Hell Gate (14 page)

“Not with the governor’s approval?” I asked.

“Certainly not, Alex. Paterson’s a thoroughly straight shooter, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who would pay dearly to show on his radar screen, to try for an advantage, whether it gets them there or not.”

“So you think Leighton is in on this scheme?”

“Leighton or his old man. The father would sell his grandkids if they brought the right price. Don’t shudder, Alex. That’s why they call it hardball. Leighton’s father has always been his fixer. I’m sure he’d like a say in who succeeds Ethan. Someone who may be willing to step aside when all this is over, if his son’s name is eventually cleared.”

“If the feds have been all over Ralevic about this, Paul, what do you need from me?”

“Lem Howell would follow you if you jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge,” McKinney added.

“Oh, please, Pat. Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “And Pat? Don’t hold your breath too long, because I’m not jumping.”

“I need you in this, Alex, because I have to come out of this clean as a hound’s tooth,” Paul Battaglia said.

There had never been a whisper of a scandal surrounding the district attorney. “But you are that, Paul. I don’t understand.”

“It’s about Tim Spindlis, Alex.”

Something happened between Battaglia and Spindlis after I got out of the DA’s car last evening. There must have been a reason the chief assistant hadn’t piggybacked with me to City Hall this morning. There must have been something he told Battaglia that meant he couldn’t be in the room with us right now.

“What about Tim?” I asked.

Spindlis was in his sixties, with little to show for a thirty-eight-year career in law enforcement except an endless series of lesser decisions that Battaglia had sloughed off in his direction.

“I’d like to see him on the bench this year. I’d like to get him named to the Court of Claims. And I don’t want that designation snarled up in any monkey business or pay-for-play talk that sleazeball Ralevic brings into the picture.”

That gubernatorial appointment to the Court of Claims was an absolute plum for a lawyer under any circumstances, but for Spindlis it would cap his lackluster career and ensure that he would have job security until he reached the mandatory retirement age, as well as top-tier pension benefits.

Battaglia had been close enough to Spitzer when he was governor to make the kind of behind-the-scene deals that placed many protégés—most of whom were well-qualified—in important jobs. Scores of former prosecutors were staff for the attorney general and the governor, dozens more wore judicial robes or ran administrative agencies. There were no bribes or illegal payments ever at issue, just the traditional political back-scratching, and the all-important blessing of Paul Battaglia.

But Battaglia didn’t have that relationship with the new governor, couldn’t call in the chits that a mentor might request of the kind of protégé Eliot Spitzer had been.

“You think Ralevic and Ethan Leighton have some kind of relationship?” I asked.

I could see now why Battaglia had been in such a foul mood yesterday. He didn’t want these events to queer the deal he had made for Spindlis. And of course Pat McKinney was in on this political positioning, because he would be the likely successor to the role of chief assistant that Spindlis now held—the consigliere to Battaglia.

Something in it for almost everybody.

“The less detail you know the better, Alex.”

“I take it someone’s been wearing a wire.” I wondered if either one of them noticed that I was beginning to squirm.

“Like I said, the feds have been after Ralevic for quite a while.”

“So you’re worried where Tim comes out in all this?” I said that, although I was well aware that Battaglia never actually worried that much where anyone else came out except himself. But Tim Spindlis was too connected to him not to expect fallout close to home.

Battaglia crushed the cigar in the ashtray, like he was stomping the life out of a venomous bug. “Someone is going to try to hurt Tim in all this. Maybe Leighton himself, maybe Ralevic, or maybe even a smart mouthpiece like Lem Howell.”

I was thankful that Mike had told me to keep my limo ride with Lem and Ethan to myself. I was trying to sort out all the players and their positions.

“You listen to me on this, Alex. There’ll be no letting Chapman off the leash during your investigation—none of his antics, no one going rogue on me here. You get a whisper of anyone trying to trash my name—or Tim’s—you’re on my doorstep before you blink your eyes.”

“I understand, Paul,” I said, ignoring the smirk on McKinney’s face. “Am I off-base asking why you think Tim’s at risk in all this maneuvering?”

