The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

CHAPTER 38

LAUREN FOLLOWED VICTOR Bodnar and the twins to a parking garage two blocks away from his apartment. As soon as she saw them walk into the garage, she hailed a cab and waited by the curb. Five minutes later the garage attendant pulled out in a Lincoln Town Car. Victor handed him a tip. One of the twins opened the back door for him, and they took off toward the West Side.

Lauren told the driver to follow them. They took the Holland Tunnel to Route 9 in New Jersey to Elizabeth. Not the portrait of American urban serenity. Even the McDonalds had iron bars on the windows. One of the twins jumped out at the entrance to one of the courthouses. He came back out fifteen minutes later. They circled around the guest parking lot and pulled up by the side of the road across the street. When a formidable-looking guy in a ponytail rounded the corner, Victor walked over to the Monte Carlo.

At first she thought the twin was there to attend a hearing. After all, one of them had hacked her computer. But when he came back out she realized it was something else. The man with the ponytail looked like an MMA fighter turned lawyer. He had to be Victor’s attorney. He walked a hundred yards before he saw Victor. Lauren was seated in the cab the same distance in the opposite direction, wedged between two economy cars.

From her vantage point, Lauren couldn’t deduce anything about the meeting. There was a moment when Victor made a big show of stomping out his cigarette, and another one when the twins came over, but other than that nothing noteworthy happened. Lauren wondered if the old man was the head of a criminal enterprise built around identity theft. Maybe there were criminal charges outstanding in his name, she thought.

Her gut told her to follow the lawyer. At a minimum he knew Victor Bodnar. He was another potential source of information. She knew where Victor lived. Her journalistic instincts told her it would be helpful to know more about the lawyer.

Her taxi followed his Monte Carlo out of New Jersey and into the Lincoln Tunnel. He drove aggressively. When he darted into the left lane, an SUV snuck behind him. It obscured the Monte Carlo.

“You’re going to lose him,” Lauren said.

The taxi driver didn’t respond. He continued rolling along at the same pace in the right lane, speaking Arabic under his breath. He’d been having a phone conversation from the moment she’d gotten in the car.

“Hey.” She tapped his seat back. “Are you listening to me?”

He twisted his neck toward her and gave her the thumbs up. Kept jabbering away the entire time. Meanwhile, the Monte Carlo was nowhere in sight.

Lauren slapped the seat back. “I’m paying to follow that Monte Carlo. If you lose him, you’re not going to get paid. Do you understand English?”

The road twisted. Traffic slowed.

Half the taxi emerged into daylight. Traffic stopped. The Monte Carlo sat idling five cars ahead, three vehicles back from the red light.

“Yes, I speak English,” the driver said, with a refined English accent. “I’m a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

Lauren slid back in her seat. Her hands left sweaty imprints on the driver’s seat back.

The driver resumed his phone conversation in Arabic. The Monte Carlo turned onto a bridge headed for Rikers Island. Bobby Kungenook was being held at Rikers. The lawyer in the Monte Carlo could be his attorney.

“Don’t go on that bridge,” Lauren said. “Turn around. Turn around. Take me back to Manhattan.”

The fare was up to sixty-three dollars.

Lauren booted her computer and used her USB modem to jump on the Internet. She dug up an old story on the New York Post from the day after Bobby was arrested. His attorney, Johnny Tanner, was quoted as having no comment for the press. Lauren searched for an attorney by that name, and found the law offices of Brian Nagle in Union. She opened the web page for attorney profiles. There was the handsome man with the ponytail.

Now she had two leads.

The boy’s girlfriend and his lawyer.