Chazz eventually turned off the lights and headed upstairs. I waited for ten minutes before I risked cracking open the pantry door. I half expected him to be standing there, a butcher knife in hand, a triumphant grin on his face for luring me out into the open. But my luck had returned. Not only was he nowhere in sight, but I heard the shower running and Chazz singing ‘We Are The Champions’ in an off-key falsetto as the water pounded down on his chemically inflated torso.
I quickly made my way out of the condo, relocked his deadbolt, and got the hell out of Dodge.
Two days later, I received a message from Benedetto. The body of Charles Crane had been found on the floor of his kitchen. He’d been dead for at least twelve hours. A nearby hypodermic needle and empty vial of HGH had been tested and found to contain very high levels of carbon tetrachloride. According to one of Benedetto’s sources, the Santa Monica Police were testing the other vials and had come to the obvious conclusion that Mr Crane had gotten a bad batch of HGH from China. Another example of how illegal drugs can kill.
One week later, $9,500 was deposited into my “brokerage account”, with additional equal deposits to be made each month for the next five months.
I’ll be able to pay Jess’s bills and keep the clinic afloat… at least for a while.
34
While Kelly had been en route home to read about her father’s first foray into murder-for-hire, Benedetto was finishing up a long day’s work. He was seated at the window, sipping a glass of fifteen-year-old single malt and gazing out at the lights on the bridge. This was his favorite part of the day. The wind down. He was soon to discover that this day wasn’t yet over.
Mrs Mathews entered carrying a distinctive navy blue file folder. Benedetto saw her reflection in the window and bade her join him.
She complied, first stopping at the bar. A moment later, she lowered herself into the matching club chair and laid the folder on the table between them. Benedetto raised her glass. “To Natalie,” he said.
This was part of the evening’s ritual. Closing the day with a drink and a toast to Mrs Mathews’ daughter, who tragically took her own life many years ago.
Cora Mathews came to work for Benedetto just before the turn of the century. Born and raised twenty miles outside of Mobile, she displayed a genius level proclivity for numbers at a very young age. A professor of applied mathematics and statistics at the University of Alabama heard tales of a twelve-year-old named Cora who could solve complicated quadratic equations in her head. What was more impressive was the fact that Cora was a normal, well-adjusted little girl; she just happened to have the mind of an advanced math scholar.
By the time she was in her early twenties, Cora was working at the RAND Corporation, consulting on the design and viability of future weapon systems. It wasn’t long before she was recruited by the NSA to work in-house. It was during those years that computers rapidly changed the way intelligence was gathered and analyzed, and Cora was at the forefront, writing programs that were far more advanced than anything coming out of Microsoft.
While in DC, she married a career diplomat, gave birth to a beautiful daughter, discovered her husband was cheating on her and got a divorce. By that time, she was burnt out on the NSA and the dark direction the government was heading with invasive surveillance, so she moved west, looking to make a new start.
The moment she walked into Benedetto’s office, he knew she was a keeper. He hired her on the spot, and every day after that he thanked his good fortune that she’d entered into his life.
It had been a Tuesday morning when Mrs Mathews called in to say she had to take care of a family matter and would need a few days off. She’d already arranged for a temp to take her place and hoped Mr Benedetto wouldn’t mind. In the two years she’d been working there, Mrs Mathews had never requested any time off. Benedetto asked if there was anything she needed from him. Her response, “I honestly don’t know yet. Perhaps.”
She returned to work the following Monday. Stoic as always. When Benedetto arrived, she followed him into his office and handed him a file folder. She didn’t know what to do with the information she’d collected on a man named Charles Crane, but requested that Benedetto read the file.
That was how Cora Mathews broke the news to Benedetto that her daughter had died.
Benedetto did some judicious editing to the file before he gave the dossier to David Harper. That set the wheels in motion and became the genesis of Gideon, The Biblical Destroyer.
Mrs Mathews, her glass still aloft, smiled a weary smile. “To Natalie.” She took a sip, then tapped a perfectly manicured finger on the file folder. “You need to see this.”
35
Kelly put down the journal and rubbed her jaw. She hadn’t realized she’d been clenching her teeth while she was reading, riveted to every word. The entry detailing her father’s first “hit” left her reeling. The loving man that raised her had a cold, calculating and very dangerous alter ego.
Surgeons generally have well-deserved reputations for their arrogance and belief that they’re infallible. Those character flaws threaten to outweigh their talent. One of the things she’d always admired about her father was that he was never arrogant and could be quite self-effacing. In her mind, he didn’t have any flaws.
Now she’d come to find out that his flaws were in a league all their own.
Her mind was still abuzz like a hive of frantic bees when her cell phone vibrated. It could only be Pete at this hour, and she couldn’t deal with him tonight. After what she’d learned about her father, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to deal with Pete ever again. How could she possibly have an open and honest relationship with anyone… especially a policeman?
