by R. G. Belsky
Except now I was forced to confront the harsh reality of my own situation. There was no actual story. Because I didn’t work for a newspaper anymore. I wasn’t even a reporter. I had the damn story but nowhere to publish it.
I needed someone who could help me make this public. Someone I trusted. Someone I knew well enough to not doubt his or her integrity for a second.
There was only one person I knew like that.
I met Susan, my ex-wife, in Foley Square near One Hogan Place where she worked. I didn’t want to go up to her office. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but it was the DA’s office, and Brad Lawton was a powerful man in law enforcement. I wasn’t sure how far his tentacles stretched. I wanted to make sure no one but Susan and I knew what I was doing until it was the right time to go public.
We walked along the streets of lower Manhattan as we talked.
“I looked into the drug robbery at Lawton’s old Bronx precinct, like you asked,” Susan said. “A huge amount of seized narcotics evidence, mostly street drugs, did indeed go missing back then. It was the biggest theft from a New York City police facility in the history of the department. Internal Affairs and the DA’s office were all over it. But no one ever found any answers. There was no viable suspect, no clues, no nothing. Eventually, the whole thing went away. I think they were happy to just sweep it under the rug to avoid any more embarrassment to the department.”
“When did Lawton get assigned to that precinct?”
“About a year earlier.”
“And when did he leave?”
“A couple years after that.”
“Right,” I said. “He got a much better gig. Working out of Manhattan as a homicide cop. He was already starting his ascent in the department. And you get a lot of recognition—a lot of media face time too, if you want it—being a Manhattan homicide cop. But it was all because of what happened in the Bronx. He became a star there with all his gang arrests. That got him the big promotion, and he never looked back after that. And I’ll bet the number of arrests he made in the Bronx, especially of gang members, went up dramatically following the drug theft at the precinct.”
She stopped walking now and looked me directly in the eye.
“What’s going on here, Gil?”
I told her everything. From the lunch with Nikki Reynolds all the way through everything I’d found out about Brad Lawton.
“Lawton was an up-and-coming detective in the Bronx,” I said. “He was the junior partner to another cop, Jimmy Garcetti. But he clearly had a big future. He was quickly becoming the golden boy of the department, and his star—which would take him all the way to the brink of the commissioner’s office where he is now—really started to shine brightly back then.
“One of the ways he made his reputation was with big gang busts. He seemed to know what the gangs in the Bronx were going to do even before they did it. He was always in the right place at the right time back then. He put together an amazingly impressive arrest record, almost single-handedly decimated the violent gangs and their leadership in that section of the Bronx. It set the tone for his entire career. Set him up for his rise to the top. Captain. Commander. Deputy commissioner. Now the police commissioner’s job is practically his for the taking. Hell, some people are even talking about him running for mayor.
“I think Lawton took the drugs. I believe he used the drugs to buy information on the street about the gangs so he could be a big man in the department. One of the people he was using as an informant was Bobby Ortiz, the gang member police claimed did the Reyes shooting. Another was Reyes himself. Both of them were double-dealing with their gangs, pretending to be loyal but snitching to the police in return for the drugs that Lawton was providing for them.
“But somewhere along the line Reyes decided he wanted to be a police officer himself, just like his boyhood friend Roberto Santiago had become. He told Lawton about it. He probably thought Lawton would help him. But Lawton couldn’t let that happen. Reyes knew too much. If he ever became a cop and told anyone, Lawton’s career would be over.
“So Lawton shot him. Tried to make it look like a gang hit. Made sure Ortiz got blamed for it. He probably wanted to shoot Ortiz too to make sure he never talked. But he didn’t get the chance. A patrol officer, Gary Nowak, saw Ortiz on the street and brought him to the precinct for questioning. This was bad news for Lawton. So he had to cut Ortiz loose, before he told his story.
“Meanwhile, Reyes was still alive. The shot hadn’t killed him. But he was in no condition to be a danger to anyone anymore. He sure was never going to be a police officer now. He was hooked up to machines and a wheelchair and was so messed up he could barely get through the day, much less cause trouble for Lawton.
“And Ortiz had disappeared. As long as Ortiz wasn’t around, he couldn’t talk either. Lawton got a lucky break when Ortiz, after being picked up in Poughkeepsie, somehow slipped through the cracks of justice and fled again. So he was gone. Reyes was no threat. And Lawton probably forgot about the whole messy business until Reyes died fifteen years later and Santiago started looking into the old case.
“Santiago died. But then there I was asking questions about the same case. That’s when Lawton came up with the idea to send me off in a different direction. He knew my background, knew my whole history of screwing up—of doing anything—to get a big front-page story. So he lured me with the biggest story he could think of: the JFK assassination. Probably got the idea with Nikki Reynolds when they were in bed together and she told him about the book proposal and manuscript she’d gotten from a man claiming to be Lee Harvey Oswald’s secret son. He figured that was perfect. So he made sure she told me about the book.
“Then he sent me the anonymous letter and somehow planted Kennedy half-dollars with the murder victims to send me off on a wild-goose chase. And when it all blew up in my face, I was discredited as a reporter, just in case I ever did go back to Reyes. As a bonus, he discredited his boss the police commissioner too and opened up the possibility that he could step into the top job. Some of it was just luck, but some of it was ingenuity on Lawton’s part to put all these pieces in motion.”