“Rumors. Only that. No substance to them, but he’s apt to get bitten in the ass by an ugly rumor.”

“I’d like to be prepared. Don’t you think it makes sense to tell me what it’s about? I understand it’s just garbage.”

Battaglia got up from the table and walked to the window. The gargoyles that crested the building across Hogan Place stared back at him, some with fierce expressions of defiance, others mocking him with their tongues sticking out in derision.

“Tim was Eliot Spitzer’s supervisor when Eliot was a young prosecutor here. Both Harvard Law, both bright young men interested in public service. God knows Eliot couldn’t keep up with Tim’s drinking habits, but who the hell can figure what else they did together when they bonded here?” Battaglia said.

“Both were very loyal to you, Boss,” McKinney added, trying to get his pointy nose as close to the DA’s rear end as possible.

“I’d rather not be reminded of Eliot’s connection to me at all, Pat,” Battaglia said, turning around to look at me. “Client Number Nine, Alex. You know what I mean?”

When Governor Spitzer had been identified by the feds as one of the regular customers patronizing high-priced prostitutes, he’d been cited as Client 9 in the criminal complaint.

“There aren’t many of us who missed that, Paul.”

“Whatever it is those girls were giving away at five thousand bucks an hour,” Battaglia said, pounding his forefinger into a pile of briefs that sat on his desktop, “I didn’t need every reporter in town trying to make a name for himself asking whether Tim and I knew anything about Eliot’s—well,
proclivities
is the nicest word I can come up with.”

“Nobody believes Eliot was involved in that mess at the time he was working here. That all came much later.”

“You and I know that. But it won’t stop the media from noting their professional relationship when Tim’s name comes up for consideration.”

“What’s the rumor about Tim, Paul?” I asked again.

The district attorney knew that despite my disrespect for Spindlis, he’d have to trust me to be on the lookout to run interference for him in case things got ugly. Reluctantly, he repeated the malicious story.

“There’s someone out to get him. Someone who claims Tim’s the one who introduced Eliot to the Emperors Club, to all his high-priced whores.”

I caught my breath before assuring Battaglia that the story couldn’t possibly be true. It wasn’t that I thought better of Spindlis than that, I just knew he didn’t have the money to cavort with the former governor at five thousand dollars a shot.

“No one will believe that about Tim. Those rumors simply won’t fly.”

“Of course Tim wasn’t in that game, Alex. You understand that, don’t you? Of course none of it’s true.”

Laura left me alone in the conference room with Nan Toth and two hot cups of coffee. I had given her orders not to disturb us for anything until Mercer arrived.

“Have you heard any gossip about Tim?” I asked Nan.

“Not a peep. He’s on the way to the bench, isn’t he? A done deal?”

“Would you figure him for a sex scandal?”

“Socks or no socks?” Nan burst into a laugh. Eliot Spitzer was alleged to have kept his footwear on during all his sexual engagements. “It’s frightening to even think of Tim engaged in any kind of intimate act.”

“That’s the party line. Battaglia’s one hundred percent in his corner, so that’s my position too. Personally, I think it would humanize the stiff if he’d been right at Eliot’s side as Client Number Ten. But it’s only wishful thinking on my part.”

“Can you imagine anything worse?”

“Yeah. A ménage with him and McKinney.”

“You need to see a good doctor, Alex. That’s a sick thought.”

“Well, I’m betting Ellen Gunsher has been there,” I said. “Humor me, Nan. It’s been a withering twenty-four hours.”

“So Battaglia’s worried about the rumor?”

“Of course he is. But not about the substance behind it. He says he and McKinney have done their own internal investigation of Spindlis. The boss read him the riot act and said he’d be put out to pasture without his pension if there was any truth to it.”

“But the damage is it’s the kind of rumor that stays in the brain, right? Once people hear that Tim was Spitzer’s mentor in the office—”

“That’s the harm. It’s obviously making Battaglia crazy. He hates to spend his time proving the negative. And McKinney’s in there panting like a dog in heat, anxious to get Tim on his way so he can be promoted.”

