Page 111 of NYPD Red 7: The Murder Sorority

Brooke inhaled sharply and put a hand to herchest.

“Sonia Blakely was their legal liaison when they were in the military,” I said. “When they left, she joined them in civilian life and managed every aspect of their business. She was the interlocutor—the middleman between the clients and the killers.”

“You’re telling me that someone sat down with her and hired her to have my husband—a man who trusted her and worked side by side with her for almost twenty years—gutted like apig?”

“Not quite. There was nosit-down. Sonia never metface-to-facewith any of her clients. The Sorority worked in complete anonymity. There was no way a buyer could ever point a finger atthem.”

“Then how did people contact them in the first place?”

“They had a website,” Kyliesaid.

Brooke gawked at us the same way we had stared at Megan when she told us.

“A website,” she repeated.

“Yes, ma’am. KappaOmegaDelta.com.”

“That’s...that’s insanity. You can’t advertise murder to the public. Why didn’t the cops shut themdown?”

“The site is on the dark web,” I said. “It doesn’t say anything about murder. It says, ‘Welcome to Kappa Omega Delta. Effective. Discreet. Global. A $250,000 deposit is required to open an account.’ And then it gives wiring instructions for a bank in Singapore.”

“That’s preposterous,” she said. “It sounds like one of those Internet scams, only dumber. Nobody would send ten cents to something likethat.”

“That’s why it worked,” I said. “People who were told how to contact the Sorority knew it was legitimate, and sent the money. Anyone else who might stumble on it—cops included—wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

“And Sonia brokered the deal?” she said. “She snuffed out the life of a man who did so much for her, for a lousy quarter of a million dollars?”

“The total price was a million dollars,” Kylie said. “Thetwo-hundred-and-fiftythousand was just a down payment.”

Brooke leaned forward. “How...how do you knowthat?”

“Megan told us. She also told us who paid for the hit,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. She’ll tell the press first chance she gets. We thought you would want to know before it goes public.”

“Curtis had his share of business rivalries,” Brooke said. “But you don’t murder your competition. Outside of work, he was a good man. Warm, congenial, generous. He had friends. Lots of them. I have spent every waking hour of this past week trying to come up with the name of a single person who would have done this to him, and I couldn’t. So yes, I think I might sleep easier at night if you told me who paid to have him killed.”

“It was Warren,” Isaid.

CHAPTER 74

Brooke froze.She was, to borrow Theo’sgo-todescriptor, gobsmacked.

“Warren?” she finally stammered. “They were brothers. They went through the usual sibling bullshit, but they were friends.”

“And business partners,” Kylie reminded her. “According to Megan, Warren was desperate to get out of the partnership.”

“So he had his brother killed?” she said. “Because of the fucking settlements?”

“What settlements?” Kylie asked as if we were hearing about them for the first time. But, of course, we knew all about them. On the day the Hellmans were murdered, Megan had given us all the sordid details of Warren’s sexcapades and how he had shelled out fifty million of the company’s money to silence the victims.

But Megan’s version of the story was designed to convince us that Brooke was the mastermind behind the two killings. Now it was time to hear Brooke’s side of the story.

“Warren was a serial womanizer,” she said. “The classic Hollywood producer stereotype. ‘You want to be in my show? Suck my dick.’ He did it for years, and then it finally started to catch up to him. One woman sued, and he settled out of court. Then another. So he wrote another check and bought her silence. Then the word got out, and it snowballed. He paid a fortune to stay out of jail. Not his money, the company’s. Half of that belonged to Curtis, and there were more lawsuits pending. Then came the murder charge. He was accused of killing a decorated police officer. A lot of people didn’t wait for the trial. They decided he was guilty, and began boycotting our television shows.

“Curtis decided to bail and open his own company, but Warren couldn’t afford to buy him out. They fought, but then in January Curtis wound up in the hospital in a diabetic coma. It was three days of hell. I thought he was going to die. But he pulled out of it, and I told him to forget all about the business and focus on his health.”

“Do you know how your husband wound up in a coma?” Kylie asked.

She shrugged. “He was under stress. He didn’t sleep well. He got careless. It wasn’t the first time he mismanaged a dose. I was furious at him for not paying more attention, and—typical Curtis—he said, ‘Hey, shit happens.’”

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