Blood Money

by James Grippando

  That all made sense to Jack. Andie always made sense. “I love you,” he said.

  “Of course you do,” she said.

  That drew a little smile as they pulled into his driveway behind the “bucar”—FBI lingo for the bureau’s standard-issue sedans. The agents Andie had summoned were already there. Jack invited them inside, and Max greeted them at the door, wagging his tail and jumping up and down as if it had been five hundred years since he’d last seen Andie. Jack let him loose in the backyard, and the humankind gathered in the Florida room to take care of an entirely different kind of business.

  Jack took a seat beside Andie on the couch. Special Agents Burns and Waters sat across from them. They were “tech agents,” which meant that Jack was the proverbial old man in the room. As a general rule, not many techies hung around till retirement age. A good one with a few years of law enforcement experience on his résumé could make a fortune in the private sector, and Jack guessed that the bureau would have the services of these two crackerjacks for maybe another six months.

  “Truth is, I should have listened to Andie sooner,” said Jack. “I resisted the idea of having the FBI monitoring my phones. Obviously, this changes things.”

  Burns spoke for the tech team. “There are ways to make this work and still protect the privacy of your clients.”

  “You may be right from a technical standpoint,” said Jack. “But good luck trying to convince my clients of that.”

  Burns opened his bag of electronic toys and showed Jack his new cell phone. “Wireless is never the most secure option, but if you have to use a cell phone, this one is encrypted. Use it when you are not in the office and absolutely have to speak to one of your clients. Agent Waters and I will set up encrypted landlines for the calls you make from home and the office, which is of course the most secure option.”

  “What about e-mail?”

  “Best thing is to tell your clients no e-mail.”

  “Can my clients call me on the encrypted lines?”

  “If you give them the number, yes. But don’t do that. The basic rule you should live by is, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’”

  “That’s impossible. What if they need to reach me?”

  “They should call your existing cell or landline. They should say nothing but ‘call me,’ and then you return the call on the encrypted line. I know that seems cumbersome, but the minute you give the phone number to anyone, you run the risk of compromising the security on the encrypted line.”

  “Won’t they see the number when I call them?”

  “Your encrypted phone is impervious to caller ID. That’s pretty basic, Mr. Swyteck.”

  “It may be basic to you,” said Andie, “but you’re talking to a guy who started practicing law when Post-its were still a technological marvel.”

  “Not quite, honey. But almost.”

  Burns continued, “The overall objective here is for Rene Fenning’s killer to remain under the impression that your existing cell phone, landlines, and e-mail addresses are still in use, still fully operational. So long as he has that impression, we can intercept, trace, and react to any message he sends you.”

  “How do I know the FBI won’t be monitoring the encrypted line?”

  “That won’t happen,” said Andie. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Jack wanted to believe her, and he knew it was greater assurance than most people got. He was still skeptical, but again, Rene’s death had changed everything.

  “Okay. Let’s go with it.”

  “Great. We’ll start here in the house. Where do you want the line?”

  “My home office, I guess. Down the hall, right next to the bedroom.”

  “You got it.”

  The techies got up and went to work. Jack’s gaze drifted toward the window. Max was in the yard, digging the Key Biscayne version of the Grand Canyon.

  “I guess I’ll need to send Max away,” said Jack.

  “He’s still a puppy,” said Andie. “Digging is what they do.”

  “I mean send him away for his own protection. It may be a bit of stereotype to think that all sociopaths like to hurt animals, but I already lost one dog to a pissed-off client.”

  “Sometimes stereotypes are true,” said Andie. “Jeffrey Dahmer used to love up the neighborhood dogs, lure them into his kitchen—and then send them yelping home with their testicles sliced open. Just for grins.”

  It made Jack cringe. “My neighbors spend their summers in Charleston. Their son RJ loves Max. I’m sure they’d take him.” Jack took another gander out the window. Max was covered in dirt, still digging. “Maybe Max can hook up with the Army Corps of Engineers and widen the harbor while he’s up there.”

  “What are you going to do with Abuela?”

  “She has a brother in Tampa. She’ll feel safe there. Then there’s my dad and stepmother. I guess they should just extend their vacation, stay in Europe.”

  Andie looked at him with concern. “These are all just precautions, you understand. Like I said before, I don’t think the targets would be Max, Abuela, your father, your stepmother. With Rene, he was acting out a sexual fantasy that will lead him to the big moment with Sydney Bennett.”

  “I can’t believe this happened to Rene,” Jack said, but the regrets quickly turned into concern. “What about you?” he said. “Aren’t you at risk?”

  “I would say yes. But you don’t need to worry about that.”

  “What do you mean I don’t need to worry? You’re my fiancée.”

  “Your fiancée is an FBI agent. You don’t have to worry about protecting me.”

  It was intended to put him at ease, but it didn’t sit entirely well with Jack. He didn’t fully understand why, though deep down he realized that there was still enough of the caveman gene in every male to make it unpleasant to hear that he didn’t need to protect his woman.

  Jack’s cell rang. He didn’t recognize the incoming number.

  “Is this a test, or should I answer it?” he asked Andie.

  Agent Burns shouted from the next room, “Go ahead and answer it.”

  Jack took the call.

  “Swyteck, this is Ted Gaines.”

  It was the first time Jack had heard from opposing counsel since their meeting in New York, and the last thing Jack felt like talking about at the moment was the lawsuit against BNN. “Not really a good time, Ted.”

