Fatal Exchange

by Russell Blake

  He was livid, burning with fury at the unfairness, that everyone else had the life they wanted and he didn’t. He knew what he had to do, the only way to make it right: he needed to find a little slut that wanted it, and work his magic on her. He had discovered after the first one that he was approaching a heightened state, a transcendence—what he required was more. And there were more pretties inside the club, no doubt drunk and fucked up, so his job would be easy.

  He crossed the street and placed his small workbag behind the dumpster, and prepared to go in. He looked completely different than on the job, so he didn’t have to worry about being recognized unless he wanted to be. Glasses, hair slicked back—he was euro-trash out for fun. And tonight was his night.

  He prowled the floor looking for the right one. Entering the bar area, he did a quick scan, saw a girl who was clearly high leaning against the wall—not beautiful, but great hair. That would do. He got a beer and watched her for a few minutes, confirming she was alone.

  She was.

  He approached her and began the process he thought of as trolling: find a girl, chat her up, buy a drink, slip something into it and then get out while it was starting to hit her. It would usually take less than half an hour. Tonight, because she was already impaired, it only took twenty minutes before she was in real trouble. He solicitously offered to help her to a cab. There were a lot of people leaving the club as it neared two o’clock, so one more pair of drunken revelers staggering out didn’t raise even a flicker of interest.

  * * *

  Later, at his apartment, music emanated from his little bookshelf stereo system, volume moderated so as not to disturb the neighbors.

  It was an older song from the 1980’s by the Human League, on repeat. “Don’t You Want Me,” played again and again and again, as he danced around his darkened living room in his garb, barefoot, exaggerated makeup on his face. Candles flickered in strategic locations around the room; he’d set them on aluminum foil to maximize their reflections, and their unsteady flames made for an eerie illumination. The air was heavy with sandalwood incense, and he was feeling the first effects of the ecstasy he’d taken upon arriving home, euphoria flooding his senses.

  He was wearing a dress and was moving in front of a full-length mirror leaned against the wall. Eyes closed, head back, swaying to the song. He stood in the center of a pentagram made of small black river rocks, with the latest girl’s hair on his head, the scalp having been carefully rinsed in the kitchen and then blow-dried. In his brassiere were her breasts, carefully packaged in ziplock bags so as not to stain the outfit.

  He hummed along to the song, singing the chorus each time it came around in a quiet falsetto, vaguely off-pitch. He was spinning now, round and round, his arms raised above his head, palms outstretched. He was getting closer and closer to being whole; it was imminent, he could feel it. He vaguely wondered how many more it would take.

  From the little dining room table, two pairs of eyes sat on a tray, watching him dance, seeing him spin.

  Chapter 7

  Stan Isaaks was having a good Saturday, looking over some Civil War–era Coronet Head twenty-dollar Double Eagle gold coins one of his contacts had sent his way. They were in flawless condition and he suspected they were part of the stash from the Republic salvage operation. The Republic was a 210-foot steamer that had sunk in 1865 in a hurricane a hundred miles off Savannah, as it was shipping funds to New Orleans from New York for post–Civil War reconstruction.

  He’d seen very few of these, and fewer still in this condition—at least MS-65. Six coins, mint condition, 1865 date, a capital D instead of the word “dollar” on the back. Truly breathtaking. To see six in the same place was an unusual treat. His contact needed them authenticated before he went to auction with them; he wanted documentation of legitimacy, as well as condition, by the best in the business, and Stan was the best.

  He wondered what it would take to get one for his private collection, then dismissed the idea. He had roomfuls of rare coins, and while he could appreciate the beauty and the value of these pieces, they weren’t really what got his juices flowing; he favored older Greek and Roman examples.

  His line rang and he reluctantly put the coin down and picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Stan Isaaks.”

  “Stan, you old horse thief! How are you this fine Saturday?” The voice was unmistakable: Saul Balinsky, his longtime friend and esteemed paper currency expert.

  “Can’t complain, can’t complain a bit. And you?” Stan asked solicitously.

