“I have a lot of personal money at stake in this, as well as most of your holdings. We can’t afford to have this blow up. It would ruin us all,” Gordon said.
“I completely understand the gravity of the situation, Gordon. Probably better than you. I’ll get back to you once we’ve dealt with this.”
Chapter 17
Ron sat at his desk, reading the toxicology and autopsy reports for Loca and Tabitha. He could see why Amy was frustrated over not having a cause of death. She’d run every type of scan she could think of, had spent many long hours going through the results, and had come up with nothing.
He thought about the voicemail message he’d gotten: Tess calling to thank him. He’d been thinking about her a lot, and he wondered, why her, specifically? There were tons of beautiful women in New York he could fantasize about, so why a bike messenger? Well, for starters, there were her green eyes and flawless tanned skin, her luxuriant black hair and her gleaming smile…
He hated to admit it, but the tongue piercing and tattoos made her seem much more exotic; they hinted that there was little that she wouldn’t be interested in doing. And then she opened her mouth, and instead of the expected vernacular, “you know, like, hey, that’s totally cool,” she spoke like an educated woman.
And of course there was her body—lean from constant riding, legs to her chin, and a walk that said she not only knew how to use it, but when, where, and why. Sexy, bright, a little reckless and dangerous, and now a girl in trouble. Potent mix. This could get out of hand quickly if he pursued it, but hitting on witnesses when they were in crisis wasn’t his style. He’d just continue to try to help, out of altruism. Then again, she’d phoned him. “Call me if I can help you with anything.” That was quite an invitation, if he wasn’t misreading it.
Wasn’t his life complicated enough?
He considered the Red Cap connection, and it wasn’t lost on him that she could be in danger if the killer was affiliated with the company. She was without a doubt the most beautiful female among the messengers, and as such had to have come to the killer’s attention if he was targeting the company. He glanced at his watch and wondered if there’d been another killing last night. He would have bet a hundred bucks on it; he felt like he was just waiting for the body to show up. It was an uncomfortable feeling.
Ron called the Red Cap offices and asked to speak to a dispatcher. Frank came on the line.
“Frank Meyer.”
“Hi, Frank. It’s Detective Ron Stanford. I wanted to thank you again for helping with my interviews yesterday,” Ron began.
“Not a problem, Detective. We all want to find out what happened with Loca.”
“Well, we’re working on it. Frank, I wanted to ask a question that may seem off-the-wall. Are all your female messengers accounted for today?” Ron tried to come across casual, but he knew he sounded on edge.
“Funny you should ask. Tess called in last night and said she’d be off for a few weeks. Her dad was murdered,” Frank said.
“I know about that. Pretty awful.” Ron was relieved they weren’t missing anyone else.
“Yeah, I know. Anyway, so Tess’s out, and Candy never came in this morning. She’s been here for a while and knows the drill; she’s never pulled this before, so we’re a little worried. I was going to call you if I didn’t hear from her by this afternoon,” Frank explained.
Ron’s heart sank. He remembered Candy. Vivacious, good-looking kid from someplace in the Deep South; had the corn-pone accent and all the expressions.
“Candy, huh? Has she ever flaked on you before?”
“No, she’s one of the good ones. Most of the girls are dependable compared to the guys. I was hoping she’d call in, say she’d been in an accident or overslept or something.”
“What’s her home address, Frank? I want to swing by and check on her before we get too excited.” Ron really wanted to contain the rumor before it went roaring off the tracks. Frank gave him her address, and asked if there was anything else he could do to help.
“No, I’m afraid not. I’ll let you know if I hear anything, though. Thanks, Frank.” Ron had decided Frank didn’t fit the criteria for a serial; he was far too old, and didn’t have the requisite guile or craftiness of a serial.
“And I’ll let you know if she calls in,” Frank said.
“I hope she does.”
Ron had been afraid one of the girls wouldn’t make it, and sure enough, no Candy. He called Amy and told her the grim news. She wasn’t surprised.
“He’s going to keep at it until he either gets caught or killed, or some significant event occurs and he disappears. I suppose I should get my kit ready…It’s just a matter of time now.” Amy sounded depressed.
“I’m waiting to get some background on the most suspicious messengers, see if there’s anything ugly in their pasts.” That was his best lead so far due to the complete absence of any physical evidence and a dearth of witnesses.
“It’s as good a place to look as any, I suppose.” Amy sighed. “I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you sooner rather than later, Ron.”
“Yeah, me too, Amy. Bye.”
Amy hung up and stared at the handset, remembering the favor Ron had asked. She marched down the hall to Tom’s office and stuck her head in. He was sitting at his desk filling out paperwork, looking efficient and interested.
“Hi, Tom. I heard you had a crazy case yesterday. A double where one of the victims was paralyzed? What’s that all about?” Amy took the professional interest route.
“It beats me how this stuff gets on the streets of New York. I first thought it might be some sort of phytotoxin, like they use for blowgun darts in the Brazilian rainforests.”
