by Mike Bogin
Bleary-eyed intelligence officers were snatching coffee and Five-Hour Energy and driving flat-out. Adrenaline might offset the beers for about thirty minutes, not longer; on the move into the briefing room, Owen and Tremaine both mugged up with strong black coffee.
Detectives were spread from Long Island to Jersey and all parts in between with the holiday, leaving Owen time to gulp java ahead of the full briefing. Nassau County police band radio calls played through the ceiling speakers. Four known dead. Victims: all Caucasian males. Perpetrator(s) at large. Awaiting descriptions. Mayor was present and accounted for, unharmed. Assassination attempt? Unknown.
Relieved nods all around. The mayor was not harmed. Confirmed.
Owen tried to contact the FBI liaison to the NYPD. Voicemail. FBI, Secret Service, CIA, NSA; nobody was sleeping, not when the Who’s Who of New York Jews were murdered with the mayor right there.
Christina Dansk, the Division Commander, moved into the stark room at a brisk clip, getting in front of the smart screen. “Here is what we’ve got,” she announced. “Four dead, identified as Morris Levy, Ari Fleish, Lawrence Perlman, Max Branderman. If not household names, every one of them is on the Fortune 400 list. All Jewish. All killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.
“In the panic, preliminary word is that Nassau PD was unable to secure the perimeter. The crowd ran from the scene; the perpetrators may have distributed amongst them to get away. No reports of chatter ahead of this attack, no organizations claiming responsibility so far. So what happened here? What have we got? Even if you sound like an idiot, stand up and sound off.”
Christiana Dansk could not help but look stunning even in the simple ascot gray knee-length dress she was wearing. Six feet tall in bare feet and given to wearing heels, her height and snow blonde hair were intimidating and dangerously attractive in equal parts.
“Can we get a screenshot of the event site?” a detective asked.
“Generic, yes, real time, no.” Google Maps appeared on the smart board, with the Commander maximizing the generic visuals on Morris Levy’s estate. Water on two sides. Twelve-foot iron fencing along the landside borders. The thirty-thousand-square-foot chateau looked like a hotel from the aerial photo. Everyone present stared, trying to fully grasp the dimensions.
More questions peppered in. “It was a party, correct? How many guests in attendance?”
“TBD. No figures yet.”
“The mayor. Where was security?”
“Nassau PD had a four-man offshore crew on a police boat, two two-man cars in front. The mayor had a six-man detail, another six from Levy’s own security staff there, and we’re waiting on a number from who knows how many more security came along with that guest list.”
“That many guns and panic, it’s a wonder that a lot more people weren’t shot,” somebody remarked to collective agreement. It might have been mayhem. Only highly trained officers would have handled themselves with that level of control. If any one of them, right or wrong, had identified a shooter, that person would be stone dead.
“Tremaine, where is the chatter on this?” Dansk wanted to know. “The mayor doesn’t visit one of the top Zionist moneymakers without some noise coming from the Moslem Brotherhood. What did we miss?”
Tremaine hated being singled out. He shrugged, shaking his head without offering any response. Nobody had heard of any official state visit and chatter was way down. For the moment, the Brotherhood was focused on in-fighting within the fledgling governments in Egypt and Libya more than on Israel.
“Could be that somebody wants to shift the emphasis,” Tremaine offered. “Bring the conflict with Israel back to the center?” Seemed plausible. Arab leaders had been doing that for half a century.
One of the younger hawks asked, “Why then do you kill four bankers when the mayor is a few feet away?”
“None of this fits any Islamist MO I’ve ever heard of,” Owen summarized, succinctly synthesizing all their thinking. Suicide bombers, screaming and spraying automatic weaponry—none of that. This was stealth. Precision. “Assuming anything Islamist is jumping pretty far ahead. Could be Aryan Nation, Neo-Nazi, New World Order—conspiracy maniacs telling themselves that Jewish Bankers rule the universe. Even a Plain-Jane murder wrapped up to look like something real fancy.” Crazy dangerous, but not suicide.
How the hell do you get inside that party, kill four people, and get out again past at least twenty security people?
Four money shots. All kills. Nobody wounded. No reports of a single miss. Fair assumption that if the mayor had been a target, he would be dead.
* * * * *
At seven a.m., attorneys for each of the deceased descended upon the Office of the Medical Examiner, Nassau County, with court orders to release all victims’ remains for burial on Thursday, July 5 in accordance with Jewish law. The Chief Medical Examiner needed no toxicology work-ups; there would be no autopsies.
Morris Levy’s skull had collapsed inward where the bullet struck, allowing for the penetrating object to be retrieved by the use of forceps directly through the entry wound on the right side anterior temporal lobe. Instantaneous death by traumatic brain injury. Ari Fleish—entry in the left occipital lobe. Forceps retrieval. Max Branderman’s brain had been penetrated through the temple with a clean entry diameter, the penetrating object pressing through the basal ganglia and finally lodging in the interior of the opposing side within the skull cavity. Skull crown was removed by means of oscillating skull saw with penetrating object left intact. The fourth victim, Lawrence Perlman, had been shot through the cerebellum, the penetrating object striking the temporal lobe, where it was retrieved from the nasal cavity by means of sectioning with the oscillating skull saw. A preliminary examination of the penetrating objects indicated uniform make and caliber. Each penetrating object was packaged and labeled by victim, as identified by a family member or representative, and released to the Nassau County Police Department.
