Star Noir

by Paul Bishop

  “Business ventures are precarious,” she pointed out.

  “Yeah,” he said and stopped with his hands on his hips to look at the empty space. “It’s not like Brian set out to screw us. He lost money too.”

  “Have you guys found a buyer?”

  Adam Damakas looked at her in profile. “Maybe. A Korean venture. They think they can gut this and turn it into a Cineplex—part of a chain they’ve invested in, operating in several cities.”

  “This was a better idea than the mobile strip club your other buddy wanted you to invest in.”

  He smiled. “There is that. Look, Ella, I appreciate you coming out, but this is my worry. I don’t need you to soften it for pops.”

  “I know.”

  They walked on farther toward the open space where ground floor cathedral windows were to be installed before the project went belly-up.

  Damakas said, “I guess I simply don’t have what it takes.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t run yourself down. It takes time to find your niche.”

  “Unlike your Noc Brenner,” he said. “Seriously, the guy comes equipped with a cool nickname and everything. Like it’s a corruption of nox.”

  Navarro frowned, unfamiliar with the term.

  “Slang for nitrous oxide, meaning he’s a souped-up dude,” he explained and shook his head appreciatively.

  “We’ve yet to see if what we do is his...thing, he might say,” she noted.

  She had received a text alert from a popular blog that covered architecture and development about the troubles Adam Damakas’ latest effort had encountered. It was complicated, but it came down to the instability of the real estate market.

  He grinned again. “I read his profile, Ella. Brenner’s some kind of hyper autodidact. Whatever he studies, he can do.” He made a sweep of his hand to indicate the interior. “I’m sure if he wanted to do development, he’d be stellar at that too.”

  “It’s not the gifts we have but what we do with what we have that counts.”

  “Deep,” he joked.

  “Just saying.”

  “Any luck on identifying who tried to kidnap me?”

  “No,” she said. “The Lincoln was found torched and there is no trace of the occupants. No doubt the talent was brought in from out of town.”

  Adam Damakas absorbed this with little emotion on his face.

  “Of course, we’ll keep looking,” she added. “We’ll uncover a lead.” She didn’t ask him again about accepting a bodyguard for his safety. He said it would cramp his style.

  The two walked out of the shadowed interior and into the sunlight of the afternoon. Their cars were parked on the recently poured concrete apron. With his hands in his back pockets, he took another look at the uncompleted building complex.

  “It’ll work out, Ella. But you know I appreciate you checking on me.” They hugged briefly and slid into their respective vehicles. He waved at her as he left in his Porsche Boxter. She received a call on her hands-free unit as she drove away.

  “Ella, it’s me. Adam has been ignoring my calls.”

  “I’m sure he’s busy dealing with this setback on the Hoboken property, Max.”

  “Yes, well, what’s your assessment of that situation?” The elder Damakas had a flat voice with almost no inflection. It suggested a man of little imagination, a matter of fact kind of individual. In fact, as Navarro knew, his mind and personality were anything but that. Max Damakas juggled several complex matters at any given time, but he was adept at compartmentalizing and focusing.

  “He’s maturing, Max,” she answered. “He’s assessing what went wrong and what he can do to correct the course for the future. It’s my opinion he won’t go off on a bender like he did in the past.”

  The man drew in what almost sounded like a disembodied breath—if such a thing were even possible.

  “I shouldn’t interfere is what you’re telling me.”

  “Exactly,” she replied. “Let him work this out for himself.” She wondered if he had called her from his yellow or white room. He had certain color-coordinated rooms where he conducted specific tasks.

  “Thank you for this, Ella. And what’s the latest on the new Vigilance operation?”

  “We’re putting the pieces in place.’

  “Of that I’m sure. I’m looking forward to your debriefing concerning Mr. Brenner.”

  “If we’re successful.”

  “I always bet on you, Ella.”

  “Talk soon, Max.”

  “Indeed.” He severed the connection and Navarro put a CD in the player. She enjoyed the introspective quality of Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain” that mitigated the noise of traffic somewhat.

