The Devil in the Red Dress

by Abigail Rieley

  After they had been back in Room 208 for a while, Eid decided to go back downstairs and bring up the laptop. The temptation to have a little bit of internet access was just too much. So the laptop came up to Room 208 along with its cables and the internet connection. Eid switched it on and checked the American football scores. Then he and Engle checked their emails as well as the emails for both ‘Tony Luciano’ and hire_hitman@yahoo.com. There had been no further contact from Collins and things needed to move along—so ‘Luciano’ was once again called into service.

  ‘Call me ASAP. I not gonna wait here for nothing—I have to leave here by Sun morning.’

  The next morning Robert Howard went into work as normal. He noticed the Chubb lock wasn’t locked on the front door. When he went upstairs the alarm wasn’t on, he knew that it had been when he and his brother had left the office the day before. He immediately saw that the desktop computer from the reception area was missing and on further investigation found that his laptop had been taken as well. He called the gardaí to report the robbery and once they had finally left he was able to go about his normal business. He had been running the business since his father had taken a back seat to spend more time in Spain, although Howard was the registered owner.

  That evening Robert was back in the house he shared with his brother when the phone rang. It was around 10.30p.m. He answered the call without thinking. It had been a long and frustrating day and the brothers were finally relaxing in front of the television. But the voice on the other end of the line made Robert sit up and take notice. It was a male voice, not someone he recognised, he couldn’t place the accent. The mystery caller asked him if there had been a break in at the office, and said he had heard Robert had lost a few computers. Robert, fully on alert now, agreed cautiously. The unidentified man didn’t elaborate. He simply said that he would be at the house in about five minutes. Sure enough a couple of minutes later there was a knock on the door. Robert went to open it while Niall moved round to the window to get a look at the stranger.

  Eid had decided to double cross Collins and offer Robert Howard the chance to buy out of the contract. He and Engle had decided to follow the same plan they had a couple of weeks earlier in California but they tried to improve on it in any way they could.

  Engle was waiting in the car on the road as Eid walked down the drive to the Howard’s house. He wouldn’t make the mistake of giving his real name this time; he introduced himself to Robert as Tony when he opened the door. In the light of the window Robert thought the man in front of him might have been Algerian, even though once again Eid was claiming to be Italian. Eid hadn’t dressed the part this time. He was wearing a tracksuit with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Robert noted that the cap was embroidered with the insignia of the US Open golf tournament. He could see ‘Luciano’ was holding something on the bonnet of Robert’s own jeep. He recognised his laptop. ‘Luciano’ handed it to him and watched while Robert brought it inside to his brother. He waited patiently until Robert came back outside and gestured for them to sit down on the step to talk.

  Then he dealt his masterstroke. He told him about the contract on himself, his brother and his father in Spain. Robert was shocked. This sort of thing didn’t happen in Ennis. By now Eid was on a familiar script and his natural flair for extortion came out once more. Without mentioning Collins for the moment he explained that the contract had been due to go ahead that week. He tailored the package for the particular mark. His price had gone up considerably since he had made the same offer to Lauryn Royston. He told Robert that the contract against him and his family had been for €130,000, a hike in the price he had quoted Collins that would have more than wiped out the $37,000 he hadn’t managed to extract from Lauryn Royston.

  He once again played the Mafioso with a heart of gold, saying he couldn’t bring himself to carry out the hit. He offered Robert the knock down price of €100,000, still considerably more than he would have got from Collins if he had attempted to go through with her plan. Robert didn’t know what to say, he was worried that this Tony was actually carrying some kind of weapon with which he could follow through on his threat if they didn’t pay up. He needn’t have worried. Eid was more in favour of a show and tell at these kinds of meetings not some kind of brute force. He showed Robert a selection of directions, directions that would bring someone to Robert’s house, to Ballybeg House and even out to Kilkee, to the holiday home there that had seemed so safe. He even had the password for the laptop. He also produced the photographs Collins had sent, even the one of herself and Howard, the one where she had pointed herself out to him as the ‘devil in the red dress’.

