“I was thinking the same thing. He or they were after more than whatever got taken from the safe. Information. And the surveillance video’s gone. The only sloppy part is leaving the watch, and we don’t even know if it’s connected.” Barry shook his head. “I have a bad feeling about this, Ron. Spooky shit. Not the usual stabbing over a dime bag.”
“Thanks for letting me butt in. Call me if you need someone to bounce ideas off,” Ron said.
Chapter 13
Tess and Nick were eventually herded out to the sidewalk while the police worked inside. They were standing in an area cordoned off with yellow tape, and a small group of curious pedestrians was gathered around, rubbernecking. A bald head popped out of the crowd, and Tess heard her name called. She looked up, and there was Stan. She ran over and hugged him and started crying again.
“Daddy—he’s…he’s dead, Uncle Stan. Somebody murdered him. And Jerome.” Her voice sounded flat, dull.
“What? A robbery? At this time of day?”
“I don’t know. I heard the police talking, and they don’t think so. They don’t know what to think.” Tess felt like she was going to collapse any second, like the walls were closing in on her.
“Then what? I don’t get it. Who’s in charge in there?” Stan was feisty and wanted to get involved.
“I don’t know. I…Stan, it’s so bad. They tore his face up. There’s so much blood.” She couldn’t go on.
“Oh, honey. Oh God, I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say.” The reality was dawning on him. Robert was dead; killed, in cold blood. Maybe fifty feet from where they were standing. And she’d found him. Good Christ in heaven.
They talked for a few minutes and his watch beeped. The money. Saul. Their meeting. Hell, did it even matter now? He decided it did—he’d promised his friend he’d check on the cash; now the money was Tess’s, so his obligation still held.
“Tess, I hate to ask you, but did your dad say anything about some hundred-dollar bills?”
She stared at him blankly, and then pulled a small wad of cash out of her fanny pack and thrust it into his hand. “I know he wanted you to have these. There’s five hundred dollars there. I was getting them at the bank with Nick when…” A look of realization came across her face. “Maybe if we’d been here, none of this would have happened.”
“Or maybe you and Nick would be dead now, too. It can go both ways, Tess. Judging by what you described, you were lucky you weren’t here.” Stan kissed her cheek and held her for a few moments. “I’ve gotta run, kiddo, but you call me or I’ll call you. What’s your cell number?”
She told him.
“I’ll call as soon as I know anything. You can stay at my place if you need to. Anything I have is yours, do you understand? Don’t you dare even hesitate to ask.” He moved back through the crowd. “I’ll call.”
* * *
Stan caught the subway up to West 96th Street, where Saul had been living for over forty years in a pre-war brownstone: no elevator, air-conditioning an afterthought, floors creaky and windows soiled with decades of accumulated soot.
Saul’s business was largely conducted over the Internet these days; his reputation preceded him, so he never had any shortage of work. He’d never bothered hanging out a shingle or opening a storefront, since he didn’t need to. He was regarded as one of the foremost currency authorities in the country, and being one of the top guys in a tiny field, his agenda was full with auction companies and traders requiring his expertise.
The door buzzed and Stan mounted the stairs to the third floor apartment, still overwhelmed from the scene at the shop. He was turning the situation over again and again in his mind; it all seemed so surrealistic. Robert dead, murdered for reasons unknown. Jerome too. It made no sense.
He climbed the final flight of stairs, pushed the decrepit doorbell, and heard lumbering footsteps inside. There were three sets of deadbolts on the door, and he listened with grim amusement as each one was laboriously turned. The door opened inward to reveal the hallway completely blocked by a mammoth of a man, easily three hundred and fifty pounds.
“Stan, good to see you. Running a little late, I see? I’m getting hungry—you had me worried.” Saul hated to miss a meal.
“Saul, you have no idea what’s happened. Let me tell you, this is a dark day, my friend. A dark day indeed.” Stan entered the apartment, following Saul down the hall. Once Stan was in his living room/office, Saul went back and re-locked all the deadbolts.
“What happened?” Saul had never seen Stan like this.
Stan described the situation at the shop: the police, Tess, the bodies, the questionable circumstances surrounding the killings, the watch exchange. Saul, who was naturally paranoid, was already in full roar with possible theories as to what had happened. Stan cut him off. He knew his friend well, and knew that if left unchecked, he could become a perpetual-motion machine of speculation.
“I brought the bills for you. Five of them. Don’t spend them all in one place,” Stan said.
Saul was immediately sidetracked. Stan put them on his desk and noticed an old hundred-dollar bill, a Federal Reserve note from the early part of the twentieth century.
“What’s the story with the old bank note? Surely that’s beneath your level of expertise? They’re hardly even collectible.” Stan enjoyed ribbing him. A little torment was good for the soul.
“That one is very collectible. It’s a counterfeit from the late 1920’s, almost perfect. Came through a Berlin bank, printed by our good friends the Soviet Union under Stalin.” Saul explained.
“You’re kidding. Stalin was counterfeiting U.S. hundreds? We weren’t at war in the twenties. What’s the story with that?”