Kelly was about to let the call go to voicemail when she saw it wasn’t from Pete. It was a 415 area code, but she didn’t recognize the number. Given the tumult in her life, she decided it was best to answer it. She was surprised when she heard Benedetto’s voice.
He apologized for the late call, but he had some information that was extremely important. Kelly asked if it could wait until tomorrow. She was in for the night and frankly didn’t have the energy to come across town. Benedetto said he was outside her building, and the sooner they talked, the better.
Ten minutes later, Benedetto was seated next to Kelly, the blue file folder opened to a candid photo of a handsome young thirty-year-old man with thick black hair. He was getting out of a Maserati Gran Turismo.
“His name is Tommy Moretti. Do you recognize him?”
Kelly took the photo and after a moment shook her head. “Should I?”
“No. I’m relieved you haven’t seen him around.”
Benedetto went on to explain that from the moment Gideon ‘went into business’ there were people looking to take him down. “My tech came across information a few hours ago that indicates your father’s death may have been a result of someone discovering his identity.”
Kelly looked at the photo again, this time with the knowledge that she could be staring at the face of the man who killed her father. “Is he the one?”
“It’s a strong possibility. His bio’s in here, but I’ll give you the gist of it. Moretti’s mother died in childbirth and his father took off. Tommy was raised by his Uncle Arthur. Arthur ran the family business, which consisted of drugs, extortion and human trafficking. Arthur had two sons of his own. One joined the Army and was killed in Afghanistan, and the other put more product up his nose than on the street. On Tommy’s twenty-first birthday, Uncle Arthur gave him the ultimate present: oversight of the drug operation, which left Arthur free to focus on trafficking and providing entertainment for people who sought the darker levels of human depravity.”
“How does my father fit into this?”
“Your father killed Arthur Moretti.”
Kelly slowly shook her head. Even after reading the last journal entry, she had a hard time believing any of this was true.
“If my father killed almost two dozen people like you say, wh
at specifically points to this Tommy Moretti?”
“Someone took credit for Gideon’s murder in one of the 4chan chat rooms. The posting stated the date and time, which coincided with your father’s death. Messages on the dark web are routinely routed through multiple servers to protect the identity and location of the user, but my tech developed a program that unravels the spider web.”
“And he determined where the message was sent from?”
Benedetto nodded. “A business registered to Atlas Manufacturing… a shell company belonging to Arthur Moretti. Tommy is Arthur’s only relative involved in the day-to-day operation. He has a reputation for being impulsive and violent.”
Benedetto placed the file folder on Kelly’s coffee table. “This is everything I have on Tommy Moretti. Businesses, places he frequents, that kind of thing.”
Kelly closed her eyes. Between her fatigue, her father’s journal and now this information about Moretti, her body and mind simultaneously hit the wall. Her whole being had been on overdrive for so long, she didn’t know when she was simply going to flame out like a sputtering candle deprived of oxygen.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Benedetto’s look of concern. “I apologize,” he said. “I should’ve waited until morning.”
“No, I’m glad you came,” Kelly said, finding a reserve of energy she didn’t know she had. “Do the police know about Tommy Moretti?”
“They’ve known about the drugs and have been compiling a case on him for years, but have been unable to gather sufficient evidence to put him away.”
“But they aren’t looking at him as a possible suspect in my father’s death?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’ll tell Pete about him tomorrow.”
“The police will want to know where you got this information. If they start examining your father’s past, it would destroy his reputation.”
Kelly shook her head in frustration. “So, I have the name of the man who probably killed my father, but I can’t tell anyone. What’s the good of knowing if I can’t do anything about it?”
“For now, just be extremely cautious. As I said before, if Moretti killed your father, he may be targeting you and Jessica as well. We’ll talk again in a day or two, as soon as I find out more.”
Every time Benedetto delivered more information, Kelly’s life got exponentially more complicated.
It’s said that ignorance is bliss. Kelly longed for her blissful past, and held little hope she’d ever recapture that feeling moving forward.
36
(David’s Journal)
Arthur Moretti runs a family business. It’s not a typical family business like a small grocery store or plumbing repair or a neighborhood clinic. Moretti deals in drugs, extortion and human trafficking. It’s the human trafficking that I find especially abhorrent. His associates kidnap young girls, predominantly runaways or foreign students taking a year abroad, then sell them into bondage to some of the most debauched people on earth.
There’s not a doubt in my mind that Moretti is a scourge on humanity. Eliminating one man won’t put an end to this slave trade, but it may staunch the flow for a while, and if only one young girl is saved, it’ll be worth it.
I’m clearly not alone in my assessment that Moretti is evil personified. Someone with substantial means wants Moretti gone, and like the other requests that flow my way, that someone wants his death to look accidental. Hence, Gideon was asked for ‘by name’. Like all of the assignments I’ve undertaken, I have no idea who’s making this request, nor do I want to know. Two-way anonymity is crucial in this line of business.
