29
Edward Riley left his BMW i8 parked in a garage on 23rd Street and walked the last six blocks to his destination. It was raining this afternoon in Manhattan, but this was good news for Riley, because it gave him an excuse to wear his raincoat. He would have worn it anyway for operational reasons, but it would have looked odd in the sun.
He’d received a call five minutes earlier letting him know his trap had been sprung. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he should wait before showing up at the trap, but he knew his best chance for success was to catch his victim at the exact moment of maximum distress, so he did not delay.
On 29th near Lexington he turned off of the sidewalk and walked down a few steps to a basement entrance below a five-story apartment building. He rapped on the metal door a few times and then closed his umbrella, leaving it against a small table sitting there by the door.
The door was opened from the inside a moment later. Riley stepped into a poorly lit narrow hallway, and he nodded to the middle-aged Asian woman standing there.
“Room four,” she said, her gravelly voice barely above a whisper.
Riley headed up the hall, taking care to avoid touching anything. Not the walls or the doorknobs of the doors he passed. He even made sure his pants leg below his raincoat didn’t brush against the curtains covering an alcove on his right.
It wasn’t that he was trying to avoid leaving fingerprints or DNA at the scene. Instead, he kept his hands tight at his sides and his slacks away from any surface at ankle height because Riley felt this place was utterly filthy. It was a massage parlor, a house of prostitution, and it was in heavy use from what Riley had been told.
Riley’s men had followed a man to this establishment twice in three days. It was clear that his target had a habit, so Riley stopped in to talk to the proprietor, then flashed a badge, a smile, and some cash. He showed the Japanese “mamasan” in charge a picture of his target, then asked her to tip him off the next time the man showed up. Riley explained how he would conduct a raid, and he told her she’d make two thousand dollars to reimburse her for the disturbance to her business, and he assured her that her cooperation would mean the New York Police Department would show its gratitude by not interfering with her operation afterward.
His promises were only half bullshit.
The two grand Riley could come up with, but he couldn’t do a damn thing about the NYPD.
At the door marked 4 he used his elbow, enshrouded in his raincoat, and with it he banged just once. This door, like the other, was opened from the inside, but this time he was greeted by an American. A black man in his thirties, big and strong, with a badge around his neck proclaiming him to be a detective from the NYPD.
Riley knew Bridgeforth wasn’t a detective. He was an employee of Sharps Partners, and a subordinate of Riley’s, but the badge went along with today’s ruse.
Riley reached into his raincoat, around his neck, and he pulled out a similar-looking badge of his own.
There was one more person here in room 4 with Riley and Bridgeforth, and the badges were for his benefit. Seated on a wooden massage table was a thin, middle-aged European-looking male wearing nothing but his underwear.
Riley nodded to Bridgeforth and the African American left the room, shutting the door behind him. He ignored the one chair in the room. Instead, he stood in front of the door, his raincoat thin protection against the trillions of microbes he pictured swarming in the air around him.
The thin man looked at him with panic-stricken eyes.
Good, Riley thought.
The Englishman could do a spot-on New York accent; he’d practiced it for hundreds of hours in the past year, even going days “in character” around the city, to the point he never saw any hint of doubt from anyone he came in contact with.
He slipped into his character with ease. In his booming Brooklyn voice he said, “Detective Rich Kincaid, NYPD.” And then, “Vice.”
The man before him just nodded, then he spoke with a pronounced Austrian accent. “As I mentioned to your colleague, Detective, I have diplomatic immunity from prosecution.”
Riley shrugged, his hands wide, a gesture in keeping with his character. “Who’s prosecuting?”
“You are required to—”
“You are required to sit there and shut the fuck up!”
The Austrian recoiled in surprise.
“Now, let’s figure out where we stand here. You are Hans Tischer. You are with the Austrian delegation to the UN. That means, even though my partner has pictures of you bumping uglies with some teenage hooker right in the middle of America’s greatest city, I have to let you go.”
The man on the massage table did not hide his expression of relief.
“But I can hold you here till my friend the photog from the New York Post shows up outside and gets into position.”
Tischer gasped now. “Nein! No. Please, you must not do this.”
“Of course, you could always shoot out the back. Yeah… might work.” He affected another half-shrug. “Although I already told my pal from the Daily News that you might try that, so I don’t really recommend it.”
“Mein Gott. Why are you doing this to me?”
Riley took a step closer. “When your ugly mug is on the front page of the paper, are you gonna tell your family that little girl said she was eighteen? Will they believe you? She’s in an ambulance outside, and she don’t look eighteen to me, Hans.”
Tischer covered his face with his hands.
“I’ve gotta cut you loose, but I don’t gotta like it, and there’s no law that says I’ve gotta do it without walkin’ you by the press. You know what I’m sayin’?”
Tischer sobbed softly.
Riley leaned in now, closer and softer. “Or I can make it all go away. No name, no picture. No problem.”
Tischer looked up, eyes wide in disbelief. “Yes? How?”
Even softer, Riley said, “This is where it gets interesting, Hans.” He looked back over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed. “Three days from now your committee has a procedural vote.” Just as Riley expected, the emotions displayed on the face of the man in front of him ran the gamut. From confusion to outrage to a new concern.
After a few moments he said, “What is this?”
Riley shrugged, still in character. “It’s one guy needin’ a favor, that’s you. And another guy needin’ a favor. That’s me.”
“Who are you? You aren’t a policeman.”
“I’m the guy with the pictures of you in the act, I’m the guy with the friends in the press outside, and I’m the guy who will fucking burn you if you don’t vote against the sanctions hearing.”
“Why?”
Riley just said, “Why? Why does anyone do what they do? Why do you pull your pants down in nasty-ass places like this?” It wasn’t an answer to the question, but it had the effect of shutting down Tischer’s line of questioning.
The Austrian man looked down at the floor for a long time. “It won’t matter. If I vote the way you want me to, it won’t matter. There are nine of us. We took a straw poll yesterday, and the majority are in favor of the Security Council sanctions hearing. The vote on Friday is just a formality.”
Riley smiled. “You might just find others have changed their position since the last straw poll. The world is coming to its senses on the matter.”
Tischer realized what this man was saying. He’d gotten to others on the committee. The middle-aged Austrian did not doubt this for a second.