by John Griffin
Solomon laughed. “That probably means he did in fact find it, the buyer sold it to him, and he sold it to you. He probably made four or five times what he paid for it.”
John and Marjory laughed. “Worth every penny,” John said. “It’s worth ten times what we paid for it now.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Solomon said.
“How was his, what did he call it, dear?” Marjory said.
“His life’s mission,” John said.
“How was it? How many did he find?” Marjory said. “Before…”
“He died?” Solomon said. John and Marjory nodded. “Three,” Solomon said.
John and Marjory were crestfallen. “Oh,” John said, looking at Marjory. “We had hoped it would have been more.” He looked at George. “For your benefit, George, Sol’s father … oh, Sol, can I tell the story?”
“Go ahead.”
“Sol’s grandfather, I suppose?” Solomon nodded. John continued, “He escaped from Germany — escaped the Nazis. But not before they had looted almost his entire family’s personal collection of art. And they had some masterful pieces, simply irreplaceable. Worth hundreds of millions today. But Sol’s father talked about these eighteen — out of everything they had and lost, these eighteen pieces that his father went to find. The grandfather found one in his lifetime as they reopened their family business, to tremendous success, in New York. And when he died, the grandfather, Sol’s father continued looking for the pieces. So he found three? Or the family had three?”
“We only had three of the eighteen,” Solomon confirmed.
“And where are they now?” Marjory asked.
“Liquidated,” Solomon said. “To pay the estate taxes for my father.”
“That’s a tragedy,” John said.
“Thanks,” Solomon said, leaning forward. “But I’m not here to talk art, am I?”
“No,” John said. “Of course not. Marjory and I, well, we want you to know we did not take anything you said about our son personally.”
“We understood,” Marjory said, “that you were just doing your job.”
“Why am I here?” Solomon asked.
John took Marjory’s hand. “Justin has run away,” John said. Marjory’s eyes glistened.
“When?” Solomon asked.
“Yesterday,” John said.
“That’s not really long enough to determine that he has run away. Could just be drunk at some girl’s house.”
“He left us this,” John said, sliding a USB key in a plastic bag over to Solomon. “It has taken us a week to figure out what was on it.”
Solomon knew what this meant. George took out a tablet and played the now familiar visualization of the weird shrieking audio sounds from the video clip on the USB key. It was a simple sentence written in pictograms and Greek letters. “I am Psycho,” Solomon read out loud. “Not unusual for a teenager. Maybe agitated by the process.”
“And he left these,” John said. He slid over a file filled with pictures. Solomon leafed through the pictures. The first few were of dead animals all bludgeoned, shot, or stabbed to death — squirrels, dogs, cats. The next series showed construction of airtight boxes, and then animals dead from suffocation. After those followed rooms — twenty in all, and twenty people. The first eighteen looked homeless. The last two were Psycho’s first victim and Juanita.
When Solomon reached Juanita, Marjory said, “We just thank God she is not dead.”
“She might as well be,” Solomon replied, thinking about the girl in a coma in the hospital. He had run through most of his remaining fortune keeping her alive and was not sure how much he had left. “She’s lying in a hospital in a coma and might never wake up. And if she does, she will never be the same; not without a miracle.”
“That’s a tragedy,” John said. “And that’s why we have asked you here.” Marjory began to weep.
“I’m not on active duty,” Solomon said.
“We know,” George said. “That’s why we called you.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know much about cops,” John said, “but I know they are never really off the clock. We will hand all of this over to the police — in fact, the officer working this case, Greg, is our next appointment. But…” John couldn’t continue.
“We have reason to believe that he will reach out directly to you,” George said.
“And why’s that?” Solomon asked. “Something you aren’t showing me?”
“No,” John said. “We know he made this personal with the last girl. We think he will again. And we’re sorry, Solomon, you have no idea how sorry. We protected our son and he … we shouldn’t have. We should have known or at least investigated ourselves.”
Marjory stood and excused herself, leaving the room.
“It’s killing her,” John said. “She can hardly believe it. Thinks someone must have convinced him to do this — that he has a partner of some kind.”
“Do you think that?” Solomon asked.
“No,” John said, wiping a tear from his cheek. “No, he’s doing this alone. And he will do this again. And when he does, he will play this awful game, and he will engage you in it. So you deserve to know. And you deserve whatever help we can provide.”
“And what do you want me to do?” Solomon asked.
“I want you to win. I want you to stop my son.”
“You know what that means? You know what he told me?”
John nodded. “I’d prefer he didn’t … you didn’t have to kill him. But if that’s what…”
“I understand,” Solomon said. “You don’t need to say it.”
“I’d rather you killed my son than he killed someone else,” John said, wiping another tear from his cheek.
“Naturally,” George interjected, “John didn’t just say that.”
“I understand.”
“Just stop him,” John said. “We will do whatever we can to help.”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” Solomon said.
Chapter Thirteen:
Clive
“So what was so important?” Sol asked. Clive was pacing in his kitchen as Sol sat at the table.
“I don’t think Justin is working alone,” Clive said. “He just can’t be.”
