Star Noir

by Paul Bishop

  “I found her,” she said hurriedly.

  “Who?”

  “The would-be Joan Summerling. She’s at a beauty parlor in Queens.”

  “I’m on it,” he said eagerly, already on his feet and in motion. He took the address from her and straddled a Kawasaki Versys, one among several motorcycles parked along one side of the facility. A corrugated bay door opened for him and he accelerated away.

  There had been a traffic snarl on the turnpike on their way to East Orange. As the cars slowed, Koburn as Villalobos told Suarez to pull off so he could use a gas station bathroom. It was there that he was able to text a message to Navarro. They’d planned ahead and he had a micro audio bud in his ear so he could receive information from her. But the two had been back on the road for more than ten minutes and he had received no word. They were now about to head toward the 280 that would take them past Newark.

  “Are you feelin’ good?”

  “Splendid,” Koburn said and used an expression Villalobos would. He grabbed at his crotch. “I’m ready to party hard.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, boss.” He held up a rigid fist and shook it slightly.

  Both men laughed, and Koburn did a good job of masking his anxiety.

  The motorcycle was equipped with a GPS system with a small readout screen between the handlebars, but he didn’t need to use it as he ducked and dodged between cars and trucks coming off the Queensboro bridge. He rode steadily, having sent two messages to Navarro, but he hadn’t heard from her. Soon, he turned a corner and stopped at the far end of the block where the Hair Wonder beauty and nail shop was located. He straddled his idling motorcycle and wondered if the blonde was still in there or whether she had she already left.

  It made sense to assume that a pro like Summerling was attuned to any disruptions in her surroundings. That made him reticent to drift past on the bike slowly enough to see if she was in the establishment. But he couldn’t simply sit there on the Kawasaki and pretend he was doing something else in case she was still there. Now that, he admitted, was the advantage of doing a stake-out in a car. He decided to walk past the salon’s picture window. If she was having her hair done, he wouldn’t be conspicuous. Having little choice, he killed the engine and backed up using his feet. He parked the bike and wandered closer to the shop.

  The BMW rounded the circular driveway with the marble fountain in its center. The figurine in the center was of the Greek god Apollo holding an urn on one shoulder and his penis with his other hand. Water gurgled from the member of the god of healing, music, and prophecy in a steady, uninterrupted stream.

  The car idled and Koburn stepped out. A woman heavy in the hips but pretty stepped from the house in a colorful kaftan. She wore sandals and big hoop earrings. Her nails were violently green and her lipstick a blazing vermillion.

  “Izzy, darling,” she announced, her arms wide, and approached like a linebacker making a beeline for the quarterback.

  “Good to see you...Bea.” He returned the offered hug. Her perfume was overly done but pleasant.

  She pulled away and gestured to Suarez like shooing a fly away. “He won’t need you for the next few hours, darling.”

  The guard leaned on the side of the BMW. “That’s okay. I’m paid to wait.”

  “You might need earplugs.” She gave him a toothy smile.

  He returned the smile as she took Koburn’s hand and led him into the house. It was cool inside and marble-lined the foyer. The woman closed the door and instantly, her demeanor changed.

  “Keep playing it like you have, Villalobos. Come on.” She turned and walked out of the entranceway and into the dining room.

  Navarro spoke in his hidden earbud, “Efrem, I can’t find any current reference for a Beatrice. Shit,” she muttered. “I have to go for a minute. I need to tell Ned something.” The device went dead in his ear.

  In the dining room, a man and woman sat at a shiny walnut table. She was at least a decade and a half younger than the supposed Beatrice, Koburn estimated. That the man was a federal agent blared from his forced-relaxed posture and the cut of his off-the-rack suit. He studied Villalobos with a dismissive glance.

  Speaking Spanish, the man said, “Let’s go over this again so we’re clear you’re clear what you’re supposed to do, Villalobos.”

  The younger woman indicated a chair. “Please.”

  Koburn sat, as did the woman in the kaftan. “All right then,” he said, also in Spanish.

