Authors: Michele Martinez
“I’ve got one right here,” Melanie said.
They all signed the agreement.
Dan flipped open a notebook to make a record of what Miles said in case he decided to recant later. Miles’s right hand was cuffed to the chair, and he was using his left to polish off one of the Egg McMuffins that Julian had ordered for him.
“Okay, let’s get started,” Melanie said.
Melanie had planned to begin by discussing last night’s methamphetamine bust and Miles’s other drug activities, which she believed would be fairly painless topics for him. Once she had his confidence, she’d circle around to his relationship with Dr. Benedict Welch, the burglary of Suzanne Shepard’s apartment, and other more sensitive subjects, including the murder itself. But her strategizing turned out to be unnecessary. Dr. Welch figured more prominently in Miles’s criminal activities than Melanie had ever suspected, and Miles gave him up without batting an eye.
“The meth Pierre took off of me, it locally produced,” he said meaningfully.
“You mean, not imported?” Melanie asked.
“Correct,” Ortiz said.
This was, in fact, unusual. The vast majority of methamphetamine consumed in the United States was imported from Mexico, where a robust trade in precursor chemicals like pseudoephedrine allowed it to be produced in enormous quantities. Pseudoephedrine had once been readily available as a decongestant in the United States until exploding methamphetamine addiction had convinced most states to regulate it. Pseudo, as it was affectionately known in the trade, was now kept behind the pharmacist’s counter and even required a doctor’s prescription in some places. Anybody wanting to make meth in their garage would find this necessary ingredient hard to come by. Domestic meth labs got a lot of press, but they were a tiny slice of the voracious meth market, just little mom-and-pop shops, for exactly this reason.
“So what are we looking at?” Melanie asked. “A lab in somebody’s bathtub?”
“Naw. Big-time.”
“What’s that mean, Miles?”
“A whole warehouse. If and when we get to yes, I’ll give you the 411 where it located at.”
“What kind of quantity are they producing?” Melanie asked.
“Between twenty and fifty keys a week, depending,” Miles replied.
Dan glanced up from his notes and their eyes met. Melanie had to look away, or those baby blues would suck her to a place she couldn’t afford to go right now.
“You’re kidding me,” Dan said. “Fifty kilos? That’s just not possible.”
Miles looked unfazed. “I’m telling the truth. Whether you believe me or not, I don’t give a shit.”
“What’s the street price of meth these days?” Melanie asked.
“About fifteen thousand a key on average,” Julian replied.
Melanie’s phone had a calculator function, and she did the math. “So this organization is pulling down somewhere between three hundred thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week in sales?”
“Sounds about right,” Ortiz said.
“Not bad,” Julian said.
“Where are they getting their pseudoephedrine? Doesn’t it take a huge amount of pseudo to produce a kilo of meth?” Melanie asked.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “That’s why I’m finding this so hard to believe.”
“It takes over seventeen thousand pills to make a kilo,” Julian said. “Seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty to be exact.”
“My man know his drugs,” Miles said, smiling.
Miles didn’t seem the least bit angry at Julian for arresting him, although he’d apparently called Kim Savitt every name in the book when the cuffs went on. Julian was that rare cop who had an effortless rapport with his informants. They were too happy hanging with him to want to blame him for their reversals of fortune, which naturally enhanced his success at undercover work.
“Answer the question,” Julian said, looking Miles in the eye.
“Where I got the pseudo?” Miles repeated.
“Yeah,” Julian said.
“We got a connect who can get however much we want.”
Melanie’s ears pricked up. She felt something big coming.
“Why is it that your supplier can get so much pseudoephedrine?” she asked, her eyes glued to Ortiz’s face.
“Because,” Miles replied, “he a doctor.”
M
iles Ortiz had met
Dr. Benedict Welch eight months earlier in a perfect example of Manhattan networking. It’d happened at a “separation shower” thrown for Kim Savitt by her girlfriends the night after she’d moved out of the five-story town house she’d shared with her mogul husband, Drew, and into her luxurious bachelorette apartment. The shower gifts tended toward La Perla lingerie and the latest designer meds displayed in carefully selected, jewel-encrusted pill cases. Miles attended in his capacity as Kim’s personal trainer and one of her many lovers of the moment. Dr. Welch was there as her plastic surgeon, and because he always got invited to everything. Welch had heard all the rumors about Miles; beyond hearing, he’d listened. He knew every flavor of drug Miles dispensed and every detail of his criminal record. Far from shying away from the man because of this, Welch had crossed a crowded room to seek him out.
