Buzz Killer

by Tom Straw

  Wild made one more attempt. “You have my card. If you change your mind and want to help, even if it’s in a small way . . .” All she got were the backs of heads. “. . . Right.”

  They retreated in silence, Macie trying to jump-start hopes about finding a lead. Of course it occurred to her that perhaps these men did not know Hall or Pinto, and that she should return in the morning, the time of day he usually fished there. She also tried in vain not to feel the vise crush of responsibility to her client, whom she had lobbied not to take his plea deal. These were the sober places her thoughts ran as she retraced her steps down Bobby Wagner Walk when she realized she was alone.

  Cody sat behind her on the retaining wall of a planter, hidden by a shrub, staring out at the end of the pier. “You in some kind of hurry?” he asked when she joined him. “No offense, but this is where you people fall short.”

  “Tell me what you mean, and I’ll let you know if I’m offended.”

  “You can’t accept pushback from a dickhead. That’s just the opening move.” He took out a pair of compact binocs and trained them on the fishermen. While he watched, he continued, “Tell me. Do you make me out as a cop? Do I really put that out there?”

  No fan of profiling, Macie gave Cody a head-to-toe anyway. His face carried authority, but she also had seen it morph in a blink to playfulness. He was certainly fit, athletic even, and wore his clothes well—especially those skinny jeans he had on.

  “Tell you one thing, if I was a cop, they’d goddamn know it. I’d brace their asses down at the precinct and we’d have some answers. Usually the threat of that is enough to shake the tree.”

  “Or you could take them for a ride.” Wild laughed, but when he nodded as if that was buried in the dark pages of the playbook, she stopped. “As a cop, what did you make of Hall showing up at Pinto’s door like he did?”

  “As an ex-cop . . . Don’t hate me, but I’d say he might look good for being partners on a cowboy hit. Two-on-one. You saw the blood and the damage.”

  “I do not believe he killed Rúben Pinto.”

  He pulled his Steiner glasses away to regard her. “I didn’t say he did. I’m saying he looks good for it.” Cody went back to his pier watch. “So. Do you hate me?”

  “Such a strong word,” she said. “Let’s go with acute degree of wariness.”

  “A high-water mark for me in relationships.” He handed the binoculars to her. “Check out Otis Redding.” Macie saw only the other two. She searched left and eventually spotted the man in the silver tracksuit standing under the pier’s pavilion, speaking on his cell phone. He pocketed it and called something to the others as he walked away.

  “He’s leaving.”

  Cody took the glasses back and smiled. “Otis Redding’s headin’ uptown. We visit. We go. He makes a call. He leaves the dock of the bay. Coincidence?”

  “What now?”

  “We follow.” He wound the cord around the binocs. “You up for that?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “Good. Cause it’s all we got.” Wild got up to join Cody but he held up a palm. “He might have a car or get a cab.” He handed her his keys. “I’ll tail on foot. You meet me with my van. Give me your phone.” His instructions were so softly given and matter-of-fact, she complied without feeling pushed around. He tapped in some digits and soon his phone vibrated. He pressed end and handed her cell back. “Just press redial when you reach the van. I’ll tell you where to meet me.” And he was off.

  Macie went the opposite way at double time, and then began jogging, struck by how this day had turned since a simple payback lunch.

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  “This thing drives like a tank,” said Wild as she pulled up to the corner on First Avenue. Cody got in the passenger seat.

  “Yep, she runs heavy.” He rapped some knuckles on the fiberglass partition behind them. “I keep all my gear back there.”

  “You mean for your video production?”

  Smile lines creased the corners of his eyes before he answered. “. . . Yeah. Exactly.” Then he jabbed a finger at his side window. Across 116th Street the man in the silver tracksuit was stepping out of a cigar store specializing in Dominican handmades. “Stay on him.”

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather drive?”

  “Let’s go, don’t lose him.” Macie checked the side mirror, eased into traffic, then signaled a left to follow Otis Redding at his walking speed west on Pascale Place. Cody instructed her to wait at the corner when they reached Second Avenue, and she nosed forward so they could keep their target in view as he crossed at the light. “Thought so. He’s headed to the bus stop. How you holding up?”