  Robert took the proffered photographs, almost snatching them out of Eid’s hand. There was his father standing proudly on the deck of the Heartbeat smiling down at his friend below. Eid argued his case for a while. They had been talking for around twenty minutes. At one stage, one of the two friends who shared the house with the brothers came home, stepping over the strange man on the step to get to the front door. She didn’t notice anything odd, neither her housemate’s nervous demeanour nor Tony’s completely foreign exuberance. She would not be able to describe the stranger to gardaí when they eventually came calling.

  Once she had gone inside Robert got up and took the photographs in to his brother. He showed them to Niall and told him to phone the gardaí, which he did using his brother’s phone. But if he had expected the mysterious Tony to stay put and wait to face the music he would be disappointed. Niall moved into the side bedroom to see what ‘Luciano’ was up to outside while his brother was talking to the gardaí. He was just in time to see Eid walk off down the drive. The two brothers ran out of the house. Niall grabbed a pen and paper on the way out to note down the licence plate of Tony’s get away vehicle but they were too late. They saw Eid hurry to the roadside and jump into a waiting car which sped off down the road with its lights off. The brothers ran back to Robert’s jeep and gave chase but the car was too quick for them. They couldn’t even get a clear look at it. Niall thought it might have been silver or maybe green but it was hard to tell in the sodium streetlights. They turned the car around and headed for home. Robert phoned his dad to tell him what had happened. Howard was alarmed but powerless in his Spanish penthouse. Robert was still talking to him when the gardaí arrived at the house.

  For the second time that day Robert found himself giving a statement to the gardaí. They told him to keep in touch and left. The brothers settled back down to what remained of their evening but it wasn’t long before the phone rang again. It was now around 12.30 a.m. Eid hadn’t been able to let things lie until the morning and wanted to make sure his visit had had the desired effect. He stopped at a pay phone in Limerick city on the way back from the hotel—he wanted to get things concluded as quickly as possible and he knew that these marks actually had serious money at their disposal.

  How long could it take them to raise the money? He must have been basing his assumptions on the gangster movies he was so fond of. He got straight to the point asking Robert if he had started getting the money together yet? Playing for time Robert told him that he had but wouldn’t have the whole amount until the following day. Eid said he would ring back in the morning and they would arrange an early meeting.

  Sure enough the next day Robert’s phone rang once more. It was Eid in ‘Luciano’ mode. He once again asked if the money was ready. Robert hedged the answer a little but didn’t deny it. We’ll be in touch he was told. Wait for our call. So he waited … for most of the day. He told the gardaí what was going on and they told him to play along, while they mounted their own surveillance operation. Robert was scared, he had no way of knowing what ‘Luciano’ would do if they didn’t pay up. Just as Lauryn Royston had feared for her life, Robert was convinced that the threat was real. He rang a local security consultant to ask about getting a bodyguard for himself and his brother. He was glad that his father and Collins were safely out of the country. Finally at around 4.45 p.m. �
�Luciano’ rang again. Eid had picked one of the few places they had some local knowledge about—the Queen’s Hotel, Engle’s first base in the Ennis region. He gave Robert his instructions like something straight out of a spy novel. Be at the Queen’s Hotel in half an hour, come alone, bring the money. Robert did as he was told, with one amendment. Before he left to drive into Ennis he phoned the gardaí and told them the plan. By the time he reached the hotel there were ten plain clothes gardaí scattered around the hotel and the neighbouring streets. They were watching the car parks and every approach to the hotel. There was no way ‘Luciano’ was going to slip through their net without being caught.

