Fear and Loathing

by Hilary Norman

  The voice came again, words not distinguishable, from somewhere farther below.

  ‘Luc, keep on calling.’ Gabe moved down to the ground floor. ‘I’ll find you.’

  A little louder, but still not close enough. From one of the storage rooms maybe, perhaps one of the coolers. He sprinted back through the kitchen – heard the voice again. From farther down. The cellar.

  ‘Hold on, Luc!’ he yelled. ‘Coming to get you.’

  At four-thirty, everyone was in position.

  Spotters and marksmen on the roofs of neighboring houses both sides of Rosemont House, because there was a heck of a possibility that Cezary, Blazek, Bodine and Copani – especially Copani, the part-timer who, according to López, enjoyed killing – might not be in the building, and if they were spotted outside, there were cops ready and waiting to apprehend under the protection of police snipers.

  Sam would have preferred to have closed Alton and the two closest side streets, but that would have been a red flag to any gang member not within Rosemont’s walls, so they’d had to settle for the exercise of sending officers into neighboring houses to ensure the safety of occupants.

  Sam would also infinitely have preferred to be among the first into Rosemont, but it was a given that if Constance Cezary was ‘Virginia’, then she and her gang knew exactly what Sam Becket and Martinez looked like. So the two of them were waiting in an FBI van parked on Alton in sight of Rosemont House, dependent on radio and cell phone contact with the operation.

  Special Agent Joe Duval heading in first any moment now alongside Thomas G. Grove – the commander of the SWAT team that had taken down the ‘Couples Killers’ a few years back. No such storming planned today, not with the likely presence of frail seniors on all three main stories of the ‘in-home elderly care service’ – assuming that Caesar Care’s operation was what it seemed.

  As it was, any one of those residents might be in grave danger.

  Tactics had been thrown back and forth, fast as a US Open finals rally, speeding through alternative scenarios. Ideally, they’d have put the place under surveillance until they knew for sure that all three men and ‘Mrs Hood’ were inside, but they couldn’t risk the wait.

  ‘We could wait for them to come out,’ Duval had said. ‘Pick them up outside.’

  ‘Except if that doesn’t go down well,’ Sam had said, ‘someone might get word to Cezary.’

  ‘And then we could get ourselves a hostage situation,’ Martinez had said.

  ‘Nice PR,’ Kovac had said. ‘Houseful of old folk.’

  Sam had to agree. ‘All we need.’

  No one else had argued.

  They were going to buzz at the entrance, claim to be from the Department of Health, show fake IDs to get them inside, then ask for the manager – and maybe that was Cezary, in which case that might be an arrest, nice and clean – but no one was buying that. And this was not a fancy nursing home with a meet-and-greet receptionist; this was a big house where senior citizens tried to get by in a protected environment, so Duval and Grove were going to have to find someone in charge, someone who knew names. Then identify themselves for real.

  Ensure no warning was given.

  Hope that the ‘someone in charge’ was neither ‘Virginia’, nor her ally.

  Find out where they were.

  Then bring in the troops.

  ‘It’s a go,’ Sam heard through earphones.

  He gave Martinez a nod, and both men raised their binoculars, Sam focusing on the entrance, Martinez scanning back and forth – others doing the same from vantage points overlooking the rear.

  Duval and Grove, wired for sound, got themselves easily inside, admitted by a nice old lady who might, Sam suspected, have let in anyone, unaware that she’d been living with Florida’s five most wanted criminals.

  He kept his gaze steady, listened intently.

  Seven seconds before they were intercepted.

  ‘How can I help you, gentlemen?’

  That was all Sam and Martinez heard before a vacuum cleaner drove seventy-something decibels over the conversation, but after fifteen seconds Grove’s voice, low but precise, came across, probably aimed down toward his miked-up chest.

  ‘Barbara Kellerman, manager,’ he reported. ‘Moving to a quieter spot.’

  Quiet enough, they had to guess, for Duval to have put the manager in the picture, because the next time they heard her voice, it was hushed, tense, efficient.

  Duval told her the names of the three men they wanted to speak to.

  ‘Let me check the computer,’ Kellerman said.

