At last Ang said, “They’re like carrying cash.”
“Is there any other footage of them later that night?”
“No, just as there’s no footage of them before this scene. The sensors in Richardson’s office were turned off like about five minutes before he was killed. But not in the bedroom, like whoever turned it off in the office didn’t, you know, do it in the bedroom. The surveillance system is in zones, and the service can be turned off with a password in a keypad, but there were like different keypads in that house.”
Halsey had Ang replay the scene. At the start of the sequence, Cohen and Cerullo were repeatedly glancing toward the ceilings, searching for telltale camera eyes. Bo Halsey was disturbed by the scene, but not surprised. Years earlier, when he was a narcotics detective in Manhattan, Cerullo and Cohen had risen quickly through the ranks and become detectives. Neither of them worked for or directly with Halsey, but the word on the job was that they were rogues, executing search warrants for drugs and cash in targeted apartments and entering on the inventories only half the cash and drugs. They kept the rest. Halsey was already working for the Suffolk County Police when first Cerullo and then, a year later, Cohen joined the department. They came from politically connected families in Suffolk County. They now reported directly to Bo Halsey, and the three of them were the ranking homicide detectives in the county. They annoyed him, he thought they were jerks, and he no longer tried to conceal his contempt for them.
Ang Tien asked, “Who are they?”
“How the fuck do I know?” Halsey asked. “Sit on this until I tell you what to do.”
Ang Tien was very obedient. “Sure, Detective. It’s easy to save. I’ll give it to you when you need it.”
23.
Margaret Harding, in a soft voice, said, “Can we talk, Raquel?”
They had just finished a brief, routine appearance in court. Raquel was surprised by the question. Since the last meeting with Harding and Richie Lupo, Raquel experienced something she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years: she was angry with them, and she took their attitude personally, as an affront to her. It was Raquel’s style not to engage in angry exchanges, not to try to intimidate other lawyers by screaming at them, and not to conduct herself as anything other than a calm, determined, dignified lawyer. It was a rare approach for a lawyer anywhere, and particularly rare in New York. She found she was more effective when she didn’t allow herself to be antagonized or insulted. Her crafty mother, born in Italy, had told her, “You can kill with kindness, Raquel, and if you stay calm you’ll live longer.” So her lingering anger and resentment had unsettled her for several days; the disquieting feelings had just started to lift when Harding spoke to her.
“Margaret, certainly, let’s talk,” Raquel said, almost brightly, as if they were agreeing to have coffee together. “Theresa will join us.”
Standing attentively nearby, Theresa Bui looked surprised but pleased. Over the last several weeks Raquel had recruited her into the work of defending Juan Suarez. Theresa was diligent and orderly; she was also a gifted writer who crafted skillful and effective letters, affidavits, and briefs. This skill was important in any case, and especially so in a case such as this one: CBS had already done a half hour broadcast, Murder in the Hamptons, about the case. Everything Raquel did was scrutinized. All the court filings were lodged electronically with the court. And as soon as they were filed the Internet lit up with the news. The reactions for “comments” routinely vilified her.
Raquel always told her students that, even for a dynamic trial lawyer, writing was ninety-five percent of the work a lawyer did. The time a trial lawyer spent in a courtroom was a fraction of her time devoted to writing in the office. “Five percent inspiration,” Raquel told her Columbia students, “ninety-five percent perspiration.” For Raquel, having Theresa working with her lessened some of the burden, and in any event Raquel had mentored other women lawyers over the years.
And Raquel recruited Theresa because she liked her. Although Theresa had initially acted as if she were in awe of Raquel-and she was-she soon let her guard down. Theresa moved in a world of people under thirty-five, a world Raquel didn’t really know but wanted to know because it seemed to be fun. Theresa lived on the lower East Side, she was attractive, she had many casual and serious friends, she went to clubs, she knew everything there was to know about social media. And she saw that Raquel Rematti, although famous, had few friends and needed them since, as Theresa knew, she was in the early stages, of recovery from a dreadful disease, no matter how robust she seemed.
With the heels of her stylish high-heeled shoes clicking on the floor, Margaret Harding led them to a door with a sign reading Jury Deliberating. The room was empty, as it almost always was. She sat down at the head of a long table. Raquel and Theresa sat to her right.
“Thanks for coming in,” Margaret said.
“Thanks for asking us.” Raquel smiled at her. “What can we do for you?”
Margaret placed a thin valise on the table. She slid out of it three large glossy pictures that resembled the promotional headshots actors once used before the Internet. “My guess is,” she said, “that you can’t know much about Juan Suarez except for what he tells you. He seems to have come out of nowhere and to be no one in particular. His wife, or whoever she was, is gone. The kids are gone. Not one of the immigrants who seem to have known him will talk to us. No one even knows his real name. He might, I suppose, have told you all those things. But I doubt it. He’s a liar.”
Raquel, who was never going to tell anyone what she discussed with Juan Suarez or any other client, smiled at Margaret, not reacting to the word liar.
“We think we know a little bit more about him now. We have an experienced and effective lead detective on this case, Bo Halsey. He’s been very curious and he’s drilled down. Halsey knows how to do that-MP in the Army, detective in New York City before he came out here. He called on contacts he developed with the DEA.”
Raquel was now really interested. The world was awash in drugs, but the DEA only had the resources to follow credible leads. If the DEA had information on Juan Suarez, it could be interesting. She said, “I’m going to ask Theresa to take notes. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” Margaret answered. “It’s probably a good idea. The DEA contacts were productive. A few days ago Halsey received a report and pictures. Let me tell you, Raquel, the pictures bear an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Suarez. But they were taken of a man known to the DEA as Anibal Vaz. Not so long ago he was followed to and through those after-hours clubs in downtown Manhattan. Anibal Vaz was a very well-dressed, well-placed drug dealer, says the DEA. They were on the brink of picking him up in the city, but he just vanished. They think he was working for a guy named Oscar and that Oscar somehow, through some turncoat law enforcement agents, found out that Anibal Vaz was about to be picked up, and made Anibal Vaz vanish before he could talk.”
Raquel continued to wait. Theresa was writing on her notepad.
“I wanted to share these pictures with you,” Margaret said, fanning the photographs out in front of Raquel and Theresa.
Raquel looked at the three pictures. The first depicted a serious-looking man in the midst of wildly dancing people. It was taken at that instant when a revolving strobe light illuminated him and the men and women around him. He was Hispanic and handsome, but could have been virtually any handsome Hispanic man, not necessarily Juan Suarez. The second showed the same man, in profile, about to walk into a unisex bathroom from which men and women were entering and leaving. The man was closer to the lens than in the first picture, but still at least twenty feet away. It was obvious as he stood near other people that the man was tall, as was Juan Suarez.