41

DeMarco returned to Manhattan, intending to break the law.

The problem he had was that one point six million people lived in Manhattan. During the workweek, people poured in from the other boroughs and New Jersey and Connecticut, and the population swelled to three million. And, for all DeMarco knew, Ella Fields wasn’t living in Manhattan. She could be living anywhere in the five boroughs among the eight point six million people in the greater New York area. Finally, there was nothing to say that she was using her own name; in fact, at this point, and after the way Sarah had hunted for her, DeMarco was sure she wasn’t.

While he’d been in California, Sarah had continued to beat the bushes, trying to find someone who had leased or rented an apartment to Fields. She’d contacted upscale hotels to see if Fields might be staying in one, living off room service. She’d continually checked to see if Fields had used a credit card in the New York area or anywhere else in the world. She’d checked with auto rental companies to see if Fields had rented a car. She’d checked with the NYPD traffic boys to see if Fields might have been issued a parking ticket, a speeding ticket, a DUI. Nada, nada, nada, and nada. Which made DeMarco more certain than ever that Fields had a fake ID and that Sarah was never going to find her.

He couldn’t give up on the case, for one thing because he knew Mahoney wouldn’t allow him to give up. Another reason was that he’d promised his aunt Connie that her son’s killer would go to jail, and the way it looked at the moment, that might not happen. Justine was down to only one solid witness, Rachel Quinn. Rachel might be able to convince the jury that Toby did it, but with no motive and no physical evidence, the odds were dropping.

But there was also a third reason he wasn’t going to give up: his ego. He hated to lose, and he refused to let Ella Fields beat him.

So his plan was to call Neil and break the law whether Justine liked it or not.

Neil lived in DC. He called himself an “information broker,” but in reality he was a guy who, for a healthy fee, could get you data on just about anyone. The man slithered electronically through firewalls or called on contacts he’d developed over the years in places that stored records, places like banks and telephone companies. DeMarco figured that once he was able to identify people the witnesses had been talking to, he would have something to work with, regardless of whether the information was legally obtained or not. At this point, screw “legally obtained.” He had to find Ella Fields.

Before calling Neil, DeMarco decided to meet with Sarah one last time to see if she’d made any progress, and if not, to tell her to go back to doing whatever it is that interns do. He’d also tell her that if she ever needed a recommendation, he would write one saying that she could walk on water without getting her shoes wet.

On the way toward the Starbucks near the courthouse, his cabdriver was forced to take a detour around one of the never-ending construction projects in Manhattan, and passed near the 9/11 Memorial—and DeMarco had one of those forehead-smacking moments.

The Ring of Steel. Why in the hell hadn’t he thought of that earlier?

New York’s Ring of Steel is modeled after a similar surveillance system in London with the same name, and was installed post-9/11 to prevent terrorist attacks. The ring consists of over eight thousand cameras, located mostly in Midtown and Lower Manhattan, that protect high-value or symbolic targets, such as the New York Stock Exchange, Grand Central Terminal, and the 9/11 monument. Sophisticated software could be programmed to look for individual faces or even shapes, like a backpack sitting on the federal courthouse steps.

That’s about all DeMarco knew regarding the system, and everything he knew he’d read in the paper. The Ring was classified like a military program, and the guys in NYPD’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau were as tight-lipped as the FBI and Homeland Security agents they worked with.

DeMarco called up Justine.

“I want to use the Ring of Steel to locate Ella Fields.”

“You gotta be kidding,” Justine said.

“No. You keep saying that the only way we might be able to get a warrant to look at the witnesses’ phone records is if we can prove Fields is in New York and has approached them. Well, Rachel Quinn works in the Financial District, and there’re a zillion cameras down there, so if Ella Fields has been anywhere near her office there’s a good chance one of the cameras picked her up. I want the antiterrorist boys to stick Fields’ passport photo into their fancy software and see if they can spot her.”

“Oh, is that all,” Justine said. “DeMarco, you do realize that those people don’t work for me and …”

“Yeah, but—”

“… and if the DA wasn’t willing to push NYPD to give me the resources I needed to track down Cantwell and Ella Fields in the first place, what do you think he’s going to say when I tell him I want to start hunting for Fields with surveillance cameras. On top of that, Jim Kelly …”

Kelly was the deputy commissioner who ran the NYPD Counter-Terrorist Bureau.

“… is a prima donna who hobnobs with the FBI and CIA, and half the time he acts like he doesn’t even work for the city of New York. What I’m saying is, if the DA were to ask Kelly to use his cameras to hunt for Fields, he’d tell the DA to go shit in his hat, and maybe rightfully so. Toby Rosenthal killed one guy, Joe. The Ring is being used to prevent fanatics from killing thousands.”

DeMarco didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, “Well, I know a guy who can talk to Kelly.”

“You mean Mahoney?”

“That’s right. Mahoney can threaten to cut off some of those federal antiterrorism funds pouring into New York, and that will get Kelly’s attention.”

DeMarco called Mahoney and told him where things stood: that he’d identified a woman named Ella Fields who he was convinced had tampered with two of three remaining witnesses in the Rosenthal case. He told Mahoney, “The only way I can think to find this woman is to use the Ring of Steel. If I don’t find her, the guy who killed Dominic has a very good chance of getting off. So can you light a fire under the asshole who controls the Ring and get him to help me?”

