Buzz Killer

by Tom Straw

  “This works better if you tell me, doesn’t it?”

  “Actually, sir, it doesn’t.” Wild had many experiences like this over the years, and they weren’t good. Sometimes a witness like this was worse than getting iced out. Unless he spoke the truth, Theresa Fontanelli would smell it and shred him on the stand. She tried another approach.

  “Tell you what. Can you and someone else corroborate Mr. Hall’s presence here for a three-hour period two afternoons ago?”

  He called out to the bartender. “Freestyle, you down with helping out J-Hall?”

  Freestyle shrugged. “You say so.”

  “We’re down,” said Crouch, turning back to her. “And listen, Miss . . . Wild. Sorry for the bitch slap when you first got here. I like to protect my people, you understand?”

  “We have something in common.”

  “And after that reporter came nosing around, I kinda had my back up.”

  Macie had started to put away her notebook, but paused. Hall was already in the news, but covered from the distance of his mug shot and a perp walk. The idea of a reporter circling so close to the case gave her stomach a twinge. “There was a reporter here asking about Jackson Hall?”

  “Trying to. Maybe not a reporter. Making a documentary, he said. Called himself a digital journalist or some shit. Whatever. If you ask me, he looked more like a cop. That’s why I shut him down.”

  “Did he leave a name?”

  “Let me see if I still got his card.” Crouch reached around to the back pocket of his jeans, exposing the grip of a revolver in his belt. “Here we go.” He angled the card toward the jukebox so he could read it. “Gunnar Cody, RunAndGunn-dot-com.” He tossed it her way. “The fuck is that?”

  Macie Wild had no idea. But she was going to find out.

  C H A P T E R • 5

  * * *

  The business card put the offices of RunAndGunn.com—“Down and Digital,” whatever the hell that meant—in NoLIta, which was in the exact opposite direction that she needed to go for her jailhouse meeting in Queens. Wild considered waiting or covering this base with a call, but her curiosity ran way too hot for that. Why was a documentary filmmaker trying to interview one of her alibi witnesses about Jackson Hall? She needed to talk to this Gunnar Cody in person—now—and not risk getting sucked into some infinite loop of voice mail tag. So she would just show up. If he wasn’t there, she could at least get face time with a receptionist and pick up a firsthand feel for the operation.

  As ever, good luck finding street parking south of Houston. Macie surrendered to a gouger garage on Kenmare and circled around toward the address up Mott Street. On a spring day, there were fewer places better to hoof it in Manhattan. The architecture froze storybook New York in time: plenty of brick and stone, more old wood than brushed steel, and fire escapes unabashedly zigzagged the fronts of buildings instead of being hidden on the side. First-floor retail kept the area vibrant and young with upper stories devoted to funky apartments and commercial loft space. In just one block she passed two art galleries, a farm-to-table diner sharing a wall with a coal-oven pizzeria, and a vintage clothing boutique marketing irony. Wild stepped through a nondescript door beside a pop-up vegan chocolatier and, for the second time that day, found herself searching a directory in a vestibule.

  It showed a Cody, G., but no business listing. She pressed the call button. After a brief pause, the speaker filled with the tinny background sounds of a TV or, perhaps, a radio talk show, followed by a man’s voice. “Not today, thank you.” Click. Silence.

  Macie buzzed again. Once more came the distorted noise and the voice. A little more strident. “Look, Watchtower, Greenpeace, whatever, save it. Not interested.”

  Macie leaned toward the speaker, trying to sound pleasant, like the kind of stranger you’d want to talk to. “My name’s Macie Wild. I’m a criminal defense attorney, and I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about a case I’m wor—”

  “Top floor.” The speaker clicked off and the release on the access door purred. Macie pushed through.

  The elevator car, a groaning, whirring freight-style cage, let her out in a small alcove with worn hardwood flooring. Green and blue recycling bins lined the wall to her left. In front of her, there was only one door. It had a number six on it. Wild reached out to knock but it opened, startling her.

  “Oh . . . hi.” She caught her breath and continued, “I’m looking for Gunnar Cody.”