  Unlike his counterparts, Ismael Villalobos had learned the hard lesson about sporting bling. Particularly when he was traveling in the United States, he worked to fit the profile of Alex Rojas, CEO of a firm that made regulators, blower motors, and related parts for industrial heaters. With newly acquired alterations to his face and having dropped thirty pounds, he was reasonably secure in his anonymity.

  But he was not a foolish man and his bodyguards watched him closely, even though they were stationed about the street as normal New York dwellers. He turned the doorknob leading to Yurick’s Quality Men’s Tailoring. The entrance was below the old-world-style wooden sign that still hung over the front. In the window was a display of fashionable suits and sport coats, along with various shirts and ties. He stepped inside and the small metal bell attached to the door tinkled.

  “Good to see you again, Señor Rojas,” a handsome older woman greeted him.

  “Always a pleasure, Mrs. Stockpool,” Villalobos said. He stepped to the counter and shook her proffered hand. She had rings on three fingers and a heavy bracelet loose on her tanned wrist.

  “Mal will be right with you. He’s finishing up a call in the back,” she said. “He’s selected material for you to examine. But why don’t you have a seat for now and if there’s anything you’d like, Claire can get it for you.”

  A curvy Asian woman in a form-fitting skirt nodded slightly at him. She stood off to one side of the shop and arranged ties on a display table

  “Maybe some coffee—black.” He sat in a Louis XIV chair atop a tiger skin rug. A small side table beside the chair held an old-fashioned rotary phone. Villalobos selected a current issue of Time from a brace of magazines in a basket and leafed through it. The young woman brought him his coffee in a china cup and saucer, which she placed on the side table.

  He began reading an article about the DEA instituting a new era of drone planes designed to better identify marijuana groves from the air. A short time later, Mal Yurick entered through an archway past a set of hanging heavy royal-blue curtains.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, sir.”

  “Not a problem,” he said and rose from the chair.

  Yurick was a silver-haired man somewhere in his seventies with a boney face. He was trim and wore slacks, a button-up shirt, a plaid vest, and buckled loafers on his feet. A cloth measuring tape was draped around his neck.

  “Step over here, Mr. Rojas, I have some items I want to show you.”

  “Very good.”

  He eventually settled on three new suits, including a dark-gray pinstriped one and several shirts and tie combinations. After his session with the tailor, Villalobos stepped outside the shop. A man in a suede sport coat argued with a dark-haired woman on the street.

  “Get your ass in the car, Helen.” A new model Mercedes Benz coupe was double-parked in the street.

  “Screw you, Todd.” She began to walk away but the yelling man grabbed her arm and twisted it.

  “Don’t you turn your back on me, bitch.”

  “Let go.”

  “I’ll let go when I feel like letting go.” He yanked hard.

  “The lady said she doesn’t want to go with you,” Villalobos interjected. He positioned himself close to the man with his hand on the other’s chest.

  Todd’
s eyes were slightly bloodshot and there was alcohol on his breath, even though it was only the early afternoon. “Who the hell asked you, asshole? This is hardly your concern.”

  “I’m making it my concern.”

  The man looked angrily at Helen. “Are you sucking this guy’s dick, huh? Is this the one?”

  “You’re a paranoid fool,” she retorted.

  “Look, Jose, why don’t you skip your ass back uptown or to Alphabet City where you belong.”

  “I belong here more than you do,” Villalobos said and slugged Todd, who sagged and almost fell to his knees.

  “Do you want me to take care of this clown?” one of Villalobos’ bodyguards said in Spanish and jogged up to his chief.

  “It’s handled,” he answered.

  Todd had a hand on his bruised jaw. He eyed the three with bad intent but didn’t make any attempt to retaliate.

  “Where can I drop you off, Helen?” her rescuer asked the put-upon Helen—aka Ella Navarro.

  “Anywhere but here,” she said, touched his arm, and met his gaze.

  An image of the woman in his bed leapt to mind. He knew at that moment they’d make love and, sure enough, less than an hour later, they were making out in a suite at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown.

