Two hours later, we were back in Judge Rafferty’s chambers along with Jason White, our tech guru. Kylie gave His Honor her most endearing smile, and I gave him an attaché case packed with cash.
“There’s a microchip embedded in the bottom, so we can track the money,” I said.
“That won’t work,” Rafferty said. “There’s been a change of plans. This was delivered this morning along with some instructions.”
He held up a plastic bag that was identical to the ones we use at crime scenes to collect and preserve evidence. It was transparent, about the size of a sheet of typing paper, and, most important, it was tamperproof. Once the bag was sealed, if anyone attempted to open it, the adhesive strip at the top would read VOID.
The bags we use at NYPD are imprinted with data fields to be filled in with details relevant to a crime and the chain of custody. The printing on this one was more like a bank deposit slip. It was used by millions of small businesses to make secure cash bank deposits. The blackmailer could have picked it up at any Office Depot in the country.
“This is where he wants me to put the money,” the judge said.
“He’s smart,” Kylie said. “There’s more than enough room for twenty stacks of Benjamins, at five thousand dollars per stack, but there’s no place to hide a tracking device.”
“Your Honor,” I said, “you said it came with instructions.”
“Yes. He wants to watch me count out the money to make sure it’s real and untraceable.”
“Tell him he can pop by your office and look over your shoulder,” Kylie said.
“He’d rather Skype. Apparently, he doesn’t trust me.”
“I can trace a Skype call,” Jason said.
“Somehow I bet he knows that. This guy is not stupid,” the judge said. “He also sent this.”
He handed me a small brown paper shopping bag with a Starbucks logo on it.
“What’s that for?”
“He didn’t say, Detective. Maybe he wants me to deliver some fucking coffee along with the money.”
“Did he give you any other instructions?”
“Come alone. No cops.”
“That’s not going to happen, Your Honor,” Kylie said. “You’ll be surrounded by cops: me, Zach, and half a dozen undercover detectives who’ve worked operations like this before. We can’t tail you too closely, but you’ll be wearing an earpiece that will let us communicate with you, and a tracking device that will tell us exactly where you are.”
“That’s good,” the judge said, “because if you’re right, and this guy is also a murderer, you’ll be able to locate my body.” He lifted his arms in the air. “Wire me up.”
“It’s wireless,” Jason said, holding up a black audio-video transmitter that looked like a smartphone. “Just tuck it in the top pocket of your jacket, and we’ll be able to see what you see, hear everything you say. And when you get a call, keep your phone close to your jacket pocket, and we’ll be able to pick up everything the caller says.”
“Excellent plan,” the judge said, “but as you can see, I’m wearing this black turtleneck. I thought it was very James Bond, but alas, it has no pockets.”
“No problem,” Jason said. “The department has a fine line of menswear for every occasion. Do you have a color preference, Your Honor?”
“Surprise me,” Rafferty said, sliding into the leather chair behind his desk. He picked up a folder, began to read, and tuned us out.
He didn’t look up until his cell phone rang forty-five minutes later. He took the Skype call, which, as expected, was one-sided. The caller could see the judge, but the camera was off on the other end.
Surprisingly, the seventy-five-year-old justice was completely at ease with technology. He positioned the phone so the caller could watch, and, following instructions to the letter, he removed the band from a stack of five thousand dollars and counted out fifty one-hundred-dollar bills. Then he replaced the band and slid the five thousand into the plastic bag.
The caller picked out three more stacks at random. When they came up clean, he told Rafferty to “bag it all and seal the bag.”
By that time, Jason White had traced the Skype account and the phone the call was coming from.
He pulled me to the far side of the room and whispered in my ear, “It belongs to a high school math teacher on the West Side. I called the school security guard. She’s in class.”
“Can you pinpoint where the call is coming from?” I whispered back.
Jason shook his head. “I can narrow it down to a three-block area two miles from the school. But pinpointing is impossible. The caller is on the move.”
I looked at the judge. The hundred thousand was in the bag, and he ran his fingers over the tape, sealing it. Any thought we’d had of tracking the money was out the window. We had to rely solely on the eyes and ears of our undercover team.
“It’s still your show,” the judge said to the black screen on his side of the video call. “What now?”
“Put the money inside the Starbucks bag, take a cab to Twenty-Third Street and Tenth Avenue, get out on the southwest corner, and wait for my next call. And Judge,” the man who was calling the shots added, “at the risk of repeating myself, no cops, or I’ll kill you.”
That was followed by the familiar whoop sound of the Skype hang-up.
The judge gave the dead phone the finger.
Jason handed him a tan corduroy jacket with the camera peeking just above the breast pocket.
Rafferty put on the jacket and dropped the sealed packet of money into the Starbucks mini–shopping bag. “Come on,” he said, looking at Kylie and me and heading out the door. “Let’s go catch this flaming asshole.”