“I know how the boss hates this kind of thing. He’s got you on such a tightrope.”

“Tell me something good might actually happen soon.”

“Okay. We’ve got our first couple of professional interpreters signed on. I’ve just spent twenty minutes with them and they’ll be easy to work with. They’ve been qualified before the grand jury on other cases. Did some good work with the robbery squad.”

“That’s a start.”

“I called Donovan to see when we can get going with the interviews.” Nan flipped the pages of her legal pad. She was a striking brunette, about my height, with dark good looks and a gift for cross-examination that made her a great case partner. “I think he’d turn the whole thing over to us if he could. He sounds completely overwhelmed.”

“So where are the girls and when do we get them?”

Nan had already sorted out which of the young women were at area hospitals, held overnight for observation or awaiting treatment, and which had been sent to detention camps. “You willing to start with two?”

“It worked for Noah.”

“I followed up on your idea. Put a call in to Safe Horizon to see what their shelter situation is in Manhattan.”

The nonprofit organization had been around for more than thirty years, and had done groundbreaking work in advocating for victims of violence in a criminal justice system that decades ago was hostile to many of their needs. Providing decent living conditions for women in battered relationships was one of the few means of offering them an alternative to life-threatening situations, and Safe Horizon had created havens in each borough of the city for just that purpose.

“Great. Baynes told me he wouldn’t allow it.”

“He’s rethinking everything today, Alex. Have you ever been to the Manhattan shelter?”

“Yes. It’s in Washington Heights. It’s called Parrish House. One of the generous board members donated a small fortune to create a very livable space,” I said.

Most animal shelters were in better shape than facilities for domestic survivor victims.

“Baynes wants to know the address. Is that a deal breaker?” Nan asked.

“It is for me.”

In order to protect its residents from their offenders, Safe Horizon never released the location of its shelters. Victims were taken to the nearest police station house and waited there until staff was notified to pick them up to escort them to their new homes.

“Try and be flexible,” Nan said, tapping her pen on the table. “They can clear two beds for us at Parrish House for four months. That’s a clean, safe apartment with its own kitchen, some clothing, counseling on-site. It would be a wonderful way to transition these young women to a new life, and gain their trust at the same time.”

“You’re right. I have no issue with Donny, of course. I just don’t think we put the street address in any reports, okay? There are twenty-five families living there who need to be safe. I don’t want the feds, the mayor, and the media circulating the address. We can even take Donny there for a site visit if that satisfies him.”

“I’ll get moving on that. The first two that he’s willing to give us are nineteen and seventeen years old. Both checked out fine medically. A bit undernourished and terribly skittish, I’m told, but we can begin our interviews tomorrow. He insists on a fed sitting in on each meeting.”

“Will we have medical records by then?”

“Catherine’s dealing with that right now.”

“Do they have tattoos?”

“I realize you wanted this all solved yesterday, Alex. Just slow it down. No, we won’t know that until we meet the women or see the medical records later today, if they’re even that specific.”

“Does anyone have a handle on how many people were actually on board, and how many have been accounted for?”

Nan was twisting her engagement ring as she talked. “Baynes said there’s one guy—about thirty years old—who’s the most cooperative. He wasn’t part of the mutiny and he actually speaks some English. He’s got relatives who immigrated to Texas and all he wants to do is get there.”

“What’s he given them?” I asked.

“They’re going to set up with him today for the first time,” Nan said. “Close as he can tell there were three hundred and ten people on board, less than thirty of them women.”

“And three of the women are dead.”

“At least three. Six people are still missing, by this guy’s count.”

“So what’s next?” I asked. “Somebody out looking for snitches?”

Turning in a snakehead in a case of this magnitude would be a deep reservoir of insurance for someone in the criminal underground who was hoping to buy points with federal prosecutors.

“The task force is flooding the Ukrainian community looking for information, and Kelli’s going to be working that piece of it for us. Marisa’s got the lead on women from Eastern Europe who’ve been busted for prostitution in the five boroughs in the last few years.”