by Tim Tigner
“It’s all you, dear. Now go get some sleep, then get back to work.”
49
Recovery
IN WHAT BECAME his final mission for the Sinaloa Cartel, Fredo Blanco had tracked down a gang of traitors known today as the Gritando Cinco, the Screaming Five. A greedy group of regional managers who had created a sophisticated cash skimming scheme that had netted them tens of millions of dollars over the course of several years—without ever being detected.
After sufficiently stuffing their mattresses, the five had faked their own deaths by blowing up a fishing boat they were all known to be aboard. Meticulous planning placed the blame on the rival Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and flawless execution left little doubt. The ruse worked and would never have been detected had it not been for a single oversight and the suspicious mind of the man at the top.
El Chapo noted that with the five gone, the revenues coming from their territories actually increased. Rather than fly into a public rage and put the traitors on alert, he kept his conclusion confidential and quietly put Fredo on the case.
Despite the fact that the five had stuck together, lowering their profile to a single spot on the globe, it had taken just four months for Fredo to find them on the Caribbean island of Margarita, off the coast of Venezuela. At that point, he informed El Chapo, got the small army he needed, and turned their retirement castle into a torture chamber.
For five weeks, Fredo broadcast a daily thirty-minute show where he worked the five traitors with tools designed to produce increasingly graphic displays. A show that El Chapo required his organization to watch. While this gave the drug lord his desired result, it led to an unforeseen consequence for his hit man.
The repeated exposure to the spraying and splashing bodily fluids of five debaucherous drug and sex addicts eventually gave Fredo a nearly fatal cocktail of contagious conditions. After the five expired during the season finale, he spent three agonizing touch-and-go months in a hospital recovering. When he finally emerged, he was free of the cartel—a rare thank-you from El Chapo—but saddled with mysophobia and hematophobia, the fears of germs and blood.
While suboptimal for sure, Fredo now considered it a good trade, given the millions he was making from freelancing, thanks to his cartel credentials.
At least he had until today.
Until he found himself pinned to an armchair by a two-hundred-fifty-pound fountain of blood.
Until the horrors of his hospital months came crashing back in a single wave so unexpected and powerful that it snapped a mental circuit breaker and sent his mind scrambling for the serenity of unconsciousness.
Of course, the blown fuse was a reprieve rather than an escape. When his eyes snapped open—some seconds, minutes, or hours later—he was still drenched in blood and pinned to a chair.
Oddly, Fredo did not go berserk.
Perhaps it was the stillness of the situation that made it tolerable.
Perhaps his sensors were still numb from overexposure.
Maybe the extreme overdose had rendered him immune.
In any case, he remained calm. He remained calm while wriggling out from under the crusting corpse. He remained calm while stepping into the shower and standing beneath the torrent until the water going down the drain was no longer pink. And he remained calm while exiting the house, hiding the ladder, and driving away.
He had been unconscious for nearly two hours and in the shower for twenty minutes more. Plenty of time for the police to respond to a 911. Clearly, the neighbors had not been alarmed and Vicky herself had not called. While he was thrilled to have caught that break, Fredo was disappointed that she’d been so savvy.
Women weren’t usually smart about such matters.
Had Vicky gone to the police, they’d have interrogated her for hours. He’d have known where to find her. Once Fredo knew a target’s location, completing his contract was just a matter of time.
On that note, Fredo realized that despite the loss, he wasn’t depressed. If the incident had cured his phobias, if his temporary immunity turned permanent, the net result would be a blessing. In any case, he’d be back on her now-hot trail soon enough.
First, however, he had two unpleasant tasks to complete. The first was calling his clients with an update. He wouldn’t actually be using the burner phone they supplied, although the number displayed would match. Out of an abundance of caution, he kept their phone turned off and thus not easily tracked, with its calls forwarding seamlessly through a scrambling relay to his cell where they could be recorded in case a client tried to renege or he was arrested and a deal needed to be made.
This particular call would likely include lots of screaming, but as they say, sticks and stones...
His second pending task was a bit of recruiting. Fredo had to find a few outlaws willing to immediately exchange a few hours of dirty work for a few thousand dollars in cash. Fortunately, he knew of a nearby biker bar that attracted exactly that type of man. All evidence of the crime and Quinten Bacca’s corpse would soon exist only in Victoria Pixler’s memory.
50
Not Focused Enough
The Caribbean
VICKY WAS THRILLED to find the Sea La Vie still berthed next to the Vitamin Sea. With its lights on.
She didn’t know what she’d have done if her friends’ slip had been empty. She had travelled that far by harnessing the winds of grief and converting emotion into motion. But if momentum stalled because her partners had vanished, if she truly found herself alone, Vicky feared her sails would go slack and she’d sink beneath her burden of sorrow.
“Skylar! Chase!” she said, stepping aboard.
The couple emerged from the main room, beaming with relief. “Oh, thank goodness,” Skylar said, moving in for a hug. “We were so worried. Sit down, tell us all about it. Where’s Chewie?”
