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Arturo was right.
Rylan had been playing dumb so far, acting relieved when we said we were cops and quickly apologizing for running, claimi
ng he owed some scary guys a gambling debt. He also claimed he didn’t know why in the world we were chasing him and since there seemed to be some kind of huge mistake, it would probably be best to have his lawyer sort it out.
In the meantime, we’d had a chance to go over his priors. We learned that instead of being a burglar in his previous life, Rylan had run a small Wall Street investment firm that had been exposed as a Bernie Madoff–like Ponzi scheme. He’d done two years at a white-collar prison and had gotten out almost two years before.
Rylan didn’t have a Facebook profile, but I managed to google a New York Magazine article about young Wall Street hotshots that described his rising from a tough section of Staten Island to become the captain and quarterback of the Columbia University football team.
I shook my head at Rylan on the screen as he rolled his office chair into the corner and began cursing at himself.
“I don’t know how good he was in the pocket uptown at Columbia, Arturo,” I said, “but I don’t think even Eli Manning could scramble his way out of this bloody mess.”
On the other side of the squad room was the office of my boss, Miriam Schwartz, now abuzz with several VIP visitors. The Manhattan DA had shown up along with the chief of detectives. The FBI had even sent over a couple of bank robbery guys. The press didn’t know that we had made an arrest, and we wanted it to stay that way. There were still Rylan’s accomplices to round up, along with the over four million in gems still missing from all the heists.
Speaking of things that were still missing, the contents of the bank safe-deposit box were still a mystery. The bank had told us that the box was registered to one Aaron Buswell. What was curious was that there was no Aaron Buswell in the New York State driver’s license system, and the contact number given was disconnected.
On a brighter note, Brooklyn and Robertson had re-interviewed the young guard at the construction site next to the bank, who broke down and revealed that he had been given five grand to be an accomplice in the heist. Not only had he given Rylan and his partners access to the construction site, he had hidden the clothes they had used in the heist in the guard shack. Fortunately, Brooklyn was able to recover the items. The CSU lab was already in the process of getting DNA off the coveralls to link to Rylan.
Rylan’s legal representation showed up twenty minutes later. He was an intense-looking fortyish blond guy in a beautifully cut dark-gray suit. He looked expensive. Very expensive. As I watched him confer with the brass across the squad room, I wondered if Rylan had bought him with the diamond money.
After watching the mouthpiece’s chat with my boss, Arturo and I escorted him down the corridor to Rylan. When I opened the interview room door, I apparently surprised Rylan, who leaped to his feet so suddenly that he knocked over his chair. He was sweating, red-faced. He looked extremely distraught.
“Whoa! Calm down, Rylan. Your lawyer is here.”
Panic flashed in Rylan’s face when he looked at the lawyer behind me.
“No,” he said. “Forget it. I changed my mind. I don’t want to talk to my lawyer. I, uh, can I talk to you? I want to talk to you, Detective.”
“That’s not advisable, Mr. Rylan,” the lawyer said quietly. “I’m here to help you. You should speak with me first.”
“Screw you!” Rylan said to his lawyer with a sudden explosive anger. “Get the wax out of your ears. I’m not talking to you, so go look for an ambulance to chase!”
CHAPTER 101
I TOLD ARTURO TO take the lawyer back to the squad room and went in and sat down across from Rylan.
“What the hell is going on, Rylan?” I said. “First you claim you don’t know why you’re here. Then you want a lawyer. Now you don’t? I mean, I’ll give your strategy points for originality, but this is getting a little tiresome, don’t you think?”
Rylan squinted down at the scuffed linoleum floor. “You’ve been a cop for what? Fifteen years?”
“Over twenty,” I said. “Why?”
He began absently thumbing at the doodles and phone numbers scribbled on the chipped Sheetrock beside the handcuff rail.
“I need to know if you’re, like, an old-school decent person, not a corrupt piece of crap out for a buck. Being a cop is a vocation for you?”
“Yes, it is,” I said honestly.
Rylan looked at me intensely for a moment with his intelligent brown eyes.
“I’ll talk,” he said. “To hell with it. I’ll talk to you, but you have to help me. Because I don’t know which direction it’ll be coming from. You don’t understand how powerful he is. I’m going to need protection.”
“Protection from who?” I said.
He looked at me. His face pale. His hands trembling. “The billionaire, Gabe Chayefsky. He’s the guy who hired me to empty that bank box.”
I sat up. Straight.