  “I’m sure glad you came to my rescue, Tony,” she said to him. The top buttons of her blouse were undone to reveal the lace of a purple-and-black bra. They sat on a couch turned away from the door.

  “Me too,” he responded enthusiastically.

  She began to unbutton her blouse. “Would you get me a glass of that lovely wine?”

  “Of course.” They’d ordered lunch in the room and the cart containing what remained of their meals and drink was behind the couch. Villalobos stood to pour her a measure of white wine. He halted abruptly at the sight of a man who suddenly stood before him. It was Todd, the one his beautiful and willing companion had argued with earlier. Jealousy and confusion made the hopeful lover’s face warm.

  “How the hell?” he demanded, then watched dumbfounded as Todd’s face seemed to shift and bone and muscle reshaped itself beneath the surface of his skin. The new face that formed was his own staring back at him—a face that had now gone ice cold.

  He was still gaping when a needle pricked in the big vein of his neck and a solution was injected into him. Startled, he turned to see the woman he knew only as Helen looking at him clinically. The lustful expression she’d recently worn was gone. It was as if she were an entomologist who’d acquired a new bug for her collection.

  His eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled without a word.

  “I’ll get him undressed,” Koburn said. Todd was no longer needed, and he now stepped into the role of Ismael Villalobos.

  “How many of his guards are downstairs?” Navarro began wiping objects down to remove any of their fingerprints.

  “Three counting the one who ran up earlier.” Her partner now sounded like the unconscious man.

  A quick rap on the suite’s door signaled the arrival of Ned Brenner, who used a duplicate electronic key to open it. He wore a suit and a name tag, disguised as an employee of the hotel, and entered quickly with a large case on rollers like those concert speakers were transported in. Using the toe of his shoe, he engaged the stops on the roller wheels of the case to lock it in place. He then opened the case, the interior of which was padded in foam. He retrieved a pair of coveralls that he gave to Koburn and handed a laptop to Navarro.

  The other man dressed Villalobos in the coveralls over his monogrammed boxers and athletic-t. The two men carried him to the case and folded him into it before they locked the two halves closed once more.

  Brenner smiled at Navarro, a hand on the side of the case. “You put the whammy on our friend, didn’t you? Got him all worked up and whatnot.”

  She looked at him sideways. “You sound surprised.”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Oh?”

  “Is that part of your power?” He gesticulated at his forehead with his fingers. “To cloud men’s minds. Make them want to want you.”

  She strolled over to him and patted the side of his face lightly with her hand. “It’s the power every woman has over you weak-willed men.”

  “Indeed it is.” They smiled at each other.

  “Kids?” Koburn said. “If you please.”

  Brenner and Navarro broke contact and he guided the case out of the door and down the hallway. The freight elevator was locked to patrons of the hotel, but he had an override key. He unlocked the car and rode down with the case while he sent a text from his phone. A ramp in the basement let him out on 45th Street.

  A bobtail truck rounded the corner. It had circled the block and now stopped on the street and the rear door rolled up. Working quickly, he let the lift gate down, and one of the two men who’d sat in the cab helped him load the case on board. The rear door rolled closed again and Brenner rode away with the Vigilance Initiative staffers in the vehicle.

  Upstairs, the disguised Koburn was grilled, and not for the first time, on the various aspects of Villalobos’ life and habits by Navarro. She consulted files on the laptop. Fortunately, generally speaking, he was a closed-mouth man and didn’t fraternize with his bodyguards. After an hour of this, he left the hotel via the exit onto Fifth Avenue.

  Hector Suarez, the bodyguard who had rushed to his aid previously, drove up in the armored BMW 328i. He stepped in and as they drove off, the other man said, “I hope you got some rest, boss,” in Spanish and chuckled.

  “Yeah, why’s that?”

  “Beatrice called and said she wants to see you before you head down to the islands.”

  Inwardly, Koburn sought to corral his panic. Who the hell was this Beatrice? That name was not in the files he’d studied. She had to be an insignificant hanger-on. “I’m worn out, Hector. That gringa was dynamite in bed if you know what I’m sayin’.”

