by Mike Lawson
So his plan was to call Neil and break the law whether Justine liked it or not.
Neil lived in DC. He called himself an “information broker,” but in reality he was a guy who, for a healthy fee, could get you data on just about anyone. The man slithered electronically through firewalls or called on contacts he’d developed over the years in places that stored records, places like banks and telephone companies. DeMarco figured that once he was able to identify people the witnesses had been talking to, he would have something to work with, regardless of whether the information was legally obtained or not. At this point, screw “legally obtained.” He had to find Ella Fields.
Before calling Neil, DeMarco decided to meet with Sarah one last time to see if she’d made any progress, and if not, to tell her to go back to doing whatever it is that interns do. He’d also tell her that if she ever needed a recommendation, he would write one saying that she could walk on water without getting her shoes wet.
On the way toward the Starbucks near the courthouse, his cabdriver was forced to take a detour around one of the never-ending construction projects in Manhattan, and passed near the 9/11 Memorial—and DeMarco had one of those forehead-smacking moments.
The Ring of Steel. Why in the hell hadn’t he thought of that earlier?
New York’s Ring of Steel is modeled after a similar surveillance system in London with the same name, and was installed post-9/11 to prevent terrorist attacks. The ring consists of over eight thousand cameras, located mostly in Midtown and Lower Manhattan, that protect high-value or symbolic targets, such as the New York Stock Exchange, Grand Central Terminal, and the 9/11 monument. Sophisticated software could be programmed to look for individual faces or even shapes, like a backpack sitting on the federal courthouse steps.
That’s about all DeMarco knew regarding the system, and everything he knew he’d read in the paper. The Ring was classified like a military program, and the guys in NYPD’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau were as tight-lipped as the FBI and Homeland Security agents they worked with.
DeMarco called up Justine.
“I want to use the Ring of Steel to locate Ella Fields.”
“You gotta be kidding,” Justine said.
“No. You keep saying that the only way we might be able to get a warrant to look at the witnesses’ phone records is if we can prove Fields is in New York and has approached them. Well, Rachel Quinn works in the Financial District, and there’re a zillion cameras down there, so if Ella Fields has been anywhere near her office there’s a good chance one of the cameras picked her up. I want the antiterrorist boys to stick Fields’ passport photo into their fancy software and see if they can spot her.”
“Oh, is that all,” Justine said. “DeMarco, you do realize that those people don’t work for me and …”
“Yeah, but—”
“… and if the DA wasn’t willing to push NYPD to give me the resources I needed to track down Cantwell and Ella Fields in the first place, what do you think he’s going to say when I tell him I want to start hunting for Fields with surveillance cameras. On top of that, Jim Kelly …”
Kelly was the deputy commissioner who ran the NYPD Counter-Terrorist Bureau.
“… is a prima donna who hobnobs with the FBI and CIA, and half the time he acts like he doesn’t even work for the city of New York. What I’m saying is, if the DA were to ask Kelly to use his cameras to hunt for Fields, he’d tell the DA to go shit in his hat, and maybe rightfully so. Toby Rosenthal killed one guy, Joe. The Ring is being used to prevent fanatics from killing thousands.”
DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “Well, I know a guy who can talk to Kelly.”
“You mean Mahoney?”
“That’s right. Mahoney can threaten to cut off some of those federal antiterrorism funds pouring into New York, and that will get Kelly’s attention.”
DeMarco called Mahoney and told him where things stood: that he’d identified a woman named Ella Fields who he was convinced had tampered with two of three remaining witnesses in the Rosenthal case. He told Mahoney, “The only way I can think to find this woman is to use the Ring of Steel. If I don’t find her, the guy who killed Dominic has a very good chance of getting off. So can you light a fire under the asshole who controls the Ring and get him to help me?”
The next day, Mahoney called him back. “Kelly said he’d do it. You need to get Fields’ picture to a guy named Dimitri. He’s one of Kelly’s technicians.”
Dimitri? “Thanks, boss,” DeMarco said.
