Meanwhile, time was running out for Karl-Heinz. His father, the old prince, was in such deteriorating health that it was doubtful whether he would even live to see his next birthday ...
Now, with the noonday sun streaming through the windows, Karl-Heinz considered his options, or rather the lack thereof. It occurred to him that if he wanted to secure his rightful inheritance, forty carefree years of bachelorhood had better come to a screeching halt. He would have to dig up an appropriate, blue-blooded wife fast, and hope to God she was a childbearer who could produce a son in record time.
The specter of Leopold, Princess Sofia's lamentably sulky eldest son inheriting the estate which, by all rights should be Karl-Heinz's, loomed ominously in his mind. It didn't take much imagination to see Leopold, a hopelessly provincial spendthrift with harebrained schemes and no business sense whatsoever, run through the entire fortune and undo the work of seven centuries in a single generation. Karl-Heinz had seen it happen to other great and powerful families, and had no desire to see it occur to his.
He felt every one of his forty years weigh heavily today, and sighed gloomily. His thoughts of Sofia and Leopold had definitely taken the shine off his day; they made his entire life's work seem pointless.
Yes, he mused, if I know what's good for me—and I do!—my playboy days are over. Definitely over ...
And with that depressing thought, he could only wonder at his own stupidity in waiting so long ... perhaps too long ... to secure his birthright.
He was still wondering about it during lunch, oblivious to Cesar, his Spanish majordomo who, hovering discreetly, sniffily orchestrated the perfect serving of everything from the lobster salad to the freshly ground, scalding hot coffee.
But the lobster went uneaten; the coffee was half drunk.
His Serene Highness, Prince Karl-Heinz von und zu Engelwiesen had lost his appetite. How, how on God's earth, he asked himself, could he of all people have been so cretinously stupid, so unforgivably asinine as to wait until today, his fortieth birthday, to see the light? Truly, such imbecility is unworthy of me! he thought with the bitter recriminations of someone who has won the lottery, but has forgotten to cash in the ticket.
He needed to make up for lost time—and lose no time doing it.
Yes, Karl-Heinz thought, uneasy rests the head, even if it wears no crown ...
TARGET:
BURGHLEY'S
COUNTDOWN
TO TERROR
The man climbed the shallow marble steps to the head of the grand staircase. To the left was the entrance to the auction auditorium proper; to the right, Burghley's carpeted showroom galleries, a succession of wide open spaces which could be divided or opened up, whichever the occasion required, via instantly movable walls on tracks.
"May I heeeeelp you?" drawled the bored Locust Valley lockjaw behind the sales counter.
He looked at her. She was one of three exceptionally thin, uniquely chic, and peculiarly interchangeable ex-debutantes who sold Burghley's books, catalogues, magazines, and pricey, specially printed books.
"Yes," he told her. "I would like a copy of Attractions."
"The November-December issue?" She raised perfectly plucked eyebrows. "Or the current one covering September-October?"
"The November-December. Also, if you have it, the January- February."
"I'm teeeeeribly sorry, but those won't be in for another month and a half yet."
"Then the November-December issue will be fine."
She turned to the magazine rack behind her, and reached for a copy of Attractions, the oversize glossy magazine which was Burghley's preview of upcoming worldwide events.
"Would you like any catalogues while you're at it?" she asked. "We've just unpacked a new shipment, and they cover the whooooole rest of the year."
"No, thank you," he said.
"That'll be twenty dollars, then."
He pulled out his wallet, fished out a crisp twenty, and handed it over. She rang up the sale, stuffed two sheets of oxblood tissue paper into a small silver-gray buff shopping bag with string handles and BURGHLEY'S FOUNDED 1719 printed in oxblood on both sides of the heavy buff paper, and slid the magazine inside it.
"There you are." Handing it across the counter, she smiled automatically, already tuning him out.
