Page 108 of King’s Ransom

Cassandra King practically livestreamed that on her social media pages.

In one post she said, ‘Everyone who’s anyone is here!’

She also advertised the designer coat she wore.

Such grief.

While all this was playing on the TV, I was actually watching something else, something that was of far more interest to me.

The security footage from 59West that Georgy had sent to me.

As I’ve said before, this is my superpower.

If I can do anything better than anybody else in my trade, it’s sit down and grind through some hyper-detailed problem, like watching a thousand hours of security camera footage.

So, how do you watch a thousand hours of security camera footage?

For one thing, you start at the beginning and work your way through it all.

For another, you do it on fast-forward (otherwise it’ll take you a thousand hours and that’s way too long for anybody, even me).

Watching it on fast-forward actually helps, since what you’re really looking for in the footage are breaks in the daily routine.

The same cars come and go, park in the same spaces. You’re looking for disturbances in those routines: new cars, new people, like workmen in trucks or removalist vehicles.

And when you watch footage on fast-forward, disturbances like these stand out.

So I brought my backpack and laptop with me to the hospital that day and got to work.

I won’t go into the details of watching the footage from 59West—I did it all morning—but suffice it to say, as I moved through the month of November, the routines of 59West quickly became apparent and they rarely fluctuated, as one would expect of a building with few residents and tightly controlled access.

In short, the residents came and went in their luxury cars or limousines, going back and forth to the garage-level elevators.

I made notes about the comings and goings of the people I knew:

On the days he didn’t use his rooftop helipad, Aristo King departed and returned in a limo with Mia Kimura, usually at similar times.

On weekends, Ajax and Cassandra came home extra late.

The building’s courtesy van—a gleaming black Mercedes Sprinter van with ‘59West’ written in gold cursive on its side—entered and exited constantly, always parking in the same reserved spot close to the elevators.

(The residents of 59West had this van and its well-dressed female driver at their disposal to go anywhere within a two-mile radius.)

It was all pretty standard.

And then I saw something.

On November 28, I saw the superintendent Lenny Grossman in his white coveralls chatting with the courtesy van’s female driver.

I noted the date: November 28.

According to the super at Lenny’s apartment building in the Bronx, Lenny had left town before Thanksgiving on November 26 . . . yet here he was.

‘Lenny . . .’ I said aloud, gazing at the footage. ‘You’d gone on vacation. You shouldn’t be in that garage, but you are.’

This bolstered my theory that he’d been impersonated.

I cracked my neck, rolled my shoulders.