Saul explained that in 1928, counterfeit hundred-dollar Federal Reserve notes began appearing in casinos and banks in Europe. The bills were so well done, no one was catching them. After four years, the Treasury Department finally caught on because of some of small flaws they found: the lettering on the reverse side of the bills was cruder than the real thing.
They issued a written warning advising all banks to closely inspect the backs of the 1914-series Federal Reserve notes, and within two months a new set of bills started circulating. They had that flaw corrected, but left another flaw that hadn’t been described in the bulletin uncorrected: the thumb of the woman holding an olive branch didn’t fully encircle the branch in the fakes, whereas it did in the genuine article.
Treasury was able to trace the bills to Berlin when the bank passing them failed during the Depression, and eventually the issue went away because the currency was changed to a smaller format. In 1940, a Russian defector confirmed Stalin had been behind it, and had been counterfeiting from 1928 to 1932, creating roughly ten million dollars worth of 1914-series bills. The defector died in a suspicious suicide in his hotel room in 1941, taking the full story with him to his grave. Every now and then one of the bills surfaced, and this was only the fourth one Saul had ever seen.
“Why haven’t I ever heard that story?” Stan asked.
“The U.S. Government wanted it to go away; they felt that due to the geopolitical situation, it wasn’t in our best interests to call the Russians on it—especially once World War II was underway,” Saul explained. “One of the biggest mysteries to this day is how they got the paper. It was perfect, and obviously from the same source the Fed used.”
“That’s incredible. So they were screwing us back when we were at peace with them, too.”
“Yeah, our lovable neighbors to the East. From the same people that brought you Communism, came counterfeiting. That was the period when Russia was industrializing, and they were short on hard currency to buy the machinery they needed.” Saul turned his attention to the new bills. “Let’s see what we have here…”
He felt them, compared them to genuine bills, took a loupe and examined them front and back, held them up to the light, put one on a digital scale and weighed it. Sat back, sighed.
“At first glance I�
��d have to say they’re real. I don’t see anything obvious. The paper looks right, has the strip, and the inks match. Leave them here, I’ll do a more thorough exam later. I’m famished. You feel like a deli sandwich?” Saul had to keep the engine stoked, he didn’t want to waste away to nothing—and Stan had promised lunch.
“Deli works for me. Lead the way, my friend.” Stan wasn’t hungry after the morning’s events, but a deal was a deal.
* * *
The Asians were also eating, down the street from the murder scene, sitting in the window watching the commotion. They really had nowhere to go from here; they needed to figure out a way into the bank and then into the safety deposit box, and identify which box was Gideon’s.
It was just bad luck that years of sedentary living had clogged the watch dealer’s arteries to the point where a little torture could induce a massive heart attack. They’d figured him to be way too young for that when they’d discussed their options in the store.
The smaller one fished out his phone and placed an international call. The line picked up on the second ring.
“Yes.”
“We located the primary target, however there was a complication and we were unable to secure the package,” the smaller man said in Burmese.
“Where is the package now?”
“As far as we know, it’s in a safety deposit box. The problem is, we weren’t able to locate the key. We’re thinking that one of the assistants may have it, so we’re staying in place until we can identify who works there. Then we’ll be able to finish the assignment,” he said.
“Well, if it’s in a safety deposit box, at least it isn’t going into circulation. Is there any evidence that any bills made their way into the world?” the voice asked.
“We can’t tell, but I would say doubtful. There was about ten thousand dollars cash in the safe, so any short-term requirements would have been met that way.”
“Very well. Let me know if you need anything.”
The two men looked at each other. They needed to find the key, and to do that they needed the crime scene to be vacated by the police and things to return to normal. That could take all day, maybe even a few days. In the meantime they were dead in the water.
The taller man ordered a soda and settled in for the duration, watching the crowd watch the police watch the forensics group.
* * *
Ron went by the dead girl’s apartment with a crime scene team, looking for anything that might give them a clue on the identity or motivation of the killer.
She’d been renting a small studio in a run-down building, no doubt all she could afford. Posters on the wall celebrated various films noirs and techno music releases. The décor was urban hippie; lots of trinkets and inexpensive Asian paraphernalia and decorations. Incense holders sat next to ashtrays, the butts of menthol cigarettes stubbed out haphazardly.
A small jewelry chest concealed a stash of marijuana and a few other chemical fortifiers: two hits of ecstasy, some Vicodin, and a bottle of prescription Klonopin from a doctor on the upper West side. That maybe explained the Klonopin in her system. Or maybe not. Klonopin was a ubiquitous anti-anxiety medication, however, mixed with alcohol it was also a popular college knockout cocktail for guys who didn’t have the patience to wait for the go-ahead from their dates.
They spent several hours going through her things, and the impression they got was that she was a party girl having a good time, living la vida loca. Some birth control pills and condoms were in the bathroom, so she was probably dating new men on a fairly regular basis.
