New York Chief of Detectives (23 page)

“I think we all checked him out, Chief. However, Mary McDonald should be able to go over everything.” Bryan added.

Pat smiled, because he knew he had also done some checking, remembering his excursion to the Secret Service.

“Great! Mary, can you fill us in?”

“Yes sir, Chief.”

Mary McDonald walked to the front of the conference room to the podium. As usual, every male eye watched her every step. Mary put up a picture of Donald Harrison with a projector. It showed a tanned, well-groomed man with a slight smile in each of the pictures. He appeared to be in good shape wearing expensive tailored suits.

“Thanks, Chief and I want to say we all worked together on this. Donald Kaiser Harrison was born in New York forty-five years ago. He attended Yale University and graduated with honors with a degree in business administration. As best we can determine, he is now worth approximately seven hundred million dollars including real estate holdings. His reported income last year was fifty million dollars. He is the CEO of a large real estate corporation, DHA International. The DHA stands for Donald Harrison and Associates. They own a lot of real estate here in New York and even have international holdings. A lot of their holdings are in Queens and actually very little has been developed.”

“I talked to a retired lieutenant who has a real estate brokerage, and he told me that Harrison had a dream of building this twenty-first century, high-tech community in Queens. He has been buying up real estate by leaps and bounds. He has offices in the Kings Building on Park Avenue, right here in Manhattan. We have absolutely nothing in our files about him. He’s well-known in society circles and is politically connected, both here and in Washington. He’s married to Robin Hefner Harrison, who is also a ‘Big Apple’ socialite. He’s been on several political re-election committees, including that of one of our illustrious United States Senators.”

Pat related his information. “I did a little checking on my own, and I can tell you with certainty that he’s very well connected in DC. In addition to having several tea and crumpets meetings at the White House, he has another meeting in a few weeks with the President and the Housing Secretary. The only hint of a fly in the ointment is an anonymous call to the FBI indicating that he was involved in shady real estate deals. They did absolutely nothing with it, and have nothing independent of the anonymous call to support it. Do we have a map showing where his real estate holdings are located?” 

Mary McDonald projected a map on the screen.

“Everything in green is owned by DHA International and everything in red is not. You can see that there are some scattered red islands throughout the area.”

“Let’s go talk to some of the red property owners and see if they can provide any insight as to why they haven’t sold their property. Looking at this map, I’m sure they’ve been made an offer. This might not be related, but we need some answers. Mr. Harrison’s ambitions may have caused him to cross the line.”

Bryan Flannery stood up.

“After the meeting, get with me and we’ll divide up the addresses.”

“Thanks, Bryan. What else do we have?” Pat asked.

Karla Adams responded. “We’re going to get with Polly this morning and dump the phone data and see who is calling who and who has called who.”

Pat responded. “Pay particular attention to the night before Tony’s body was found until the time it was dumped around 0400 hours.”

“Hopefully, we’ll have that this afternoon, Chief.”

“Great! Have we heard anything from Marcus Johnson?”

Wilbur Stone answered. “I’ve been working on that with Karla, Chief. We have pen registers on the Mom’s phone, and so far, there have been no calls that look suspicious. She insists that he’s not called her. He is either on the run or pushing up daisies somewhere.”

“Thanks, Wilbur. I hope he’s on the run, because he can probably fill in some pieces. If there’s nothing else, let’s get on these addresses, and I’d like to see Mike and Mary in my office. Also guys, let’s keep a tight lid on these developments. This will break soon, maybe even today, and when the powers above find out who we’re investigating, it’ll become more interesting.”

The room came alive with chatter. The task force members stood around the map and wrote down addresses. Bryan Flannery was writing down the assignments. These were highly skilled detectives, and they were eager to develop leads. Pat returned to his office with Mary and Mike.

They walked into Pat’s office and shut the door. Mike Logan spoke first.  “What’s on your mind, Chief?”

“Solving this case, and I think it’s about time to rattle ‘Mr. Moneybags’ cage.”

“Oh, this sounds like a disaster, Chief.” Mike said.

“Maybe not! When these guys start nosing around Queens, asking about real estate offers, it’ll no doubt start some rumblings and get back to our suspects. That’ll give them advance notice and maybe a head start on covering their tracks. If we go to them first and then they find out about all the leg work, it’ll make them think we know a lot more than we really do. When suspects get rattled, they tend to screw up and make mistakes. We’ll be there to catch them.”

“It makes my guts crawl, Chief. I’m an old street detective, and I have no interest in going toe to toe with this guy. I don’t mind locking him up, but teasing him scares me.”

Mary McDonald quickly disagreed. “I agree with the Chief, Mike. We have court orders on the phone, and we can see who gets called after our visit. I think it’ll shake them up because people like this aren’t used to dealing with the ‘po-po’.”

Pat remained quiet for a few seconds and then launched his idea.

“I’ll go with Mary and try to talk to Donald Harrison and, Mike, maybe you can nose around outside.”

Mary agreed.  “That works for me, Chief, and the fact that you’re there may rattle his cage even more.”

Mike Logan nodded his head in agreement.

CHAPTER 48

Tuesday April 13-Day 12

Kings Building-647 Park Avenue

Borough of Manhattan, New York

1100 Hours

The
Kings Building was located only a mile and a half from One PP. Mary was driving her black Crown Vic and pulled into the parking garage. Inside the garage they saw a white Mercedes limousine parked in a space marked, ‘Reserved DHA.’ Mike Logan was the first to comment.

“I suspect that ‘Mr. Moneybags’ is the primary passenger of that ride.”