Back outside on Madison Avenue, the man took the magazine out of the bag, rolled it up tightly, and stuck it in his coat pocket. As for the shopping bag, he crumpled that and the tissue paper into a ball and tossed it into the trash can on the corner. He didn't even want to be seen carrying around a Burghley's bag—it was too noticeably chic and memorable, and in his line of work drawing attention to himself was not only bad for business, it was a risk he could not afford to take.
He was the most successful career criminal in the world, only nobody knew it.
Which was exactly the way he intended it to remain.
A grand strategist at heart, he hadn't gotten to where he was by sticking out in a crowd. Or trusting anything to luck.
On the contrary. Caution was his middle name, and keeping a low profile his tried-and-true game. Too smart to openly consort with others of his kind, he was not, however, above using highly skilled criminal personnel when needed.
In those cases, he did as he'd done in Macao—delegating the details to an associate who would see to everything while he himself wisely kept his distance and stayed safely, invisibly, far in the background. The melodramatic black disguises he donned on the rare occasions he met with his go-between were no affectation; they were a necessity.
The secret to his success had always been that no one—not even his own second-in-command—could identify him as the mastermind should a job ever go wrong.
To date, this recipe of one part anonymity to one part caution had served him well. Neither Interpol, the FBI, the Surete, Scotland Yard, nor a single police department on earth had him in their criminal files, not even for so minor an infraction as a parking violation.
Blessed with a photographic memory, he never left a paper trail, was a virtuoso at laundering money, and was worth a hundred million dollars of cunningly concealed assets in gold, diamonds, and cash stashed safely in—and invested cleverly from—an untraceable maze of dummy corporations and numbered bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Grand Cayman, and the Isle of Jersey.
Needless to say, he could long ago have retired in supreme luxury. The only reason he still worked was because he truly liked crime.
Now in the midst of planning his curtain call—his biggest and most daring caper ever—his foremost concern was to ensure that it would not go down in the annals of history as merely the crime of the year. Nor the crime of the decade.
No, nothing short of the crime of the century would do.
This was to be the crowning achievement of his criminal career; his glorious swan song before retiring to join the world's law-abiding citizens.
But best of all, he would be able to sit back, far above suspicion, and watch as the authorities ran around in useless circles, trying to hunt down the elusive mastermind.
Because it went without saying that they would never find him, for the simple reason that as far as they, or anyone else was concerned, he did not exist, at least not as a criminal.
And that, he thought with the satisfaction of someone whose life is devoted to matching wits with the guys in the white hats, is nothing if not truly elegant.
Chapter 9
For Kenzie, home was a walk-up on East Eighty-first Street, where she had the third floor rear of a five-story, one-family brownstone which had long since been carved up into ten rental units.
The circa-1920s kitchen was tiny, and had a minuscule gas range, a countertop oven barely big enough for roasting two tiny game hens, plus an ancient refrigerator/freezer of roughly the same vintage, which required weekly defrosting. But never mind.
The living room had a working fireplace from whose mantel she'd painstakingly stripped and sanded a century's worth of paint, two windows ov
erlooking the garden out back, and relatively high ceilings. Better yet, the walls were thick, the neighbors quiet, and there were two smallish bedrooms, a steal in Manhattan for a mere rent-stabilized $823.28 a month.
It was also the perfect apartment to share, one reason why she had been attracted to it in the first place. Alas, three months earlier her roommate had discarded a series of boy toys for a dentist with a thriving practice, and had moved on to the greener pastures of matrimony and Westchester County. Without someone trustworthy with whom to share the rent, gas, electric, and cable TV bills, Kenzie had had to apply the brakes on her greatest passion—buying at auction.
She possessed an uncanny knack for ferreting out "sleepers"—those lots at auction which were either misattributed or completely overlooked by other buyers. Thus she managed to purchase treasures for a proverbial song before attributing them correctly, and turning around and either reselling them for a hefty profit or keeping them to enjoy.