At eleven a.m., Nassau County PD and the FBI accessed the report from the forensic examiner. Despite the severe impact compression that left one of the four bullets reduced to half its size, absolute confirmation was made. Each bullet was fired from the same weapon, a .300 Win Mag.
Confirmed: single shooter. One shooter firing four kill shots in quick secession, 3.2 seconds, using a cartridge, moving the kickback equivalent of a twelve-gauge shotgun firing a one ounce slug. Tens of millions of these same .300 rounds were put into use by sportsmen, hunters, police forces, and military forces from multiple nations. Tens of millions.
Flagged and tagged locations of the bodies, the location of the stage, and other physical elements at the crime scene left law enforcement officers and forensic specialists the confidence to exclude firing locations on the water or from above. The shots were fired from close range. On plane or very nearly on plane. Specially-trained dogs identified gunpowder residue along the tree line, thereby corroborating these findings.
Not a single eye witness had heard a clear sound of gunfire. Audio specialists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, confirmed four shots using noise suppression and the 3.2 second elapsed time interval from first to last shot.
One weapon, modified or equipped with a professional-standard silencer, used by a skilled practitioner capable of penetrating an elite security force of at least twenty career officers, plus several dozen personal security bodyguards. Every one of the guards was accounted for. No indication of complicity.
No published manifestos. No taped messages. No indication of motive. NYPD did not even have confirmation of the forensic reports—Nassau PD had supplied a one paragraph summary; nobody from NYPD had yet tap-danced to the FBI’s tune.
NSA scoured for any claim to responsibility. Al Qaida? Had the Saudis or the Afghans or Iran finally hit upon the gold standard and produced this caliber shooter, no pu
n intended?
More likely, they had bought the shooter. Who was out there for hire? NSA examined on all international money transfers to look for the payoff. What British or Israeli or American had trained the shooter?
The one other possibility kept intelligence officers up at night in a cold sweat. The motivated individual. This was the one they could not control. With two people, there is always a communications trail. Three conspirators produce multiple internal trails. With each additional participant, the trails grow exponentially. Personalities intersect. They clash. Noises come through apartment walls. A drunken comment gets passed along. There is a chain of command, leaving someone doing the step and fetch and feeling the brunt of being low on the pecking order. Egos flare. Someone needs to brag.
One person is something else altogether. Ted Kaczynski, the loner able to elude authorities. Hired killers, terrorist cells, none of these compares to the motivated loner.
* * * * *
Emerson Elliot returned to the air at three a.m. with copies in hand of the obituaries already published for each of the victims. He began his program by listening to his own broadcast from the night before. Two Xanax before bed had mellowed him out considerably, but he slept fitfully and awakened with an unsettling feeling of confusion between dreams and reality. He wanted that cracking walnut sound and then the toilet plunger sound to be deleted from his brain, only there wasn’t a button for that. His hands trembled, still holding onto the physical memory of Morris Levy’s head imploding.
Crazy Thumbs’ real name was Eric Epstein, which just wouldn’t work, not two EEs in the same studio. Thumbs wished that Emerson Elliot would take some time off and let reruns carry the programming. What was the point of being on the air after what he had just gone through?
After playing the soundtrack, Elliot reasoned aloud, trying to understand the circumstances himself. Why in God’s name had he even been at Levy’s? To play master of ceremonies for a man he hardly knew? He didn’t need the money. Was he so shallow that he wanted to meet another rock idol?
How did soldiers see these things, handle these threats, and come home to girlfriends and wives and parents and kids, he asked himself? He found himself tearing up again, not recognizing the signs of post traumatic shock.
Crazy Thumbs held up his white board pad. On it, he had written “Downer.” Who wanted to hear that internal dialogue on the air?
EE ignored him. Leafing through the New York Times, he read lines from six different articles from just that day. Bombings in Mosul. Twenty-four dead. A raid on a police station in Herat. Nine dead, eleven wounded. Troops firing heavy machine guns into a residential neighborhood in southern Syria, killing five, three of them children under ten years old.
“How is it humanly possible that people do these things?” he asked his audience. “Are we born that vile? Are we taught whatever it is that makes people do that? How does a person learn not to feel empathy, to go around so numb that you’re a pig and not a person at all? Oh, maybe that’s it; maybe I’m on to something. The other guys are just pigs, not human, so that makes it OK.”
“My God. That is just too gross. Listeners, Crazy Thumbs thinks you’ll be turning off the show. Call in today, please. Tell me to go screw myself if you feel like it. That’s OK, too. Thumbs, I’m taking this one day and if I’m not funny and the sponsors decide to place their ads with Imus, God bless them, too,” he said.
