ever wanted to do. I’d sent Nina back to her husband. I wanted to keep her name out of my office’s mouth. I couldn’t protect her from this trial, but her husband could, goddammit. Spousal privilege would prevent her from having to defend his sorry ass. And then, when it was all over, she could leave him.
I just couldn’t go with her.
I sighed, picked up the new file on Calvin Gardner from my desk, and absently flipped through it. We jumped the gun a little on the indictment, but given the suddenness of John Carson’s death, we couldn’t risk losing the last thread that held the operation together. We had been lucky Gardner’s lawyers had waived their right to a speedy trial in favor of a lengthy discovery process. We had sixty days, said the judge, but based on the obliqueness of the information so far, I was guessing we’d end up asking for sixty more.
His life was confusing, to say the least. Derek Kingston, the special investigator with the Bureau of Organized Crime, hadn’t been able to determine his exact relationship to the safe house where he had been spotted, and neither had I. Carson was identified as the owner of that particular house, and it was still empty. But girls from Cypress Hills, the nearby housing project, were still disappearing. Twenty so far, with a lot of other leads in other neighborhoods too. With Carson and Letour out of the equation, that had to mean Gardner was in charge of that scheme, or he was working with someone else.
The problem was finding out who, and where, they were. And if it was outside Brooklyn—outside of our jurisdiction. As yet, the U.S. attorney, once on John Carson’s payroll, had been unwilling to tap into the investigation. Carson’s ability to cover up the crimes of his cronies seemed to extend beyond the grave.
A knock at the door pulled me out of my misery. Derek, in his typical street clothes of jeans, a faded Yankees jacket, and a backwards baseball hat, stood in the doorway, one sneaker crossed over the other. He didn’t exactly fit in with the suited lawyers here on Jay Street, but what made Derek the best investigator we had was his ability to blend in everywhere else.
Today, though, he didn’t look like he was particularly enjoying his job.
“Be honest,” I said as I swiveled in my chair. “You wish you were writing traffic tickets right now, don’t you?”
Derek snorted as he walked in. It was a frequent joke between us, actually. He’d been about ten seconds from leaving the NYPD when he was called up for the special investigator position, right when I was also ready to abandon the DA for some private-sector contract bullshit. Derek and I ended up saving each other’s careers, and we’d been friends ever since.
“Different jobs, same dead ends,” he said, flopping into the other chair in my small office. He shook his head. “We’re getting outside our jurisdiction, Zo.”
“You’ve been saying that for months.”
“This is different.”
I frowned, glancing at the still-open door. Derek turned in his chair and kicked it shut before swiveling back to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “The Pantheon filing was a dead end too?”
I’d asked Derek to investigate the LLC that was technically on the lease of the house. We already knew Carson owned it, but I was betting there were other names associated with it too. There had to be if the operation was still in effect after the man was dead.
“The LLC was registered in Delaware,” Derek said. “A no-name shell corporation, of course. That tiny fuckin’ state has more corporations than people, did you know that?”
I nodded. I did actually know that—most of the legit corporations in New York were registered in Delaware for the tax and anonymity benefits, not to mention the underground operations I made my living going after. So, the fact that the LLC listed as the lessee for the safe house was registered in one of four states that allowed anonymous ownership wasn’t particularly surprising.
“Well, John Carson was a criminal mastermind, not an idiot,” I said. “We thought this might happen. He made the mistake of putting his name on one deed, but the others are someone else’s problem now. I just need the documents. Somewhere, there’s a name. Who’s associated with the LLC?” Delaware state law required that an anonymous LLC must name someone who knows the owner, even if that name wasn’t the owner himself.