  The barefoot man in torn jeans, and showing a sliver of bare chest behind a half-zipped hoodie, appraised her quickly but without the mental TSA pat down she had endured in the bar uptown. He did give her a rapid scan though—matching the same one she was giving him. “I’m Gunnar,” he said, bringing his attention to her face and leaving it there. Gunnar Cody had alert eyes. And something kind was going on in there under those soft lashes, she thought. He had an unchallenging gaze that made it easy to hold contact. A few years older than she, Macie guessed him to be the other side of thirty-five. He stroked his three days of stubble and said, “I apologize for my appearance. I was not anticipating any callers.” The tongue-in-cheek formality, something out of Tennessee Williams, made her laugh, and she watched his starter set of smile creases deepen when she did.

  An awkward pause followed. She had come prepared to challenge the snot out of this guy. But now, as their spontaneous little moment faded, it left Macie at a loss for where to go next. So she reverted to the playbook, albeit less stridently than she’d planned. “I want to know why you’re following me.”

  “Following you . . .”

  Wild stepped a foot closer to face him. “Please. This is too big a city to cross paths accidentally with someone twice in one day.” He didn’t answer, just gave her a bemused look that almost made her doubt herself. Almost. Holding up his card, she said, “I got this from the manager at the Stealer’s Wheel a half hour ago. I couldn’t see your whole face this morning in Chelsea. You were holding up a camera.” Cody seemed completely unfazed by her. He continued to observe her, unperturbed, even when she pointed to the Panasonic 130 slung on the coatrack inside the door. “Like that one. Only bigger.”

  “Look, you’re making a nothing coincidence into something.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. I’m a lawyer.”

  Cody took a step back and held the door wide. “Would you like to come in?” Macie hesitated. A stranger whom she’d caught tailing her was inviting her inside his loft. Tiger Foley knew where she was, but really, what good would that do? He read her and added, “If you’d rather just talk here, it’s OK.” She found his gaze again, made a gut check, and stepped in past him.

  His loft appeared to take up the entire sixth floor of the townhouse. Macie came to that reckoning through stolen glances from the kitchen table where they sat to talk off to the side of what architects would call the great room. Clearly a mixture of home and workplace, the space was tidy enough without being fussy. It had a definitely male vibe—super large flat screen, free weights beside the exercise bike in the den section, and an acceptable amount of clutter you get from living life. When Cody went to the fridge to get them a bottle of Saratoga sparkling, Macie stole another glance, this time at his ring finger, which was empty. She then craned to peer around a freestanding bookcase across the den where she heard the low-volume whine of what sounded like a Formula One car race. Behind that partition Wild spotted racks and tables of electronic gear: more video cameras, hard drives, and LED monitors. One screen played video embedded with time code of an expensive foreign sports car zooming around Columbus Circle at night. Cody pulled a drape across the opening, obscuring her view of his little studio, and flipped on his Sirius XM to mask the beehive droning of the racing car with some Don Henley.

  “I barged in on your workday.”

  He settled across the table from her and shrugged. “What’s a workday?” She warmed under his amused gaze. “I’d be going at it twenty-five/seven if I could rig it.”

  Handed the
opening she said, “Going at what, may I ask? Exactly what is RunAndGunn?”

  “Don’t you forget the dot-com,” he said with mock seriousness. “Very proud of that here. Those domains are hard-won.” As “Heart of the Matter” faded out, a sloshy-mouthed DJ, direct from the Alan Freed Studios at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, came on and reminisced about an Eagles concert she attended thirty years ago and how Glenn Frey had been taken too soon. “Hate it when they talk,” said Cody. “Jeez.”

  Wild brought it back. “So. RunAndGunn—dot-com . . .”

  “A little start-up of mine,” he began. “‘Run and gun’ being news videographer jargon for shooting whatever you can on the fly. Gunnar, Gunn; it kinda works.”

  “Clever.”

  “Manly too.”

  Again his self-mocking tone cracked her up. “And you do all this . . . here?”