“You mean curare? That would produce the results you saw—it blocks the acetylcholine receptor sites and paralyzes instantly.” Amy was up on her obscure poisons.
“But the tox screen says otherwise. Makes me think this isn’t a robbery.”
“Doesn’t sound like your usual smash and grab, that’s for sure,” Amy agreed. “What did it turn out to be?”
“Good old tetrodoxin, but synthesized to increase the potency and absorption. When was the last time you saw that in a robbery?” Tom liked showing off.
Amy’s eyes widened. “Wow. Like in fugu? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it being used.” Fugu was a Japanese puffer fish that contained a deadly tropane alkaloid, tetrodoxin, in some of its organs. Every year, several Japanese died from eating torafugu; the amount required to kill a man was only about two milligrams, which would fit on the head of a pin.
Amy knew about it from reading the literature, and it had stuck in her memory because she couldn’t imagine people eating the fish knowing they could die if it was prepared incorrectly. But the question was, why would anyone synthesize it? How much deadlier could you make it…and why would you want to?
“Yup. They had it purified down to where just a pinprick’s worth would drop an elephant. I’ve never seen anything like it—I sent the findings off to Washington for a second opinion.”
“Just when I think I’ve seen every possible type of ugliness, a new one surfaces.” She smiled at Tom, who’d had the hots for her for years. “Sounds like you have your hands full.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Well, I gotta get back to work. Thanks for the info, Tom.” She smiled again. No harm in turning on the charm.
“Yeah, see you around,” Tom said as the door closed.
Amy returned to her office and called Ron to tell him what she’d just learned.
They were both at a loss as to what it meant. Whatever the explanation, they were sure it didn’t bode well for the investigation Barry was running. Obscure killing agents, tortured watch merchants, abandoned quarter-million-dollar wristwatches—this was not the stuff of which easy and painless investigations were made.
~ ~ ~
Tess returned from her ride soaked with sweat. She’d torn around the island at racing speed, then cri
sscrossed through Central Park to get some additional miles in. Riding calmed her and acted as a salve on her spirits. She supposed a lot of it was the serotonin spike caused by the exercise—the famous “runner’s high”—as well as the sense of self-sufficiency and freedom of being outdoors, moving under her own power.
She carried her bike up the stairs and positioned it in the usual space in her foyer, grabbed a bottle of Gatorade out of her refrigerator, and plopped down on the couch.
Her answering machine was blinking. She reluctantly rose, approached it, and hit the playback button. Three new messages. The first was from her sister, apologizing for her husband’s behavior and asking her to please call back ASAP.
Whatever. She’d get to it later.
The second message was from Duff. He had heard what happened from Frank, and called to tell her he was there for her if she needed anything. She smiled to herself. Duff used to be a gang member who would kill you for looking at him, but after his daughter was born and he took a bunch of slugs in the back, he had an epiphany and decided to go straight.
One night at the Corral he’d told her about it, and she had been fascinated by the brutality and casual violence of the lifestyle. The money was insane, and he was often tempted to go back to it, until he looked into his daughter’s eyes. That always stopped him cold, and every day he swam upstream and did the right thing, instead of the easy thing—went to work delivering packages containing documents, instead of packages of crack.
That was the sort of story that kept her biking instead of going back to programming: it was a different world on the street—the stakes were life and death. It was hard to live in an insulated pseudo-reality after being immersed in that environment. Tess thought she had an inkling of what returning soldiers felt like, when they left hand-to-hand combat to return to a life where their biggest danger was mowing the lawn. Maybe she was just an action junkie, hooked on the pulse of a counter-culture few ever saw or heard about. Add that to her list of faults, she thought.
She listened to the last message. It was Stan checking in, telling her he was at the shop all afternoon. She made a note to call all three back, and then hit the shower for the second time that day.
~ ~ ~
The two Asian men had been sitting at the café across the street from Nick’s apartment since eight o’clock that morning, on and off. After the first few hours, they’d moved down the street to a Starbucks and hung out there, before returning to the café for lunch. They were wondering if he’d even returned home last night when the smaller man’s phone buzzed. He thumbed it on.
“Hello.”
“Where are you?”
“We’re staking out the watch shop assistant’s house, waiting for him to surface.”
“That’ll have to wait. A currency dealer in New York called the Treasury Department and reported he has in his possession a number of bills that look like ours. Treasury is sending someone over to pick them up.” The voice on the phone spoke with deliberation. “That can’t be allowed to happen.”
“I understand. What do you have on him?” The smaller man scribbled furiously as the voice relayed the details.
“Time is not on our side. Get this handled immediately,” the voice ordered.
“You can depend on us.”
The smaller man explained the situation to his partner; they needed to get into the currency dealer’s place, and needed a pretext to do so.
He pressed redial. The phone answered on the second ring.
“Can you have your local man in New York contact this currency dealer and arrange a cover story for us to meet him? Maybe we have some old currency that needs to be authenticated?”
“Perhaps we can. But that could take some time. Why don’t you see if you can find a way in without involving our man? Discretion is less important than speed at the moment. If it’s an impossibility, then call me back and I’ll see about making an arrangement.”