  Robert took a seat at the bar and ordered a drink. He waited nervously for his phone to ring. He was aware that there were two female gardaí in the hotel watching him and it was unlikely anything could go wrong but he was still worried. He barely noticed when Engle swept past him on her way to the toilets although something about her registered on the edge of his consciousness. Then finally his phone rang again. He grabbed it to answer the call and all around him the waiting gardaí got ready to make an arrest. It was Eid, sitting across the road in the Library Bar from where he could keep an eye on the proceedings. It was 5.40 p.m., almost an hour since his last call. Robert had been sitting at the bar for almost half an hour but finally it was show time. Eid told him to go towards the Ladies’ toilets just beyond the bar in a small lobby area. A nice private space for the kind of transaction they were about to carry out. He would be met there by a woman. He was to give her the money and wait while she counted it. All nice and businesslike, as if they had done this successfully so many times before.

  Robert got up and headed over. Engle followed close behind, once again chosen to be the one to collect the spoils of the game. They stood in the small carpeted lobby between the glass doors leading to the bar and the front desk. To their right he could see the reception area, muffled behind the second door, people going about their business completely unaware of the covert operation going on in their midst. Engle didn’t waste time. She looked Robert up and down and noticed his empty hands. She asked him if he had brought an envelope for her. Robert was playing along as the guards had told him to. The computer first, he insisted, hardly missing a beat, after all there were two computers stolen and only one of them had been returned.

  ‘Were you not talking to him?’ Engle asked, her irritation showing as this extortion attempt looked set to go south just as quickly as the one in California. Robert held firm. He wanted the reception computer back, unaware that it would end up incriminating Collins. He asked to speak to ‘Luciano’. Realising that this attempt too was going to end in failure, Engle brushed past him and walked away. She didn’t see the gardaí who followed her from a discreet distance behind. Eid came out to meet her. From where he was sitting he could see her leave the hotel. Engle told him what had happened then headed back to the car, parked a short distance away. The gardaí were waiting for her. Eid stopped off at a phone box and once again rang Robert, trying to salvage something from what was rapidly becoming a very expensive trip for nothing. He asked him what he was playing at. Why hadn’t he handed over the money? Robert was getting into his stride by now, no computer, no money he insisted. Eid hung up the phone, the conversation hadn’t gone the way he had hoped. To be honest this new attempt was going no better than the last. As he stepped out of the phone box the gardaí swooped. This extortion was going considerably worse than the previous one.

  Both Eid and Engle were taken to Ennis garda station for questioning. Eid said nothing of any importance but Engle began to confess and was quick to tell the gardaí that she was simply another victim in all of this. She was merely Eid’s pawn, an unwilling partner in all the subterfuge. He had been keeping her a virtual prisoner in the States, all she wanted was a chance to get away from him. Her voice was whispery and timid and she looked gaunt and stressed. The detectives interviewing her had no doubt that she would make a good witness, despite her position.

  Eid, on the other hand, was unhelpful when it came to answering questions, his manner alternating between irritated belligerence and incredulous jocularity. He had only been on holiday with his wife. He didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. What was all this about Tony? He wasn’t Tony, his name was Essam. Nobody had mentioned Essam so they couldn’t have been talking about him, could they? What about the things they had found in his hotel room? Eid still played dumb. What things? The cables from Robert Howard’s laptop, the poster of the old bank notes, and digital clock that had been stolen. Eid looked at the clock. It was a nice one, wasn’t it. Cool! He wasn’t so impressed with the poster. What was the use of that? It wasn’t even legal tender. They told him they knew the stuff was stolen. Eid was adamant. He didn’t know anything about any office. It was a cool clock though. What about the wigs and the masks? Well it was almost Hallowe’en! The black gloves? Ireland was cold if you were used to the desert heat of Nevada. The detectives showed him the photographs he had brought with him to Robert’s house. The photograph of P.J. Howard on his yacht and the other one of Howard with Collins sitting on his knee. They asked him did he recognise anyone in them?

  Eid looked at them carefully. Oh yes he recognised them all right. The woman was Collins. It was at that point he said he was having an affair with her. The gardaí jumped on the suggestion and Eid warmed to his story. They had been having an affair for ages! He had even visited her on P.J. Howard’s boat—when Howard wasn’t there of course. He had been supposed to be travelling on to see her at the end of this visit, he told them, except Engle had insisted on tagging along. The gardaí weren’t convinced. When they checked with Collins she was convincingly scandalised. The very idea was idiotic. But while the gardaí might not believe Eid’s story of clandestine love, it was still the first time Collins’s name had been raised as anything other than a victim in the whole extraordinary mess.

