“In fact, Alex has been looking for a monkey on Match.com,” Ryan said. “Gave up her ‘prosecutes perps’ nickname for ‘lonely lady lawyer.’ Once she knocks off Estevez she can go with ‘my pimp’s a chimp.’”
“Well, I’ve changed all the password info for you,” Aaron said, taking one hand off the keyboard to hand me a Post-it note with a series of hieroglyphics scribbled on it. “Secure it. Learn it. Eyes only for you and Laura.”
“In fact, Chapman says Alex sometimes confuses that long prehensile monkey tail with another organ that-”
“Who cares what Chapman says, Ryan?” I snapped. “What’s Aponte’s real name and how much of my case information is compromised?”
“We don’t know who she is yet,” Drew said.
“She had to be fingerprinted to get this job,” I said.
“You don’t think Estevez would try to embed a mole who’d be roadblocked before she got her toe in the door, do you? His mole has no criminal record. He’s smart.”
“Smarter than I am; that’s for sure.”
“Amen to that,” Ryan said. “Your Wellesley degree with a major in English lit is taking a backseat to Antonio Estevez and his street cred.”
“So this girl-whoever she is,” I said, “has no rap sheet, but she has the balls to take on this assignment. What’d she get?”
Aaron Byrne leaned into my screen. “You’re screwed on Estevez. She copied everything in that folder.”
“Damn. Damn it.” I was walking in circles, furious at myself for enabling this breach because of the obvious password I’d chosen. “It’s on my head now if anything happens to Tiffany and those other young women.”
Nan raised a hand at me. “Calm down. Tiffany’s under control and we’ll find everyone else before his posse does. It’s more important that you work with Aaron to identify the cases that might have been in the same portal.”
“Go through these folders with me, Alex,” Drew said, passing the top three to me.
“I thought the FBI claimed this setup was foolproof,” I said, taking them from him.
“Technically it is,” Catherine said. “Except for human error.”
The feds’ cyberteam had devised a special computer system for our office, in recognition of the fact that hundreds of thousands of case files had to be managed independently of one another. Too many people had access to computer stations-legal and support staff, civilian investigators and cops-that were spread out in both of the large city buildings we inhabited. The sheer volume of DANY employees put a lot of information at risk.
People of the State of New York v. Andrew Kreston.
I focused on the name on the manila folder, first in a tall stack of cases awaiting trial or reassignment to another unit member. Each of the files contained at least one count of sexual assault. Some had top charges of murder in the first degree, while others referenced surviving victims who had been subjected to just about every kind of abuse one might imagine.
“Kreston,” I said, trying to think of the way I had structured my virtual storage cabinet. “Sodomy first degree. Male victim. Drugged and assaulted. No connection to Estevez.”
“Legal issues,” Aaron said. “Any overlap?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Looks like you’ve got it firewalled. Should be fine.”
“Second one is Harry Wiggins. Serial rapist. Four victims, all strangers. Housing projects on the Lower East Side. Nothing to do with trafficking.”
I put that folder to the side and looked at the third one. “Jamil Jenners. Attempted murder, attempted rape. Choked a woman till she lost consciousness. She was coming out of the restroom in a Chelsea club.”
“Clean and clear,” Aaron said.
I reached over for the Wiggins case.
“Go back a step,” I said, unhooking the red string from the back of the folder and pulling out the papers.
Aaron Byrne stopped typing and looked up at me. “I thought you said not related.”
“The cases have nothing to do with each other. But both of them involved a motion to consolidate the counts in order to try the defendant for all his victims at once. Gino Moretti opposed it successfully, and the lawyer for Wiggins tried the same tactic, too, without a shot.”
“You mean you used the identical motion papers in both instances?”
“I’m trying to think,” I said, pulling on strands of my hair. “It was three months ago.”
Everyone was staring at me.
“I’m just not sure, but it’s possible.”
Catherine picked up my phone. “Is there a speed dial to Special Victims?”
“The second button.”
“Is your travel agent on speed dial, too?” Ryan asked. “One way to Afghanistan. Leaving tonight.”
“Take it.” I handed the folder to Ryan. “You’ve always wanted this one. The Post will give you front-page ink if you nail this guy. I’m nauseous even thinking about the possibility that someone like Estevez knows where to find these good people.”
I could hear the clacking keys of the computer as Aaron Byrne tried to figure if the case had been stolen by the Aponte impostor.
“All good here, Alex,” Aaron said. “You only used a blank template for your motion for joinder. You used language and names specific to each case, so there’s no hole in the wall.”
Ryan pushed the folder back in my direction.
I shook my head. “Keep it. Estevez has been put over for a month. Get Wiggins in front of a jury as soon as you can.”
Drew Poser kept passing folders to me while I racked my brain to think of common features between and among the cases.
When we finished scouring the two piles on the desktop, Catherine began to read through the index cards boxed on the far corner of my desk. They contained the hundreds of names of defendants indicted by other lawyers in the unit.
I perched myself on the arm of one of the chairs and rubbed my forehead. “I approved all of these grand jury actions at the time they were submitted, but you’ll have to refresh me on some of them. There are so many.”
“Okay,” she said when I gave her a blank look after the sixth or seventh name. “Wanda Evins. You must know this. The mother who brought her fifteen-year-old daughter to New York from Kansas City to set her up for business during the Super Bowl last year.”
I closed my eyes. “Check that one, Aaron.”
“She was pimping her kid?” he asked.
“I’m sure I cross-referenced this with Estevez. It actually fit the trafficking laws.”
“Yes,” Nan said, “but mother and child are tucked away at home in Kansas. I’ll get the screening sheet and call to check on them.”
“Go back to what you said to me in the courtroom, Drew.”
“About what?”
I stepped out of my heels and ran my stockinged feet across the ratty carpet. “My secrets. You said that all my secrets are gone.”
“Well, I was just-”
“What did you mean?”
“Nothing, really.”
“He meant that a lot of your personal information wasn’t well protected, Alex,” Aaron Byrne said. “Yeah, Wanda Evins is a hit.”
“I’m on it,” Nan said. “I’ll cover them.”
“All the stuff in your Word files isn’t secure, in the way most of the case folders seem to be. Like, here’s a bunch of letters.”
“You keep personal correspondence on here?” Ryan asked.
“No. No, I don’t.”
“Letters to the Bar Association, looks like some to a few of your victims, recommendations for a couple of guys who left the office this year. By the way, the one to the City Bar has got your home address on it, Alex.”
“That’s where they bill me.”
“What’s the difference?” Drew Poser asked. “Everything anyone wants to know about people is on the web. I’m sure Alex’s phone, her e-mail, her contacts, her shoe size-it’s all out there.”
“Then why did you make the crack about my secrets? What do you think I’ve got to conceal?”