“You take the happy couple,” I said to Corcoran and Fischer. “We’re out of here.”
Kylie followed me out the door. As we ran down the stairs I told her all I knew. “Nathan Hirsch. Handcuffed to a bomb. Foley Square.”
We jumped in the car. I hit the light bar but kept the siren off. I still had Cates on the phone. I put her on speaker.
“We’re on the way,” I said. “What have you got?”
“Ten minutes ago Hirsch was on his way to court. A male Hispanic comes up behind him, cuffs a briefcase to his wrist, shoves a burner phone in his hand, and says, ‘Don’t do anything stupid, or I’ll blow you to kingdom come.’”
“Segura,” I said.
“We have a positive ID,” Cates said.
“Then what happened?”
“He called 911.”
“What?” Kylie yelled. “Segura tells him not to do anything stupid, and the first thing he does is call 911?”
“You’re not tracking with me, MacDonald,” Cates said. “Hirsch didn’t do anything, except probably piss his pants. Segura called 911. Then he patched it into a three-way call: the victim, the perp, and the 911 operator.”
I heard what she said, but I couldn’t make sense of it. “Why?” I asked.
“My best guess is that Segura wants Hirsch to confess all his sins, and calling 911 guarantees that it’s all going to be recorded and released to the press.”
Kylie made a hard right onto Lafayette.
“Right now Hirsch is spilling his guts out,” Cates said. “He owned up to the Thailand drug run twenty years ago, he admitted he’s got this hooker set up in a condo in Jersey, and he just confessed to bribing a witness in a libel case he won last year. That alone will get him disbarred.”
“Segura spent twenty years in a Bangkok prison because of this asshole and his friends,” I said. “Do you think he’s going to be happy with Hirsch losing his law license and doing a Martha Stewart in a minimum security country club?”
“Almost there,” Kylie said, making a left on Duane.
“I don’t care how good a lawyer Hirsch is,” I said. “He’s not going to be able to argue for his life. Segura wants him dead, but first he wants to completely humiliate him—destroy whatever legacy this weasel may possibly have. And I’ll bet that as soon as Hirsch coughs up every smarmy, slimy thing he ever did, Segura is going to blow him up the same way he killed the other two.”
We turned left onto Centre Street, and Kylie hit the brakes. The New York County Supreme Court building at 60 Centre is directly across the street from Foley Square, an iconic landmark in lower Manhattan steeped in history and the site of the sculpture Triumph of the Human Spirit.
Kylie and I had just been there, all pumped up about getting the search warrant that would bring down Troy Marschand and Dylan Freemont. I’d barely taken note of my surroundings, but I vaguely remember that the air was crisp and clean, the traffic was flowing, and all was right with the world.
Now, less than an hour later, men and women in uniform were scrambling to set up barricades three hundred feet from the courthouse steps, where a lone man in a dark suit sat with a cell phone to his ear and a bomb chained to his wrist.
“We’re at the scene, Captain,” I said. “We’ve got cop cars, fire trucks, and media vans up the ass. Where the hell is the bomb squad?”
“Bay Ridge, Riverdale, Ozone Park, and Harlem. We got a rash of school bomb threats just before this one came in. I’m sure Segura is behind it, but we can’t take a chance until we evacuate every one of those kids and have the dogs canvass the buildings. The Emergency Service Unit is on the way, but right now, it’s on you.”
“The uniforms are working on crowd control. What do you want us to do?”
“Stay on this phone,” Cates said. “Nine one one will patch you into the conversation between Hirsch and Segura.”
“Patch…? Why?”
“Why the hell do you think, Jordan? You’ve been to Bangkok. You know the players better than anyone. This is your case. I want you to talk with Segura and keep him from detonating that bomb.”
Kylie looked at me and shook her head. She knew what I knew. Segura had spent half his lifetime planning for this moment. There was no way on earth he was going to settle for an apology and a couple of confessions. But that’s not what Cates wanted to hear.
“All right, Captain,” I said, opening the car door. “I’ll try my best.”
“There’s no trying on this one, Jordan,” she barked. “Suit up and get it done. This department and this mayor cannot afford another dead New York City millionaire on the front page of every paper in the country.”
I heard a click, and then I was listening to a man speaking. I recognized Nathan Hirsch right away.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” Hirsch said. “Who is this?”
“This is Detective Zach Jordan. I’d like to join this conversation.”
“Detective,” a second voice said. “Do you know who this is?”
“I do.”
“Nathan tells me you flew to Bangkok to pay me a visit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So sorry I missed you,” he said. “Why don’t we catch up now?”