Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
The Rev. Patrick Mahoney ditched his usual jeans and Converse for the dark blue suit and the brown shoes he considers bougie before boarding the Amtrak in Washington D.C., to New York City last March. He wanted to look presentable for the speech he’d be giving at the New York mayor’s interfaith anti-gun violence summit. But he also needed to blend in with the other suits as he later entered an office building in Midtown Manhattan off of Fifth Avenue. Briefcase in hand, the Presbyterian minister walked confidently past the empty lobby, mashed the elevator button, and slipped inside.
He had another mission, and it had nothing to do with guns.
But the elevator ride ended anticlimactically on a floor with what looked to be an empty office space. The other potential address he had for his target was for the adjacent building. This time, the pastor would have to get past a security guard before riding up to what he hoped were the secret headquarters of Danco Laboratories, a U.S. distributor of the abortion drug mifepristone.