Chapter Twenty-One
At around ten the following morning, Jerry was awakened by the ringtone of his cell phone. After a moment, he sat up and stared at it on the small, cheap night table by the bed. His immediate thought as he shook off a dreamless sleep was that it must be another wrong number.
With his head aching from the night before, Jerry grabbed for the cell phone. It slipped out of his grasp and fell to the carpet below.
“Fuck.”
He reached down and picked up the phone, now on its fourth ring.
“H-hello?”
“Where the fuck were you?” came Jeff's voice. “On the pooper?”
Jerry held his breath for a long moment desperately trying to keep his cool.
“You there?”
“Yeah,” Jerry said, “Just got up.”
Jeff laughed. “It’s quarter past ten, dude,” he said. “But I forgot, you are no longer a resident of the world of the living.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s a done deal,” he said, and Jerry could feel the glee in Jeff’s voice. “The check is in the mail.”
That was the code Jeff had agreed to use to notify Jerry that Global had paid the claim. That they had pulled it off! Four million dollars was being, or had already been, wire-transferred into the LLC checking account which Holly had opened for that purpose. In the next couple of days, they would transfer the money into several other accounts set up in obscure, out of state banks, in the names of the several other LLCs. The paper chase would be daunting and difficult if it was ever pursued, something, of course, they hoped would never happen. Eventually, after two or three months, the four million would be divided two ways – two-thirds to be shared by Holly and Jerry, and the other third for Jeff.
Jerry knew that with the money now in their laps, Jeff and Holly would have to make a final decision concerning the killings.
“Once the money is deposited, she’ll travel down there,” Jeff promised. Of course, he was thinking that Jerry was still waiting for her in Binghamton. “You holding up okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jerry said. “I’m fine.”
“Just a couple more days,” Jeff said. “Hold tight.”
Jerry knew more than ever what they intended to do. First, Jeff would kill the body guy. Then, Holly would come down to Binghamton once the insurance money was deposited, but not to act as his front. Instead, she was going to help set him up for murder.
But Jerry held the cards now. He started to say something, but for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Jeff that he was on to their murderous plots and that the body guy had been forewarned and was now his partner. The old conspiracy was over and a new one was beginning. And he was going to make a new life without Holly. With Jade, perhaps.
“What?” Jeff asked.
“No-nothing,” he said. “I – I didn’t say anything.”
“Alright,” Jeff said. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jerry said. “Just a couple more days.”
Jerry felt refreshed and alive with purpose as he paid the grim-faced, nodding Arab motel owner for yet another night, then stopped for breakfast at a nearby diner. Right after a cup of coffee and some eggs, bacon and home fries, he’d pull out his cell phone and tell Jeff and Holly that they could go to fucking hell. That the conspiracy was over. That a new day had dawned, and he had demands.
In the foyer on his way into the restaurant, Jerry found a Buffalo News box, dropped three-quarters into the slot, and pulled out a paper. After being shown a booth in the mostly empty, post-breakfast/pre-lunch rush, a waitress came over and filled a cup in front of him to the brim with steaming black coffee. With professional efficiency and indifference, she took his order.
While sipping the coffee, Jerry spread the newspaper out on the table and, as always, went straight to the sports pages. He was pulling out the local news section just as the waitress was bringing his breakfast platter.
After shoveling a fork-full of over-salted, over-buttered scrambled eggs into his mouth, swallowing them down with more coffee, Jerry was immediately drawn to a headline in the far right column of the local section:
Med School Worker Stabbed To Death -- City police found William Robinson, 38, stabbed to death near his home on Box Avenue. Robinson's body was found in an alley between two houses by a man walking his dog shortly after midnight. According to Robinson's wife, he had not returned home that evening from his job at the University of Buffalo Medical School where he cared for cadavers donated for dissection. Police suspect that he was killed earlier and that robbery was a possible motive for the slaying in that high crime neighborhood.
Jerry could not move. He just sat there for a time staring at the headline.
Stabbed to death.
He put down the fork, his appetite gone. Jeff and Holly had acted more swiftly than he had anticipated.
The waitress came over and filled his cup.
“Something the matter with your eggs, honey?” she asked.
Jerry couldn’t think of what to say as he looked up at her with a weak smile.
“N-no,” he said. “Just not so hungry all of a sudden.”
She smirked at him and quickly walked away. Jerry picked up the paper and re-read the article.
Med School Worker… Stabbed to Death… William Robinson… 38.
He crumpled the paper and tossed it aside on the booth next to him. Goddammit, he thought. So Jeff really had it in him. Jerry's next thought was doubly disturbing.
He was next.
Part Two - Second Betrayal
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Jerry returned to Binghamton two weeks after the body guy’s murder, he decided that he could no longer stay at the house in Endicott. Jeff knew where he lived and could readily find him.
So his first night back, Jerry found a cheap motel off State Route 11 and booked a room. Then he called Jade. She had returned from her “vacations” to Albany and Florida, and Jerry was glad to hear her voice. And he was doubly glad that she unhesitatingly agreed to meet him.