  “I’ve never tailed a suspect before.”

  “Subject. He’s not a suspect unless he is implicated in a crime. Jeez, what kind of lawyer are you anyway, Macie Wild?” That made her laugh and loosen her white-knuckle grip on the wheel.

  Their man boarded the M15 Southbound, which made tailing easier, on one hand, since a bus was fairly easy to keep track of, but more challenging on the other because they had to eyeball every stop not to lose him in a crowd of passengers getting off. She grew inured to the horns protesting her slow speed, but when they came into Midtown and she got caught at a red and the bus continued on, Cody said, “You might want to tighten up.”

  Macie indicated the lane markings. “It says buses only.”

  “Nothing bad will happen. Keep it close.” Battling a lifetime of respect for the law, she took a spot in the forbidden lane, giving her clear access to her M15 SBS. A police siren double chirped, and an NYPD blue-and-white pulled alongside. The cop riding shotgun signaled her to pull over.

  “Crap,” she said. “See?” Cody reached across her and flashed his wallet at the officer. The uniform gave a two-finger salute and the police car broke away. “I thought you said you weren’t a cop anymore.”

  He said, “I’m not,” and left it there.

  The stop at Houston Street is designated for passenger exit only so it made it easier to spot the man in the tracksuit when he filed off. Maintaining the tail became trickier in the Lower East Side congestion, and they lost him once, only to regain him when he turned onto Avenue A. He rounded the corner at Third Street and breezed into a storefront offering back rubs and tension relief. “Who are they kidding?” said Cody. “It’s a massage parlor.”

  “In the same block as the Upright Citizens Brigade,” said Macie, tilting her head toward the improv group’s theater. “Ironic.”

  “Or fitting.” They shared a chuckle, and he pointed, “See the plumbing truck leaving? Grab his space.” After she took an appalling number of maneuvers to park, Cody opened his door and said, “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To book a couple’s massage.”

  C H A P T E R • 11

  * * *

  Wild came around to the back of the van as Cody finished extracting the stack of Pinto’s boosted crime scene papers from his messenger bag. He shut the cargo door and slung the satchel. He read her expression. “You don’t really think I mean we’re going to . . . you know.”

  “No.” And then she added with emphasis, “No!”

  “I said book, not get.” He lagged for a cab to pass and crossed the street. She fell in step. “I want you to pretend you’re a first timer and monopolize the manager with a bunch of dumbshit questions while I do my thing.” Macie came to a halt on the sidewalk, and he stopped too. “Problem?”

  “So you know, it would be a first. So you know.” Point made, she scanned the parlor’s storefront. “And what do you mean by ‘do your thing?’”

  “You won’t need to stall too much. I hope not anyway. Depends how long it takes me to get access to his massage room.”

  “For what?”

  “First of all, I want to see an ID from his wallet, so we have a name. An address would make it all nice.”

  She gestured at the Timbuk2 hanging on his shoulder. “Why do you need that? You going to slip a GPS in
his pants?”

  “Oh, please. He’d notice that. But I like the way you think. Almost un-lawyerly. Is that a word?” He didn’t wait for an answer but opened the door for her to go inside.

  The lobby might have once belonged to a tanning salon or shoe repair shop. At four p.m., it was faux midnight in the tiny reception area thanks to the window, which was tinted the fifty-first shade of gray. The odor was industrial-strength disinfectant mixed with the scent of patchouli curling off a lone stick of incense on a shelf near the manager. She was in her late fifties, with what would be called a practical haircut that went with her squared face and blocky physique. “Welcome to Bliss on Demand,” she recited in a monotone, then cleared some gravel from her throat.

  “Jai Bhagwan,” replied Cody with a bow as they approached the counter.

  Stage fright pecked at Macie. The reality set in that she was going to have to pull off a performance. “We were wondering if you do couples.”

  The woman slid on a pair of glasses from her neck chain and clapped a release form onto a clipboard. “You each want a relaxation massage?”

