The Guise of Another

by Allen Eskens

  “What do you mean when you say that he told you what he wanted?”

  “He was kind of specific, especially with Aubrey. He told her that she would be with a man named Richard and that Richard might be reluctant. She should flirt with him and touch him and get him drunk. He said that we wouldn't get the full two thousand unless she got him to screw her in the salon.”

  “And what were your instructions?”

  “He just told me to be nice to his friend Wayne and do whatever he asked.”

  “And did you?”

  Michelle lowered her eyes. “I have a good life here, Detective. Nobody knows anything about my past. I have a husband and two children. Have you come here to destroy all that?”

  A sudden gust of wind from the storm shook the awning outside of their window, battering it with a force that startled them both. A trash can rolled across the parking lot, and rain came down in a heavy curtain. The sudden pounding of the rain against the window raised such a din that it prevented them from speaking in the hushed tones they had been. So they waited for the leading edge of the storm to pass them by before they continued.

  As he waited, Alexander thought about Michelle's question. Would their conversation destroy her life? If he was right, Jericho had been blackmailing someone for what happened on the Domuscuta. She had been getting $50,000 a year for her involvement. The possibility existed that she could be charged with a crime. If Jericho killed James Putnam, she would likely be either a codefendant or a witness. Alexander could see no way to get her through this without her past coming to light. But he decided to give her a nonanswer so that she would continue her story.

  “I didn't come here for that,” he said. “I need to know what happened on that yacht.”

  Michelle met Alexander's answer with a slump of her shoulders. “We did what they paid us to do. Aubrey flounced and bubbled like she was supposed to. I don't know any man who could have resisted her. She plied Richard with champagne, getting him to drink it off her body. I watched and tried to do the same, but my guy seemed more interested in Aubrey and Richard than in me. I was fine with that because Wayne was a pig of a man. But then Wayne and I left the salon and went to his cabin.”

  Michelle twisted her wedding ring around her finger, no longer able to look up as she spoke. “I was terrified. I had never done anything like that before. I mean, I'd had sex plenty of times, but never with some greasy old man…for money. I thought Wayne was going to hurt me. Instead, he stood at the door and watched Richard and Aubrey. It was weird. It was like he needed to make sure that they had sex. Then he closed the door, smiled this truly sick smile, and said, ‘It's our turn.’”

  Michelle shuddered as the old memory passed through her. She raised a trembling cup to her lips and took a sip of coffee. “After we were done…after we…well, you know, Wayne became really cold. He ordered me to get dressed. Then the guy with the scar brought Aubrey and me up to the deck and told us to get into the life raft.”

  “The dinghy?”

  “Yeah, that's what they called it. It's a rubber raft with a motor, right?”

  “That's it.”

  “The guy with the scar gave us our money and told Jericho to take us back to the pier on Coney Island. That's when I got to know Jericho. I saw him on the yacht earlier, but we never talked until we got in the dinghy. He told me that he lived in Red Hook and worked on that yacht on weekends. And I told him about how I lived in my own apartment above a nail salon in Gravesend. I even told him the street address because I kind of hoped that he would look me up. I thought he was cute.”

  Michelle stopped talking for a moment and thought back. “All he knew about me was that I was a prostitute. He didn't know that I'd never done anything like that before. When I got out of the dinghy, we said good-bye, and I watched him disappear into the darkness. I remember feeling ashamed and alone—dirty. I thought I would never see him again. But I was wrong.”

  The waitress topped off Michelle's coffee and made a joke about the storm. When she saw Michelle wipe a small tear from her cheek, the waitress stopped talking and went away. The wind had calmed, but the rain continued to fall, thick and cold. After the waitress left, Michelle sipped the fresh coffee, maybe hoping that she wouldn't have to take that next step. Alexander gave her a slight prod. “I take it you did see Jericho again?”