  The sweep of her hand to his home studio brought him forward in his seat. “As I said, it’s a start-up. But I’ve got all my own gear and I’m doing just fine in a very competitive landscape. Since you’re curious, I do stringer gigs, you know, freelance video for local news stations who’ve cut back on the number of crews they carry. They either assign me to cover events or I pick up what I can off my scanners and sell what I can. There’s a lot of overnight stuff, bodega stickups, car crashes—hamburger on the highway—you get the idea.”

  “Twenty-five/seven.”

  His turn to laugh. “Exactly, exactly. But I’ve managed to score some coups for being new. A ride-along I did with ATF on a stinger missile raid in Jersey went viral and, next thing, one of the networks flew me to Paris after the November attacks. From there I ended up embedded on a Belgian politie raid in Molenbeek.” Was this guy bragging, selling, or just pumped? She couldn’t tell. “See, my business plan is to develop a rep for cutting-edge street journalism that’s credible and impactful—hey, I should write that down. That’s dangerously close to sounding like a mission statement.”

  Wild studied him, and things didn’t add up. Oh, she bought the freelancing and the viability of his enterprise. Gunnar Cody seemed like a smart, capable, and driven guy. But something wasn’t getting said. Something was buried in omission. Why, she wondered, was a shit-together guy like this doing a start-up at his age? Macie sized up his strength and bearing and came up with an educated guess. “Were you in the military before this, or something?”

  But her question, however gently presented, forced a shadow over his brow. She had poked a sore spot. “Listen, if this is none of my business . . .”

  “No, it’s cool.” He half-masted his lids as he conjured a reply. “Flat out? I was a cop.” That made sense of the nightstick in the umbrella stand inside his front door. “NYPD, if you want to know. Spent most of my years on TARU. You know TARU?”

  Macie did, and the mention of it renewed her unease. The NYPD’s Technical Assistance Response Unit was an elite, and ultimately, secretive investigative branch responsible for a grab bag of all things electronic. The detectives from TARU did everything from photographing mobsters outside funerals, to setting up court-warranted phone taps, to planting bugs in offices, homes, and social clubs of organized crime or terror suspects. To Wild that was all fine, even necessary, within its legal limits. However, as an advocate for the civil liberties of her clients, she frequently butted legal heads over the tactics of the surveillance unit. To her, TARU had a dangerous appetite for shooting crowd video at protests and rallies. She saw them as spies who played fast and loose with the Handschu court ruling that restricted the police from gathering files on law-abiding dissidents. Cody had probably invoked TARU for street cred but it had the opposite effect on Macie. It only made her imagine him as one of the cops hosing video at Occupy, the Eric Garner marches, and the immigration protests. She must have worn it on her face. He added, “I’m definitely ex-TARU though.”

  “Ex how?” Studying him, she did not detect any crisis of conscience over civil liberties.

  “Wow, you are a lawyer, aren’t you.”

  “You said you were TARU, now you’re ex-TARU. I’m curious.”

  “Let’s say that I departed under less than happy circumstances. Why don’t we leave it there?”

  “Sure, no problem.” So, fired. But the association with spying had cooled her to him and worried her. “I’d like to know what your interest is in a case I’m working on.”

  “Not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I represent a defendant accused of a recent homicide. Today I tried to get into my crime scene, and while I was there, I made you, Mr. Surveillance. Then up at the Stealer’s Wheel, I discover you’d also been there. That’s what I’d call interest.”

  Cody said nothing. In the pause, Classic Vinyl filled the space with The James Gang. “I’m not sure what you want,” he said at last.

  “I want to know why.”

  “As a lawyer . . . especially a public defender . . . you know all about the First Amendment. So, if you recognize that I am a credentialed member of the press working on a documentary, you should understand that’s something I’m not required to share.” The gentleness of his delivery did nothing to take the sting off his answer.

  “Oh, please. We are so not at the freedom of the press stage here, Mr. Cody. I have an innocent man going on trial for a murder. I just want to know all I can about anything related to my case.”

  “I hear you. I’d be doing the same thing.”

  “Then help me here.”

  “Sorry, I can’t say more right now.”

  “That’s not acceptable.”

  “To me it is.” Now he started getting heated too. “Look, Ms. Wild, I am in the midst of shooting an investigative piece of major importance to my business. It’s my very first commissioned project from VICE Media.” He tilted his head and cocked one brow to punctuate the significance.