The next day, Mahoney called him back. “Kelly said he’d do it. You need to get Fields’ picture to a guy named Dimitri. He’s one of Kelly’s technicians.”

Dimitri? “Thanks, boss,” DeMarco said.

DeMarco met Dimitri in a bar off Broadway that charged fifteen bucks for a martini. The guy looked like a gangster: ferret-faced, slicked-back hair, dressed in a tight, shiny suit. He also had a Russian accent. DeMarco knew that Russia produced a lot of mathematicians and computer weenies, and if they weren’t committing computer crimes back in Russia, they were employed all over Wall Street as quants and embedded in companies that needed tech-savvy folks. DeMarco, however, didn’t care that Dimitri might be a Russian spy who had managed to penetrate the NYPD. All he cared about was that Dimitri might be able to prove Ella Fields was in New York.

DeMarco gave Dimitri Ella Fields’ passport photo, and three days later Dimitri met DeMarco in the same bar and handed him a photo showing a clear image of her standing near the building where Rachel Quinn worked.

In the surveillance photo, Fields was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and running shoes. She wasn’t disguised in any way. She was also one spectacular-looking woman; she had outstanding legs. She appeared to be staring at the entrance to Rachel Quinn’s building, as if waiting for Rachel to appear. Or at least that was the way DeMarco intended to interpret the photo.

DeMarco called Justine. “I can prove Fields is in New York. I have a photo of her standing in front of the building where Rachel Quinn works. It looks like she might be waiting for Quinn to come out of the building. Now do you think we can maybe get a couple of warrants?”

The next day, DeMarco and a weary-looking Justine Porter were sitting in the chambers of Judge Walter Hoagland. Hoagland was seventy-four years old, six feet four inches tall, and rail-thin. He probably weighed 140 pounds. He had a chicken’s beak for a nose and about six strands of yellowish white hair that he combed over his liver-spotted skull. It was well known that Hoagland carried a .32 automatic beneath his black robe when he was in court; he’d never drawn the weapon, but was secretly hoping that one day an opportunity would present itself.

Prosecutors loved Hoagland; his judicial peers did not. Hoagland was reversed more often on appeal than any other criminal court justice in Manhattan, and his fellow justices wanted him gone. The problem with Walter Hoagland was that he was simply tired of criminals getting away with crimes he knew they’d committed. Once, when he’d had a few too many drinks, he told a reporter that any system that relied on twelve idiots to determine guilt or innocence was doomed to fail.

The consequence of all this was that if Hoagland—the jury be damned—was convinced a defendant was guilty, he made no effort to hide his feelings and ruled against almost every objection and motion made by the defense. He also had a tendency to instruct juries in such a manner that if the jurors followed his instructions they would almost certainly find the defendant guilty. At this stage of his life, Hoagland didn’t care if he was reversed on appeal. His attitude was that if some animal was turned loose to prey upon the public, it wasn’t his fault, as he’d done his best.

Hoagland didn’t bother to read the ten-page affidavit that Justine Porter had spent all night preparing. He said, “Just tell me what this is all about.”

So DeMarco explained. He said that a couple named Bill Cantwell and Ella Fields had been running around the country for over ten years making witnesses change their testimony or disappear, and as a result rich folks were acquitted of murder and manslaughter. Hoagland was fascinated.

DeMarco explained how he’d come to his conclusions after looking at what had happened in cases in Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Houston, and surprisingly, Hoagland didn’t rush him. DeMarco concluded by saying that Ella Fields was in New York—that he had a surveillance photo proving this—and that one of the witnesses in the Rosenthal case had disappeared and another had had a stroke that might not have been due to natural causes. On top of that, two other witnesses who had been willing to testify that Rosenthal killed Dominic DiNunzio had now changed their testimony.

“You really think this woman tried to kill an old lady?” Hoagland said.

“Yeah, but I can’t prove it,” DeMarco said.

“So what do you want?” Hoagland said.

“Your Honor,” Justine said, “we want a warrant to look at the phone records of people who may have communicated with Ella Fields. That includes Rosenthal’s lawyer and two of the witnesses.”

“Why are you bringing this to me instead of Judge Martinez?” Hoagland asked.

Martinez was the judge who had presided at Toby’s arraignment and would be presiding at his trial. And the answer to Hoagland’s question was: We’re bringing this to you because you’re more likely to give us a warrant. But Porter couldn’t say that. Instead she said, “Your Honor, this isn’t about the Rosenthal murder case directly. This is about building a case to convict Ella Fields and David Slade of witness tampering and possibly attempted murder. If we presented this to Judge Martinez it might constitute a conflict of interest and could cause Judge Martinez to recuse himself, which wouldn’t be fair. To Judge Martinez, I mean.”

“Aw, bullshit,” Hoagland said. “You came to me because Martinez is a pussy.” He paused, then said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you the warrant to look at the witnesses’ records, but stay away from Slade. Looking at the records of a shark like Slade could cause everyone problems if he found out. If you get something from the witnesses’ records, then maybe I’ll let you look at Slade’s.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” DeMarco and Justine simultaneously said. Then they hustled out of Hoagland’s chambers before he could change his mind.