  “Later that same morning,” she said in a voice so low Alexander had to lean forward to hear her. “I heard a knock on my door about five a.m. I looked out the peephole, and there's Jericho, his hair all wet, no shirt, looking around as nervous as hell—like some animal being hunted. I open the door, and he tells me that the guy on the boat is trying to kill him—the guy with the scar.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “I'm sorry…I can't.”

  “Prather?”

  Michelle perked up at the name. “Yes. Prather. He's the guy with the scar.”

  “Why did he want to kill Jericho? What happened on that yacht, Michelle?”

  Michelle took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she exhaled. Then she continued, her eyes fixed on the rim of her coffee cup, her thoughts reaching back to a faraway memory. “Jericho told me that after he got back to the yacht, Prather sent him to his quarters, but he didn't stay there. Jericho had left the dinghy tied to the side of the yacht instead of using that crane thing to lift it on deck, like he was supposed to. After a while, he heard the dinghy knocking against the side of the yacht. He went out to the swim deck to make sure that he had secured it properly, and while he was out there, he saw a glow coming from up top.”

  “A glow?”

  “He didn't know what it was, so he snuck up to the wheelhouse to see and he found a laptop computer connected to a wire that went over the side of the boat and into a window of the salon.”

  “Camera?”

  Michelle hung her head and nodded. “They recorded us…well, Aubrey, mostly. They wanted it for blackmail. When Jericho found it, the laptop was still recording. He could see into the salon. Wayne and Prather were arguing with Richard. They were trying to talk Richard into doing something illegal. They wanted him to go along with a plan they had, but Richard refused. He said that he was friends with a bunch of congressmen and senators, and he wouldn't screw them over. Jericho thought it had something to do with defense contracts.”

  “Were they trying to bribe him or threaten him or…”

  “Both. The told him that they could buy a yacht like the Domuscuta and could live like kings. When Richard didn't go for that, they…” Michelle let her words trail off as though unable to finish the sentence.

  “They threatened to send out the video of him and Aubrey,” Alexander said.

  Michelle nodded. “They said that they had video of him fucking a hooker, and they were going to show that to his family and his friends in Washington. They told Richard they were going to ruin him if he didn't go along.”

  “I take it Richard didn't go along.”

  “No. Jericho said that Richard told them to go fuck themselves and got in Wayne's face. That's when Prather pulled a cord out of his pocket and wrapped it around Richard's neck. They killed Richard.” Michelle's hands shook as she unburdened herself of this dark secret. “He said that Prather tied Richard to some kind of weight and dumped him into the sea.”

  “And Jericho captured all this on the computer?”

  “On a flash drive.”

  When Michelle said those words, it was as if a hole in time had opened up and pulled Alexander back to the day that he first read the accident reports. Officer Percell had written down the last words of the man in the Porsche. “Find it, before they find her.” The “it” was the flash drive and the “her” was Michelle Holla. Pope knew the peril that would follow the flash drive. Men would not hesitate to kill to retrieve such incriminating evidence. Pope also knew that, after his death, Michelle Holla would remain the only witness who could explain how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. A dark thought began to form in Alexand
er's head.

  “Detective, are you okay?” Michelle asked.

  Alexander shook his head slightly to brush away his uneasiness. “I'm sorry. It's just that this is a lot to take in. So Pope captured the murder of Richard Ashton on a flash drive?”

  “He said he had the whole thing up to the point where they carried Mr. Ashton out of the salon to dump him into the ocean. He said he heard Garland tell Prather to go below and make sure that the crew was still asleep. Jericho peeked down and saw Prather had a gun in his hand.”

  “Jericho was still up top?”

  “Yeah. So he pulled the flash drive out of the computer and snuck down to the dinghy. Wayne had gone back into the salon, and Prather was checking the captain's quarters. He said he fired up the motor and took off for Coney Island as fast as he could go. When bullets started hitting the dinghy, he tried zigzagging, but it's a rubber raft. He saw that he was going down, so he dove for the water. About that time, a bullet must have hit the gas tank because it blew the dinghy to pieces.”