  “And this is related to my case? Does it connect to a man named Jackson Hall?”

  “Not going to go there. And if the First Amendment isn’t enough, I’ve signed a nondisclosure with VICE. As an attorney, you know what that means.”

  “I demand to know what other witnesses of mine you have met with, if any.”

  “Apparently you know what that means, and don’t care.”

  She pushed her Saratoga away and stood. “This lost its sparkle.”

  “Right there with you.” He rose too.

  Cody followed her as she strode to the door. She opened it herself and pivoted back to face him. “We’ll be talking again if I find you shadowing my investigation.”

  “Actually, to shadow you, I’d have to be a step behind. I believe that would make you the shadow. With all respect.”

  Feeling the foundation crumbling under her feet, Wild had no alternative but leave it there. She stalked to the elevator and pressed the down button. As Gunnar Cody’s door closed behind her, Macie could hear Joe Walsh singing “Walk Away.”

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  Her pal the blue heron was back on the rocky bank across the C-wire from the Rikers visitors lot at three forty-five that afternoon when Wild stood at the trunk of her gray-pearl Corolla performing her ritual security jettison of jewelry, electronics, and sharps. Macie was glad to ditch her phone, weary of the flood of tweets and Instagrams hounding her, bolstering her, or offering advice about the Buzz Killer case. There were numerous attempts to book interviews with him, even a jailhouse bride proposal. Gusts out of the south kicked up some chop in the East River, but the stately bird held position, focus riveted on the broken surface, waiting to strike at the first flash of movement. Instead of slamming the trunk, Macie pressed it closed this time, leaning on it until the latch clicked, and when she glanced back from the first security gate, the heron was still on duty.

  In the visitors’ intake hall, she took the short line reserved for attorneys, showed the officer at the window her Unified Court System security pass, signed in, and stated her appointment to see her client, Jackson Hall. By rote, Wild held out her hand to get it stamp
ed. When that didn’t happen, she looked up. The guard mumbled, “One moment, miss,” and swiveled away in his chair while he picked up his phone.

  A sergeant named Fong, whom Wild had dealings with before, and liked, slipped out from a side door a moment later and gestured her to a quiet corner of the room. Macie’s legs weakened on the short walk to join him because Sergeant Fong had come to meet her and he was seeking privacy. “We just placed a call to your office a few minutes ago, Ms. Wild,” he said as she approached.

  “Why, what’s going on?”

  “There’s been an incident involving Mr. Hall,” he said somberly.

  “Incident, what kind of incident? Tell me what happened.”

  The sergeant stepped closer and lowered his voice. “He went missing at some point today. After a search, your client was found in the shower area, hanging.”

  C H A P T E R • 6

  * * *

  Guards found Jackson Hall unconscious, but alive, and Wild drove herself in a fog of disbelief to Bellevue where the ambulance had rushed her client. She called ahead to Soledad Esteves Torres, and her team’s social worker was waiting for her in the center of the huge glass atrium that formed the modern entrance where IM Pei had encased the old hospital in a St. Elsewhere snow globe of grief and miracles. “How the hell did this happen?” she asked on Macie’s walk-up. Her question was only partly rhetorical, so Wild shared Sergeant Fong’s version. When a corrections officer went to round up Hall for her conference, he wasn’t in his cell. They put out an alert, and a few minutes later, one of the COs found him in an alcove near a janitorial closet with a garbage bag cinched around his neck. It had been rolled into the thickness of a rope and looped onto a wall pipe. Apparently there was enough stretch in the plastic to lower his feet onto the floor, subtracting just enough body weight from the ligature to save his life—they hoped.

  “Jesus . . . A thousand bulls in there, a gazillion security cameras, and nobody saw anything?” The firewall between Macie and her feelings was tenuous and her friend was eroding it further. “Goddamned Rikers.” Soledad had spent nearly two decades dealing with The Oven, and every incident like this tested her shock threshold. “Department of Corrections should either get their shit together in that place or change the name to what it really is, Devil’s Island.”