  They waited.

  Bodine and Blazek were both on duty.

  Copani was not.

  ‘Unless Miss Cezary – that’s the owner – had him come in to give her a treatment.’ She was checking a computer. ‘Nothing’s logged, but they might have made a private arrangement. Miss Cezary likes her privacy.’

  Sam bet she did.

  ‘I could call to try and find out,’ Kellerman offered.

  ‘Please don’t call anyone, ma’am,’ Duval said.

  ‘Do you know where Bodine and Blazek are right now?’ Grove asked.

  ‘Mr Blazek should be doing rounds on the second floor,’ the manager replied. ‘And Mr Bodine is probably in the basement kitchen loading up the hot servers for dinner at five forty-five.’

  ‘How many other people in the kitchen?’ Grove asked.

  ‘Three,’ she said. ‘Is this going to be dangerous for them?’

  ‘We’ll do our best to keep everyone safe,’ Duval said.

  ‘The residents are usually in their rooms at this time,’ Barbara Kellerman said. ‘They tend not to come out until dinner, and some of them eat in their rooms, so if you’re patient, you should only have to wait for Mr Blazek to exit whichever room he’s in, and then he’ll be at the medication cart preparing for the next resident.’

  ‘You all get that?’ Grove said softly.

  ‘Affirmative,’ his second-in-command told him.

  ‘Final question, ma’am,’ Duval told her, ‘and then we’re going to secure you and everyone else on this floor. Where is Miss Cezary?’

  ‘She’s at home, where she always is. In the penthouse.’

  ‘Does she have surveillance?’ Grove asked. ‘Could she be watching us now?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Why the smile?’ Duval asked.

  ‘Because Constance Cezary is just a very sweet, friendly old lady.’

  The front door opened again less than two minutes later.

  What looked, from the confines of the van, like a small dark-clad army, the equivalent of at least four SWAT teams, flowed into the building, while a team of MBPD officers shut down Alton one block each way.

  If Copani was not inside, they might lose him, but Grove had made the decision for public safety.

  Sam and Martinez readied themselves.

  Their turn next.

  Two more silent, tense minutes passed, and then:

  ‘We have Blazek,’ Duval radioed.

  Less than thirty seconds later: ‘We have Bodine.’

  ‘Detective Becket, that’s a go,’ Grove said.

  ‘Are you ready to go up now?’ Chauvin asked Cathy.

  ‘I’m fine right here,’ she said.

  It had been dark outside for a couple of hours now, making little physical difference in these shuttered rooms, yet nightfall had sharpened her fear.

  She’d accepted his offer of dinner as delay tactics – Hostage 101 – and though she’d thought about the possibility of his using a date-rape drug, Cathy doubted it, because the man seemed to think he was romancing her, for God’s sake. The aroma she’d noted earlier was boeuf bourguignon, which Chauvin had served at the small table with mashed potatoes and green beans, and she’d told him she had little appetite, that having her closest friends threatened and being abducted were not conducive to eating rich food.

  ‘I worked hard to make it for you,’ Chauvin had said.


  ‘I can’t imagine when,’ she had said. ‘Since you claim to have been holed up in Le Rêve spying on people and …’

  Her voice had trembled, and she’d stopped, mad at herself for showing fear.

  ‘Try and eat a little something,’ Chauvin had encouraged.

  Cathy had shivered, despite herself.

  ‘Are you cold? There’s no wood, or I’d light the fire.’

  ‘I’m not cold. Just ready to go home.’

  ‘That’s not the deal.’

  ‘I didn’t make a deal.’

  ‘The deal is we spend some time together. You have to get to know me.’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Chauvin had said. ‘Just stay with me awhile.’

  ‘Then just get on with it.’ Her patience had evaporated. ‘Take away this ridiculous dinner and tell me what you really want so we can get this over with and I can go back.’

  ‘What about your friend and the waiter?’

  ‘His name is Gabe Ryan.’ Cathy had pushed back her chair, stood up.

  ‘Sit down, please.’

  ‘No.’ She’d walked toward the front door.

