Down to the Wire, page 5
It was up to FBI Director Jonathan Kramer to decide who would be the point man for the FBI in the bombing investigation. It was easily the most important decision Kramer would have to make on the case, since he believed in allowing the lead investigator significant autonomy.
The reason for giving that autonomy was twofold. First, it invariably resulted in a more successful investigation, since he would only choose an experienced professional. Second, it insulated Kramer from blame if things went bad. If things went well, there were also fewer barriers for him to grab his share of the credit.
While the decision was important, it wasn’t particularly difficult. Kramer’s first call, less than an hour after the bomb exploded, was to FBI Special Agent Nick Quinlan at the Chicago office.
“Have you been watching television?” Kramer asked.
“The Weather Channel,” Quinlan said sarcastically. He knew full well why his boss was calling. “I like it because it has a lot of highs and lows. I find that exciting.”
“Get your ass on a plane.”
“My wife’s birthday is Saturday,” Quinlan said. ” We’ve got tickets to the Bulls game.”
“My eyes are filling up with tears. Now get your ass on a plane.”
Nick Quinlan was as good as it gets at bombing investigations. He didn’t sift through the rubble, looking for clues. He wouldn’t know a clue if he fell on one; that was best left to the forensics people. But once the information was fed to him, there was no one better at tracing it back to the source.
Quinlan was known by people who worked for and with him as two people, Quinlan 1 and Quinlan 2. Quinlan 1 was gregarious, open, and sensitive to the needs and concerns of others. Quinlan 2 was icy cold and intense, his anger and displeasure manifesting itself in biting sarcasm and logical badgering.
No one on his staff could predict with any accuracy which Quinlan would be present at a particular moment, but once Quinlan 2 made his appearance, the word spread among the group like wildfire, and everybody who could do so left the scene.
Both Quinlans shared a laserlike focus on work, which meant solving cases and chasing down criminals. His success rate was among the highest of all agents, past or present, and he was held in such esteem by fellow agents that he received the biggest of compliments; he became a verb. When wanted criminals who evaded capture for a long period of time were outsmarted and finally caught, they were said to have been “Quinlaned.”
Quinlan’s permanent base was the Bureau’s Chicago office, but even before he got Director Kramer’s call, he had started packing. Two and a half hours after the call, he was on a plane to Newark Airport. The investigation would be in his hands, and no expense or manpower would be spared. Whoever did this had to be taken off the streets immediately.
An agent was waiting for Quinlan with the case file when he arrived at the airport. Quinlan then headed straight for the Newark office, closed the door to the office he’d be using, and started to read. It was his style to absorb all available factual information before he would listen to opinions from other agents.
The file showed that on-scene investigators had determined the point of origin within hours of the explosion. It was on the second floor of the east end of the building, with one of two possible doctors’ offices being the exact location. The bomb was a powerful type of plastic explosive, clear, odorless, and very difficult to detect. It was also a mixture of the type that investigators hadn’t seen, which meant that the perpetrator knew exactly what he was doing. And based on the damage, the amount used was probably the size of a shoe box.
There was no reason to think that it was the work of a suicide bomber, so the device was probably detonated from a remote location, possibly by cell phone. In fact, at that point there was no reason to consider this the work of an ideological terrorist at all, since no group had come forward to claim credit. That did not conclusively rule out such a terrorist group, but it made it far less likely.
Quinlan was not about to jump to conclusions about the perpetrator; he or she could be anything from a terrorist to a disgruntled patient to a random lunatic. The grievance could be real or imagined. Quinlan’s approach was not to try to anticipate the evidence; he would just let it lead him to where he was supposed to go.
There were no early breaks in the case, so on his second day, Quinlan set in with his team to do the painstaking work of interviewing victims and bystanders, checking building records, doctors’ office visits, etc. Most of that work would be done by agents under him, and Quinlan would be called in only if that initial work turned up something which seemed to be of some significance. But Quinlan would read all the reports with a fresh eye, just in case something was overlooked.
Quinlan and the task force formed under him for this investigation set up shop in the Federal Building in Newark. When he was inside the offices, however, it was the same as being back in Chicago, as they seemed to have been constructed to exactly the same specifications. The only really noticeable difference was that nobody wondered when the Cubs would win the World Series.
Quinlan’s team numbered twelve agents, but more would be available on a moment’s notice if needed. He had worked with most of them before, since traveling around the county troubleshooting was his specialty.
Two days into the investigation, an agent Quinlan had brought with him from Chicago, Frank Serrano, knocked on Quinlan’s door, even though it was always open. Quinlan had specifically requested Serrano to be assigned to this case; he trusted him and totally respected his judgment.
Both agents generally found themselves thinking on the same wavelength, which was amply demonstrated by the fact that Serrano had recently married Quinlan’s first wife, Kate. Since Quinlan was currently on number four, he hadn’t had a problem when Serrano approached him about it.
“You sure you’re not upset?” Serrano had asked.
“Of course not.”
Serrano remained dubious. “You sure?”