  “Ack, you know, you get older, things start to fall apart, then they fall off. By the grace of God I’m still here.” Saul was in perfect health, if obese, and would undoubtedly live to be a hundred. He’d never gone a day without complaining about his state to someone. Part of his nature.

  “I know only too well. Listen, Saul, your ears must have been ringing—I was going to call you this weekend. I have a favor to ask. A friend’s come into a large number of hundred-dollar bills, and I’m suspicious about their legitimacy. They originated in the Far East and my gut’s saying something’s off. I promised I’d look into it,” Stan explained.

  “ Far East, huh? I’ve never heard of any problems coming from there, other than some low-grade forgeries that would be caught in seconds. Have you seen the bills?” Saul was intrigued. It was his passion to suspect everything; he’d been forced out of the Treasury Department into retirement and labeled “eccentric” because of his paranoia.

  “No, I haven’t… They passed an airport currency exchange booth, for whatever that’s worth. There’s probably nothing wrong with them—I’m just trying to look out for an old friend, is all,” Stan said.

  “Currency booth? Ha! Hacks. Chimps. They couldn’t tell the difference between a good counterfeit and the real thing if you painted the fake red. Although it’s pretty hard to dupe the newer bills.” He thought about it. “You could take them to a bank, but even they could be fooled depending on who’s working and the quality of the fake. Any high-grade counterfeiter would know most of the standardized tests… we actually saw some out of Russia in 1995 that were pretty good, passed all the field exams, and some Iranian ones that were close. That’s one of the reasons we came out with new tests a few years back, and with new bills in 1996.” Stan heard Saul eating something, the crinkle of a wrapper and some chomping, swallowing. “There’s a lot of detail in the newer bills, and quite a few hidden gotchas that only Treasury knows about.” Saul paused. “And of course that I know about. I’ve been out of the loop for seven years but I still remember a trick or two.”

  “I’m going to pick them up Monday, at noon. Why don’t I bring them by and we can have lunch? Say one-ish? My treat?” Stan knew the mention of food, and free food at that, would be too much for Saul to resist. Not that he would have turned Stan down anyway; they’d been friends for too long. Still, he would appreciate getting a bite out of it.

  “You’re singing my song. Although I have to watch what I eat—my doctor put me on a diet. Sometimes I wonder why I even try; he looks worse than I do.” There hadn’t been a day in the last twenty years Saul hadn’t been on a diet. And he broke his diets a lot.

  A lot.

  Stan smiled. “Then it’s a date. Your place around one, one-thirty, you pick the restaurant. Have a nice weekend.”

  “And you as well. See you Monday.”

  * * *

  Sunday morning, Ron Stanford’s Blackberry went off as he was reading the paper over cereal. He’d gotten a divorce a couple of years back, and since then enjoyed his time alone; he could decompress, do whatever he liked, whenever he felt like it. The job had been the end of the marriage, the usual story: his wife felt increasingly estranged over the years as he put in weeks or months of eighteen-hour days trying to catch bad guys.

  She’d been game for it at first, but had seemed preoccupied for the last three years they’d been together. One day he came home and she announced that she’d fallen in love with anoth
er man and wanted out of the relationship. It shouldn’t have surprised him; all the signs had been there, he’d just been too busy to care. The divorce had gone through amicably, everything very civilized and adult. He’d gotten his solitude, and she’d gotten her CPA, and presumably free tax returns for life.

  He looked at the number and sighed. Sundays were often busy days for him, as the fallout from the weekend was discovered and the bodies floated to the surface. He pressed redial.

  “So what is it this time? Better be good,” Ron said.

  “Sorry to bug you on a Sunday, Detective, but we have a 187 that looks like something you should be in on. This is Sergeant O’Keefe, sixth precinct. It’s the same as Harlem a few days ago.”

  Shit. That was awfully quick. He’d been hoping for some kind of a lunar cycle, more time between bodies to fit the puzzle pieces together. “Same M.O.?”

  “You got it.”

  “Where?” Ron grabbed a pen.

  “Avalon club, around the back. West 20th.”

