It wasn’t much, but it was far from a wasted morning. Ted had something to work with, and that beat trying to weave fog into mittens. He left the Preacher with a hefty contribution and called Lester. There was no answer, but Lester called back in less than thirty seconds.
“What’s up?”
“You’re at the courthouse? Take down these addresses. Find out whatever you can, and text it to me. Then go down to the county clerk and check tax records. I’m getting a slice, and I need to hear from you before I’m done eating. Call me when you’ve got it all.”
Ted didn’t want to leave Corona without coming up with more information about Miss Miller. She could be dead and buried or alive and kicking a few blocks away.
One slice turned into two. He made notes on a napkin and calculations on his smartphone. By focusing on the numbers, he was able to tune out some of the Mexican rap music coming out of the overhead speakers.
Though he’d seen only the bare bones of the court docs, Ted knew that Barbara Miller had lost three buildings. According to ACRIS, the city’s online real estate records, she owned nine others. Even if all twelve buildings were standard three-story walk-ups, the combined rents would have added up to a nice piece of change. In Manhattan, most midsize landlords had been driven out of the business by a crushing combination of competition, government taxation and regulation, and massive amounts of capital, both foreign and domestic. But in the outer boroughs, it was still possible, though becoming harder every year, for a business like Miller’s to survive. And be quite profitable.
He estimated taxes, water bills, management costs, and insurance. He already knew—again from ACRIS—that six of the properties were not mortgaged, so it was a safe assumption that the others were no different. As long as her maintenance costs were under control, Barbara Miller was netting well over a million dollars a year.
Manny was right. It made no sense. People ran into all kinds of troubles in their lives—rich people as well as poor and those struggling in the middle—and Ted thought that he had heard all of their stories. But this case was unlike any other. Miss Miller was old, granted, and therefore liable to have been hospitalized, developed dementia, or died. But the management company should have taken care of paying the bills and collecting rents. That was both what they were paid for and how they got paid. They would have to be his next call. He’d need to give it some thought first. They weren’t going to easily open up for him.
As soon as he heard from Lester.
Ted finished the second slice and flipped through an abandoned copy of El Diario while he waited. Spanish had been the dominant language of the streets when Ted was growing up, but he’d never conquered the accent. He understood a little of what he heard, if the idioms were familiar, but he had trouble framing sentences more complex than those needed for ordering a meal. But he could read it well enough—given both time and a picture above a story to lend some context. The news didn’t read any better in Spanish.
libre, pero sin hogar
Six men, arrested and then released by Immigration, had returned home to find their apartments emptied, their belongings gone, and the buildings boarded up and awaiting demolition. The feds—ICE and Homeland Security—had raided two buildings in Queens a month before, netting two men ostensibly wanted in Peru for terrorist activities and four alleged undocumented aliens. That was background. The current story was that all six people had been released as evidence mounted that they were all legal immigrants—the Peruvians had been in the States for decades and both were citizens. But while they had been in custody, their apartments had been emptied and the buildings sold to a development company. Ted wasn’t surprised to see that it was LBC—Reisner. When contacted, the recent landlord of the buildings had claimed to have no responsibility, though he’d offered the men $1,000 as a “hardship donation.” Buried in the last paragraph was a quote from an ICE spokesman, apologizing for the unfortunate situation and claiming that they could not reveal the sources that had led to the raid.
The story danced admirably on the knife-edge of hinting that LBC had orchestrated the deal, duping both the feds and the citizens. The implication was probably not actionable, or the editors would never have let it through, but the point was clear to anyone with a skeptical frame of mind. Most New Yorkers fit that description.
It was past time to have heard from Lester. If he’d struck out, Ted needed to follow up on the bits and pieces he had. He was about to punch the buttons to call him when the cell phone buzzed in his hand.
Cheryl. He gritted his teeth and answered. “Molloy.”
“I’m payin’ you, and I expect updates. Did I tell you that? Every day I want to hear what you’re doing.”
“Cheryl. Good to hear from you.”
“Don’t give me that. Where are you?” She paused in her attack for a nanosecond. “And what the hell are you listening to?”
“I’m working, Cheryl. In fact, I can’t talk long. I’m expecting to hear from one of my investigators on a good lead.”
“Do you know who shot my Richie?”
“No. I don’t know. I told you, let the damn cops handle that. That’s what they do. Meanwhile, I am following up on that surplus-money case.”
“This thing Richie and you were doin’ together?”
Ted decided not to argue the point. “Yeah. That thing.”
“Yeah? And?”
“And I’ve discovered some interesting anomalies.”
“Say what?”
“Some weird stuff.”
“I know what anomalies are, asshole. I want to know what you’ve found.”
“I’m waiting on a callback. Could we talk about this later?”
“Give me a taste.”
“I have no way of knowing if somebody else is working this one, but the money is real. I need to find a lady named Barbara Miller. She’s in her nineties and owns a few buildings. If I can cut a deal with her, we’re set.”
“That doesn’t sound complicated. Or weird.”
“There are other people involved. I don’t want to go into it.”
“Is that what’s taking you so long?”
“Do you know how many Barbara Millers there are in Queens?”
“You just need one, don’t you?”
“I’d like to find the right Barbara Miller, if it’s okay with you.” Ted’s phone beeped with an incoming call. “I’ve got to go. This might be the call I’ve been waiting for.”
“I want to know who killed Richie. Meet me at the Korean barbecue place on Northern Boulevard at eight o’clock. I’ve got a business meeting, but I should be done by then.”
Ted’s inclination was to avoid all unnecessary contact with this woman—he didn’t trust her. But it occurred to him that he had questions about Richie that only she could answer, and he needed to see her face when he asked. If she was going to lie to him, he would at least make it a little more difficult for her. And he could fit in a quick meeting and still make the game before first pitch. “How about before your meeting? I’ve got Mets tickets.”
“Fine. Six o’clock.”
How many Korean BBQ joints were there on Northern Boulevard? They outnumbered the Dunkin’ Donuts ten to one. “Wait! What’s the name of the place? Where on Northern?”
“I don’t know—I don’t speak Korean. A hundred and fiftysomething block. Near Murray. You’ll see it.”
And she was gone.