“Hey, I’m not gonna have to give her away, am I?”
The wedding went off without a hitch, and the couples remained good friends, though these days Kate was probably pissed off with Quinlan for dragging her husband to New Jersey.
“You got a second?” Serrano asked from the office door.
“Sure.”
“We got a list of all the patients for each of the doctors on the second floor of the building. It goes back five years.”
“Good.” Quinlan had specifically requested that the patient list go back that far, in case someone had felt that the doctor had committed malpractice and damaged their health. Of course, to retaliate by blowing up the entire building would have been evidence that it was their mental health that was in question. “What kind of doctors are they?”
“Were they,” Serrano corrected. “They were both killed in the explosion. One was an orthopedist, the other an eye doctor.”
“Any interesting names on the list?”
“I just looked at it quickly; not much that jumped out at me.”
“Nobody named ‘Mr. Mad Bomber’?” Quinlan asked. “No bin Ladens on the list?”
Serrano grinned. “No. But that reporter, the one who saved the five people, was a patient of the orthopedist.”
“Maybe he was coming or going that day, and that’s why he was there.”
Serrano shrugged. “Probably.”
“Talk to him,” Quinlan said. “Talk to everybody.”
CHARITY ARRIVED AT THE hotel promptly at 11:45.
She drove up in a Mercedes sedan and was as fashionably dressed as any of the guests returning for the evening. Nobody could have guessed why she was there or who she was going to see.
On the other hand, she could never have imagined that the man who opened the car door for her and gave her a valet ticket was actually a vice squad officer. And she certainly had no idea that when he helped her out of the car he attached a tiny microphone to the inside of her coat.
The maneuver was entirely legal. The police had identified her as a prostitute, and had good reason to believe that she was at the hotel to conduct business. If she went to the bar, had a drink, and then left, that would be that. If she did something else, like plied her trade, then the microphone would be activated and ready to record it.
Charity went through the lobby, out the door, and past the pool to the bungalows. It was clear to the numerous officers watching her that she knew her way around the place quite well; this was obviously not her first visit.
The bungalow the mayor was occupying was the farthest from the main lobby, which made it easy for the police van to be parked along the back road, about forty yards from the bungalow. It was painted the same color as the hotel vans, with HOTEL CLAREMONT emblazoned on the side.
While Chris was in the van, as promised, for the moment he might as well have been home on his couch. Also in the van were Novack, Willingham, and two technicians, which made it quite crowded, and they positioned Chris on a bench from which he could not see out the window. Since the officers would be listening to the goings-on in the bungalow through headsets, he wouldn’t be able to hear anything, either. So all Chris could do was watch the officers as they monitored the situation. It was not the vantage point that he had planned on.
Charity reached the bungalow door and knocked and the door opened within ten seconds. One of the technicians, watching with night-vision goggles through the tinted windows, said, “She’s in.”
Novack and one of the other techs each had on a pair of headsets and they huddled over a console, listening intently. After about thirty seconds, Novack said, “What the hell is going on? I can’t get anything.”
The other technician looked over and turned a knob on Novack’s console, which prompted him to say, “Got it.” After another couple of minutes, he said, “I don’t believe this guy. He’s telling her about the damn speech he gave.”
“Can you turn up the sound so I can hear it? Or give me a headset?” Chris asked, but nobody in the van bothered to answer him. Chris was annoyed at the treatment he was receiving, but wasn’t about to do anything that might mess up the operation. It would remain Novack’s show until the mayor was in custody.
It was another ten minutes, during which Novack complained repeatedly of inaction, before he seemed to tense up and hunch over the console. “Bingo,” was all he said.
“They getting to it?” asked Willingham.
“Oh, yeah.” Then, “Call Donovan.”
Willingham called Donovan on his cell and then put Novack on the phone. Novack assured him that there was no doubt about what was going on. “Wait until you hear the tape. We put it on eBay and we can retire.”
Donovan was quite happy not to hear the tape and that he’d avoided being on the scene was by design. If things went well, he would have no trouble claiming credit. If they went badly, he would be nowhere to be found.
“Any mention of drugs?” Donovan asked.
“No, but you don’t have to talk about them to use them. And it doesn’t even matter if he’s using, as long as they’re in his room.”
Donovan gave the go-ahead, though it was not an enthusiastic one. Whichever way this went down, somebody was going to get stomped on.
Novack put down the phone, barked a command into an intercom, and everything swung into action. He and Willingham burst through the door of the van, with Novack yelling to Chris, “You stay in here.”
There was no way Chris was going to do that, and he ran out the open van door after them. He could see up ahead that nearly a dozen officers had encircled the bungalow, waiting for Novack and Willingham to get there. Everything remained eerily silent.
When Novack reached the bungalow, it signaled the end of the silence. He pounded on the door. “Police! Open up!”
The only way the occupants would have had time to obey would have been if they were standing inside with their hand on the doorknob. Novack gave them no more than five seconds and then signaled to two officers with a large battering ram to knock down the door.