In this way, she had made ends meet while furnishing her apartment with a collection of surpassingly fine if eclectic art and antiques, a luxury which would have been dauntingly prohibitive to anyone but the rich, let alone a young Manhattanite restricted by Burghley's bare-bones subsistence wages—the consensus of management being, the honor of working at Burghley's more than made up for in cachet what was lacking in salaries.
As if cachet put food on the table, Kenzie mused with grim humor, the carefully rewrapped Zuccaro propped between her legs as she struggled with the five heavy-duty Fichet locks on her front door—the wisest investment of any lone female city dweller.
Once inside her apartment, she snapped the door shut with a well- practiced bump of her buttocks and had barely finished latching the fifth and last lock when the back of her neck began prickling.
I'm not alone! a keen sixth sense informed her.
Suddenly she could feel her stomach crawl; rancid bile rose swiftly in her throat. Slowly and cautiously, she turned around, a bass drum pounding in her ears.
"Hel-looooo, beautiful!"
Flashing his blinding whites, Charley Ferraro blew her a kiss from across the room.
"Charley!" she gasped reproachfully. "God! You sure know how to give a girl a scare!" Now that she was in no danger, she didn't know whether to be relieved or angry.
Anger won out, especially since he'd made himself right at home.
With his muscular arms crossed casually behind his head, he was comfortably, if incongruently, sprawled on the voluptuous, cut-velvet Napoleon III sofa with its exuberance of fringes and tassels—an item of furnishing more suitable for an odalisque than a man whose firm, NYPD-trained body was clad in nothing more than skimpy snow white briefs.
"And just what the hell do you think you're doing here?" she demanded in outrage. "Other than trying to scare me to death, that is?"
"As a matter of fact," he said jovially, wiggling his toes, "I never left. I told you I had the day off. Remember?"
Seeing her infuriated expression, he sat abruptly forward, his face registering solicitude. "Hey, what's the matter, babe? You don't seem exactly overjoyed to see me. Have a rough day, or something?"
Letting her shoulder bag drop to the floor, Kenzie slumped against the door in weary resignation. Drawing a deep, ragged breath, she held it in for a full ten seconds before expelling it, the force of her breath lifting the sable bangs from her forehead.
Dammit! Tonight she neither wanted nor needed Charley's company. She'd been looking forward to spending a visually gluttonous hour feasting her eyes on her Zuccaro—not Charley Ferraro's otherwise delicious and wiry free weights-sculpted body—before getting ready for her first-ever, high-society shindig at the Met.
Placing the Zuccaro on the demi-lune table by the door, she put her keys into the glazed green ceramic Han dynasty bowl and then turned to face him, her hands on her hips, her feet planted in a wide, aggressive stance.
"Get out, Charley," she said quietly.
"Excuse me?" He made a production of using an index finger to clear nonexistent wax from his ear. "Babe, did I hear—"
"Charley," she interrupted, unruffled, "are you deaf? I said out! Out!" She clapped her hands sharply twice. "Vamanos!"
He looked appropriately taken aback as he tried to gauge the seriousness of her tone. "Aw, come on, babe," he cajoled.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he looked at her with a trace of perturbation, but seemed otherwise unconcerned, counting on his cocky charm and far from unattractive looks to win her over. "You don't really mean that," he added, mildly aggrieved.
"Oh yeah?" she retorted. "Try me."
Picking up the Zuccaro, she tore off the wrapping, stalked over to the fireplace, and propped the picture atop the mantel, adjusting it until it was just so. When she finally turned back around, she caught Charley eyeing her buns with unabashed connoisseurship.
"Guess what Super Dick's been thinking about all day?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
"Super Dick!" Kenzie rolled her eyes. "You've got to be kidding!"
Plopping herself down on a Louis Philippe chair, she untied her laces; by the time she'd kicked off her Reeboks and was standing up, Charley was on his feet too, engulfing her in his strong, bulging arms.
She pushed him away. "Get your paws off me, Charley," she said wearily. "And while you're at it, why don't you collect your clothes, get dressed, and go on home? Hmm?"
Worry lines creased his handsome features; Charley Ferraro was unused to rejection from members of the opposite sex.