  “I’ve seen the place. Be there in half an hour.” He was thinking about the geography. The first killing had occurred uptown in the 23rd precinct, Spanish Harlem. This one was on the opposite end of the island. Two very different scenes.

  The timing was disturbing. Why two killings here and now, so suddenly, and why so close together? Usually serials following a ritual did so in some cyclical manner, gradually accelerating as they became more brazen or craved more stimulation. This wasn’t a cycle at all, at least that he could tell.

  He wondered if the killer was a recent transplant to the city, some new fucking crazy who’d decided to make the Big Apple his hunting ground. Or perhaps it was some high-pressure guy in a suit who just had a traumatic event and couldn’t make the voices in his head stop commanding him to kill. Who knew? He’d seen it all. Truly had. Every ugly bugfuck-crazy sort of malfeasance and viciousness that could be imagined, he’d savored, up close and personal.

  What a way to make a living.

  He caught a cab downtown from his apartment on West 71st. Traffic was mild by NY standards and the cabbie knew the club. Ron approached the team and saw Amy had been called in on this one, too. Small world.

  “Hey, Amy. Round two, huh?” he asked.

  “Good morning, Ron. Yup, this is our boy again.”

  “Tell me what we’ve got.”

  “Caucasian female, twenty-something, in the dumpster. Looks like she’s been there for at least thirty-six hours, so this is a Friday night case, not Saturday.” Amy grimaced. “It’s ugly, Ron, worse than the last one. The heat’s not our friend.”

  “Thanks for the ray of optimism, Amy. What else?”

  “Same deal. Eyes, hair and breasts gone. You wanna take a look?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Let’s see the damage.” Ron hated this part. He steeled himself for what he knew was under the tarp in the dumpster. They hadn’t moved her yet, as they were still prepping the crime scene, dusting for prints—a long shot, with God knows how many janitors and others having touched the stinking receptacle.

  He put on a surgical mask doused with menthol, climbed up the stepladder to look at the remains, and lifted the tarp.

  In spite of the years on the job, he retched. It was bad. She’d swollen from the heat and was grossly distended, her skin split in multiple spots. Ants had invaded the cavities where her eyes had been, as well as the top of her head and her chest. The stink was unbelievable, even through the mask. Ron didn’t envy Amy her gig one bit. The girl’s dress had been sliced up the center to allow access to her chest. He noted that her panties were still on, and that there was no evidence of any stabbing or other violence—save for the obvious.

  He stepped down, pulled off the mask and staggered to the mouth of the alley, gulping fresh air. Amy came up beside him.

  “You never get used to it, do you?”

  “I don’t know how anyone ever does, Amy. Good Christ, that’s vile. How do you do it?” he asked her.

  She considered her answer. “Somebody has to do the ugly parts; that’s us. And somebody has to figure out why he’s doing this, how he’s selecting them and killing them. That’s you.” She turned and looked back at the dumpster. “He’s not going to stop, Ron. This is just the beginning. He’s picking them out for a reason, and my bet is he’s done this before—or done some pretty horrible things before.”

  “I get the same feeling.”

  “He’s careful about how he cuts them, and yet he’s doing it in alleys. Reckless. Calculated risk, maybe part of the thrill?” Amy was brainstorming, playing detective.

  “Dunno. I’m going in to the office to run this through the computers, see if anything comes up out-of-state. I’m wondering, why now? Why here, all of a sudden?” Ron’s Sunday was ruined, but rather than sitting in some bar trying to drink away the body’s impression on his psyche, he’d try to find out something about the animal loose in his city. Amy was right. He was there to stop this; that’s why he got up in the morning.

  “I’ll get in touch once I know more. Wanna bet cause of death was indeterminate?” Amy was already on to how he was killing them.

  “Not today, thanks. You see if you can figure out how he’s doing it, I’ll work on the why and who.”

  “It’s a deal. Have a nice Sunday, Ron.”

  “You too, Amy.”

