the extortion business.”

“That calls for some jail time in my book,” Kylie said. “Offer them three years. They’ll get out in eighteen months, but at least they’ll have—”

Kaplan cut her off. “You think like a cop, MacDonald. The DA thinks like a politician. If those tapes ever saw the light of day, it would rock this city’s establishment to the core. Forget about going to trial. I can’t even charge them with anything, or it’ll be on the public record.”

“So the DA is willing to cut them loose just to suppress those tapes,” I said.

“Zach, these are the people that Red is supposed to take care of.”

“Protect and defend, Selma. Not cover up.”

“It’s not your call, and it’s not mine,” Kaplan said. “It’s the DA’s.”

“No doubt with some input from our politician in chief, Mayor Sykes,” Kylie said. “I bet every horndog on those tapes donated generously to her campaign.”

“Sweetheart, you’ve been at this long enough not to sound shocked. The mayor and the DA are simply protecting the hands that feed them.”

“Where is this external hard drive with all these damning videos now?” I said.

“Troy hid it in his mother’s basement. We should have it in a few hours.”

“Then maybe there’s an upside to all this,” I said.

“Please,” Kaplan said. “I could use an upside.”

“Most likely the external hard drive is a backup, and the original videos are still on Aubrey’s laptop. Do you think Troy and Dylan have it?”

“Troy swears that they don’t, and I believe him. He’d be too scared to hang on to it.”

“And Janek Hoffmann didn’t have it, either,” I said. “But somebody does.”

“The question is who.”

“We know that Aubrey always had it with her, so my best guess is that somebody found out about this secret documentary, killed her, took the laptop, and has no idea there’s a second copy. And I’m betting it’s one of the thirty-two men on those videos.”

“I guarantee you it’s not the Honorable Michael J. Rafferty,” Kylie said, a wide grin on her face.

“There you go,” I said. “We’ve just narrowed down the suspect list to thirty-one of our fair city’s most respected citizens.”





CHAPTER 55



It had taken less than two minutes to cut Nathan Hirsch free from that bomb, and more than two hours to fill out the investigative work sheets that detailed the incident.

“If I’d have known that saving his life would involve so much paperwork,” Kylie said, pushing her chair away from her desk, “I’d have thought twice about flipping the switch on that cell jammer.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Since when have you ever thought twice before pulling one of your crazy-ass stunts?”

“It wasn’t a stunt. I got a court order.”

“Kylie, you can bullshit Barbara O’Brien, but don’t bullshit me. I saw the signature at the bottom of that warrant. Rafferty’s not a federal judge, so he must have sent his clerk across the street to the district court and had one of his cronies sign it. You couldn’t possibly have gotten all that done before the fact.”

“Well, aren’t you the crafty detective? What’s important here, Zach, is that we saved a man’s life.”

“Yes, and now that man is cuffed to a bed in Bellevue, his wife is filing for divorce, and the DA’s office is charging him with half a dozen white-collar crimes. So I guess you’re right. It sounds like a win-win all the way around. How do you plan on celebrating?”

“C.J. and I are going for dinner at the Mark.”

“Are you serious? The same hotel where the robbery took place?”

“They have an incredible restaurant in the lobby. The hotel manager invited everyone at the poker game to be his guest, anytime. Hey, do you and Cheryl want to join us?”

“Thanks, but Cheryl took the Amtrak down to Philadelphia for a conference. My victory dinner will be a solo affair: sausage pizza, a six-pack of Blue Moon, and a Yankee game.”

“That sounds dreadful.”

It did. But it was a lie. Not the Cheryl part, but everything else. Q had texted me earlier in the day and told me he had a lead on the two thugs who had chloroformed Bob Reitzfeld, tied him up, and escaped with eight hundred thousand dollars. It was ironic that C.J. would be returning to the scene of the crime on the very same night that I was working hard to connect him to it.

As soon as Kylie left the office, I texted Q. Some of my informants like to give up the information they’ve got, take the money, and run. Not Q Lavish. He doesn’t take money, and he enjoys turning our get-togethers into a social event.