  “All right then what?” the man challenged.

  “You’re the one telling it,” he replied in English.

  The other man was on the verge of snarling a response but remained quiet when the younger woman seated beside him put a hand on his arm for a brief moment.

  She said evenly, “You will make the arrangements for me to be part of your crew to Montserrat. I am your accountant and it would be a logical choice.”

  “Hardly,” he said.

  “Look,” the man said and pointed a finger at him, “you don’t seem to appreciate that we have your nuts in a vice and we can turn the handle any way we like.”

  “Do you want this to work or do you want this to blow up in your face?” Koburn let his left hand rise and fall. On it was a heavy ornate ring, a replica of one favored by the cartel chief. Absently, he rubbed the ring’s jade stone and continued.

  “The only reason I’d have a broad with me is for riding my rod or she’s family and she’s a part of the organization.”

  They all looked at him, then each other. The one called Beatrice nodded slowly. “It makes sense and would be a more plausible cover for Z-9.”

  “Okay,” Z-9 said, “I’m his daughter who he kept well away from his business but now, things have changed.” The younger woman considered the words she’d said, formulating her cover identity internally.

  “What changed?” the man asked. “This has to be airtight.”

  Koburn said confidently, “No one really knows who handles my books,” he began and hoped this was correct about Villalobos. “Certainly not my man out there or any of my other bodyguards.” He splayed both hands on the table. “As far as Prospero is concerned—or for that matter, anyone else at the auction—the only thing they need to know is she’s my daughter.” He paused, then added, “Me and Beatrice’s daughter.” He assumed that the older woman’s cover, given her age, had been that of a long-lost love.

  Indicating the younger woman, he said, “This one watches my money and investments.” Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “And how are your close-combat skills?’

  “Try me,” she said.

  “Perfect. She’s my bank and my protection,” he said with finality. “What name do you like as I’d better not call you Z-9.”

  “Nikki,” she said after a moment’s pause.

  “Nikki it is,” he said.

  Another round of exchanged looks and curt nods followed. Somewhere outside, a dog barked.

  Playfully, she shook his semi-rigid member in her hand. “Do the various women you bed remark how fascinating your dick is?”

  “You’ll make me blush.” Brenner stretched. “Besides, a gentleman doesn’t say.”

  “I’ll make you blush all right.” The woman known currently as Joan Summerling began to stroke him as the two tongue-kissed. They were in an open-air loft space of an antiques shop bordering the Lower East Side. A grandfather clock ticked off time as the woman took him in her mouth and he lay back in the grip of bliss.

  She licked the ridge around the top of his penis and said, “When you wake up, you’ll tell me everything I want to know.”

  He frowned. Had he heard her right? She was working on him again, but his ecstasy gave way to a growing dread. He tried to move but his arms were immobile and unresponsive to his wishes. She stopped giving him a blowjob and laughed. It was rather unpleasant.

  Her firm hold on him remained, but he couldn’t squirm free, even though he tried. Everything else about his body was unresponsive. It seemed as if he m
ight climax at any second but the familiar tingle in the lower part of his stomach was superseded by a low-frequency buzz that coursed through him. His eyes fluttered and he tried to stay awake, but everything went black—although he knew the sun shined on their nude forms in the loft space.

  When he awoke, he wasn’t surprised that he was bound. He remained naked and was duct-taped to a Stickley style chair. Summerling was dressed. They were now in the rear of the antique shop which appeared to be the work area. The blonde was busy looking over various tools piled on a half-restored dresser.

  “My, you recovered quickly.” She glanced from him to the tools and selected a good-sized rasp.

  “You saw me trail you from the beauty parlor.”

  “I did indeed, my well-endowed centaur.” She stood close with the instrument and used her free hand to smooth a lock of his bronze-hued hair from his face. After she’d left the beauty parlor, Brenner had followed her to a coffee shop. There, he made it look like he casually struck up a conversation with her. There was laughing and eye contact between them, and that led to their afternoon assignation in a shop owned by a friend of hers that she knew was closed for the next few days. This friend was supposedly out of town. He knew that was bullshit but hadn’t expected her to get the better of him like she had.