  “And Jericho, being the athlete he was, swam to shore and found you.”

  Michelle nodded, and her gaze remained locked on the center of the tabletop as the memory played out in her head. “I was scheduled to work that next day, the afternoon shift again. But after what happened, I couldn't bring myself to go in. Jericho also thought I'd be safer if I stayed home. I called the club, and the manager asked if I heard what happened to Aubrey. Of course I hadn't.” Michelle started to tear up at this memory. She slowed her words down, making sure that the gravity of the event didn't pass unnoticed. “He told me that they found her in her apartment, dead, a bullet in her head.”

  “They were tying up loose ends,” Alexander said half to himself, completely unaware of how cold those words sounded.

  “Yes, Detective. They were tying up loose ends. They tracked down the two prostitutes and killed them. But remember, I was using Hillary Wolkochek's ID. When they tied up my loose end, they killed the wrong person. Someone snuck into Hillary's apartment that morning and put a bullet into the back of her head while she slept. I'm responsible for her death.”

  Michelle broke into a full sob, using a small napkin to wipe the tears. Alexander waited until Michelle had calmed enough to talk again, then he asked, “Is that where Jericho came up with the idea for getting his new identification?”

  Michelle looked up, her eyes red and puffy. “I'm not sure I follow.”

  “Jericho killed his roommate and then lived under that man's name. Surely you knew that.”

  “You mean James?”

  “So you know about James Putnam?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said through her sniffles. “But clearly you don't. Jericho didn't kill James. He loved him. They were roommates, yes, but they were closer than most brothers. They met at Pace University. They found each other somehow and discovered that they were both orphans. Jericho lost his parents when he was very young, his mother to cancer and his father to alcohol. I can't remember what happened to James's parents.”

  “Car accident.”

  “That's right. They shared that past and bonded to each other because of it. After we discovered that Hillary and Aubrey were killed, we were scared to death. Jericho thought that they might go to his and James's apartment, so we called James to warn him. James grabbed some of Jericho's clothes and some money, and we snuck off to this Laundromat that they both knew. That's where I met James. He was a great guy.”

  “Was James part of the blackmail scheme?”

  Michelle stiffened a bit when Alexander used the word blackmail. “No. And neither was I at first. Jericho and I debated about turning the flash drive over to the cops. We argued about it. Jericho didn't want to. He said that we could make money from it. He said I could live in a big house, never have to strip again. I knew it was wrong, but I went along with it.”

  “Is that why he brought you fifty thousand dollars every year?”

  “That was my cut. I told him a few years ago…after I got married, that I didn't want it anymore, but he insisted. My husband thinks the money is from a trust fund. He's not a very sophisticated man, but he's sweet.”

  “How did Jericho come to take over James's identity then?”

  “That came about as a sad coincidence. Jericho hid out for a couple weeks in my apartment, rarely leaving. We were running low on money, and Jericho asked James to empty out Jericho's bank account and bring it to the Laundromat. When James showed up, he was wearing his best suit and tie. He could only stay a little while because he had a job interview. He was so excited…” Michelle smiled a melancholy smile at the memory. “We agreed to meet at my place after his interview, but James never came back.”

  “Why not?”

  “His interview was on the ninety-eighth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center at eight thirty a.m. on September 11th, 2001.”

  Alexander sat back in his seat and let the last few pieces of the puzzle shift and move until the picture became clear. “James died on 9/11. But no one knew he was in the tower.”

  “No one, except me and Jericho,” Michelle said. “He had no family except a brother in prison. No one knew he was dead. There was no body to identify. He just vanished into the dust.”

  “So Jericho stole his identity.”

