The Borzoi Killings Read online

  Praise for The Borzoi Killings by Paul Batista:

  “Paul Batista has done it again. Through the eyes of criminal defense attorney Raquel Rematti, you’ll see the criminal justice system laid bare. This book is truly ‘shock and awe’. A must read.”

  —Lis Wiehl, New York Times Bestselling Author

  “The Borzoi Killings is Paul Batista’s newest entry into the world of high-powered murder/courtroom mysteries. From the brutal murder that leaps off of the first pages, through the twists and turns of the investigation, and the drama of the trial, Batista channels an insider’s knowledge of crime and punishment, together with a craftsman’s creation of compelling characters, into a page-turning, thrilling, and, ultimately, shocking journey. A must read!”

  —Jack Ford, Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning television journalist

  “The Borzoi Killings is one fine book indeed, keeping you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. Just when you think you have it all figured out, Paul Batista surprises you again and then all over again…right up to the last page. Hold your hat—you’re in for a great ride!”

  —Rikki Klieman, legal analyst and author of Fairy Tales Can Come True

  Praise for Death’s Witness by Paul Batista:

  “This well-crafted legal thriller has the feel of the real, because it was written by a first-rate lawyer who is also a very good writer.”

  —Alan Dershowitz, author of Preemption: The Knife That Cuts Both Ways

  “The verdict on Batista’s debut legal thriller: Guilty of delivering not only sharp courtroom drama but steamy romantic escapism as well. Vincent Sorrentino, a crackerjack Manhattan DA (not unlike Batista, a commentator on Court TV), is leading the legal team for 14 defendants accused of bribing Congressman Daniel Fonseca, including Selig ‘Sy’ Klein, owner of a shady trucking empire personally represented by Sorrentino’s colleague and friend, Tom Perini, a former Heisman Trophy winner. Tom’s murder while running in Central Park shatters his wife’s and toddler’s world and almost lands Fonseca a mistrial. Grieving Julie Perini suffers more shocks as she learns about her husband’s secret underworld association connected to the ongoing trial.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A spectacular new addition to the legal thriller genre. Fast, smart and exciting, with richly drawn characters and a race-horse pace. Death’s Witness is definitely a winner!”

  —Jack Ford, anchor, Good Morning America

  “A great read!”

  —Fred Graham, anchor on Court TV and former CBS news correspondent

  Praise for Extraordinary Rendition by Paul Batista

  “Batista does it again when international intrigue collides with murder in Extraordinary Rendition! A high-priced Wall Street lawyer gets the shock of a lifetime… law school never prepared him for this! It’s a fast ride—buckle up!”

  —Nancy Grace, attorney, TV personality, and New York Times bestselling author of Death on the D-List

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  THE BORZOI KILLINGS

  Astor + Blue Editions

  Copyright © 2014 by Paul Batista

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by:

  Astor + Blue Editions,

  New York, NY 10036

  www.astorandblue.com

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  BATISTA, PAUL; THE BORZOI KILLINGS—1ST ed.

  ISBN: 978-1-941286-00-5 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-941286-00-5 (ePub)

  ISBN: 978-1-941286-01-2 (ePDF)

  1. Lives of the Rich and Famous—Murder Mystery—Fiction. 2. Murder of the top 10 richest man—Fiction 3. Police Corruption and Legal Thriller—Fiction 4. Illegal immigrants and organized drug cartels crime—Fiction 5. Political corruption vs the whistleblowers—Fiction 6. Sexual entanglements of a wealthy American family—Fiction 7. Southhampton, NY, and New York, NY—Fiction.

  Cover Art: Ervin Serrano

  Author photo: Star Black

  Listen to The Borzoi Killings audio book on:

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  To my sister, Susan Becker,

  and the memory of our beloved parents.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Praise for Paul Batista

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  About the Author

  Other titles by Paul Batista and published by Astor + Blue editions

  the borzoi

  killings

  paul batista

  1.

  Brad Richardson’s office at the estate was a light-filled room lined with glass walls overlooking the lawn that led to the dunes. Whenever he stood, he saw the Atlantic Ocean over the low, reedy expanse of Egypt Beach and the silver crests of the waves collapsing onto the shore.

  He loved the office, as he loved the sprawling house itself, in late October when the trees started to change colors and the lawn, no matter how well-watered and tended by Juan Suarez, stopped growing. Around the house were the flat potato and corn fields that had dominated this whole area when he was a boy and his parents owned a saltbox summer house on Main Street in East Hampton. Now, even all these years later, large tracts of farmland were still here near the Atlantic shore, along with some new houses, all large, rising out of the distant fields.