  Sucker.

  “Some kind of coating on your tongue,” he said. “Absorbed through my skin.”

  “When I drooled on your John Thomas, gorgeous, before I gobbled you up.” She quivered her tongue and imitated an English accent before she reverted to her neutral voice. “Now listen, handsome, I don’t want to deform you or deprive some other lucky hottie of your abilities...” She trailed the words off as she placed the flat side of the rasp against his cheek. “But you need to be forthcoming.” She tapped the tool twice on his face. “Who do you work for? Whose radar am I on?”

  “Can’t we work something out?” he asked lightly.

  She smiled sweetly and bent forward to force the rasp between his clenched legs. Its rough surface was against his genitals, and he sucked in a breath as she sawed the tool back and forth quickly.

  Brenner gritted his teeth and his right eye teared up. He closed his mouth and bit down hard.

  When she withdrew the rasp, there was blood and skin on it. “I will emasculate you, pretty boy, and not blink. Feds, SEALs, whatever, even when they try to be laid back, do something to give themselves away. Not you. You are loose, but you were on the job.”

  She put her face close to his and her gaze bored into his. “I’m not getting a midnight flight to Gitmo. If you don’t want to hold that lovely wang of yours in your hands—dismembered, that is—you better talk.”

  “Okay,” he said, and a stream of red smoke puffed from his mouth into her face.

  She fell back, hacking and coughing, but swung the rasp. He had rocked his body back and the file caught him on the chin but not flush. The stuff he’d spewed on her was like a concentration of pepper spray. Doctor Templesmith had convinced him to keep a capsule of the chemical in his mouth, tucked between his gums and lower lip near his back teeth. When she cut into him, he’d bitten down on the shell.

  The chair partly gave way when it toppled, and he twisted his body in an attempt to free himself from the duct tape. A semi-blind Summerling stalked forward and swung the rasp like a pirate with her cutlass. He rolled and the movement damaged the chair even further, which provided a little slack in which to use his limbs to try to free himself.

  “Not so fast, my love.” Guided by the sound of his struggles, she lunged and collided with him as he rose to his feet. She jabbed the tips of her stiffened fingers into his kidneys and he buckled slightly but rammed his shoulder into her and drove her into a sixteenth-century French provincial armoire.

  The center of one of the doors of the restored antique splintered and the whole of it fell and carried the woman with it. He used his teeth to tear the tape around his wrists. She kicked him in the stomach, and he went down. His hands were free again, though, and he grasped a push broom nearby and struck at her with the handle, using it like a bo staff.

  Summerling’s red eyes were still blurry and when she launched herself at him, he thwacked the handle against her head. She reversed course to go low and attempted to reach the table with the tools on it. Brenner was quick but not fast enough and she threw a screwdriver at him like it was a knife.

  He batted the tool aside easily with the handle. She upended the table and put it between them, but her real goal was evident when she retrieved an open can of paint stripper that had been under it.

  “You’re so freaking clever,” she said and splashed the contents around. She obviously practiced some kind of sleight-of-hand because she made a motion with her fingers and suddenly held a lit match.

  “Until we meet again, luv,” she taunted in her proper English accent before she dropped the match and the flammable paint stripper blazed. She ran out the front and he considered pursuit for a split second before common sense kicked in. A beat cop who had to choose between a pretty blonde yelling for help and a crazy naked man chasing her with a broom…well, it seemed obvious who the officer would empty his magazine into and ask questions later.

  He managed to put the fire out by beating it with a Berber rug. Thankfully, it hadn’t been big enough to convince someone to phone it in. Finally, he hunted in the store cloakroom and found Vaseline, which he applied to his injured area before he dressed gingerly. He exited the shop, limping slightly.

  6

  “You’re not feeling sorry for yourself, are you?” Ella Navarro asked.

  Brenner took a gulp of his Scotch. “I should have caught her.”