“Morris Levy, died in my arms last night. He would have turned seventy-years-old today. Levy, I’m reading here, was saved from the Holocaust by spending his first thirty months inside a convent dressed as a girl so that he would not end up an infant in the gas chambers. They were killing children. After the war, he lived in an orphanage in Britain before being sponsored to live with foster parents in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The little boy spoke fluent French and English and went on, during his lifetime, to add Hebrew and Greek, having the good fortune to be fostered by professors of classics and history. After attending public high school, Levy was awarded a full scholarship to Brandeis University where he graduated at age nineteen, summa cum laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. As one of the earlier adopters of technical trading theory, Levy became the youngest money manager on Wall Street and, by age thirty, was a founding partner with Adam Fines in forming the investment house of Levy, Fines, and Wallman. Morris Levy was a major benefactor for Brandeis University, for the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, for Birth Right, and numerous other Jewish causes.”
EE paused, leaving dead air space that made Crazy Thumbs cringe before continuing with this maudlin, soul-searching response to the attack.
“I’m not going to pretend that I was friends with Morris Levy or Max Branderman or Ari Fleish. These weren’t my friends. You guys know me too well and I’m not ever going to lie to you. I get invited to their parties because I have an agent who takes an appearance fee. I’m supposed to loosen up the crowd, do a little Sammy Davis Jr. bit, make sure the spotlight hits the right people, and lob a few light zingers to roast the birthday boy.”
EE was on his streaming video webcast, but he paid no attention to that. With his trademark sunglasses off, his bloodshot eyes removed all the semblance of perpetual youth, usually so carefully crafted. He looked mid-fifties, tired, sad.
“Do we really care about the billions these men amassed? That meant something yesterday, not much today. Morris Levy left a son, two daughters, and four grandchildren. Max Branderman left five-year-old twins, a little boy and a girl from his second marriage, along with two grown children. Branderman’s foundation has funded more than three hundred organ transplants for children and is this country’s leading organization for organ-donation advocacy.”
EE continued reading in a dazed monotone. “Ari Fleish and his husband, Phillip Aushlise, were civil liberties advocates for twenty years. They used their energy, their relationships, and their resources to fight for their right to be the married couple they became not even a year ago. They never got the chance to celebrate their first legal anniversary because some depraved maniac put a bullet in Ari’s brain.”
He didn’t need to read notes about one of the victims. “Larry Perlman was actually my friend. He owned two television networks, bringing some of the funniest and most real programming to the air today. He had a huge influence on food, fashion, travel, home design. Huge. He was married five times, with all five marriages ending in spectacular implosions. I met Larry at summer camp when we were ten years old. Larry was getting a care package sent up every day and he used to sell beef jerky by the stick and cookies one by one.” Elliot remembered how Larry had the only place around camp to buy snacks after the camp store closed at four o’clock.
“I never knew a ten-year-old who played with himself that much,” he said, remembering. “Larry had the top bunk and both our beds would shake and squeak after lights out while Larry went down the list of the girl counselors, imagining this one’s tits and how the next one’s short-shorts outlined her doughnut smuggling.”
Elliot had been to three of Perlman’s weddings. “Five marriages, who knows how many flings, no kids. Larry’s ma is a sweetheart. Eighty-two-years-old, sharp as a tack. He was picking her up in the helicopter to join him on the boat for the weekend. She made him walk with her around the decks for cardio exercise. Joanie, if you’re listening, I am so sorry. Nobody was more fun than Larry. How he found time to accomplish so much is a mystery. Beneath the Tony Soprano looks, he was a mensch and a credit to you. I love you, honey.”
* * * * *
He debriefed himself, moving mechanically through the action in carefully-considered segments that rang as failure after failure. Operational success had been all luck. Juicing on high risk like a punk. He was out of condition. Overlooking K9!
Control, timing, accuracy…acceptable marks on all points. But that was the easy part. Stationary civilian targets at <75 meters.
Conception failure. What was he thinking, selecting Jews for the first target? That was what was firing up the pain along the small of his back. His whole point and purpose was lost. He reached his arm behind him and rubbed his fingers into the thick red scar tissue. He should have seen that coming. Everything was being distorted. Wasn’t it obvious to everyone? Didn’t they have eyes to see that house, to see that gluttony?
Four kills, thirteen billion dollars between them, but the news and radio were calling him an Islamist.
That could not be left to stand.
He used a Google search to locate the mailing addresses for media outlets, including Emerson Elliot Enterprises. First putting on latex gloves, he slipped 3 X 5 index cards from the middle of the pack. Using a black, broad-tip felt pen, he wrote in all-caps I KILL RICH PEOPLE, and then left the cards on the table while he walked back and forth. He shouldn’t have to say it at all. He applied the postage stamps, then he dabbed a moistened paper towel onto the upper right corners of the flip side of the index cards.
* * * * *
Nassau County PD was happy for all the help they could get and delivered their entire file to NYPD’s Intel Division, or D.I.D, while the Bureau was holding out and dragging its heels, leveraging their position as usual.
Like every detective within Intel Division, Owen reviewed the emerging case file with the ballistics report and digital imagery. When Tremaine set a venti caramel macchiato from Starbucks onto the laptop keyboard, Owen looked up for the first time. Tremaine had been standing beside Owen’s desk for a full minute and that was about as long as he was going to be ignored.