  “I’m already on that.” He withdrew an unsealed envelope from inside his coat pocket and gave it to the pretend drug lord.

  He looked in the envelope. Inside was a yellow and blue tablet. Viagra and Cialis. He looked blankly at the bodyguard.

  “Now you know her, Smiley,” Suarez was saying. “You can’t dis her, so you better get your second wind and get it on. Anyway, maybe you can take a quick nap before we get over there.”

  Koburn needed to text Navarro to see if she could find out who this Beatrice was. But he also knew Villalobos didn’t do his own texting, which gave him plausible deniability in case somehow, the authorities had tapped his deeply encrypted communication devices. He would have to go in blind. If this Beatrice had sufficient status to demand his presence, he’d better be prepared or he might wind up discovered and dead.

  5

  Ella Navarro was nude as she sat cross-legged in her hotel room not far from the Chrysler Building. She had finished re-reading several recent reports about the mystery blonde who currently seemed to go by the name Joan Summerling. She couldn’t explain why being undressed enhanced her ability of remote viewing and she was reasonably sure the answer was a psychological one, but there it was. It was not a habit she’d shared with anyone else from Vigilance.

  She had earbuds in and her smartphone set to a loop as she listened to the newly christened Summerling talking. Her voice had been captured over time via surveillance equipment. Often, she wasn’t the direct target of these eavesdropping efforts but had been in conversation with the person who was. The woman was adept at affecting several types of accents and spoke several languages. But it was possible to discern certain consistent qualities in her phrasings. It was these Navarro concentrated on when she projected.

  Focused on the face and voice and with her eyes closed, she opened the pathways in her mind. Not unlike a form of astral projection, she sent out invisible antennae or feelers in search of Summerling. It wasn’t like she’d receive a mental image of the woman in her head seated and drinking Earl Gray tea or anything like that. Instead, it was
more like a sonic probe that tried to pick up the presence of movement on the other side of a thick cement wall. That was how the impression of the woman would come to her if it did at all.

  Trance-like, she remained still and silent and reached dead end after dead end in her attempts to locate Summerling. Then, almost like you’d scoured the house looking for your car keys and you suddenly saw them on the counter and wondered how you’d missed them before, there was her target.

  “Yes,” she muttered. She soaked in what she could before her eyes snapped open.

  “Son of a bitch,” Navarro exclaimed. She stopped the loop on her phone. That was when she noticed the text message from Koburn—from several minutes before.

  As Ella Navarro began her remote-viewing search for Joan Summerling, Ned Brenner finished reviewing the video on the flying tank. He’d played it repeatedly for several minutes and even zoomed in on several sections of the vehicle. Finally, he tapped a key and closed the file on the laptop.

  For now, he was at a loose end until he received word as to where exactly Koburn would be flying to in the Caribbean for the auction Prospero was holding. At times like this, when he felt the need to expel energy—to do something—he’d go to the park to find himself a chess game or prowl the art museum and maybe hook up with a brainy babe. But he was on the clock and so had to be ready to jump if need be. How the hell did cops sit endlessly in a car or in a van, waiting and watching for hours?

  Despite his outwardly calm demeanor, being Zen and inwardly directed simply wasn’t his thing he’d concluded years before. Brenner liked to do something and the more edgy the better. They’d taken the truck to the facility overlooking the Hudson. Villalobos was removed from the case and placed in a secured room that included a comfortable bed, a private toilet, and a radio—a plush prison cell. The drug lord woke up, monitored by hidden cameras. He demanded to talk to his lawyers, but his only response was the modified voice of the staffer who watched him on the monitor and asked him what he wanted to eat.

  Dr. Templesmith wasn’t around and neither was Navarro. Brenner, his feet up on a desk, amused himself with a few card tricks the magician and performer David Blaine had shown him one night at a party. A staffer stopped to watch as he tore an ace of clubs in half and, after a quick shuffle, revealed that the card was whole again. His phone chimed as the staffer clapped briefly before he walked off. It was Navarro calling.