DeMarco met Dimitri in a bar off Broadway that charged fifteen bucks for a martini. The guy looked like a gangster: ferret-faced, slicked-back hair, dressed in a tight, shiny suit. He also had a Russian accent. DeMarco knew that Russia produced a lot of mathematicians and computer weenies, and if they weren’t committing computer crimes back in Russia, they were employed all over Wall Street as quants and embedded in companies that needed tech-savvy folks. DeMarco, however, didn’t care that Dimitri might be a Russian spy who had managed to penetrate the NYPD. All he cared about was that Dimitri might be able to prove Ella Fields was in New York.
DeMarco gave Dimitri Ella Fields’ passport photo, and three days later Dimitri met DeMarco in the same bar and handed him a photo showing a clear image of her standing near the building where Rachel Quinn worked.
In the surveillance photo, Fields was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and running shoes. She wasn’t disguised in any way. She was also one spectacular-looking woman; she had outstanding legs. She appeared to be staring at the entrance to Rachel Quinn’s building, as if waiting for Rachel to appear. Or at least that was the way DeMarco intended to interpret the photo.
DeMarco called Justine. “I can prove Fields is in New York. I have a photo of her standing in front of the building where Rachel Quinn works. It looks like she might be waiting for Quinn to come out of the building. Now do you think we can maybe get a couple of warrants?”
The next day, DeMarco and a weary-looking Justine Porter were sitting in the chambers of Judge Walter Hoagland. Hoagland was seventy-four years old, six feet four inches tall, and rail-thin. He probably weighed 140 pounds. He had a chicken’s beak for a nose and about six strands of yellowish white hair that he combed over his liver-spotted skull. It was well known that Hoagland carried a .32 automatic beneath his black robe when he was in court; he’d never drawn the weapon, but was secretly hoping that one day an opportunity would present itself.
Prosecutors loved Hoagland; his judicial peers did not. Hoagland was reversed more often on appeal than any other criminal court justice in Manhattan, and his fellow justices wanted him gone. The problem with Walter Hoagland was that he was simply tired of criminals getting away with crimes he knew they’d committed. Once, when he’d had a few too many drinks, he told a reporter that any system that relied on twelve idiots to determine guilt or innocence was doomed to fail.
The consequence of all this was that if Hoagland—the jury be damned—was convinced a defendant was guilty, he made no effort to hide his feelings and ruled against almost every objection and motion made by the defense. He also had a tendency to instruct juries in such a manner that if the jurors followed his instructions they would almost certainly find the defendant guilty. At this stage of his life, Hoagland didn’t care if he was reversed on appeal. His attitude was that if some animal was turned loose to prey upon the public, it wasn’t his fault, as he’d done his best.
Hoagland didn’t bother to read the ten-page affidavit that Justine Porter had spent all night preparing. He said, “Just tell me what this is all about.”
So DeMarco explained. He said that a couple named Bill Cantwell and Ella Fields had been running around the country for over ten years making witnesses change their testimony or disappear, and as a result rich folks were acquitted of murder and manslaughter. Hoagland was fascinated.
DeMarco explained how he’d come to his conclusions after looking at what had happened in cases in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Houston,
and surprisingly, Hoagland didn’t rush him. DeMarco concluded by saying that Ella Fields was in New York—that he had a surveillance photo proving this—and that one of the witnesses in the Rosenthal case had disappeared and another had had a stroke that might not have been due to natural causes. On top of that, two other witnesses who had been willing to testify that Rosenthal killed Dominic DiNunzio had now changed their testimony.
“You really think this woman tried to kill an old lady?” Hoagland said.
“Yeah, but I can’t prove it,” DeMarco said.
“So what do you want?” Hoagland said.
“Your Honor,” Justine said, “we want a warrant to look at the phone records of people who may have communicated with Ella Fields. That includes Rosenthal’s lawyer and two of the witnesses.”
“Why are you bringing this to me instead of Judge Martinez?” Hoagland asked.