  ‘It’s locked,’ Chauvin had reminded her. ‘Please come back to the table.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you act like a child, I’ll have to treat you like a child.’

  ‘I wouldn’t try.’

  Chauvin had regarded her for a moment. ‘You’ve heard of Qi Gong, Catherine?’

  ‘Please stop calling me that. Of course I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘I would commend it to you.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Though she’d guessed it meant that the jerk had been in some kind of training, which had toughened him up, and to her knowledge, Qi Gong was not a martial art, but still she thought that ‘commending’ it to her had probably been another threat: ‘unless you know what I know, don’t think about standing up to me’.

  ‘Fuck you, Chauvin,’ she’d said, and sat down on the couch.

  He had sighed. And then he’d cleared away the dinner, humming some old song that she recognized but couldn’t place, and now he was taking his time over his chores, cutting shrinkwrap with precision, placing plastic containers in straight lines on a worktop.

  OCD into the bargain, Cathy thought.

  ‘Would you like to go upstairs now?’ he said, startling her.

  ‘I’m fine right here,’ she said from the couch.

  ‘Coffee then?’

  ‘OK.’ Anything to buy time. ‘So what is it you want me to understand?’

  Grace came into her mind, and Cathy yearned for her psychologist mom’s wisdom almost as much as she longed for Sam to magically come busting through that locked door.

  Chauvin was making coffee, humming again, then singing softly as he reached for cups. She did know the song, ‘Grace Kelly’, a hit from some years back, had liked it, and it hadn’t been about Kelly, but in Chauvin’s head, Cathy knew it had to be linked with his obsession with the late princess and …

  Any moment now – she reined in her thoughts – he was going to make her go up those stairs. She had to focus.

  He’d put the keys in his pocket.

  Front right-hand pocket.

  No way she could get them from him unless he got out of those jeans.

  Jesus.

  Chauvin stopped singing. ‘It’s strange. I know so many things about you, but not how you like your coffee.’

  Black was how she wanted it – needed it now.

  Then again, anything that bought more time.

  ‘Could you make a cappuccino?’ she asked.

  Faces on the way through the hallway, more pale bespectacled faces behind the glass window of a door, penned in, staring. Elderly people and staff, too, all unnerved, some excited, because this had to feel like a movie, unreal, strangers swarming, taking over, wearing dark bullet-resistant vests, holding guns.

  Duval and Grove were leading the way, Sam and Martinez right behind them, everyone checking back and forth at every turn, because Blazek and Bodine were out of the picture, but Copani was not, nor Cezary, nor ‘Virginia’; and no one knew how many others might be involved in the operation, so no one was safe, and their Glocks were out of their holsters, police all over, keeping the innocent safe, looking out for each other.

  There was an elevator but they used the stairs – special grip handrails, anti-slip stair-edging, and if it weren’t looking as if this place had been set up by a monster, the house might feel OK, a place of safety.

  The stairs ran out on the third floor.

  An elevator marked Private over to the right, leading to the penthouse, the boss’s private domain where, according to Barbara Kellerman, Cezary lived alone, having no need of permanent care, drawing all the help she needed from Rosemont House employees.

  Kellerman had told Duval that the elevator ran from the basement, and reports from the rear confirmed that no one had entered or exited that way since they’d arrived, and officers were now in place near the two top floor fire exits; everyone exercising extreme caution, since someone might have tipped off Cezary, or maybe the ‘friendly old lady’ did have a personal surveillance system that her manager didn’t know about.

  If Kellerman was telling the truth.

  Sam had spoken to her briefly downstairs, had been impressed by her calmness, but had seen no intense shock, felt unsure about her.

  Unsure about everyone in this place.

  He’d paused momentarily in the entrance hall, noting a black-and-white photograph on a wall to his right.

  ‘That’s her,’ Kellerman had said.

  Sam had taken a closer look.

  A silver-haired woman, elegant in a dark dress, single strand of pearls around her neck. Intelligent eyes that might be blue or gray, mouth curving in a slight smile. Humor of a kind in there, Sam thought.

  ‘How old is she?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Seventy-two,’ Kellerman had said. ‘And sharp as a tack.’

  Not Hildegard Benedict.