She worked for a small import/export company on the West side. There could be a link there, he thought—maybe one of her co-workers knew both Loca and her? Hell, there were a million potential threads, all possible, but unlikely. In Ron’s mind, it circled back to Red Cap; that was the connection. He dutifully made a note of her employer’s address and booked a reminder to talk to the staff there. No doubt it would be another colossal waste of energy.
There wasn’t a lot to go on, nothing that stood out, and after spending the better part of the afternoon digging through her belongings, they were no closer to a breakthrough.
* * *
The killer thought about the interview this morning. It was inconvenient the murders had already been linked to the company, although in retrospect that was inevitable as he collected more trophies. He didn’t completely understand his compulsion for bike messengers; maybe it was simply his proximity to them, or maybe it was that they were all in such amazing physical shape. The girl at the club had been very satisfying, but not nearly as satisfying as Loca. Something about messengers just got his juices flowing.
The cop was bad news. He emanated danger to the killer and made him very uncomfortable; his questions suggested he knew more than he was letting on, although he figured they were intended to create that impression. He wasn’t worried—he’d covered his tracks—but it was disturbing to have eyes prying into his work. He was finally getting somewhere, he just knew it, he was progressing in his highly personal quest. He didn’t know how many more pretties it would take, but he was confident he was closer than ever.
Tonight was hunting night. He’d selected his next target carefully, had been eyeing her for some time. She was a lying whore, just like they all were. But two could play that game. She did have great hair and nice boobs, which in the end was more important than her character.
The cop was a concern, though, and not one to be treated lightly.
He hummed in the bathroom as he washed his hands, which he did approximately thirty times a day; it was enough that he had to use moisturizer to keep his skin from cracking. The world was a filthy place, full of nasty, dirty people and things, and one couldn’t be too careful. Let the rest of the peons contract e. coli poisoning or infectious diseases too horrible to imagine. Not him. That was probably why he’d always had a hard time with sex—it was so squalid, so sloppy and gross, just teeming with filth and nastiness ready to infect an unsuspecting guy.
His mother had drilled that through his head again and again; as a devout Christian woman and a strict disciplinarian, she could wax distressed for hours on the perils of the flesh and the risks people encountered when they “got up to no good,” as she put it. He’d been hearing that ever since he was a small child, and had no doubt it was true. All one had to do was open the newspaper to read about the latest evils running rampant through the population: AIDS, syphilis, herpes, gonorrhea, hepatitis C, parasites, warts, even flesh-eating bacteria.
No sir, he wasn’t interested in any of that.
He could still remember her vividly describing how men’s flesh would rot off their faces, and huge open sores would appear, pain beyond anyone’s imaginings afflicting the nerve endings. She told him how you could never tell by looking at a girl whether she was a cesspool of corruption and depravity—just to assume they all were.
When AIDS had surfaced, she’d seen confirmation of the righteousness of her beliefs, and she’d reveled in clipping newspaper accounts of the host of horrors afflicting the sinning masses—all because they were so vile, so profane and lascivious.
He kept humming as he exited the bathroom, clean hands and a clean heart. To all appearances, a man with not a care in the world.
“Don’t you want me, baby…”
* * *
Tess was still waiting for the officers to give her a ride home. They’d insisted on extending that courtesy, probably because they didn’t want her trying to navigate the city streets in shock. Nick was answering the fourth or fifth round of questions, becoming more irritated each go-around. The forensics team was still doing their crime scene cleanup, which could last many more hours.
Nick broke away and approached her.
“Tess, I need to be here for awhile. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll meet you later?”
“Okay, Nick. I’ll do that.” She was still out of it; you could tell by the way she talked. She was there, but only physically. Her mind wa
s a million miles away.
“Shit.” He’d forgotten his gig tonight. “I’ll be really late. I’ve got a show tonight, and we can’t cancel. Will you be all right alone?”
“Sure, Nick. I’ll be fine. I’m not planning on going anywhere. You go do what you have to do…” she drifted off.
“I’ll call when I get done here,” he said.
“Fine, Nick.”
The officer waved her over and she unlocked her bike and disconnected the front tire from the frame. They fit it into his trunk. The last image she saw before they pulled away was a gurney with a dark green body bag being wheeled towards a waiting ambulance.
* * *
Amy was scratching her head as she read the toxicology report on the second victim. There just wasn’t anything that should have killed her. She’d personally gone over every square inch of both Loca and the second girl’s bodies, and there were no punctures or injections. Stomach contents revealed nothing unusual. There was nothing to suggest suffocation, or drowning, or electrical shock, or anything else that would explain her passage to the next world.
There was no evidence of sexual abuse—at least according to the conventional definition—either pre- or post-death, so that motive was as dead as they were. Amy had no doubt that serials like this one were driven by sex at some level. Sex and anger. The overwhelming majority of serials were males in their late twenties to early forties—it took a while for all that anger and frustration to build to a head.
Her phone rang.
“Amy Silva.”
“Hi Amy, it’s Ron. Listen, can I ask you to do me a big favor?”
“That all depends on what you have in mind, Ron.” Was she flirting with him?
“Your colleague Tom O. is working a double homicide from this morning over on West 47th,” Ron explained.
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