  The interviews with Eid were going nowhere because he would not admit to anything. It was time to organise an identity parade. It was almost midnight on a midweek night when the gardaí started scouring the pubs of Ennis to rustle up a suitable line up. Eid began to cause problems in that regard. There weren’t that many middle aged Egyptians in the town at any time of the day but at this time of night … they ended up making do with a motley assortment of locals, not an ideal selection but the Howard brothers still had no difficulties in picking Eid out of the line up.

  Robert also had no difficulty picking out Engle as the woman he had spoken to during the meeting outside the toilets in the Queen’s Hotel. The gardaí didn’t doubt that she was every bit as complicit as Eid in the scam, but could not hold her. On 1 October, after three days in custody, she was allowed to board a flight back to the States. Back in Nevada she went straight back to the house on Camden Cove Street. She wasn’t planning on staying. She wanted to put as much distance as she could between herself and Eid and it wouldn’t hurt to get out of the way if the Feds came knocking about the California case.

  Lisa was there when she called. They didn’t have much to say to one another. Lisa kept asking her what was going on. Why had she and Eid been arrested? Why hadn’t Eid been let go as well? Eventually Engle told her the truth. She told her about the website and the plot to kill the three Howard men. But there had never been any intention to kill anyone, she insisted. It was only ever going to be a hustle. Engle told Lisa about the stolen computer and the attempted extortion and finally a potted history of the arrest. She didn’t stay long in the house, just taking the time to pick up some things. She wanted to go back to her family and maybe even to Todd, for a third time perhaps.

  Back in Ireland, Eid did not have the opportunity to plan his future. The detective team who investigated the case did not believe a word he said. Engle had neatly sidestepped the consequences but the gardaí were still keen on Eid providing them with some of the answers they were lacking. He was furious that Engle had been let go. He felt he had been set up, plotted against by
the women in his life. It hadn’t all been down to him. Why should he be the only one to face the music? The gardaí wanted to keep him close; he was remanded in custody to Limerick Prison on theft charges.

  Nothing about the case made any sense to the gardaí tasked to investigate the extortion attempt. None could understand how Eid had obtained pictures of P.J. Howard and why he had said he was having an affair with Collins.

  Collins was back to being the model partner and spending most of her time with P.J. Howard. Engle had disappeared into the bosom of her family and things seemed to be going well with the ever faithful Todd. The only thing she hadn’t done was fess up to her little misdemeanours in California. The FBI were very interested to talk to her in relation to Lauryn Royston’s complaint but when Engle went to ground she wasn’t that easy to track down. She hadn’t even left a forwarding address with Lisa. She wanted to put as much distance between herself and Eid as she could.

  Eid wasn’t going to let her go that easily though. He was, of course, still in contact with Lisa, his lawful wife who, for the time being, was standing by her man. On 1 December he persuaded her to send Engle an email from his account pretending to be him. Lisa did what he asked. She wanted Engle out of their lives as much as he wanted her to take the rap. She wrote asking Engle for the rings he had given her when they had their Vegas wedding. Engle also wanted out. She wrote back quickly promising to send them back. All was charm and affection; the two women played their parts as they had done for Eid so many times before. Engle wrote back to Lisa playing Eid, wishing her ‘good luck and have a nice life.’ She didn’t ask how things had gone in Ireland. Lisa didn’t offer any information. She wrote back to the woman with whom she had shared her husband, ‘I wish you good health and happiness.’ So things ended on an amicable note. But this wasn’t getting the result Eid wanted. A couple of weeks later he persuaded Lisa to write from his email address again. This time his plan was to set a trap. He told Lisa what to write. On 14 December she wrote,