They did so, with a noise that Chris thought he could have heard if he had been at home, twenty miles away. Officers rushed into the room, guns drawn and screaming, and Novack and Willingham followed. Mixed in with all the male yelling was a woman’s voice, screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs. Charity was clearly pissed off at being interrupted.
Chris stayed behind, peering in and trying to find out what was going on, but there were too many police officers milling around. When he moved closer toward the door, an officer blocked his way.
Other hotel guests walked over to see what the commotion was and the night scene was now brightly lit by the colored lights of arriving police cars. After about ten minutes, the noise level had considerably abated and ten minutes after that, Chris could see a man being led out, in handcuffs, a blanket over his head. Chris got a shot of it with his cell phone camera.
That, Chris thought, had better be Mayor Stanley.
The man was put into a car and driven away, with Willingham next to him in the backseat. Novack came out moments later and looked around until he saw Chris. “In the van,” he said, and Chris followed him there.
True to his word, Novack described for Chris exactly what happened in the bungalow. Mayor Stanley and Charity were naked in bed, in the middle of a sex act that was regretfully aborted when the “guests” arrived, but which was captured for posterity by a police photographer. On the desk was an assortment of drugs and drug paraphernalia, and Novack was quite certain that the mayor would test positive for a number of them.
Novack was clearly delighted with the results of the evening’s work, and he told Chris that the highlight was the mayor repeatedly yelling, “You work for me! You work for me!” at the officers.
“What did you say?” Chris asked, searching for details for the story.
Novack smiled. “I said, ‘Not anymore, Mr. Mayor. Not anymore.’ ”
Chris stood up and extended his hand to Novack. “Great job, man. Thanks.”
“You must be kidding; you did it. And if you ever meet your informant, buy him a beer on me. It doesn’t get much better than this.”
Chris went back to the office, where a roomful of people were waiting for him, having held the morning edition up to include the story. He’d pretty much written it already, at least in his head, so it did not take long.
Scott Ryder was one of those waiting, since the story would go into the online edition immediately. “I hope this is good,” he said. “My bedtime was three hours ago.”
Chris smiled. “It’s better than good.”
The only difficulty Chris faced in writing the story was in making it journalistically dispassionate, so as not to reveal the glee he was feeling at his good fortune. He also was feeling a weird sort of power, knowing that he was in the process of dictating what everyone would be talking about starting the next morning.
Once it was filed and put to bed, Chris had a little time to reflect on the evening’s events. The funny thing was, he realized, that it would have been a huge story no matter how it turned out. Had Charity actually been a librarian there to read poetry with the mayor, and had the strongest thing in the room been Diet Coke, the break-in would have still been page one.
Novack and Donovan’s asses were on the line, but Chris would have come out fine either way. The media thrived on bad news, and once the operation had commenced, there was certainly going to be bad news for somebody.
SEX, DRUGS, AND HYPOCRISY: A POLITICAL CAREER
COMÉS TO AN END IN BUNGALOW 62.
by Chris Turley
I was at the Claremont Hotel in Woodcliff Lake last night after midnight when Mayor Alex Stanley was led from his bungalow to a waiting police car. He had a blanket over his head to frustrate photographers, but they haven’t invented a blanket strong enough to ward off the media storm that is sure to drive him from office.
Twice this week I have uncharacteristically managed to be in the right place at the right time. But this was no happenstance; it was an anonymous tip from a caller to me that set the sting operation in motion.
And let there be no doubt about it; this was not a case of innocent people being victimized, like those that happened to be in the medical center when the bomb went off. This wound was self-inflicted, by a man who may have just been shown to be an unworthy champion of moral values, a man widely considered to have a bright political future, but with a hidden need for the very things which were certain to destroy that future.
There will be speculation of a police vendetta against the mayor, but in my view nothing could be further from the truth. I went to them with evidence that a crime was about to be committed, and they uncovered probable cause that my information was correct. Not to have pursued the matter would have been to abdicate . . .
ANY MEDIA PERSON WILL tell you that there is more than one sex drive.
There is the traditional one, which everyone knows about, and which people strive to satisfy, with varying degrees of success. And then there is the other one, the insatiable need for people to read about other people’s sex lives, the more sordid and humiliating the better. The latter is a satisfaction that can be achieved without having to take anyone to dinner first.
Chris’s story about Alex Stanley’s arrest was a media explosion that actually rivaled the medical center detonation. The New York and national media descended on Englewood Town Hall the next day like vultures, and the twenty-four-hour cable news networks talked about Stanley’s fall from grace and the medical center twenty-five hours a day.
Of course, they couched the new story in terms that made their reporting seem more noble, citing Mayor Stanley’s betrayal of the public trust. Newscasters all over the dial shook their collective heads sadly at what the mayor’s poor family must be going through.
But the bottom line, and all the media really cared about, was that he was caught with a hooker and enough drugs to qualify the hotel room as a pharmacy, and the one thing the public could trust was that the media would milk it for all it was worth.