"Well?" She stared mercilessly at him.
His frown deepened. "That the thanks I get for saving you from KP?" he asked.
"KP?" She blinked her eyes rapidly. "What is this? Are we suddenly in the armed services?"
"Well, you are an army brat, right? And you don't want to cook, do you?" When she didn't reply, he added smugly, "Didn't think so, which is why yours truly called out for grub. It should be here any minute now. Your favorite—Burmese." He took the opportunity to flash her a thousand-watt smile. "Still find me resistible?"
"As a matter of fact," she said inexorably, "yes. Eminently so."
That wiped the grin off his face. "You aren't," he said slowly, "by any chance telling me to get lost ... are you?"
"Why, that's exactly what I'm doing," she said, pouring on the molasses.
What the hell! Now this was a first! She'd never treated him like this before! "Don't you think you owe me an explanation?" he demanded huffily.
She placed both hands on her hips. "Charley," she sighed, "has it ever occurred to you that I might have made other plans?"
He blinked, clearly taken aback. "In that case, may I inquire as to what those plans are? Or is that asking for too much?"
"Not at all," she said magnanimously. "I've been invited to a society party at the Met. The museum, not the opera."
"Well, ex-cuuuuuse me! And here I was, harboring the distinct impression that you weren't into all that society shit."
She shrugged. "Maybe I've changed my mind."
He glared belligerently. "And who, may I ask, is taking you?"
Her eyes could have drilled holes through his. "That," she snapped coldly, "is none of your business."
And that said, she went around the living room, picking up his clothes and tossing them, item by item, right at him. He snatched them expertly out of the air.
Looking nonplussed, he clutched the bundle against his chest with one arm. "Christ," he muttered. "What's gotten into you?"
"Me?" she said. "Why, nothing."
"Nothing?" He reached out, caught her by the arm, and pulled her close. Thrusting his pelvis against her, he looked down into her eyes and asked, "What do you mean, nothing?" A playful smile touched the corners of his lips.
She'd have had to be comatose to be unaware of the stiff, throbbing glans barely contained within his briefs. For whatever other failings and bullshit Charley Ferraro could be accused of, impotence was not among them.
Kenzie's face was expressionless, but her amber eyes glowed like a cat's. Ever ready though he might be, this was one time she wasn't. "Charley, Charley, Charley," she sighed, her soft, nimble fingers venturing down. She slipped them inside his briefs and ignored his tumescence to cup a hand around any male's single most vulnerable spot, his scrotum. "What does it take to make you learn?"
"Learn what?"
"Why, this," she said. And smiling sweetly, she gave his cojones a good, viselike squeeze.
His reaction was predictable. "Je-sus!" he yelped, letting go of his clothes and very nearly levitating.
She eased the pressure, withdrew her hand, and stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her to watch while he cupped both hands protectively over his crotch and danced a little jig.
He slid her a mean glare. "Now, what did you go and do that for? Are you fuckin' nuts?"
Still smiling sweetly, Kenzie said, "Now then, let's say that was just foreplay, hmm?" She tilted her head to one side. "Think 'Super Dick' would care to experience an entire gamut of new sensations?"
Angrily he snatched his clothes up off the floor and hurriedly started getting dressed. "That does it!" he huffed. "I'm outta here!"
Even as he was still buttoning up his fly, he tucked his shoes under one arm, lunged for the door, and unlatched the five locks, fleeing barefoot down the stairs in record time.
"And good riddance!" Kenzie yelled after him. Slamming the door with all her might, she locked it and clapped her hands, as though ridding them of dirt, or congratulating herself on a job well done. She thought: Just goes to show there's more than one way to skin a cat!
Men! She snorted. Why is it they never seemed to learn?
She jerked as the downstairs buzzer abruptly blared. Savagely, she whirled around and stabbed the TALK button of the intercom. "Damn you, Charley!" she yelled into it. "What the hell does it take before you get the message?"
Too Damn Rich Page 9