Martinez was the judge who had presided at Toby’s arraignment and would be presiding at his trial. And the answer to Hoagland’s question was: We’re bringing this to you because you’re more likely to give us a warrant. But Porter couldn’t say that. Instead she said, “Your Honor, this isn’t about the Rosenthal murder case directly. This is about building a case to convict Ella Fields and David Slade of witness tampering and possibly attempted murder. If we presented this to Judge Martinez it might constitute a conflict of interest and could cause Judge Martinez to recuse himself, which wouldn’t be fair. To Judge Martinez, I mean.”
“Aw, bullshit,” Hoagland said. “You came to me because Martinez is a pussy.” He paused, then said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you the warrant to look at the witnesses’ records, but stay away from Slade. Looking at the records of a shark like Slade could cause everyone problems if he found out. If you get something from the witnesses’ records, then maybe I’ll let you look at Slade’s.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” DeMarco and Justine simultaneously said. Then they hustled out of Hoagland’s chambers before he could change his mind.
42
Ella had never in her life been more terrified.
She couldn’t understand how this guy, DeMarco, had identified her. It just didn’t make any sense. Even if one of the witnesses—like the barmaid or the bartender—had told DeMarco that a woman had coerced them to change their testimony, they wouldn’t have been able to identify her as Ella Fields.
Nobody in New York—not David Slade, not the witnesses, not Carmine Fratello—knew her name was Ella Fields. She’d never told any of those people her name. She’d even worn disguises when she met with them so they would have a harder time identifying her. And when she rented the apartment in Chelsea, rented a car, and paid for the hotel room where she met with Slade, she didn’t use a credit card in her own name.
Bill had always been incredibly casual—foolishly casual, in Ella’s opinion—about protecting his identify. He figured the way he would get caught was that one day a witness he thought he’d turned would turn on him, and Bill would show up for a meeting and the cops would nab him—and it wouldn’t matter what ID he was carrying in his pocket. He also hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to phone security until Ella started working with him.
But there was one thing Bill did do that Ella really appreciated: He did everything he could to protect her by making sure she couldn’t be tied to his activities financially. When he rented a house, he rented it in his name only. He filed a tax return every year based on a phony salary that he claimed he made as a consultant, but he filed as being single; he never asked Ella to take his last name after they were married. Ella was listed as a joint holder on his bank accounts, but Bill was the one who deposited the money. His objective was to make sure that Ella didn’t wind up in jail for income tax evasion, wire fraud, or any other financial crime. And when Ella started working with him directly, one of the first things Bill did, at her insistence, was get her a bulletproof false identity.
Bill knew a man in San Antonio who made his living making IDs for Mexican illegals. The guy didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the Mexicans, but for Ella, he went all out. The real Carol Owen was a runaway from El Paso, the same age as Ella, who had disappeared at the age of fourteen. She had most likely died, but then Carol’s drug-addict mother died too, and Carol was never declared legally dead. So the guy in San Antonio obtained Owen’s social security number and birth certificate, and using those documents he got Ella a passport, a driver’s license, and credit cards. She even had an AAA card in case her car broke down.
When Ella was working and had to show an ID for anything—such as renting a car—she used the Owen ID. The only time Ella used her real ID was when she’d traveled with Bill on vacations and they were doing things that were totally legitimate, such as taking a cruise. But even then, Bill paid for things using his credit cards.
What all this meant was that if Ella slipped up, the cops might learn that there was a Carol Owen who was tampering with witnesses, but Ella Fields would be able to get on a plane and fly far away as Ella Fields. But somehow, this damn guy, DeMarco, had learned that she was married to Bill—he must have found a record of their marriage license. And then—and this was the part that made no sense—he’d concluded she was in New York and involved in the Rosenthal case. How in the hell could that have happened?