  “I think a better way to say it is that Jericho assumed James's identity. It wasn't easy for Jericho to do that. We thought about it long and hard. We waited, hoping that by some miracle James made it out alive. Finally, Jericho went over to his old apartment. We were so scared that they were still watching the place. But Jericho slipped in and came back with a small, metal box with all of James's stuff in it, his birth certificate, school ID, Social Security card, everything he needed to become James.”

  “Who wrote the letter to James's brother?”

  “Jericho wrote it, but I signed it. We both practiced his signature, but mine was spot-on.”

  “And you two headed for the Midwest.”

  “We came here, to Des Moines, first. We lived in a motel for a month until I turned eighteen. He set me up with a bank account, an apartment, and a driver's license. When he left, he never said where he was going. I thought I'd never see him again. Then, just after Thanksgiving, he contacts me and says he wants to meet. We came here to this restaurant.” She pointed to a corner booth a couple feet away. “We sat at that booth there, and he gave me a box—told me not to ask any questions.”

  “You didn't need to ask any questions, though. You knew that it was blackmail money.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “I'm not concerned with your…gifts as long as I can bring this to an end. I need to bring down the men who killed Aubrey and Hillary and Richard Ashton. I need to know where that flash drive is.”

  “I swear I don't know. I'd tell you if I did. I don't want anything to do with this anymore.”

  “Did Jericho ever say anything…anything at all that might help me find it?”

  Michelle shook her head. “No, not a thing. I didn't even know that he was in Minneapolis. He would always block his number when he called. He said I'd be safer if I didn't know anything.”

  “I have a friend in New York, a detective, who will want to talk to you. They've reopened the investigation into the death of Richard Ashton. I suspect they will go back and look into Aubrey's murder, and Hillary's, now that we know the connection.”

  “Reopen the investigation. You can't do that. I'm safe because they think I'm dead.” She looked at Alexander, her eyes imploring him. “I have children. If anyone learns that Jericho was living in Minneapolis, they'll know where to look. They'll find me and my family the same way you did. You can't tell them about Jericho. You can't let them know.”

  Alexander thought about the meeting Billie had with Wayne Garland, a meeting where Jericho's resurrection would have been mentioned. He rubbed the back of his hand across his lip, looked at Michelle, and said, “I think they already know.”

  Drago Basta had made a ca
reer out of remaining in control of his emotions while those around him did not—starting on the day that he killed the Albanians who were raping his mother. So it surprised him when he felt a powerful urge to take a baseball bat to Jericho Pope's apartment. At five o'clock that evening, Drago walked into the master bedroom to begin its dissection, acknowledging, for the first time, the tiny voice that whispered defeat. He had gone through the trouble of killing Magda Markova and that unlucky sap from the parking garage—just to clear the way for this search, and now it seemed unlikely that he would find anything. He had no backup plan. He had been so sure that the flash drive would be in the apartment, and if it wasn't, the key to where it lay would be found there. But now it occurred to Drago that he may be leaving empty-handed.

  In the bedroom, he found another small collection of DVDs and a handful of game CDs. He tested every track, fully expecting to find the video that Jericho Pope stole from him. It had been copied to a CD when Jericho first sent a copy of the video to Garland.

  Jericho Pope, the first mate of the Domuscuta, had disappeared into the murky waters of the Lower New York Bay on August 25, 2001, his meaningless existence all but forgotten by the likes of Wayne Garland and Drago Basta—until late November of that year, when Garland received a phone call. The caller demanded that the receptionist put him through to Garland, and when she raised a fuss, the caller told her to tell Garland that the first mate from the Domuscuta had a gift to deliver.

  Garland panicked when he heard the message and pushed the wrong button, accidentally hanging up on Jericho. Before Jericho called back, Garland had the good sense to summon Drago Basta, who had an office at Patrio headquarters at that time.

  When Jericho called back, he told Garland exactly what he had in his possession and exactly what it would cost Garland to keep the data out of the hands of the government. Garland gave Jericho his private mailing address, a location where Jericho could mail a copy of the proof of Garland's crime.