The last question hit Vicky like a sledgehammer. She’d known it would be coming, but that didn’t keep her chest from cracking. She collapsed in Skylar’s arms.
It was daylight when Vicky awoke in the guest cabin of the Sea La Vie. Fortunately, she recognized the room, even though she had no recollection of going there. Most of the previous evening was a blur of teary sobs and supportive hugs.
“Good morning,” Skylar said, setting down a paperback while rising from a bedside chair. “How are you feeling?”
Vicky took the question seriously. She sat up and did a self-appraisal as her mother whispered a reminder to Be the lion. “I feel like a new person. How long did I sleep?”
“About eleven hours,” Skylar said, then added, “You took a couple of pills.”
That made sense. “Is Chase aboard? I’d like to talk about next steps.”
Skylar didn’t resist or question. She appeared to intuitively understand Vicky’s need to stay afloat by generating forward momentum. “Sure. He’s been looking forward to that. We can talk over breakfast.”
Vicky did her best to ignore the empty fourth place at the familiar table. A table which, now that she thought about it, was emblematic of the most socially active period of her adult life. The only period during which she not only was part of a twosome, but also enjoyed a relationship with a couple of a similar stripe.
“How much did I tell you last night?” Vicky asked after her first swallow of coffee.
“You walked us through the attack and your escape, but not much else,” Skylar said.
“Was I clear? I really don’t remember. I was in pretty bad shape.”
“You didn’t mention the police,” Chase said. “Were they involved?”
“You know, I never even considered calling them. At first, all I could think about was fleeing from the killer. After that, it was all about remaining sane, if that makes sense. Reliving the events through hours of police interrogation, while exposing myself to a second, no, a third attempt on my life…” She shook her head, picturing herself locked in a police interview room. “After the discreet and efficient way Bellagio security handled things in Las V
egas, and given that I’ve been in hiding ever since, calling 911 never struck me as an option. I suppose that puts me in a tough place now, though.”
“We’ll want to get your story to the detective in charge. I’ll take care of that, using an attorney.” Chase opened the Notes app on his phone. “I’ll emphasize that it was the second professional assassination attempt on you, a celebrity entertainer, and that you have once again fled the country for safety’s sake. We’ll want to refer him to someone in Las Vegas to corroborate your story. What name should I give him?”
“Basil Bakhshi at the Bellagio. Thank you.” She paused there, her train of thought derailed by images of police interrogations.
Skylar took her hand. “Do you need a break?”
“No, I want to press on.”
“I understand. Earlier, you mentioned wanting to talk about next steps?”
“Yes. What did you learn in New York?”
“We learned a lot,” Skylar said with an encouraging smile. “They all live in the same building, which is just a block from their office. They occupy the top two floors, which require a key to reach by elevator but are also accessible using the stairs. There’s a 24-hour concierge desk in the lobby, beneath which are three security monitors, one showing the outside view from the front door, one showing the lobby from the front door, and one split screen showing the inside of both elevators. In short, it’s got good security for a residence, but it’s no Fort Knox.
“The four RRS&S partners each travel with a bodyguard. As near as I could tell, the bodyguards rotate every eight hours to maintain protection 24/7. Again, very good but it’s not the Secret Service.
“Their single biggest security attribute is, of course, their ability to read minds. For that reason, we did not venture inside their offices. We only entered the building’s lobby.”
“Excellent. Thank you. So to summarize, you think we can get to them but it won’t be easy?” Vicky asked.
“Get to them for what?” Chase replied, his voice eager with anticipation.
“How far did you get with your experiments?” Skylar added.
Vicky thought about using her pine needle analogy, but decided to keep it even simpler. “Far enough to make me believe that I can fry the receptor cells required for mind-reading, but short of the focus required to be confident that I won’t inflict additional brain damage.”
Skylar looked away.
Chase asked, “Where does that leave our operation?”
Vicky felt a warm rush from his choice of pronoun. She was not alone! “After what they did to Chewie, I’m no longer concerned with their well-being. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about causing additional damage to their brains—assuming they are the ones who sent the assassin.”
“Which we’ll find out by interrogating them before zapping them.”
“Exactly.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about how we might pull that off,” Chase said. “The Pascal trial provides us with perfect cover.”
“How so?” Vicky asked.
“If we focus our questioning around Pascal’s defense, the lawyers will assume we were sent by either one of the state’s witnesses or their lawyers or a woman still in the woodwork. There are plenty of people out there eager to collect millions from the subsequent civil suits.”
“In other words, they won’t suspect that you sent us,” Skylar added, squeezing Vicky’s hand.
“I like the sound of that.”
“So it’s settled,” Chase continued. “We’re headed to New York.”
51
The Third Way
New York City
VICKY SMILED at the real estate agent, happy to be wearing her Pradas with purpose again. Granted, she was using them as a weapon rather than a tool, but ridding the world of those four lawyers was for the greater good, like weeding God’s garden. “Cynthia, could you give us a minute alone?”