Susan hadn’t said anything the entire time I was telling the story. She just listened intently. Like she was making mental notes of everything I said. Or maybe she was just trying to figure out how to get away from this conspiracy nut who used to be her husband.
“That’s a helluva story,” she said finally. “Let me see if I’ve got everything. You’re saying Brad Lawton stole a drug shipment from the police evidence room, then he shot someone on the street in cold blood and fifteen years later lied and planted evidence and sent the entire department after a fictional serial killer just to make sure no one ever found out he took the drug shipment.”
“There’s more,” I said.
“What more could Brad Lawton possibly have done?”
“I don’t think Roberto Santiago’s death was an accident.”
I told her about my conversation with Sledzec and about the missing keys and about him being passed out in front of the bar.
“Jesus,” Susan muttered.
“I did some more checking on Lawton’s background after that,” I told her. “Did you know that back in the late ’90s, when he got his first big promotion to homicide cop and was transferred to a high-profile job in Manhattan, he wasn’t the first choice for the job? There was another detective with a stellar record named Jack Graynor in Brooklyn who was supposed to get that promotion. Except one day Graynor went into a deli while he was off duty and got gunned down during a holdup.
“A few years later, a city councilman named Ned Colby decided to make a political name for himself by going after corruption in the NYPD. At some point, he started nosing around Lawton’s precinct. Until one night when something went wrong with his car—investigators said later it looked like his accelerator pedal got stuck—and he plunged off the West Side
Highway into the Hudson River. He died, and his police corruption investigation died with him.
“Then, when the deputy commissioner’s spot opened up, there were two leading candidates for it—Lawton and a police captain named Gregory Shore. One day the FBI got a tip that Shore was trafficking in child pornography. They got a search warrant, checked his computer, and found tons of shocking pictures of young children in sexual situations. He quietly left the force soon afterward. And Lawton, of course, got the deputy commissioner’s job.”
“Are you saying that you think Lawton was responsible for all this?” Susan asked me now.
“Like Nikki Reynolds told me, Brad Lawton always gets what he wants.”
“Even if he has to resort to ruining people’s careers and maybe even killing them?”
I nodded. “And then there’s the story about his wife being killed by a mugger. That doesn’t ring true either. No one ever caught the mugger, no one ever saw a mugger. Maybe she knew too much about the man she was married to, and she had to be eliminated too. I can’t say that for sure yet. But I believe Brad Lawton is a dangerous man, Susan. An evil man. If even a portion of this is true, then I’ve never met anyone as cold-blooded and calculating and willing to do anything to get ahead as him. And he does it all in the guise of the charming, likable good cop everyone loves and thinks is wonderful. We’ve got to stop him.”
“Do you have any evidence at all?”
“We have the bullet.”
“The bullet that was in Reyes for fifteen years?”
“Yes.”
“The bullet is from a thirty-eight revolver, right?”
“Right.”
“The police use a nine millimeter.”
“Now they do. But in the early ’90s, police still used the thirty-eight. I checked. And some of the cops were allowed to keep using them as their official weapon for a number of years afterward.”
“Okay, but we still don’t have the weapon that fired the Reyes shot. So what good is the bullet if we can’t match it up with the weapon that fired it?”
“Lawton has a trophy case at his house on Long Island. I read about it in one of the articles about him. He likes to show it off to guests and at parties he throws for the beautiful people. Keeps all sorts of mementos and stuff from his days on the force in this trophy case. Supposedly it includes guns he used day to day on the street and as a homicide detective. Maybe the weapon he used to shoot Reyes is in there.”
“Why would he keep it and then leave it in a display case for the world to see?”
“Because he’s arrogant. Because he thinks he can do anything he wants. Maybe it even gives him a high or a thrill to do stuff like that. I think there’s a good chance the weapon that shot Reyes is there. If we could just examine those weapons . . .”
Susan shook her head. “It won’t work. No way I can get a search warrant for the deputy commissioner based on all this speculation. I need more. I need some sort of hard evidence that actually connects Lawton to the Reyes shooting.”
“I have an idea about that . . .”
Chapter 49
BRAD LAWTON WAS just as friendly, just as forthcoming as he’d been in our past conversations when he ushered me into his office at NYPD headquarters.
“Good to see you again, Malloy,” he said, shaking my hand enthusiastically. “Although I wish it were under better circumstances. I was really sorry to hear about you leaving the Daily News. That’s a damn shame. What happened?”
“My story fell apart.”
“Well, that’s not your fault.”
“The people at the News thought it was. They blamed me.”
“Doesn’t seem fair.”
“Of course, I do have a history.”
“Oh, right, that Houston business.”
“I’m a little accuracy-challenged is the way they put it.”
Lawton chuckled. A friendly chuckle. I remembered how much I liked him the first time I was here. He’d seemed like a good cop.
“I still have a few questions about the story,” I said. “Questions about the case. That’s why I came to see you today.”
“I thought you weren’t working as a reporter anymore.”