Despite the fact that I’ve now been at this for a while (Moretti is my eighteenth assignment), I don’t take what I do lightly. Killing another man (or in one case, a woman) is a monstrous act. Each time I carry out an assignment, it weighs heavily on my mind and eats away at my conscience. While I wonder if my soul is eventually destined for heaven or hell, I’ve decided that prior to my demise I’m determined to bring about the early demise of others if it makes the world a little safer.
I began my preparations for Arthur Moretti by acquiring his medical history. It’s easy to get hold of records when you have access to medical databases. Due to HIPAA privacy rules, it’s neither ethical nor legal to obtain someone’s information without their consent, but given that I eventually plan to murder him, taking a look at Moretti’s records is a violation that hardly troubles me.
I took perverse satisfaction in discovering that Arthur had a history of cardiomyopathy and arrhythmia. It was only a matter of time before his heart gave out on its own, but the individual who wanted him gone wasn’t willing to wait for that eventuality. Most people who hire Gideon are rather impatient when it comes to their requests being fulfilled.
I took some time off from the clinic (I told Kelly I was attending a conference in Santa Barbara) and spent a few days observing Arthur Moretti. While he ran a dangerous and violent business, Moretti himself was a frail man in his mid-seventies. Like many people his age, he had developed some set routines.
Every night he sat in the same chair, turned on the same lamp and read the San Francisco Chronicle. Over the course of ninety minutes, he chain-smoked half a pack of Winstons, drank a glass of warm milk laced with Old Crow, then creakily made his way to his bedroom.
It’s become clear to me that the most effective plans were the least complicated. The more complex the scenario, the more things can go wrong. In the case of Arthur, the best method for achieving the desired result was extremely unsophisticated, but required a degree of risk. I had to get inside his house.
I thought a man of Arthur’s criminal stature would have elaborate security, but that wasn’t the case. When he was home, one of his no-neck soldiers stood guard. Since Moretti kept no cash or valuables in the house, the only protection he needed was personal. Hence, his armed companion. When Moretti left for the day, the house was locked but vulnerable.
At the advice of Benedetto, I’ve mastered several break-in techniques (the internet, especially the dark corners of the web, is a trove of information, some of it quite frightening). The tools I need, like the electric lock-pick, have been supplied by Benedetto.
Once I let myself into Moretti’s home via the back door (which was screened from the neighbors by a tall hedge), I made a few simple adjustments to the electrical cord and light switch of his table lamp. I was inside the house for less than five minutes and left behind no traces of ever being there.
That night I positioned myself next to a commercial dumpster in the alley next to Moretti’s house and settled in. The rank odor of decaying food burned my nose and made my eyes water, but my discomfort was minimal compared to what I had in store for Moretti.
I watched through my pocket binoculars as he sat down, placed his Winstons on the table, and pulled out the day’s Chronicle. Moretti took a sip of his dairy-diluted bourbon, lit up a smoke, and then reached for the lamp switch.
As he twisted the black knob to turn on the lamp, his body was jolted by a massive surge of electrical current. He looked like a man doing the St Vitus dance.
After his erratic and violent twitching, Arthur’s blackened hand slipped off the switch. He slumped back into his chair, steam rising off his balding pate.
I can’t say I was happy to watch him die. I don’t get joy from other people’s misery, regardless of how despicable (the one exception was Musselwhite). Nor did I feel remorse. The job was done, a horrible person was eradicated, and my compensation would keep the clinic running for another few months. Some people would look at this as a “win-win”.
I look at it as karma.
The next day, the Chronicle ran the story of Moretti’s demise on page four. His death was being investigated, but the police were already saying it appeared to be an accident due to a faulty electrical connection. Rather than detailing Arthur Moretti’s sordid life, the Chronicle opted instead to flesh out the story with family-friendly statistics about how many peop
le died each year as a result of defective wiring.
That marked the end of Arthur Moretti. I understand from Benedetto that Moretti’s business will take a serious hit, and may be inherited by his nephew or perhaps taken over by a rival family. Unfortunately, drug dealing and trafficking will continue, but at least one person has paid his dues.
37
After Benedetto left, Kelly was too amped up to sleep. Instead, she’d gone back into her father’s journal and read about him carrying out his “assignment” on Arthur Moretti. She could no longer pretend that the things Benedetto had told her were fabrications. She’d read enough of the journal (all that she could stomach so far) and accepted the reality that her father moonlighted as an anonymous assassin. Now, in addition to dealing with the void created by his death, she had to come to terms with his secrets.
She’d finally climbed into bed, but her mind kept taking her to places where sleep was not an option. Her thoughts turned to Jessica, who was now her responsibility. Kelly loved her sister dearly and would do whatever was necessary to take care of her, but every once in a while her subliminal thoughts toward Jess took a harsh turn. Kelly couldn’t help but have selfish flashes where she considered her sister as an emotional and financial burden… and then she remembered that it was her fault Jessica had been put in harm’s way, and that made her feel even worse.
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