“Certainly. I’d say take your time but I have another couple coming for a viewing in twenty minutes.”
“Thank you. We’ll be quick.”
Vicky, posing as the British couple’s assistant, turned to Skylar and Chase while the listing agent excused herself to the third-floor foyer. “She’s not lying about the next appointment, but she’s been showing it for a week without takers. Her claim that it just became available refers to the owner moving out, rather than the traditional definition.”
“What about the price?” Skylar asked.
“She’s expecting to get the full asking price, but isn’t certain she’ll get it for the full half-year. Hard to find people with both that much cash and the same calendar requirement.”
The owner of apartment 3B, a successful romance writer, was going to be spending the next six months in Paris, researching the novels she hoped would put her on the charts in the lucrative French marketplace.
Meanwhile, she hoped to rent out her four-bedroom, five-bathroom Central Park West apartment for a staggering $50,000 per month.
“Do you think she’d take $250,000 if we offered the cash up front?”
Vicky did the math. “That gives Cynthia $15,000 in commission rather than $18,000. I think if you agreed to take care of Charles directly, she’d go for it. He makes ten percent of her six percent, so he’s expecting $1,800.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Chase said.
“Are you sure?” Vicky asked. “That’s a lot of money. And I don’t know when or even if I’ll be able to pay you back.” Saying her future was uncertain was like calling Vladimir Putin powerful, or Jeff Bezos rich, or Archibald Pascal inventive.
“There’s no need to pay us back. We’re in this together as fellow victims of their atrocities,” Skylar said.
“And there’s no more appropriate use for that money anyway,” Chase added.
He opened his wallet and extracted a blank check from a corporate account. After filling it out for $250,000 he handed it to Vicky and said, “Go close the deal and get the keys.”
She did.
“Thank you both again,” Vicky said, handing over two heavy sterling silver key rings. “Cynthia will swing by tomorrow with the completed paperwork and will answer any questions you might have about the apartment at that time.”
Chase nodded. “Getting into the lawyers’ building was a stroke of luck to be sure.”
“You’re really not worried about Slate recognizing you?”
“We’ll be careful to avoid her, but between Skylar’s new hair color, my stubble beard, and the fact that we’ll be wearing wool suits rather than cotton shorts, I’m confident that we’ll be safe so long as we don’t end up face to face.”
Skylar glanced up from her exploration of their new kitchen. “Slate’s not looking for us and would probably second-guess herself if she thought she did, given that she only knows us from a short meeting in St. Croix.”
While Vicky processed their logic, Skylar motioned to the fancy, fully automated coffee maker before her. “Shall we grab a drink and sit down to discuss our next steps?”
Once each had made a custom beverage and they were seated around the antique oak breakfast table, Chase opened by saying, “I need to better understand how your EMP device will work. Will it be like a ray gun we can shoot them with from across a room? Or more like a bomb we can blast them with in the lobby?”
Vicky waggled her hand. “I have some flexibility, in that I haven’t built it yet. Theoretically, I could design a device that used either the ray or the bomb approach. That’s largely a question of how much power it employs.”
“Theoretically?” Skylar asked.
“Right. While I won’t lose any sleep worrying about doing unnecessary damage to their brains, I don’t want to be reckless, and I refuse to allow anyone else to be injured in the process.”
“We don’t want that either,” Skylar said.
“How long will the treatment take if the power setting isn’t reckless?” Chase asked.
“I’d want to zap them for a full minute.
”
“Well, that rules out the equivalent of a sniper shot, but it’s still manageable.”
“What would be the best-case scenario?” Skylar asked, adding, “Let’s aim high.”
Vicky knew exactly what she wanted to do. “I’d like to use a closed system rather than an open one, to eliminate the possibility of collateral damage. That means placing the device in contact with their heads, like a pair of headphones, rather than employing it from a distance like a gun.”
“So we swap out their earbuds for ones that will also shoot the ray?” Skylar clarified.
“That’s the right idea, although the system will be much too big and bulky for earbuds.”
“But your glasses are so small?”
“Apples and oranges. My glasses are receivers coupled with a tiny Bluetooth transmitter. This is more like a radio station.”
“How big are we talking?” Chase asked.
“Like a set of noise-cancelling headphones or a virtual reality headset,” Vicky said. “Assuming it will be placed on their heads. It would need to be more like a large toaster or a microwave oven otherwise.”
“We could spy on them to see if any or all of them happen to use either device,” Skylar suggested.
“That won’t work,” Chase said. “I’m sure the weight change will be too significant not to notice. We’ll need to trick them into putting on our device.”
“Or do it at gunpoint in the elevator,” Vicky suggested. “Now that we’re in the building that shouldn’t be too difficult to orchestrate.”
“Maybe for the first one, but not for the next three. And don’t forget the bodyguards. Or underestimate them.”
“Rats. I did forget. And you’re right, we’d need to get them all at once that way.”
“There is a third option,” Skylar said, rising from the table as if hoping the movement would power her thought into flight. “One that doesn’t rely on deception, luck, or force.”