  He walked towards the subway, considering the implications of the second killing. Two bodies, three nights apart. A pattern? Did that mean some other girl was going to wind up butchered on Monday? And why do it in alleys, if he was taking trophies and being so careful with the cutting? Convenience? Thrill?

  He could already tell it was going to be a long day. Whenever he got on a case like this, it became a fascination, something almost personal, and he clicked into obsessive-compulsive mode. That’s what made him impossible to live with, and also good at what he did. He hated the bodies, hated the grotesque violence, was disgusted by the whole thing—and that was what motivated him to find the perp and make it stop.

  So he went to work.

  To make it stop. To make the bad man go away.

  His mind bounced to Amy. She was in her mid-thirties, and he knew through the grapevine that she’d also had a marriage blow up within the last few years. She was attractive in a mousy way, but he’d never gone for her type in the past, instead favoring the hot, vivacious type.

  How’s that working for ya, Ron?

  Touché, he thought.

  For now, though, eye on the ball. Time to catch a monster.

  Chapter 8

  The flight from LAX arrived at JFK on time and the plane emptied its passengers into the terminal. The two Asian men collecting their luggage at baggage claim were unremarkable, dressed conservatively, likely engineers or technical workers.

  They walked out to the curb and the shorter one placed a call on his cell. He spoke rapidly into the small handset, and five minutes later a dark grey American sedan pulled up. The trunk popped and another Asian man jumped out of the driver’s side and ran around the front, greeting them and bowing even as he loaded their luggage.

  Once on their way, the taller man gave the driver the name of their hotel and requested they swing by an address in midtown first. The smaller of the pair lit a cigarette, inhaling the smoke greedily. It had been a long flight. The American cigarettes tasted good and he made a mental note to pick up a carton on his way back to Myanmar .

  An hour later they pulled up to the address on 47th Street, and the two men surveyed the shop. They instructed the driver to pull down the block and turn the corner; he complied, and they got out and circled back around, pretending to look into windows. They arrived at the address and peered through the metal grate in place across the small storefront. Little shop, not much to it. A few blocks off the beaten path, and deserted on Sunday.

  They moved around the corner looking for an alley or rear entrance. Nothing, just more buildings, more stores. They’d have to enter through the front. Much more da
ngerous, but who’d be watching? And more importantly, who’d remember a couple of nondescript Asian men? They all looked alike to the round eyes, wasn’t that common wisdom?

  They returned to the car and got dropped off at a hotel off Times Square and told to call if they required anything—money, weapons, women. They thanked the driver for his courtesy and assured him they’d be in touch.

  * * *

  Gordon Samuels was running hard on the treadmill, contemplating his next move. He’d already bought into his position on the oil futures, patiently, over the last twenty trading days; there was no way to call it off at this point without losing a fortune.

  He’d weighed the likelihood of the test batch of bills being caught in time to ruin his plans, and concluded it was unlikely in the extreme.

  Then again, it had been equally unlikely that the bills would materialize in New York in under a week. They were in an unknown location with some watch dealer, who right now could be spending them, leaking them into the financial system, where at some point they might—only might, not would, might—be flagged by someone at a clearing bank and sent to Treasury.

  That was a lot of things that had to go wrong in a very short period of time. The odds were inestimably small.

  On the positive side, Myanmar was scheduled to begin their oil futures purchases within three weeks, and was already printing the first runs of the final revision of the bills. They were going to start with smaller buys and spread it around, to avoid suspicion of where all the newfound wealth was coming from. What would inevitably happen is that the spot market cost would start increasing as new demand indicated by the futures outstripped supply— Myanmar would actually want delivery of the oil, not just the profit resulting from the increase in value of the futures contracts.

  They weren’t especially price-sensitive, given they could literally print money at will, so that would drive the price up quickly once the sellers realized they needed to deliver the oil. He’d taken huge futures positions ahead of the trading, positions where just a five-dollar move would double his investment. Once the oil play was done, the plan was to buy massive options positions in several companies that were going to be acquired like mad by a group of hedge funds working on behalf of Myanmar 's government, driving the stock prices through the roof and making Gordon and the Asians richer in the process.