“We’re on our way.”
They rose to leave. As they flagged down a cab, they saw Nick stumble out of his front door looking like he’d been beaten with a board. They regarded exchanged a glance.
“That’ll be a project for later.” They gave the cabbie an address close to Saul’s building and were on their way.
~ ~ ~
Saul had also tried Stan earlier, and also had gotten the machine. He tried again, having decided his news was way too juicy to impart by leaving a message, and was rewarded when Stan answered.
“Stan Issaks.”
“Stan, it’s Saul. How goes the war?”
“So-so, my friend, so-so. I’m not doing well. Yesterday really got me down, you know?” Stan had spent a restless night troubled by images of Robert lying on the floor, bloodied.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I know he was a good friend. It’s a shame, a tragedy,” Saul said.
“That it is.”
“Well, I have interesting news for you. Your instinct there was something fishy going on with the watch transaction? You were right. Those bills are bogus. They’re the best fakes I’ve ever seen, but still fake.”
“Really. What was the giveaway?” Stan stammered.
“The watermark was the big one. The hair didn’t look right, and then I noticed the facial expression was a little off from a similar series bill,” Saul said.
“Aren’t all the watermarks the same?” Stan wasn’t on the paper currency side of the fence—his specialty was coins. Both men were snobs, secretly finding the other’s fascination with paper or metal beneath their own interests.
“No, they’re actually quite different.” Saul explained about comparing notes within a series.
“That’s quite a catch, Saul. What do you think? Who has the expertise to produce that level of fake?” Stan was beginning to get an idea in his head, and he didn’t like it.
“To be honest? It seems too sophisticated not to be state-sponsored, Stan. I’ve seen plenty of fakes over the years, and these are almost as good as the real thing,” Saul explained.
“Robert said the collector was from Korea. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Why not? Either them or Iran, or Syria, or any of a couple of dozen other countries. Ten years ago I would have said maybe the Chinese, but why counterfeit when they basically own everything now? Ha! I still wouldn’t rule them out completely, though…” Saul mused.
“What can I say? You’re a genius. Congratulations.”
“Why don’t you swing up and we can celebrate my discovery over a nice bottle of wine? You available this evening?” Saul was feeling festive, and feeling festive alone sucked.
“Why not? I can be up there before rush hour hits. I was thinking about closing down early anyway; my heart’s not in it today,” Stan said.
“So maybe five-ish?” Saul asked.
“Even a little before that. You want I should bring anything?”
“No, tonight’s on me. I’ll get some decent red and we can have dinner after we toast. See you then.”
~ ~ ~
The Asians ambled up the street, stopping at the building next to Saul’s. Three stories, stone façade, bars on the windows of the ground floor. Saul’s looked like half the rest of the buildings in that area of the city. There didn’t look to be any easy way up, at least not from the front. The smaller man made a call.
“You need to get your friend to set us up to go in. I don’t see any simple way into the building.” They could pick the lock, but in daylight on a reasonably well-traveled street it was too dangerous.
“Give me half an hour,” the voice said, then hung up.
~ ~ ~
Gordon’s private line rang. He was hesitant to answer, but had little choice at this stage of the game.
“Samuels.”
“We require some assistance, quickly. Treasury is sending agents over to pick up the bills. My men are in the neighborhood but can’t get into the building.”
“And? What would you like me to do?” Gordon was getting a
queasy feeling. He was good on the phone or with a computer monitor, but wasn’t prepared to get physically involved.
“I need you to call this Saul Balinsky and make up some reason for my men to see him. Perhaps you have some older banknotes that require authentication? He is apparently an authority on the topic.”
“That I can do. Give me a few moments and I’ll place the call. I still have his contact information.”
“Time is of the essence.”
“Consider it done. I’ll call back in a few minutes to confirm.”
Gordon went online and did a search for antique U.S. currency, and found thirty pages of every imaginable variation. He scratched out some notes, and then took a deep breath and dialed Saul’s number.
And got nothing but ringing.
Time was running out on them. He dialed again. Ring, ring, ring. No answer. Maybe the guy was in the bathroom. He’d give it five minutes, try again.
Gordon paced in front of his picture window. It was two o’clock. Treasury would probably get there before five, so in the very best case they had just a few hours to find all the notes and deal with Saul.
That stopped him. Deal with Saul. What precisely did that mean? How were they planning to “deal with Saul” so the whole affair went away? The enormity of what he’d become involved in hit home. He was going to participate in the murder of an innocent man, a man whose only crime was being unlucky enough to take possession of the bills.
Buck up, Gordon. Think about the billions at stake, not to mention that you’ll lose your fortune if this goes south on you. Sometimes extraordinary measures were required to achieve extraordinary results; that was a cost of doing business.
Besides, he had no direct knowledge that the Asians would kill Saul. They just wanted to get the notes back.
He tried the number again. No answer.
Fatal Exchange (Fatal Series Book 1) Page 13