Malique La Grande was right. Street-smart New Yorkers, especially those who are looking to steer clear of the law, can practically smell an unmarked police car. That’s why NYPD has a mini-fleet of Ford Interceptors that are painted yellow and tricked out to look exactly like the city’s thirteen thousand licensed taxis.
We call them cop cabs, and they’re perfect for running surveillance in heavy crime neighborhoods, where a squad car, or even an unmarked, would be a dead giveaway. They also come in handy when you’re tailing a blackmail victim on his way to make a hundred-thousand-dollar ransom drop.
Judge Rafferty left the courthouse and hailed a legitimate taxi, and Kylie got behind the wheel of the decoy. I was about to get in the front passenger seat when she stopped me.
“Sorry, dude,” she said, “but if you want this to look authentic, you’re going to have to sit in the back.”
“If I wanted this to look authentic, I’d get someone a little less blond and a lot less hot to do the driving. Guys will be flagging you down, even if they have no place to go.”
“Please don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” she purred, her green eyes wide and soulful, her lips in a mock pout. Then came the more familiar Kylie MacDonald wiseass smirk. “Now get in the back, or find another taxi.”
I got in the back, and she pulled onto Centre Street. A few blocks later she turned onto Canal, and we blended into the rolling sea of yellow cabs.
His Honor had a knack for undercover work. A few minutes into the ride, he engaged the driver in classic idle taxi chitchat. Where are you from? How long have you been driving? How ’bout those Mets? Then he aimed the pocket cam at the man’s hack license. By the time they reached their destination, we knew all we needed to know about the driver. Most important, he wasn’t part of the shakedown. It had been a random pickup.
The judge got out of the cab and stood on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 23rd Street.
“I don’t like it,” Kylie said, parking in a bus stop on the opposite side of the avenue. “The nearest subway is on Seventh, which is a solid half-mile walk from here. That means whoever is coming for the money is going to be on wheels.”
“So what part don’t you like?”
“The judge is too vulnerable standing there. We should move in on foot and get closer to him just in case a van swoops in and tries to pick up the old man along with the money.”
I was about to get out of the cab when Rafferty’s cell phone rang. Kylie and I listened as he took the call.
“I’m on the damn street corner,” he barked at the caller. “Now what?”
“Walk west on Twenty-Third,” the voice said.
We watched as the judge headed west. “I’ve got a bum knee,” he said. “How far do I have to walk?”
“Half a block. That big green box in the middle of the sidewalk is an elevator. Take it up to the second floor.”
“Son of a bitch,” Kylie said, pointing at the trestle thirty feet above the street. “He’s meeting the judge on the High Line.”
The High Line is one of New York City’s most inspired public parks. It’s the brainchild of two men who saw an unused elevated railroad spur and helped convert it into a mile-and-a-half-long aerial garden that winds above the city from Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district to Hudson Yards on 34th Street.
I radioed Danny Corcoran. “The drop is on the High Line at Twenty-Third. We need to block off the closest exits so the perp can’t get back down to street level. Kylie and I have this one covered. Get a team to cut him off at Twentieth and another at Twenty-Sixth.”
“Box him in,” Corcoran said. “I’m on it.”
“One more thing,” I said. “Get a bird up there. We need eyes in the sky.”
I turned to Kylie. “Take the stairs. I’ll meet you up top.”
I ran toward the elevator. It was the slowest way to get where I wanted to go, but I had to make sure that the money that had just gone up wasn’t already on the way down.
It wasn’t. The elevator was empty, and I got on. Kylie was waiting for me at the top. Even though I was in full-blown cop-in-pursuit mode, I couldn’t help but be dazzled by the beautiful greenway floating above Manhattan’s west side. It was a triumph of urban development that attracted five million tourists a year. I took Kylie by the hand, and we pretended to be two of them.
“Start walking north,” the voice on the judge’s phone ordered.
His Honor, who was only fifty yards away, saw us, nodded, and started walking. We did the same, walking at his pace, pretending to admire the vegetation as we went.
“Red Leader,” Danny said over the radio. “Aviation is on the way, and backup is in place. Do you want them to close in?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Judge is headed north. Keep a tight lock on the exit at Twenty-Sixth. Backup at Twentieth can start moving uptown.”
The judge was almost at 25th Street when the voice came back. “There’s a bench up ahead. When you get there, I want you to set your little shopping bag on it, and keep walking.”
Not only could Kylie and I see the judge from a safe distance, but we could also look at my iPhone and see exactly what his pocket cam was seeing. There was a beautifully crafted teak bench nestled in front of a thick patch of greenery. The judge slowed down as he approached the bench, lowered the bag with the extortion money onto the seat, and then kept walking.
I radioed Danny, gave him the exact drop location, and told him to position his remaining backup team on the avenue directly below us.
“Do you see anybody?” Kylie asked.
I looked around. Not many people. And those who were there were strolling, oblivious to the mini–shopping bag sitting on a bench, tucked into a quiet nook, surrounded by nature.
“Nobody,” I said, looking left, right, north, and south.
What I didn’t do was look up. So I didn’t see the quadcopter as it stealthily moved in on its target. I didn’t hear the buzz of the tiny rotors slicing through the air until it was too late.
The drone swooped down from the sky and hovered over the bench. Within seconds, a grappling hook that was suspended from the landing gear latched onto the handles of the Starbucks bag, lifted it up, and banked west.
“Aviation!” I yelled, keying my radio. “Red Leader on the High Line. Where are you? We need air support, and we need it now!”
“Zach, what’s going on?” It was Danny Corcoran.
“We got sucker punched,” I said as I watched a hundred thousand dollars of district attorney Mick Wilson’s money fly low over the Hudson River and make its way uptown.