“Why you staying there?” she had asked.
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Upon her arrival, Jerry gave her a long embrace.
“You’re shaking, hon,” she said and, knowing something bad was bothering Jerry, let his embrace linger.
Jerry took her to the bed and they laid down together. “What’s the matter?” she asked, stroking his hair as he lay, balled up, in her bosom.
Then, after a deep breath, he told her. everything. Ending with how the body guy had paid with his life and he was next. And how without Holly, he needed a “front.” After telling Jade all this, Jerry admitted that most of all, he was just plain scared.
Jade remained silent for a time. There was a lot to digest.
And most of it was fantastical. Like a cheap crime novel.
“You did that?” she asked. “Faked your death. Stole four million dollars?” She laughed at him with an amazed look.
“Yes.”
“That took fucking balls, hon.” Jerry laughed. “I guess.”
Then they kissed for a time while lying on the bed, deeply and passionately, not as whore and customer, but as friends, lovers perhaps. She called Luke’s cell phone and told him to go home. She was staying the night. They made love and afterward, Jade held Jerry in her arms and soothed his trepidation and despair deep into the night.
Later that night, holding Jade securely in his arms, Jerry revealed how he intended to exact his revenge.
“I already set them up,” Jerry told her with a sigh. Jade snuggled even deeper into Jerry’s arms.
“You set them up? How?”
“After the shock wore off over the body guy’s murder, I formulated a plan.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Well, first I thought about just giving up and turning myself in. Snitch on Jeff and Holly and work out a deal. Spend a couple of years in jail and have the satisfactio
n of getting back at them that way. But, what is the saying? That would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Plus, I’d be looked at, mocked, for what I was, a goddamn weak cuckold. I’d never be able to look myself in the mirror, have any self-respect. So that was out.”
Jade had started playing with Jerry’s chest hairs and though it tickled, he let her do it. Clearly, she was growing a little fond of him. “So what did you do?”
“Well, first of all, I planted two emails messages, fake emails,” Jerry said, “emails that incriminated both of them for my murder. For one of them, I used an email address I set up under Holly's name and sent it over our old home computer. The message will show up on the hard drive of that computer and link her solidly to the crime. She had access to it, only her, and whatever message was sent from it would be linked to her and only her.
“I snuck in the house during the lunch hour one afternoon while Holly was at work and sent an email from that computer to Jeff’s email address on his computer at work. Then, I hustled my ass downtown and slipped into Jeff’s office at the law firm toward the end of that same lunch hour and sent the response to Holly’s computer at home.” Jerry snapped his fingers. “And, just like that, both of them are incriminated in my murder.”
“How’d you pull that off? The emails. You had to do it pretty quick. I mean simultaneous, right?”
Jade had finished playing with his chest hairs and had moved her hand to his crotch and was massaging it. A moment later, Jerry laughed.
“Don’t you ever stop?”
“Tell me about how you did it — the emails. It’s making me excited.”
“Everything makes you excited,” Jerry laughed.
Then she was sliding down him, licking his chest and upper belly, then belly, as she went.
“Jesus,” he sighed.
“Tell me,” she whispered, her mouth up against his lower belly, licking him just above his crotch.
“I can’t tell you anything when you’re doing that.”
“Then don’t. Wait til I’m finished.”
She was finished in about ten minutes and moved back up to snuggle into his arms again. Jerry was spent. He felt himself drifting off to sleep.
“No, you can’t. Don’t go to sleep,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Geez, you’re killing me, girl.”
The emails.
“Yes, the emails.”
“How did you plant them? Sounds like spy stuff. Like James Bond or something.”
Jerry laughed and took a deep breath as he sat up to tell her. Jade turned toward him and started playing with his chest hairs again.
“Stop that a minute and listen,” he said and sighed. She giggled and leaned back in his arms.
“The first thing I had to do was break into my own house. Well, not break in. I had a key, the same key from the night I snuck in and found them out, and I knew the security code. So that was easy.”
“Well, let me back up a minute,” he said. “The first thing I did actually was sneak up to the law firm where Jeff and Holly worked, to case out Jeff’s office. See if he ever left his computer unattended, and when and all that. I wasn’t well known up there, hadn’t been up to Holly’s workspace too often, just a handful of times in five years. And she works in a totally different department than Jeff anyway. It’s such a large firm, a lot of employees don’t even know each other.
“Plus, I had this beard going–” he fingered his chin “–that acted as somewhat of a disguise. But to be on the safe side, I picked up a decent looking wig at one of those spy stores, and a maintenance man outfit they used at the building. I asked and without thinking twice about it, some building maintenance guy told me the store they got them from.”
“Sounds neat so far,” Jade said. “CIA stuff, like I said.”
“Anyway, I went up to the law office toward the end of the lunch hour, around one or so, and found Jeff's office empty. Just as important as that, he had left his office door wide open and his computer was still on, despite whatever memos I knew from Holly that the firm had sent about turning it off for security reasons or whatever.