  Another old lady in a nursing home.

  Big lesson for him and Martinez to learn.

  Coincidences did happen.

  Kellerman had told them she had a key to the private elevator which she said triggered a light on every telephone in Cezary’s five rooms: living room, bedroom, treatment room, kitchen and bathroom.

  ‘There’s another phone inside the elevator. I buzz before I go up.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t want you to?’ Grove asked.

  ‘She tells me. And she can disable the elevator if she chooses to. Though there is an emergency override; a coded keypad next to the phone.’

  ‘How many people have that code?’ Martinez had asked.

  ‘Just me. If I’m going to be absent, the code is passed to my deputy, and is altered again when I return.’

  ‘Is there a camera in the elevator?’ Sam had asked.

  ‘No.’

  Now, on the third floor, Sam turned to the others.

  ‘I think we need Kellerman up here.’ His voice was barely above a whisper. ‘She calls Cezary and we four ride up. If she turns Kellerman down, we use the emergency code. Either way we need to synch with the fire exit teams.’

  ‘Are we trusting what Kellerman told us?’ Martinez asked.

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ Sam said.

  ‘She’ll stay under guard,’ Duval said, ‘so no warnings possible.’

  ‘Can’t be sure she hasn’t warned Cezary already,’ Grove said.

  ‘We could be walking into an ambush,’ Sam said.

  Anything possible, given who they were dealing with.

  Upstairs, in Constance Cezary’s private residence, Anthony Copani was eating dinner.

  Fine food. Filet mignon with sauce Béarnaise and tiny crispy fries, going down well with a bottle of Pinot Noir.

  Mrs Hood had called him a few hours ago to invite him.

  ‘Will you be wanting a treatment?’ Cop
ani had asked.

  ‘Probably a massage.’

  ‘Will the others be there?’

  ‘Not tonight, Leon. Will four be too early for you?’

  ‘Not for you, Mrs Hood.’

  There was something else on the lacy white cloth, a dish of something beneath a silver-domed cloche cover with a brass knob.

  ‘It’s my gift for you, Leon,’ she told him now. ‘After your dinner.’

  ‘Another reward?’ His dark eyes glinted.

  ‘You deserve it,’ Cezary told him.

  She watched him accelerate, then slow down for the last few mouthfuls, wanting to relish the final morsels.

  ‘That was terrific, Mrs H,’ he said.

  ‘Glad you enjoyed it.’

  She had not sat with him, had moved around the room, regarding items, photographs, books and ornaments, touching a polished leaf on an orchid plant, walking to an alcove, looking at a small screen.

  She did so again now.

  ‘Something good?’ Copani asked, wondering what kind of TV this sharp-eyed old lady, this buyer of killers, enjoyed.

  ‘That depends,’ she answered, ‘on your outlook.’

  She turned, saw the greedy third generation Italian-American eyeing the covered dish again, and smiled. Copani was a barely adequate fitness instructor who got off on bullying and gazing at his reflection, who could be sweet to the residents but regularly ridiculed them and had been known to get impatient, even hurt them if he felt pissed off. Copani would do anything for money, believing – and in this he was not wrong – that it equaled power.

  Except you needed more than money to achieve power. You needed a brain.

  You needed to know how to manipulate people.

  It had been so easy. A stash of kiddy porn planted in an envelope in his basement locker; one of Cezary’s cameras ready to catch his expression when he found it, then a little editing to remove the disgust, keep the moments when he looked excited – and those close-ups had been cruel but authentic.

  And after that he’d been hers.

  Frank Blazek – a nurse with a cruel streak, was a recovering addict. Cezary had studied him for a while before creating a situation exposing him to an unlocked drugs cabinet. Blazek had swallowed some tabs on the spot and pocketed more, all on video.

  Jimmy Bodine, an orderly without ambition or scruples, had been raised in Chicago, hated his family and the cold, had come south for sun, sex and whatever else was on offer. He’d stolen valuables from two patients, had been caught and reported to Cezary, and he’d heard terrifying tales about Florida jails, but the boss had been kind, had told him she’d keep quiet, take good care of him, so long as he did her bidding when the time came.