  “You’re too damn competitive.”

  “Very,” he admitted.

  She sipped her cabernet sauvignon. Hiram Templesmith entered the darkened tavern, stopped at the bar, and ordered a beer on tap. His order filled, he brought the glass to their table and sat.

  “All set,” he proclaimed.

  “Good,” she responded.

  “Where we’re going—Montserrat,” Brenner began. “I Googled the place. It was damn near abandoned after a volcano blew not too many years ago. Forty square miles with a sixty percent exclusion zone.” He shrugged. “I’m just saying, it damn sure seems like Prospero takes his role seriously.”

  “You didn’t think this would be cakewalk did you, son?” the scientist chided. “Like how casually you fleece the sheep in one of your card games.”

  “You said to apply myself.”

  “Indeed.” The other man raised his glass.

  “To success,” Navarro said and clinked her glass lightly against her colleague’s.

  “To staying alive,” Brenner said and joined the toast.

  “Here, here.” Templesmith clinked his glass against his too hard and shattered both.

  “Oh, my goodness,” the older man said. “I’m very sorry about that.” He produced a handkerchief and dabbed at a small slit of a cut on the side of Brenner’s hand. “How embarrassing.”

  “No worries, Doc,” the younger man said. “I’ll get us refills.”

  He left the table and Ella Navarro exchanged a look with Templesmith as he folded his handkerchief and tucked it into his front pocket.

  Efrem Koburn dozed but woke suddenly and was momentarily disoriented. He glanced out of the ferry’s porthole and wondered who he was this time and where was he going. Then he remembered, and the role he was playing clicked into place. Being Ismael Villalobos had to be as second nature to him as walking and breathing. It had better be so as to not make his host suspicious. Their research hadn’t indicated that Prospero and Villalobos had even met, but this was no time to get sloppy—particularly now that the cartel boss had been flipped and was the presumably unwilling bedmate of some damn intelligence branch of the government.

  The agent who pretended to be his daughter sat beside him on the padded bench. Cocktails had been offered and served on the trip from Antigua by pretty women in
bikinis and sarongs. He recognized two other underworld types on the boat and was sure the agent did as well. They’d made small talk in accordance with their cover and she’d indulged in a vodka martini.

  A bland-looking man in rimless glasses tipped his server for his beer. He looked like a desk clerk from the Building and Safety department on vacation. Koburn didn’t know this man but did recognize an individual named Gavin Soderberg, a Wall Street denizen who’d been in trouble with the SEC more than once. He had a cobra’s eerie attractiveness, and research by Vigilance speculated he was a buttoned-down front for mob interests.

  Most of the men on the ferry had given the attractive Agent Z-9 an appreciative look. But Soderberg’s gaze had lingered on her and seemingly sized her up as he might a future acquisition. Koburn knew she was aware of this too.

  The ferry docked in what was called Little Bay in Brades, the relocated capital of the island after the destruction of Plymouth when the volcano blew. On the dock, the group there to bid on the anti-gravity engine separated from the regular tourists. They were met by a man in khakis and a colorful short-sleeved shirt. He was slender but had large hands.

  “Welcome my friends. We’ll get your baggage loaded and taken to the facility.” His manner was affable but there was wariness behind his eyes—a tour guide with a jackknife strapped on his leg. He motioned to the men and women with him, dressed similarly as he was, and they ushered the bidders and their small entourages into open-air jeeps.

  “Thank you,” Agent Z-9 said to Soderberg, who held out a hand to help her into the jeep where he sat. Koburn entered a vehicle behind her along with a large man with small ears. He was built like a linebacker and kept a steady watch on his boss, Soderberg. There were eighteen in all and the jeeps left the dock area. From what Koburn had read, there was one main road that went around the island, although some of it had been wiped out due to huge swaths of molten magma. It didn’t take long to leave the knot of shops, hotels, and commerce. Only one-third of Montserrat was currently populated and there were small roads—lanes really—leading into hillsides lush with greenery and loud birds.