“How observant you are.” Pat joked.

“Thank you, Chief, I think I might just stay here and see if we have any sudden exits.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Pat and Mary got out of the car and went to the lobby via the garage elevator. DHA International was located on the thirty-ninth and fortieth floors of the forty-story building, according to the directory. They took the elevator to the fortieth floor assuming that his office would be on the top floor. They stepped off of the elevator, and there was a small receptionist’s desk. Pat walked up to the counter.

“Good afternoon, may I help you?” The receptionist said.

“Yes, I would like to speak with Mr. Harrison.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but it’s quite important.”

“Whom may I say is calling?”

Pat reached into his pocket and pulled out his creds flashing his ornate gold shield.

“I’m Patrick O’Connor, Chief of Detectives, New York City Police Department, and this is Detective Mary McDonald.”

“Wait here, please.”

Pat and Mary sat in a small waiting area and in about fifteen minutes, a well-dressed man with neatly trimmed sandy blonde hair approached them. Pat shook hands with him and introduced Mary, who also shook hands. Pat made it a point to flash his shield again for effect. 

“I am Daniel Pellegrino. Unfortunately, Mr. Harrison is unavailable. Is there something I could help you with?”

Pat replied, “Not really. This is a private matter.”

“I am Mr. Harrison’s attorney, and I will need you to provide me with any questions you wish to ask him in writing. I’ll review them and decide if my client would be comfortable discussing them with you.”

“That’s not exactly the way we work.”

“Then I suggest you leave the premises.”

“Aren’t we a little quick on the draw, counselor? This was not meant to be confrontational.”

“Leave, or I’ll call security.”

“I have 35,000 cops to back me up. I’m not afraid of your rent-a-cops!”

The door opened and three uniformed security officers came into the lobby. Pellegrino ordered them. “Please escort Mr. O’Connor and his associate out of the building.”

One of the guards grabbed Pat’s arm. Pat immediately grabbed the guard’s wrist and did a wrist lock forcing him to the floor. Pat could see the disbelief in Pellegrino’s eyes. Pat decided to set the tone.

“I’ll ignore the fact that your guard just assaulted me, forcing me to defend myself. The next time, he’ll go to jail. We’ll escort ourselves out, and you can let your boss know we’ll be back.”

Pellegrino was red in the face, but was speechless. He was obviously not used to being challenged on his own turf. Pat and Mary walked out of the office and took the elevator down. Mary spoke first.  “I’m glad that went smoothly.”

Pat laughed. “It’s pretty obvious they have something to hide. I could’ve been there to personally thank Mr. Harrison for his contributions to the reward fund. Instead, they jumped to the conclusion that he was suspected of something. My gut tells me that he’s up to his elbows in this thing. He probably already knows about the Blue Goose Cantina search, probably through that little prick lawyer Romano.”

“I agree, Chief. You’ve definitely rattled their cages.”

Mary and Pat entered the parking garage and saw that the limo was gone. When they got in the car, Mike Logan was waiting.

“How’d it go Chief?”

“Like a lead balloon. They’re pretty rattled.”

“The Chief put a security guard on the floor.” Mary added.

“Really?”

“Mike, it was great! He grabbed the Chief’s arm and the Chief put him on the floor!”

Mike related his observations.  “About ten minutes after you guys left, Harrison and none other than Joey DeCarlo came out of the elevator and left in the limo. We now know for sure that they’re definitely connected.”

“So we did learn something from our outing.”

“Yes Sir, Chief, we most certainly did.”

Pat pulled out his cell phone as they pulled out of the garage. He first called Bryan Flannery and updated him. Then he called Police Commissioner Longstreet and asked for a face to face meeting.

CHAPTER 49

Tuesday April 13-Day 12

Police Commissioner’s Office- One Police Plaza

Borough of Manhattan, New York

1300 Hours

Pat
walked into the commissioner’s office and the secretary told him to go on back. The door was open, and Pat walked in.

“Good afternoon, Patty, I heard some concern in your voice.”

“We’re making a lot of progress in the Rodriguez case. It’s taken an important turn, and you need to be in the loop.”

“Should we include Chief Abernathy?”

“As much as I hate to admit it, I think we should.”

The commissioner called Abernathy’s desk and asked him to come to his office. In just a few minutes, he walked in. The Commissioner spoke first. “Charles, please close the door. Patty has some developments in the Rodriguez case.”

“Sure, Commissioner, I hope we have a break.”

“So do I!”

“There have been a lot of developments since our search of the Blue Goose Cantina out in Queens. The lab identified blood in the back room as belonging to Tony Rodriguez and the other blood in the room as belonging to the crispy critter we found in the burned car near Queens College.  However we still don’t know who he is. We also found some prints that are very interesting. One of the prints is from Salvatore Cortez, a known gang banger from Queens. The others are more interesting. They belong to an ex-cop named Joey DeCarlo and none other than Donald Harrison, the real estate entrepreneur.”

Commissioner Longstreet exploded.  “My God, why would he be in that Hispanic dive?”

“We really don’t know, Commissioner, but he’s buying up a tremendous amount of real estate in Queens allegedly for some high-tech, high-dollar development. There are some people who wouldn’t sell to him and we’re going out talking to them. I don’t have those results yet.”

“I just can’t believe he’d be involved in anything criminal. For goodness sakes, he gave part of the reward money for the Rodriguez fund.”

“I’m just following the trail where the evidence leads us, Commissioner.”

“Do you think this is possible, Charles?” Longstreet asked.