  The house was quiet on this Tuesday morning. His wife Joan was in the city at their Fifth Avenue apartment, Juan had the day off as he did every Tuesday, and Brad had told the cooks not to bother coming to work since he intended to go into East Hampton and pick up food for lunch. He looked forward to driving on the village’s broad Main Street lined by ancient trees and stately houses. In October the famous village was largely empty; the restless crowds of the summer were gone; and on this day, under a flawless autumn sky, it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

  Brad also looked forward to a quick tour of the new construction at the public library on Main Street. He and Joan had donated several million dollars to the renovation of the cozy seventy-five-year-old building. The outer shell of the library— the tasteful framework of walls and roof—was preserved by the restoration of the original exterior brick, wood, and shingles. But the interior was gutted, and beautifully crafted rooms, shelves, and floors were being installed. Ultimately the names of Joan and Brad Richardson would appear on a discreet marble plaque
over the new fireplace.

  He visited the construction site each week. He made an effort to learn the names of most of the carpenters, masons, and plumbers. They knew him. Brad Richardson was, after all, one of the richest men in the world, ranked tenth on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was slender, likable, engaging. One of the organizers of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, he had that rare gift of making other people feel comfortable and respected. Some of the workers at the construction site called him Brad.

  Not only did the quiet of his Tuesday world soothe him, but he still managed to feel that rush of pleasure like a drug whenever he stayed ahead of the European and Asian stock markets. Years earlier, when he came into the world of finance, even a hundred-dollar gain on a trade made him giddy. Now, when the numbers involved were infinitely larger, a sensation like euphoria, but quieter, more secure, still came over him. He had heard serious marathon runners talk about the body’s soothing reaction to the endorphins their bodies released during the 26.2-mile race. A day’s success in trading flooded him with “endorphins,” as he would say, “even though I don’t know whether there really is such a thing as an endorphin. I’m the only guy in history ever to flunk Biology 101, the legendary gut course, at Harvard.”

  Brad was a dedicated, powerful swimmer. As on most Tuesdays from late April through late October, he left the house at noon and walked barefooted over the lush lawn to the dunes and Egypt Beach, the southern border of his property. He wore a bathing suit and a loose-fitting white bathrobe. Sunlight glittered on the vast expanse of the Atlantic.

  The dogs—Felix and Sylvia, fawn-colored, almost mirror images of one another—kept pace with him as he ran across the deserted beach, shedding his bathrobe. The Borzois, too, were powerful swimmers, and they plunged into the waves with the same grace, speed, and skill as Brad.

  After ten minutes of intense swimming, he rolled onto his back. He stretched out, his arms spread. His face was in the benign sunlight. Near him floated the dogs, sleek as eels. Sometimes in the gentle swell of the waves their warm bodies touched his.

  Brad Richardson’s world was utterly quiet now. The ocean waters sustained him. The sky was pure blue. Three seagulls, far overhead, wings open, were suspended on some invisible flow of wind. And, above the dazzling white birds, parallel contrails from two invisible jets spanned the upper atmosphere for miles and miles.

  Sun, air, water: Brad Richardson had the sense that he had lived for thousands of years. And that he had thousands more ahead of him.

  Just as he was deciding to end his day at four (it was late in Europe, early the next day in Hong Kong), Brad Richardson found himself doing something he had always vowed not to do because he thought it was pretentious: he talked into two cell phones at once, seamlessly handling the information he received in Japanese and French and responding fluently in both languages. He stared through the panes of glass toward the ocean. Sylvia and Felix, still tired from their ocean swim, slept in the warmth of the sunlight near the glass doors.

  Brad heard footsteps behind him. Somewhat surprised at the sight of the man casually approaching him, he said, “Be with you in a second.” He was too distracted to smile.

  The Borzois rose to their feet. Normally edgy, they walked together in the direction of the man in the yellow raincoat. Their hard nails clicked on the floor. As Brad gradually brought his dual conversations to an end, he thought that it must have started raining because the man wore not only the raincoat but knee-high green boots as well. Brad turned again in his old banker’s swivel chair to look at the lawn and the dunes. There was no rain.

  Brad wore a collarless sweater. The freckled back of his neck was exposed. The man in the rain slicker, focusing on the middle of Brad’s neck, swung a machete as if it were a baseball bat, striking that vulnerable area of the neck. It was a flawlessly directed swing.

  Making a sound like a human wail of grief, cowering, Sylvia and Felix moved closer to the man in the raincoat as if looking for safety. Two perfectly executed, back-to-back strokes from the machete struck both dogs. The bodies of the Borzois still quivered powerfully, uncontrollably, as he left the light-filled room.

  2.

  His real name wasn’t Juan. It was Anibal. When he casually mentioned that to Joan Richardson as they drank iced tea during one of his work breaks, she said, “Really? I’ve never heard of that name.” She wore a white tennis visor that shaded her eyes and nose. Her intensely blue eyes glinted in the visor’s shadow. “It sounds Arabic, doesn’t it?”

  Juan wasn’t sure he understood the word “Arabic.” He said, “Not to worry about it, Mrs. Richardson. I like Juan better.”