“So the plan was set. I’d break into my house around noon the next day and send Jeff the email message from the old PC in my den, using the email address I had set up for Holly, and then hurry downtown to the law firm before lunch ended, sneak into Jeff’s office and use his computer to answer it.
“Anyway, this cockamamie plan worked somehow,” Jerry said with a laugh. “I generated two emails that can incriminate both of them for my murder.”
Jerry gently moved Jade out of his arms, jumped off the bed and switched on the lamp on the night table next to it. Jade squinted in the harsh, sudden light as she sat up and watched Jerry pull his suitcase out from under the bed. After a few moments, he found what he was looking for – an envelope containing the incriminating emails.
Standing naked before her, he started reading from the top one:
Dearest Jeff:
It’s hard to believe that we pulled it off. In a few short days, we will have everything we need, money, each other, time. I miss you so much but I agree that we have to wait to change our patterns. I thought I would feel guilty, but I don’t. I just don’t. I am amazed at my lack of guilt; how giddy I feel. I miss you so these evenings when I come home to an empty house. I am glad you agreed that it wouldn’t be suspicious if you started visiting me some evenings.
That is what I live for now. I need you here. And it’s so hard at work playing the part of a grieving widow and resisting going up to you, hugging you, kissing you, laughing out loud over what we pulled off.
All My Love, Holly
“Sounds just like her,” Jerry lamented, staring off for a moment, hearing her saying those things.
“So what does Jeff’s response say?” Jade asked. “What did you write back?”
“Only two lines,” he told her, and lifted the copy of the email from under the fake one from Holly. “There’s no greeting, of course, just this: ‘Don’t write stuff like that to me here.’ It’s all in caps. Then, I added: ‘It could ruin everything,’ and repeated, ‘Everything’ again. The beauty of it was that it implicated him in the whole plot, especially the “ruin everything,’ in caps part.”
“But what did Holly do when she got that message?” Jade asked.
“She didn’t do anything,” Jerry said. “The beauty of it is that she never uses that email address. She doesn’t even know it exists. But it was her address, and it would be linked to her through the computer in my old house.”
Jerry stuck the copies of the incriminating email messages back in the envelope, returned it to the suitcase, and shoved it under the bed. Then, he got back in bed and snuggled next Jade.
“And that’s it,” he said. “The first part of the plan.”
“What’s the second?” Jade asked.
“I call them.”
“Who? Call who?”
“Them,” Jerry said. “Well, him – Jeff.”
“Why?”
“I tell him I know everything,” Jerry said. “I tell him I know they are lying, cheating murderers. And then I blackmail them. Once they pay me the money, I wait some time, five, six months, and then send the incriminating emails to the cops.”
Jade laughed. She was twirling his chest hairs again.
“You’re awesome,” she said, and down she went to give him his reward.
Chapter Twenty-Three
For six months after planting the emails, Jerry lived anonymously with Jade with her acting as his front. Jerry worked out a lot, made love often to Jade, and they shopped and cooked dinners together and generally acted like the happy newlywed couple they often pretended in public to be.
Still, Jerry wasn’t going to be satisfied until his plan for getting back at Holly and Jeff was fully realized.
The first part involved obtaining his share of the insurance money, $1.33 million, had gone off as planned. A week after he had returned to Binghamton, Jerry had called
Jeff and told him that he knew about his affair with Holly that he had killed the body guy, and that if Jeff didn't wire his share of the insurance money within three days, he'd turn himself into the police. Two days later, the money was safely wired into various accounts in obscure banks around the country under the names of the various LLCs which Jerry had filed in New Mexico before placing the call to Jeff.
And just yesterday morning, six months after receiving his share of the insurance money, the second part of Jerry’s plan was irrevocably put into motion. He drove the hour or so up Interstate 81 to Syracuse and found the downtown post office. He parked in a surface lot and entered the squat, ugly building. He slid the stamped envelope containing the emails he had created now over six months ago, incriminating Holly and Jeff for his murder, into the opening of a first class mail drop. The envelope was addressed to Global Insurance’s Philadelphia headquarters office.
For a paranoid moment, Jerry worried about video surveillance cameras outside and inside the building capturing him walking in and mailing the letter while wearing latex gloves, but soon enough, he laughed off how farfetched that worry was. Except for the postmark which would reveal that the emails were mailed from this post office in Syracuse, no one would ever figure out a way, if there even was one, to determine who had mailed them. The primary concern, initially at least, would be with the content of the emails. Only later might the focus change to who had sent them and why. But by then, months would have passed and whatever surveillance video that may have existed, if any existed at all, would long ago have been erased. Furthermore, there was no way of knowing, from the video, if one existed, who had mailed the letter. Hundreds of people probably walked in the post office on a daily basis.
Tomorrow or the next day at the latest, Global’s fraud unit guys would be salivating over the incriminating emails. Some old, crusty insurance company investigator would grumble that the arson investigators had been wrong. Jerry Shaw had been murdered, burned alive. Once that connection was made, they would be after Jeff and Holly like flies on shit.
The Anonymous Man Page 13