When it came to cell phones, which could be easily monitored and used to track people, Ella was particularly careful. She had one phone in the name of Carol Owen that she used for communicating with George Chavez, and she put down that phone number when she rented an apartment or made an airline reservation. But she used prepaid cell phones for everything else, and when she came to New York one of the first things she did was buy half a dozen burner phones; she used a different phone to communicate with Slade, each of the witnesses, Curtis, and Carmine Fratello.
She didn’t see any way DeMarco would know about Carmine or Curtis, but if he got a warrant to look at the witnesses’ phone records, he’d see that the witnesses were communicating with someone with an unregistered phone. And if he asked the witnesses who had called them, what story would the witnesses give? The other problem—the bigger problem—was that if the cops got the numbers of the phones she’d used to talk to the witnesses, they could locate her using them.
She needed to get rid of all the damn phones.
She also needed to find out if DeMarco had asked the barmaid and the bartender about her. So she called them, and was furious to learn that DeMarco had spoken to them and asked if anyone had tried to get them to change their testimony. They both said they lied to DeMarco and told him that no one had talked to them. Well, at least that was good.
She then called Curtis, the maintenance guy at Esther Behrman’s assisted living place, and asked if a cop named DeMarco had asked about her—and that’s when she learned that DeMarco had shown Curtis her picture.
“What!” she shrieked.
Curtis said, “In the picture you had short blond hair, not like the hair you had when we met, but I knew it was you.”
“What did you tell him?” Ella said.
“I said I never saw you before. But he went all over the place showing everyone your picture. I don’t know if anyone else said they saw you.”
“Why in the hell didn’t you call me when he asked you about me?” Ella said.
“I don’t know what happened with Esther, but I do know I didn’t do anything illegal. I just didn’t want to, you know, get in any deeper.”
Son of a bitch! DeMarco not only knew her name but had a photo of her. If the bartender admitted that she’d paid him off or if the barmaid said that Ella had forced her to change her testimony, she was screwed.
What she should do was get the hell out of New York. The trial started in two weeks, and there was really nothing more she needed to arrange when it came to Toby Rosenthal’s case. All the witnesses and Carmine Fratello were prepared to testify and Slade was ready to present his defense, the one that would point to Dante Bello as the killer. And as she
’d already told Slade, whether he liked it or not, she wasn’t going to do anything to Rachel Quinn. So her work in New York was done and there was no reason to stay in the city any longer—other than to make sure Slade paid her the million he owed her.
She hunted through her rented apartment in vain for a hammer; apparently, the doctor who had subleased her the place had never had any use for one. So she took a brass candlestick, laid a thick towel on the doctor’s hardwood floor, and used the candlestick to smash all her cell phones to smithereens—including her Carol Owen phone. She didn’t think DeMarco could possibly know about her Carol Owen ID, but she couldn’t take the chance. As upset as she was, she just whaled the shit out of those phones, plastic pieces flying all over the apartment. She was lucky she didn’t end up with a splinter in her eye, not to mention that the doctor wasn’t going to be too happy when he saw the condition of his candlestick.
She left the apartment and walked down the street and dumped the remnants of all the phones into several different trash cans just in case there was still some functioning electronic part she hadn’t managed to kill, then stopped at a store and bought three more phones so she’d have clean, untraceable ones to use.
Returning to her apartment, she started toward the bedroom, planning to pack her clothes, but then saw her reflection in a mirror. She’d been running her hands through her hair as she paced the apartment, and her hair was sticking up in spikes. And her eyes. She had the eyes of an animal with its paw caught in a trap.
She stopped and looked directly into the mirror and said: “Ella Sue, get a fucking grip on yourself.”
She sat down on the bed and asked herself: What did DeMarco really know?
He knew she’d been married to Bill. But so what? Being married to Bill wasn’t a crime, and she doubted that DeMarco could prove that she’d worked with Bill. He knew what she looked like, but again, so what? If he could prove she’d tampered with the witnesses in the Rosenthal case, then he could arrest her—but the only way he’d be able to prove that was if Jack, Kathy, or Edmundo talked, and she knew these three wouldn’t talk, as they’d all accepted money from her.