  Three months earlier, in late spring, she’d made him indispensable to the way she and Brad Richardson lived. Their gray-shingled, twenty-room house on the ocean at Egypt Beach near the understated and elegant Maidstone Club offered up endless projects on which Juan could work.

  Juan was bright. He was a gifted mason. There was a complex weaving of New England-style stone walls throughout the two acre estate. Juan could make the brick and the stone pristine again after the steady erosion from seasons of ocean winds and rains, snow and late winter fogs, as well as the dry days of hot sunlight in June, July, August, and September.

  He was also a skilled gardener. The house the Richardsons called the Bonac was built in 1925 by a branch of the Vanderbilt family. Unlike the gaudy and overblown homes of the newly wealthy investment bankers, the house had gardens that were carefully designed and planted decades earlier. Juan knew the secrets of restoring and maintaining a garden’s freshness, symmetry, and style. He was a plumber, too. And he could easily control the crafty, childlike play of the bizarre floating machine that devoured and neutralized the algae that sometimes floated on the glinting surface of the Olympic-size pool.

  From her kitchen Joan Richardson often watched Juan, his shirt off, navigate the strange device through the pool’s water. He was over six feet tall, so strikingly different, she thought, from the many Mexican, Nicaraguan, and Costa Rican men who had settled in this far eastern end of Long Island. There was a relaxed, muscular tautness to his shoulders. Every lean contour of his body was framed against the grassy dunes and the bright Atlantic beyond him. He could be a model, she thought. It was a guilty pleasure to watch him, like glancing as she sometimes did at Internet porn. At night, even with slender and immaculately clean Brad Richardson asleep next to her, she touched the most sensitive places of her body as she thought of Juan. In the eleven years of her marriage, she had never once conjured up her husband’s image in the long and luxuriant prelude to sleep.

  She first saw Juan Suarez on a chilly day in April as she and Brad opened the house for the first time since Thanksgiving. They discovered Juan when they hired blue-eyed, sandy-haired Tom Golden, who ran an expensive nursery and landscaping company, to bring a crew to the estate to trim and shape the high hedgerows, always green, that blocked the view of the sprawling house from the road.

  Tom Golden had arrived, as usual, in his new steel-gray BMW just after one of his trucks pulled up to the hedgerows. There were at least six immigrant men, Juan among them, standing in the open trailer attached to the truck. Thirty minutes earlier, Golden had found them on the side of the Montauk Highway in Wainscott where as many as twenty men gathered just before dawn every morning to wait for the owners of nurseries, painting companies, and contractors who stopped quickly, almost furtively, as if buying drugs, pointing at the men they wanted for the day. Strong, swift, Juan vaulted into the back of the trailer as soon as Tom Golden pointed at him. As he always did, Juan held out his hand to help the smaller men clamber up.

  It was an overcast day. Golden made the assignments for work at the Richardson estate—the hedgerows needed to be trimmed and boxed and dead leaves raked and pulled by hand from the plants in which they had been tangled since the fall. There was the scent of ocean water and thawing earth in the air. Juan sensed that he and the others would work only half
the day, and receive half a day’s wages in cash, because the darker areas of the clouds seemed to carry rain. There was already a mist, chilly and damp. Juan wore only a thin sweatshirt.

  Golden, always in a hurry, knew that Juan was meticulous with the gasoline-powered pruning saw. It was as though Juan could create topiary from any bush. Speaking in rudimentary but understandable Spanish, Golden assigned Juan to trim the tall roadside hedgerows. Juan immediately turned to the corner of the truck’s flatbed where the gas-driven trimmer was stored, opened the cap, put his finger into the well, and found that the fuel rose only to the tip of his index finger. He unscrewed the top of the ten gallon gas drum and poured gasoline through a funnel into the trimmer. Then he unfastened a tall, two-legged ladder. Carrying the ladder and the heavy trimmer, he jumped from the back of the truck.

  Almost miraculously, the overgrown hedgerows, swept carefully by the powerful saw, were groomed under Juan’s graceful motions as he stood at the top of the ladder. He inhaled the odor of the exhaust fumes together with the earthy smells of the cut leaves, twigs, and branches. Under him, a man he knew only as Paz, slightly over five feet tall, raked the fallen cuttings while Juan moved steadily down the hedgerows, feeling the heaviness in his arms and shoulders but still able to keep sweeping carefully at the tall bushes.

  Juan never came near the owners of the houses where he worked. Sometimes there was a glimpse of men, women, and children around a distant terrace and swimming pool, and sometimes he saw people playing tennis on clay courts. And sometimes in the distance he could see thin women sunbathing, naked. They had that aura of moneyed privilege Juan had first seen only when he had migrated from Washington Heights in upper Manhattan to the Hamptons, which he had always heard described by men from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala as the place where everyone could find work, the promised land.