Miles had been hovering awkwardly beside a table laden with caviar, sushi, and salmon in aspic. He felt out of place. The room was packed with gorgeous, rail-thin women getting smashed on Grey Goose martinis who wouldn’t dream of coming near the food table
because they never ate in public. Miles would’ve been right at home if called upon to train them, fuck them, or sell them drugs, but he didn’t have a clue how to make jaded small talk with them over cocktails. He was quite alone when the good doctor approached.
Welch began by sampling an unagi roll. When he’d swallowed it, he turned to Miles nonchalantly, as if he were simply a random stranger standing within earshot.
“The eel is a bit dry, don’t you think?” Welch asked.
“What?”
“Did you try the sushi?”
“I can’t eat that shit. What the fuck is in it anyway?”
Welch laughed as if Miles had made a clever joke. “Touché.”
Welch smeared a blini with some black caviar, topped it with a dollop of sour cream, and shoved it into his mouth, contemplating Ortiz the whole time with the watchful gaze of a cat.
“So you’re the famous Miles Ortiz, are you?” he said eventually.
“What are you, a faggot?”
“No, although you’re not the first person to mistake me for one. As a well-dressed man with good manners, well…” He gave a worldly little shrug.
“Why you talking to me, then?”
“This is a party. Aren’t you here to talk to people?”
“Not to you I’m not.”
With his sunken dark eyes and ripped muscles, Miles looked utterly menacing, but Welch neither flinched nor retreated.
“The thing is, I understand from my dear friend Kim that you have a sideline beyond your employment with Flex Gym.”
“Huh?”
“I hear you sell drugs.”
“You a narc?”
“Not at all. I’m a doctor and a businessman, and I have a proposition that I think will interest you.”
S
o it was Welch who approached you? Not the other way around?”
Melanie asked Ortiz.
“That’s right. I did a stretch in Rikers a few years back that wasn’t no fun. My best shorty got shivved right before my eyes, died in my arms. After that, I clean up my act, throwed out my gang beads, and got my personal-trainer certification through this reentry assistance program the city got. You people should make more programs like that; they help put guys like me on their feet. Anyways, when Dr. Ben come to me, I was out of the life, just pitching small-time shit to my ladies at the gym. Club drugs, tranquilizers, maybe some reefer now and then, nothing that’s gonna bring la DEA down on my head. Flying below the radar, you feel me?”
“Give us the details on the offer Welch made to you that night,” Melanie said.
“He tell me he got girls at every pharmaceutical company in the U.S. willing to give him as much pseudo as he want for the right price.”
“Girls?”
“Like, sales associates. They all pretty girls be selling to the doctors. Ex-cheerleaders and such. Anyway, Ben realize what a gold mine he sitting on, how many Washingtons within his reach, but he ain’t got the connects to make it happen. That’s where I come in. He tell me, think of it like you an entrepreneur getting offered a partnership in a dot-com start-up. Don’t miss the boat.”
“And you went for it?”
“Fuck, yeah. I ain’t no loser,” Miles said, flaring his nostrils.
“So what’d you do?”
“I’m from Marcy Projects. I got my peoples there.”
“You contacted individuals you knew to be in the drug trade,” she translated.
“Exactly.”
“Like who? We need names,” Melanie said.
Miles hesitated and looked over at Siler, who’d been busy folding a discarded Egg McMuffin wrapper into an origami bird. Siler looked up, instantly grasping the situation.
“It never feels good to rat out your homies, Miles,” he said. “But the government won’t accept half-assed cooperation. If you don’t have the stomach for it, quit now and we can still get you arraigned today. The statements you’ve made here can’t be used against you because of the proffer agreement.”
“But my man Pierre got me on tape selling him sixty grams of meth.”
“Then your choices are simple,” Siler said. “Answer every question they ask, or step up and do your time.”
