Melanie sat in the war room on the sixth floor facing Miles Ortiz across the table. His eyes were glittery and sharp as ice picks. The left one was decorated with a jailhouse tattoo that looked like a stitched cut, as if Miles had just been sliced with a beer bottle in a bar fight. The pricey personal trainer dressed in pure gangsta-thug style—diamond studs in both ears, a nylon do-rag tied over his black hair, and a wifebeater T-shirt showing off lean, muscled arms. For the bored housewives of the Upper East Side, there was nothing sexier than violence.
Dan and Julian sat on either side of Miles. They’d been in place already when Melanie had arrived at the war room, putting to rest her faint hope of seeing Dan alone. She had plenty to ask him about. The status of his investigation into her Web stalker. Where Rockwell Davis and Clyde Williams had been at the time of Suzanne Shepard’s murder. And of course, why he’d ignored her phone calls again last night. But this debriefing was just too pressing. Her questions would have to wait.
Melanie slid a piece of paper across the table.
“You speak and read English?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Miles said. His voice was a hoarse growl.
“This is a Waiver of Speedy Arraignment form. Saturday arraignments happen only in the mornings. We can either bring you before the judge right now, in which case your arrest becomes known and your value as a cooperator diminishes accordingly, or else you can sign this and wait until Monday morning, when we’ll try to arrange for a closed-courtroom arraignment. There are no Sunday arraignments, so if you want to do the debriefing, you’ll have to spend tonight and tomorrow night in jail before seeing a judge. Are you comfortable with that?”
“It true what Pierre say, I’m looking at a ten-to-life?” Ortiz asked.
Despite his chilling appearance, Miles’s demeanor was matter-of-fact and intelligent. As a seasoned narcotics trafficker, he handled his arrest in a businesslike manner—exploring his options, unbowed but not whining.
“The quantity of methamphetamine you attempted to sell to Detective Hay carries a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years,” Melanie said.
“But I can get out from under the minimum if I talk?”
“If you cooperate, I can ask the judge to reduce your sentence. Otherwise, he’s required to sentence you to ten years. But cooperation isn’t just talking. For somebody in your position, with a significant criminal record, arrested selling a large quantity of a drugs, you need to make cases and testify.”
“Make cases. You mean wear a wire?”
“Do something that helps us arrest other violators. What that is depends on you, on what information you’re privy to. The whole point of talking today is to figure out what you can do, and whether it’s worthwhile for us to proceed.”
“But if I don’t go to court, I don’t get no lawyer?”
“If you want a lawyer, I can call somebody in right now to advise you on the cooperation process. That’s not a problem.”
“That would be good. I don’t need to go to court, but I want a lawyer to talk to before I decide.”
“Is there somebody in particular you’d like me to call?”
“Legal Aid is good with me. They always done right by me before.”
“Fine. I’ll make some calls,” Melanie said.
“If we just sitting around, any chance I could get a coupla Egg McMuffins?” Ortiz asked Julian.
Within half an hour, Jerry Siler from Legal Aid showed up to confer with Miles while Melanie, Dan, and Julian waited outside the war-room door. Jerry was an old-timer, a stoner, affable, burnt-out, cynical—all of which made him wonderfully easy to work with. Short and slight with graying hair, he wore red high-tops with his shabby suit and gave the impression of someone who wasn’t paying attention, which was far from the truth. Jerry got better results for his clients than virtually any other lawyer in Legal Aid. He’d been around the block a few times too many, and it showed in his face, but he knew his job inside out. After fifteen minutes or so, he called them back into the room. Jerry sat beside Miles now. The two of them had taken to each other with no fuss, like the professionals they both were.
“We’re good,” Jerry said, lacing his fingers behind his head and contemplating the ceiling. “Miles has some information I think you’ll be happy with. We need to execute a proffer agreement first to protect him in the event the cooperation doesn’t go forward.”
“I’ve got one right here,” Melanie said.
They all signed the agreement.
Dan flipped open a notebook to make a record of what Miles said in case he decided to recant later. Miles’s right hand was cuffed to the chair, and he was using his left to polish off one of the Egg McMuffins that Julian had ordered for him.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Melanie said.
Melanie had planned to begin by discussing last night’s methamphetamine bust and Miles’s other drug activities, which she believed would be fairly painless topics for him. Once she had his confidence, she’d circle around to his relationship with Dr. Benedict Welch, the burglary of Suzanne Shepard’s apartment, and other more sensitive subjects, including the murder itself. But her strategizing turned out to be unnecessary. Dr. Welch figured more prominently in Miles’s criminal activities than Melanie had ever suspected, and Miles gave him up without batting an eye.
“The meth Pierre took off of me, it locally produced,” he said meaningfully.
“You mean, not imported?” Melanie asked.
“Correct,” Ortiz said.
This was, in fact, unusual. The vast majority of methamphetamine consumed in the United States was imported from Mexico, where a robust trade in precursor chemicals like pseudoephedrine allowed it to be produced in enormous quantities. Pseudoephedrine had once been readily available as a decongestant in the United States until exploding methamphetamine addiction had convinced most states to regulate it. Pseudo, as it was affectionately known in the trade, was now kept behind the pharmacist’s counter and even required a doctor’s prescription in some places. Anybody wanting to make meth in their garage would find this necessary ingredient hard to come by. Domestic meth labs got a lot of press, but they were a tiny slice of the voracious meth market, just little mom-and-pop shops, for exactly this reason.
“So what are we looking at?” Melanie asked. “A lab in somebody’s bathtub?”
“Naw. Big-time.”
“What’s that mean, Miles?”
“A whole warehouse. If and when we get to yes, I’ll give you the 411 where it located at.”
“What kind of quantity are they producing?” Melanie asked.
“Between twenty and fifty keys a week, depending,” Miles replied.
Dan glanced up from his notes and their eyes met. Melanie had to look away, or those baby blues would suck her to a place she couldn’t afford to go right now.
“You’re kidding me,” Dan said. “Fifty kilos? That’s just not possible.”
Miles looked unfazed. “I’m telling the truth. Whether you believe me or not, I don’t give a shit.”
“What’s the street price of meth these days?” Melanie asked.
“About fifteen thousand a key on average,” Julian replied.
Melanie’s phone had a calculator function, and she did the math. “So this organization is pulling down somewhere between three hundred thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week in sales?”
“Sounds about right,” Ortiz said.
“Not bad,” Julian said.
“Where are they getting their pseudoephedrine? Doesn’t it take a huge amount of pseudo to produce a kilo of meth?” Melanie asked.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “That’s why I’m finding this so hard to believe.”
“It takes over seventeen thousand pills to make a kilo,” Julian said. “Seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty to be exact.”
“My man know his drugs,” Miles said, smiling.
Miles didn’t seem the least bit angry at Julian for arresting him, although he’d apparently called Kim Savitt every name in the book when the cuffs went on. Julian was that rare cop who had an effortless rapport with his informants. They were too happy hanging with him to want to blame him for their reversals of fortune, which naturally enhanced his success at undercover work.
“Answer the question,” Julian said, looking Miles in the eye.
“Where I got the pseudo?” Miles repeated.
“Yeah,” Julian said.
“We got a connect who can get however much we want.”
Melanie’s ears pricked up. She felt something big coming.
“Why is it that your supplier can get so much pseudoephedrine?” she asked, her eyes glued to Ortiz’s face.
“Because,” Miles replied, “he a doctor.”