  “Together!” Macie blurted.

  “We can do that. You may have a wait. I only have one girl working now and she’s with a client. Another’s gal’s coming in a half hour.”

  Cody gave Wild’s foot a subtle nudge and she began her diversion. “Hm. Two women . . . is there any way to arrange a mix? Male and female?—Oh. And pricing. Is there an up-charge for doubles? I’d like to see your price list for comparison.”

  The manager dropped her head to peer at Wild over the top of her glasses. Cody asked if they had a restroom. She pointed toward an archway of hanging beads to the side. “Price list, huh . . . ?”

  Six minutes seemed like an eternity to Macie, who had resorted to asking if they accepted health insurance when Cody parted the beads and emerged from the back, giving no sign of success or failure. “It’s cash only. Seventy dollars,” reported Wild.

  “Each?” he asked, so sharply that Macie apologized to the manager.

  Citing the price point, they thanked the woman for her time and left. On the walk back to their parking spot, he said, “His name is Fabio Mir.”

  “One of the names Mr. Hall gave me.”

  “Right. For the record, I never bought Otis Redding. Not for a second.”

  “Did you get an address?”

  “It’s a Florida license, so no help there today.”

  “You were gone forever.”

  “Five minutes, thirty-eight seconds.” He flashed his runner’s watch. “Fabio’s cell phone took longer than I thought.”

  “To do what?”

  “Tap it.” They stopped at the rear of the van. He placed a hand on each of her upper arms and gently adjusted her position so he could keep an eye on the massage parlor. “You may have read about some of the technological advances that let police, government agencies, black hats, state actors, Fancy Bears, and certain unscrupulous journalists hack cell phones? For instance, decryption devices and radio interceptors that spoof cell towers and induce your target’s calls to relay through your gear.”

  She gave him a skeptical look and tugged the strap of his messenger bag. “You have all that in here?”

  “None of it.” He reached in and pulled out a battle-scarred electronic box the size of a TV remote. “What I did instead was pair his Bluetooth to this. So now, as long as we keep in range, we can listen to all his calls. I only have one set of earbuds, so we’ll have to do it in here.” He unlocked the van and opened both rear doors. Seeing inside the back for the first time, Macie’s jaw dropped.

  The entire cargo hold of Gunnar Cody’s E-350 Super Duty had been custom converted into a state-of-the-art mobile surveillance lab.

  While she absorbed all this, Cody leaned over the bumper and gathered up the stack of Pinto’s papers he had left earlier. He stowed the heap in a plastic milk crate, then turned to her. “You said your afternoon was clear. What about tonight? You up for seeing where this goes?”

  Macie didn’t need to consult her calendar to know what she had on deck. Counseling with her ex-fiancé. She mulled her choices: rehashing the breakup in Paris or the next leg of her spontaneous adventure.

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  Two hours later, parked outside a flophouse in the Bowery, they sat at the console in the rear of Cody’s van listening to Fabio Mir place a cell phone bet from his room. In a pause while the bookie looked up the over-under, they made out the unmistakable sound of their subject urinating in the toilet. “Hear that? That’s why I insist on Bose speakers,” said Cody from his seat in the folding chair beside Macie’s. He arched his back in a stretch and then returned his attention to the monitor in front of him that displayed a quad split—two angles of the sidewalk and two of the front of the hotel—all fed from cams on the roof of his E-350. “The sad part is, when our man hangs up, it’s back to watching paint dry.” Cody canted his head her way. “You bored?”

  “I’m new at this. So not yet.” Gunnar Cody entered such a zone staring at the monitor he reminded her of that heron she had observed near Rikers: the hunter who sees but is unseen. Same focus. Same patience. Same stillness. Macie didn’t believe in omens. But watching Cody, she thought maybe she should reconsider that.