“What makes you think that?” Sol asked, taking a swig of rum from Clive’s now nearly empty bottle.
“Look,” Clive said, lighting a cigarette and taking a drag. “He doesn’t work alone. He’s not alone. He doesn’t run his own plane or boat, and he would need those to get back and forth from Europe.”
“I’ll give you that, but this is a little different than transit. Few people run their own planes or boats,” Sol said, taking the last of the rum and shaking the empty bottle.
Clive replaced it with whisky. “No, I get that. But there’s this line. And on one side,” he gestured with his left hand, “Justin is working perfectly alone killing people, getting away with it, running from the country. And on the other,” he gestured with his right hand, “he has an accomplice or two who know what he is doing and are actively helping him. I don’t think we are there,” he shook his right hand, “but we absolutely are not here.” He shook his left.
“So that leaves us somewhere in the middle. This isn’t new information.”
“No, fuck, Sol, I’m helping. Stop.” Clive ran his hands through his hair, lit cigarette and all, and then took another drag before continuing. “We are looking for Justin. Everyone would know who he was. And he knows it. So no, it was not him who put the note in Vera’s throat. It was someone after Schweinsteiger, the first pathologist who examined her. That I can be sure of.”
“Unless it was Schweinsteiger himself,” Sol said.
“Not likely,” Clive responded. “So I’m sure, yes, it was after him. And the most probable would be the ambulance drive
rs — the people taking the bodies from one place to the other. Access to the bodies, no cameras. Plenty of time. Morbid senses of humor and probably not above this sort of thing for shits and giggles. They’re the type who put makeup on dead bodies and laugh when we open up the bag. Fuck, Sol, I laugh, too. Inserting the note would be a bridge too far for a prank, but if they were paid?”
“I’ll bite. Got names?” Sol asked.
“Carl Jones and Paulie Cassavetes,” Clive said, pulling out a piece of paper with names and phone numbers on them.
“I’ll talk to them,” Sol said.
“I thought that might be a little awkward.”
“I’m less concerned than they should be,” Sol said.
“Still,” Clive said, “I went ahead and spoke with them already.”
“What did you find out?” Sol asked.
“Carl is sixty-six years old and is scheduled to retire at the end of this year.”
“And Paulie?”
“Paulie is in Atlantic City staying at the Taj.”
“Now that’s a solid fucking lead,” Sol said.
Chapter Fourteen:
Reg
Reg’s phone rang. His ring tone was a simple bell — he could not stand the tones most people used these days. The very first thing he did whenever he got a new cellphone was change the ringtone to the most old-fashioned ringing bell that came preloaded. It was exactly what he had done when Sol gave him the burner he was using for the heist.
Sol had called. He asked to meet Reg as soon as he could, and Reg traveled down to The Dog and Duck to meet him. It was not far from Reg’s apartment, so he did not mind the twenty or so minutes walk. When he arrived, Sean pointed him to the back room. If Sol was waiting there, it meant something serious.
When Reg opened the door, Sol was halfway through a bottle of 50, with an empty in front of him. “Sit down,” Sol said.
“What’s up?” Reg asked while seating himself.
“I need to ask you to do something for me,” Sol said.
“A favor?”
Sol shook his head. “Nah. This isn’t a favor. This is police work. I wasn’t sure I’d ask you to do it.”
“Because I’m a rookie?”
“Nah.”
“Because it is too dangerous?”
“No, Reg. I was just going to do it myself, but I can’t really leave the city and do this myself. I can ask Sham if you’d prefer.” Sol picked up his phone.
Reg put his hand out. “Sol, you don’t need to ask this way. You don’t need to play me. I want to help.”
“You’re my first choice because you’ve read more of my file. Sham isn’t the file-reading type. Most doctors aren’t.”
Reg shrugged. “That’s what the stats say.”
“It’s also what he’d say, if you ask him. Which I did. So you know who this is.” Sol opened his wallet and took out a photo.
“That’s Justin Graham. The primary suspect for Psycho.”
“He is Psycho,” Sol replied.
“As you say,” Reg said.
“Here’s what I know,” Sol said. “After killing Greg, he fled the country. Got to Europe. Used a credit card once — dumb luck, sloppy mistake, maybe putting us off the trail by letting someone else use it, doesn’t matter. He did it. Not someone else. Him. My guess? He was bragging — bragging that he got away, daring us to come get him when he knew that was nearly impossible. And then there were new videos.”
“More than the ones I gave you?” Sol nodded. “I didn’t know about those,” Reg said.
Sol nodded. “You aren’t supposed to. I’ve seen them. Kevin helped interpret them — ran them through the audio filters that showed pictures of Justin’s time in Europe. A photo album for this fucked-up asshole. And then, he came home.”
“He’s here?” Reg said, leaning forward.
“Yeah,” Sol said.
Reg leaned back. “So what are we doing? Are we cancelling the heist?”
“No,” Sol said. “It isn’t my case. I’m not investigating it. I’m not even a cop. I’m just trying to get out of a shitty situation myself. But a few people on the force are pulling for me. Hoping that I find Justin first.”