“I don’t mind the inside, but ten years?” Miles said.
“They got you by the balls, man, I can’t disagree,” Siler said. “So how do you want to play it?”
Miles shook his head. “I don’t know. Some a’ these dudes I been with from a shorty. I don’t think I can.”
Melanie wasn’t about to let this witness slip away over the names of a few meth dealers in Marcy Projects. She wasn’t here to make a drug case; the meth bust was just her leverage over Miles. What she needed was evidence on the murder.
“Miles, if this part is difficult for you, it can wait. We will eventually need those names, but there are other topics I’d just as soon cover first.”
They had to keep their eyes on the prize. If Welch and Ortiz had been mixed up in major narcotics trafficking, if that was the deep, dark secret Suzanne Shepard had unearthed about them, then it was looking more and more likely that one or both of them had a motive to kill.
“Getting back to Welch,” Melanie said, “does he use? His eyes looked funny to me when I met him.”
“Yeah, uh-huh,” Miles said nonchalantly.
“What drugs?”
“Little of this, little of that. But with the ice, he got a real habit. Like, he can’t be without it.”
“With the methamphetamine, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“New topic, okay?” she said.
“Sure thing,” Miles said.
Siler leaned back in his chair and resumed work on his origami. Dan picked up his pen.
“I hear you knew a woman named Suzanne Shepard,” Melanie said.
“Whoa, time-out. This comes out of left field,” Siler said, springing to life.
“I need to explore this area with him, Jerry.”
“This is the woman who was murdered in Central Park a few nights back. By the guy they’re calling the Butcher, right?”
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“My client’s in here charged with a narcotics offense. That’s all I’ve discussed with him, and all he’s prepared to discuss with you. If you’re trying to put him with a murder, or even knowledge of a murder, we’ve got a problem.”
“I—” Miles began, but Siler clapped a hand over his client’s mouth.
“Shut up and let me do the talking here,” Siler said. “I assume from what you just said that you have evidence that my client knew this victim?”
“That’s correct.”
“What evidence?” Siler asked.
“I can’t go into it with you.”
The second you told a suspect what you knew, you were setting the parameters for what he’d confess to. Melanie had learned that the hard way on other cases. If Ortiz knew what Melanie had on him, he’d
admit to exactly that much and not one iota more. But if he didn’t know, he’d be much more likely to tell her something approximating the truth about his involvement in Suzanne Shepard’s death.
“Do you have any evidence he was involved in the murder?” Siler asked.
“I have some evidence tending to suggest that, but now that he’s in custody, we can find out definitively. All he has to do is submit to a DNA swab.”
“You can get that whether we consent or not.”
“Yes, I can, and I intend to. But if he’s really innocent, let him submit voluntarily. Keeps things friendly,” Melanie said.
Siler looked troubled. “The swab isn’t a problem, but I need some time to speak to him. I can’t just let him start yapping about a murder without knowing what he plans to say.”
“Fair enough,” Melanie said, nodding.
Julian rehandcuffed Miles behind his back, and he, Dan, and Melanie stepped out into the hallway again, shutting the door. Melanie used the time to check in with Shekeya, who reported that her girls were having a tea party with Maya as guest of honor.
After a few minutes, Siler opened the door and beckoned them inside.
“We’re making progress,” he said. “My client is prepared to proffer on his involvement in the burglary of Suzanne Shepard’s apartment at the behest of this Dr. Welch. But he insists he had nothing to do with the murder.”
“Is he willing to submit a DNA sample for testing?” Melanie asked.
“Not only willing, enthusiastic,” Jerry said. “He’s confident the test will show he’s innocent.”
“All right, we’ll make arrangements to get the technicians over here. In the meantime, let’s hear what he has to say,” Melanie said.
They all resumed their seats. Siler nodded at Ortiz.
“Here’s how the burglary go down,” Ortiz began in his gruff voice. “We up and running on this meth operation. I get a small percentage and my man Ben get a handsome chunk of change outta every batch. Sales is good. Everything going nice and smooth. Then one day about three weeks ago, Ben come to me and say we got a problem. I say, ‘What?’ He say, somebody sniffing around, asking too many questions, and I need you should do something about it.”