  “It’s not like TV cop shows,” he said. “Ten years doing surveillance on TARU, I can tell you that. We had some of these go on weeks, a month. Often no payoff.” The hours of isolation must have been long, she thought as she checked out the stack of books on the shelf under the monitors. She spotted the Stieg Larssons he’d mentioned at lunch along with an eclectic mix of literary fiction, travel essays, history, and classics. As he worked a camera joystick to check out some movement up the block, which turned out to be nothing, he continued his thought. “You really get to know your partners though. It’s like being locked in a submarine.”

  That felt like her opening. “So what should I know about you?”

  “You’re pretty much seeing it.” He smiled to himself. “Form your own judgment, but do be kind.”

  That sudden impishness made her smile. Again. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Is this like cross-examination?”

  “Let’s find out. How did you get into this work?”

  Fabio Mir ended his bookie call, and, by habit, Cody logged the time on a spiral pad. “Not so unique a story. 9/11 did it. I was a J-school major at Saint John’s. Destined to be the next Anderson Cooper. The twin towers came down; I signed up for the cops instead. Enrolled at the academy while The Pile was still smoldering.”

  “How did you end up in TARU—and surveillance?”

  “OK, can you kind of take the stink off that? And don’t deny, I caught it.” He gave her a quick glance then went back to his monitor. “To be fair, the Technical Assistance Response Unit is not exclusively about surveillance. Talk about Ground Zero, who do you think set up the landlines down there when all the cellular went out? And when there’s a hostage situation, it’s TARU cops who climb the telephone poles in the line of fire to set up the Bat Phone for the negotiators.”

  She rested a hand on his. “I’m not trying to badger the witness, honestly. Just trying to understand.”

  That siphoned off some tension, and he sounded more relaxed as he continued. “To answer your question, TARU found me. I guess because I was built for it. In high school, my buds and I were this combo plate of Big Bang geeks making all kinds of electronics shit and pulling these ballsy pranks. You know, like using a video cam to see the road while we ducked down to make it look like our car was driving itself? Crazy stuff I’d arrest myself for now. Anyway, it got around I was pretty good with a camera and had an almost-journalism degree, and that got me recruited for the tech unit. It was a blast too. Great guys, important work . . . Got to use my skills too.” He gestured to the cargo interior, which looked every bit like an actual TV news minivan. “Like most of what’s in here, I custom made my own snoop devices at the TARU workshop. You know, stuff for
concealment. Cameras, mics, heat and motion sensors . . .”

  “Bugs and secret wiretaps?”

  “Come on, counselor, you have to admit, in today’s world, somebody’s got to do it. What did Orwell say about rough men who keep vigilance so that the innocent may sleep at night?”

  “You do realize you’re quoting the guy who wrote 1984 from inside a surveillance van.”

  “I can tell you firsthand, at TARU we stopped terror plots before they left their basements. A few mob guys had their days spoiled too.” He opened his cooler and pulled out two waters, handing her one. “Fact is, people are all paranoid about police surveillance when retailers are using facial recognition at store displays to track their buying habits. Amazon, Netflix, and your phone’s weather app know more about you than the police ever will.”

  She took a pull off her water and said, “You’re kind of making my point. Not just about surveillance, but what is private anymore? Not our homes, our neighborhoods, our mistakes, our intimate moments—our secrets. Nothing is sacred. And when nothing is sacred, what happens to us?”

  “Now who’s the Buzz Killer,” he said. Macie found herself laughing along with him, and how could she not? Cody had turned a despised nickname into a term of endearment.

  The speakers came alive as Fabio Mir placed a call from inside the building. A man with a Russian accent answered brusquely. “Bad time. Call you back.” That was that.

  “So much for our entertainment portion,” said Cody, sweeping his cams again with the joystick. “I think it’s your turn, Macie Wild. You learned all about me—”

  “Oh, I’m far from done. You don’t know my appetite for the truth.” Cody waited. Wild relented, not particularly enjoying the reversal. “Let’s see. I grew up in a happy home of what you’d call high achievers. My dad was a state senator and is now back in private law practice.”

  “Where?”

  “Manhattan and DC. Mom’s in Doctors Without Borders.”

  “I’d call this high achieving. What the hell happened to you?”