Reg nodded and felt that he knew what that meant. He was not sure if he believed in that type of justice, but hoping to be a cop himself, he felt the best idea was to be modestly enthusiastic about the idea that Sol would kill Justin, and that this would be alright. “And what do we have?” he asked.
“A lead,” Sol responded, passing over a picture with the name Paul Cassavetes on the back. “That photo album from Europe was found in the audio files of postings on a gore website shortly after a note was found in the throat of a dead girl. It was not there during the first examination. It was found in the second. The most probable person to have done it was one of the two ambulance drivers. One of them is sixty-six. The other is in AC.”
“So Justin paid the dude, who then went to AC, too dumb to lay low for a little bit before spending his dough?” Reg said, holding up the picture.
“Probably just hoped to double it. Also, probably doesn’t think what he did was all that wrong.”
“So what are we doing?”
“We are following the lead. Except I can’t follow it. I can’t go so far off-track, out of the city.”
“Blows the heist?”
Sol shook his head. “Maybe, but that’s less likely than tipping off Justin. He might have wanted me to find Paulie. He probably did — probably chose the young kid with a gambling problem knowing that eventually we’d figure out who got the note into the girl’s throat. That’s how he thinks. But wherever I can, I like to do whatever is possible not to tip Justin off. Not to let him know I’m playing his game. I don’t know. Feels wrong. So I’ll pretend I haven’t figured it out. You need to go down and talk to Paulie. Find out what he knows, if anything. Or just find out when he got that note and who gave it to him. Whatever you can.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Reg said. He got up and left.
Reg went home to grab his car keys and then went down to his garage. He drove a 2014 Mercedes SLK but did not like anyone to know about it. He had driven cars like this his whole life, but here, in New York, he was driving a car paid for by his parents and felt a fraud. Felt like he did not belong, like his peers would think he was simply slumming it for a while before moving on. He did not have the heart to trade down to something more appropriate, but he knew he would need to.
He headed out for Atlantic City thinking about the truth. Thinking about something President Obama had told him once in a quick meet-and-greet. “Think about what you want to do, not what you want to be.” And that was it. Before then, his whole life he wanted to be either a congressman or in the state senate, and then a senator, maybe a governor. Keep moving up. Maybe be president. But his goal was to be something until he realized that being something was a waste of time. Being something was easy.
He had the connections, and he had the money. All he needed was the right timing — an empty seat in a safe district held by Democrats, easy enough to come by in the northeast. But that was being something. All his goals changed when he considered instead doing something. What he wanted to do was stand up for justice and lower crime. Lawyers do not do that. Neither do congressman, though they will take credit for incidental drops in crime rates. But police officers? Here he was driving to AC to help locate a serial killer. He was doing something.
A few hours into his drive he was there. He pulled up to the front of the Trump Taj Mahal and stepped out of the car, handing the keys to the valet and getting a ticket in return. He looked every bit the part of a monied regular in designer jeans, a white, fitted v-neck shirt and a black leather jacket. To him, this was last season’s gear. A year earlier, at the end of every season he would empty his closet. Other than his friends and acquaintances, nobo
dy would have known the difference, but those friends and acquaintances used to matter when he was trying to be something. He had not bought a stitch of clothing in a few months because he was focused on doing. And he discovered that to most people his clothes as he wore them now were what all the NYC millionaires and kids of millionaires wore.
Paulie played blackjack — that was what Sol knew. Reg hated blackjack. It was the game amateurs played because they had seen a few movies or read an article online that told them how to count cards and tilt the table in your favor. The only worse game was poker. If Paulie played poker, Reg probably would not have come at all — or he would have, but he would be pissed the whole time.
Reg walked through the midlimit blackjack tables, checking the picture in his pocket to see if he could match it to Paulie. He was there last night. He would be there tonight, too, unless the money was gone. As he walked through the casino, he passed his game, the game of gentlemen and winners: baccarat. He sneered at the punto banco tables and stood for a moment watching the action at a high limit chemin de fer game.
A pit boss asked if he wanted a seat. Reg knew he could not just watch the high-limit games like this, so he showed his player’s card and took a seat. He played for an hour, made more money than he would all year with the NYPD — a feat that was not so heroic as it sounds at these limits — and then cashed out and headed back to the blackjack tables.
Paulie was there, flanked by an escort. His stack was low. He was down to twelve tigers — $1,200. That was what was left of the devil’s ransom, Reg thought. He watched and he waited. Paulie had $300 in play and was dealt two queens. Dealer showed an eight. Paulie split the queens, and the rest of the table groaned. One lady in the table over yelled in a shrill voice, “Who’s splittin’ queens?”
Paulie doubled down on the first hand and was dealt a ten, and stayed. On the next he doubled down again and pulled an eight, and stayed. Round the table it went to the dealer, who flipped to show seven. He dealt himself another card and pulled a six. Bad luck, sure, but Paulie was stupid. The table knew it, but Paulie was out of money. The escort gave him a kiss on the cheek and left. Whether she had already been bought and used or was just hoping to get something of what Paulie had left, it did not matter. Paulie had nothing left to give.