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LITERARY S. BRONX / S. LEBANON, May 9 -   Even the weekend was dominated by Lebanon - and, through Nabil Abboud, Hezbollah. While the election wasn't until May 15, on Sunday the diaspora voted in New York and elsewhere.

Kurt Wheelock decided to (UN) cover it by follow Abboud. He witnessed the type of polling place intimidation so recently debated and denounced and in some cases invented in the United States. Then something he hadn't expected. 

  Nabil Abboud, Hezbollah TV, had scored an interview with the US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Sure she had sat down with Erdogan's state media on Friday. But Hezbollah? What were these people thinking?  

 Kurt did his best to overhear - Abboud was also live streaming it, sure to add some mocking commentary and spike the football later - and it seemed Linda Thomas Greenfield or her handler Olivia Adair believe that Abboud, with his big office inside the UN minus the intimidated South Korean scribe, was a way to reach "the Arab Street." They didn't call him Hezbollah TV for nothing.

Linda Thomas Greenfield was heading "to the region," as they said, to be "on the ground" before some photo-ops in Brussels. Kurt decided to cover that, too. Not only Linda Thomas Greenfield but even spokesperson Olivia Adair refused to answer his emails, or an email about his exclusion from the UN by a big pro bono law firm. They had cast their lot with Hezbollah TV. Who did they represent?

* * *

 The voting in the Lebanon election - with the sect of each position pre-selected -- would only end on Sunday night. But Big Tony Guterres would have flown the coop by then, to Moldova then Vienna, with Lisbon in between presumably to visit and add to his money.   But he hadn't left yet.

Kurt Wheelock after recording his usual stand-up in the trees across Sutton Place, mocking the two separate UN Security vans and idling Mercedes in front of Big Tony's public mansion, stayed on. He returned the Citibike to the rack on First Avenue so Lyft wouldn't keep charging him. And he set up a stakeout - the same word for the area in front of the Security Council they had barred him from before throwing him out altogether. 

  He almost missed it. Nabil Abboud arrived with two women. Kurt zoomed in with his camera. One was Asian - Kurt recognized her from a phone Abboud had shown him at the stakeout, the Korean woman from Abboud's basement - and also a seeming Hispanic woman, in flashier dress.

The three went in, allowed in by UN Security, then Abboud came out and stood chatting with the guard. Kurt focused his camera's long distance microphone, a new feature, and overheard since Abboud always spoke so loudly. 

 Abboud was bragging, "I'm not worried about the police or FBI. A politician we bribed down in the British Virgil Island was arrested with drugs we paid him to move and he's already getting out. Diplomatic immunity. How much more, this one - ladies from the SG. No problem." 

  The guard nodded. "Just making sure," he said.

   After a time the door open. But only the Asian lady came out, and left with Abboud. Later Big Tony came out with whole entourage and set off, one UN Security van in front and one behind, presumably for the airport. Where was the Hispanic woman?

* * * *

  Hezbollah's ascendency in the election was virtual assured when Saad Harari dropped out in January. Still Abboud was threatening the few seemingly Hariri-aligned voters he could find, with "I know where you live" or its equivalent.

As Kurt Wheelock tracked him, he found himself thinking if not whispering, I know where YOU live, and Big Tony too. But Big Tony had immunity.

   Kurt's NYPD source in The Bronx texted him that there'd been a missing person's report filed, or attempted to be filed. It hadn't been accepted, formally, because not enough time had gone by. And the filer was not a family member but a service, or really, a pimp. Could be a case of a runaway slave, the guy told Kurt.

But Kurt would look into it. The scene of the crime might be on Sutton Place, while Big Tony was out searching from fresh victims in Moldova. Human trafficking indeed.

* * *

   In the Hezbollah trial finally the judge dropped the Allen charge on that. It didn't happen at the beginning of the Day 4 of deliberations, or even in the middle when they asked to hear again audio of Alexei Saab telling the FBI how he could "re-ignited" with the group in Lebanon. But when they were about to leave for the day, the judge did it. Try again to deliberate and reach consensus. No future jury will be better positioned then you and it will just cost more. Lives?  

 Kurt had confirmed in The Bronx that the missing woman had been picked up for a date on Sutton Place. Sure there were a lot of Johns in this part of down. But only one made so bold by immunity. And it was happening in Moldova, Abboud bragged to Kurt when confronted.

"Why do you think Guterres takes so many guards with him?" Abboud demanded. "I remember you used to ask that in the briefing room before they threw you out. But that was your problem. Always asking, never just figuring it out. Guterres' uses the guards to gets the girls, and even sometimes to do them." Kurt let that sink in. Stink it, was more like it....

Previously: 

LITERARY UN GATE, April 15 -- "This is only supposed to happen on Long Island," Sergeant Rosario said. It wasn't clear if to his driver Cory Witmer, or to Officer Linares who had found the body.

     She was tied up and naked, and dead. That and the location of the dump, in the weeds behind the Hunts Point Market, had all the markings of the murder of a prostitute or whatever term they were using now. Escort.  Sex worker.

   "This is some Joel Rifkin b.s.," Rosario continued.

    "Or Gilgo Beach," mused Linares, who was younger and watched Netflix on his phone. While on duty, often parked down here at the bottom of the confines of the Four-One precinct..

IV.  

  In a four story mansion in Manhattan a reclusive man watched the news of the dead woman found in The Bronx.

  It was not Jeffrey Epstein - sure Ghislaine Maxwell had been described telling his most artistic victim to watch out when she jogged by the river, but she was still around to say it - but the more corpulent Antonio Guterres. And the mansion was paid for not by Les Wexner but rather the public.

   As Secretary General of the United Nations Guterres had a hard job, he told himself. It took a hard man to do a hard job. His double chin was growing, jiggling while he pontificated about fossil fools at the UN Security Council stakeout and then left with security without taking any questions. But underneath he had the same drive as in Geneva, that long decade when Catalina had refused to move with him from Lisbon, and left him alone in a mansion.

  It was her fault, Guterres often thought, as he waited for those that UN Security would bring him. The specifics of this supply chain he didn't focus on. Something about Talia's List. And now this, a badly dumped body. Couldn't the UN do anything right?

V.

    It wasn't just that the UN's Big Tony club sometimes filmed themselves - sometimes, without their knowledge or ability to censor, they got filmed.

  It had happened in Tel Aviv, the white UN four by four of UNTSO, the sex in the van the video of which was published by the blogger Big Tony hated, and who in turn came to hate him.

   At first Tony's spokespeople ignored Kurt Wheelock's written questions - Big Tony has already had him thrown out and banned, but they'd said they'd answer in writing so it wasn't censorship - but then other media picked it up. Some credited Kurt and his website, or Twitter account.

  And so the same UN Office of Internal Oversight Services which had helped Tony cover up Fabrizio Hochschild's sexual assaults on the 38th floor was deployed, promising an investigation of what anyone with a laptop or cellphone could see.

  Three men, it was said, were being reassigned. With full pay, Kurt quickly pointed out. But for most of the media which had reported on the video, the case was closed.

  Now this: a body dumped in Hunts Point, and talk about a "Blue Plate Special," not meaning a diner deal but the blue license plate on diplomatic and UN vehicles. In his mansion Big Tony ranted, How stupid could they have been?  How stupid indeed. Kurt was digging into it. But of course, they were digging into him - and they had immunity. 

To be continued - and see Inner City Press Patreon here

To be continued.

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