“I’m not.”
“But you’re still asking questions?”
“The questions are just for me. As you might imagine, this has all been pretty devastating. It’s turned my whole life upside down and probably ended my career as a journalist. I’m just trying to figure out what went wrong, what I might have missed and what I screwed up. I know this is my problem, and you don’t have to talk to me about any of this. I’m not carrying a press card anymore. But I appreciate any time and insight you could give me.”
Lawton nodded sympathetically.
“Of course,” he said. “This case has been devastating to the department too. We looked pretty bad ourselves. There’s a lot of scrutiny of us now because of how this all turned out. A lot of blame being passed around. No one comes out of it looking good when a case goes wrong like this one did.”
“Actually, that’s not true,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re looking pretty good. The police commissioner is taking all the heat for this. He’s the guy up there in front of the TV cameras and the rest of the media looking like a jerk. Just like I look like a jerk. But you . . . there’s a lot of talk that the commissioner could wind up losing his job over this. And that you’re at the top of the list of candidates to replace him. So, you see, you do come out of this looking pretty good, Deputy Commissioner. Damn lucky for you. I mean it couldn’t have worked out better for you if you’d planned it that way.”
Lawton stared at me impassively across the desk.
“What was your question about the case?” he asked.
“There’re two things that bother me the most,” I said. “First, how did the Kennedy half-dollars get to each of the crime scenes? And second, who sent me that letter connecting the murders to the Kennedy stuff? Neither of those two things makes sense anymore, given what we know now. I mean, if there were three separate crimes committed by three different people for three different reasons . . . then how did the Kennedy half-dollars get there and how did the letter wind up on my desk? A letter that appeared genuine because the letter writer knew about the Kennedy half-dollars at the crime scenes. A fact that had not been made public yet. Ergo, it seemed as if the person who wrote the letter had to be the killer. Except there was no single killer, as it turns out. Very confusing, huh?”
“We haven’t been able to figure that out either,” Lawton said.
“No one in your department can explain the Kennedy half-dollars or the letter?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Not a clue?”
“No.”
“Not even a viable theory?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Funny, because I have one.”
“You have one what?”
“I have a theory as to what really happened here.”
“I’d be happy to hear it.”
“I don’t think you will be.”
“Why not?”
“Because it all comes back to you. Everything—all the misdirection on this case—was your doing.”
“Why would I do something like that?”
“To make sure I didn’t keep looking into the death of Victor Reyes.”
I ran through it all with him. Everything I believed even if I couldn’t prove it yet. How he’d used Nikki Reynolds to get me interested in the Kennedy book after I came to his office asking questions about Victor Reyes. Sent the anonymous letter to me at the News. Left the Kennedy half-dollars to be found. And then leaked that information to Carrie to try to get us—really, me—to chase after the wrong story.
“Maybe Nikki mentioned the book in pas
sing when you were in bed or something, and you had a good laugh about this kooky guy and his book,” I said. “But then you realized the potential it might have to interest me as a story. I think I probably talked to Nikki at some point about my lifelong fascination with the Kennedy assassination and all the unanswered questions about it. Even showed her my library of books and videos on the subject. She told you that, which made it even easier to come up with the idea to send me off on a wild-goose chase about the JFK killing instead of writing about the shooting of Vincent Reyes.
“Nikki didn’t know why she was doing it, of course. She was just doing you a favor. Then later, when people started dying, she got scared. But when she took me to lunch and tried to convince me to get involved with the Oswald book the way you’d asked, it probably didn’t seem like that big a deal to her. The only problem was it didn’t work. I wasn’t interested in the Oswald book. Not then, anyway.
“So you decided to up the ante. Maybe the fact that the first murder victim was named Kennedy gave you the impetus, maybe it was just a coincidence. But you came up with the idea of connecting a Kennedy half-dollar to each of the crime scenes. How did you pull that off? Well, you’re a top cop. It wouldn’t be too hard. I checked. No one ever found a Kennedy half-dollar at the actual crimes scenes when they first arrived. They always turned up later. You probably showed up at Union Square and dropped it there for the CSI guys to find with Shawn Kennedy. In fact, I’ll bet if I check the records you were at the Balzano crime scene at some point too. The Kennedy half-dollar in the Daniels case was found afterward when the body was already in the morgue. I think you planted it there. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Somehow someone put the coins there to be found with all three bodies. If not the killer, then it had to be a cop.
“Anyway, after you came up with the plan, you leaked the information to Carrie Bratten. She was writing the story about the Shawn Kennedy murder, and she used you as a source for the Kennedy half-dollar connection with the Daniels case. Except you also needed me to get involved in this, not just Carrie. So you sent me that anonymous letter pretending to be a Kennedy killer. Again, the only person who could have known about the Kennedy half-dollars at that point outside the police—they hadn’t been made public yet—was the person who put them there. That would be you on both counts. So I put that together with the Kennedy book stuff on Lee Harvey Oswald Jr. and presto . . . your plan is up and running in high gear. I forget all about poor Victor Reyes. I’m on the trail of a Kennedy killer, running around the country and chasing Kennedy leads instead of worrying about what really happened to Reyes.