  “This is not a discussion. We’ve seen the postings on Celeste Laramore’s Facebook page. Remove them immediately.”

  “What?”

  “I fully expected you to claim ignorance.”

  There was a beep on the line, and suddenly there was a third voice. “Good evening, gentlemen. Judge Burrows here.”

  Judge? Jack didn’t know the voice, but he certainly knew the name: Burrows was the judge in Celeste Laramore v. Breaking News Network.

  Gaines took control. “Thank you for agreeing to conduct this emergency hearing telephonically, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Swyteck, it would appear that there has been a violation of my order to keep the allegations of the complaint in this action confidential and under seal.”

  “Honestly, I have no idea what this is about,” said Jack.

  Gaines said, “It’s about the posting of confidential information on Celeste Laramore’s Facebook page. Judge, if you’re at your computer, I can get you to the proper Web page.”

  Jack followed along on his iPhone and pulled up Celeste’s Facebook page.

  The judge said, “I’m looking at the page now. What postings are you talking about?”

  “Right there on her wall. It’s the only information posted since Celeste Laramore went into a coma.”

  Jack scrolled down, knowing that the judge was doing the same. Sure enough, there were a series of status updates from that afternoon, bubbles of information stacked one on top of the other. Jack read the first, the second, the third—then skimmed the rest. Each status update was a few sentences in length. Collectively, the u
pdates—sixty-seven in all—repeated, verbatim, the substantive allegations of the complaint in Celeste Laramore v. Breaking News Network.

  “This is very troubling,” said the judge.

  Gaines jumped on the sentiment. “Your Honor, this is a blatant violation of a court order to file the complaint under seal and keep the allegations confidential. We demand that Mr. Swyteck remove the posts immediately.”

  “Mr. Swyteck, how soon can you make that happen?”

  “I’ll look into it as soon as this call is over.”

  “Look into it?” said the judge in a reproving tone. “Counsel, you need to remove it.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. But I want to be clear that I don’t know how this information even got here. It’s never been my practice to monitor the Facebook pages of my clients, and that’s especially true in this case. Obviously, Celeste didn’t do this.”

  “Obviously,” said Gaines. “But it doesn’t take a computer genius to know that these postings could have been made only by someone with account-manager status for Celeste’s Facebook page. Ruling out Celeste doesn’t rule out a single other person in her camp who had access to her username and password.”

  “That’s a ridiculous accusation,” said Jack.

  The judge intervened. “You’d better hope so, Mr. Swyteck. Because if this violation was willful and done at your direction, the sanctions against you and your client will be severe.”

  “Judge, we would like a hearing on the issue of sanctions as quickly as possible,” said Gaines.

  “We’ll deal with that in due course,” said the judge. “For now, I’m ordering Mr. Swyteck to remove these postings by midnight tonight. Further, I want a written certification delivered to my chambers no later than nine A.M. stating that the plaintiffs and their counsel are in full compliance with the confidentiality order. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” said Jack.

  “That’s all for this evening, gentlemen,” the judge said. A beep confirmed that he had dropped from the conference call.

  “I’m checking that page at twelve-oh-one A.M.,” said Gaines. “It had better be clean.”

  Gaines hung up. Jack took a deep breath and tucked his phone away. Andie came to him and massaged his neck.

  “That didn’t sound good,” she said.

  It would have been easy to unload on the spot and tell Andie what he would have liked to have told the judge—that the five horrendous days between Sydney’s release on Sunday and Rene’s murder on Thursday had been the personal and professional equivalent of a tsunami, and that the last thing any human being in his position should be held accountable for was the Facebook page of a client in a coma.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Jack.

  “Really? Isn’t there anything I can help with?”

  Jack appreciated the sentiment, then actually considered it. “Well, maybe there is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What do your tech agents know about Facebook?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was league night at Bird Bowling Lanes, and all twenty-two lanes were filled. While each team bore the name and logo of a different sponsor, collectively they had to be the largest display of baby-blue shirts south of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Merselus found a small table near the shoe rental counter, sat down with his cheese pizza and beer, and waited. If he’d been at a pizzeria, he would have sent the pie back to the kitchen as too greasy. Funny how being at a bowling alley made it tasty. To a point. He finished one slice and pushed the rest aside.

  Merselus checked his phone. Ten minutes before seven. Ten minutes until showtime. He kept an eye on the main entrance as he drank from his longneck. Technically, he was working, but one beer wasn’t against the rules. Especially since he made the rules.

  “Could I squeeze by you and get to those balls, please?” a woman asked.

  She was dressed in one of those baby-blue shirts, and Merselus was sitting in front of a rack of nine-pound pink bowling balls, so he knew exactly what she was after, but he turned it into something else.

  “Lady, your only hope of squeezing by anybody is a ten-week gig on The Biggest Loser.”

  She looked more hurt than angry, but she just stood there.

  “Take a hike, fatso,” said Merselus.

  She hurried away. Merselus watched her ass shake as she made a beeline to another rack on the other side of the alley. He was about to check his phone again for the time, then stopped himself. Patience was normally one of his virtues, but on a night like this, after all the planning, even Merselus had to remind himself to be cool.

  His gaze swept the alley. A guy on lane fifteen was in the seventh frame of a perfect game, and a crowd was beginning to gather. Merselus ignored the excitement, his focus shifting back and forth from the main entrance to the men’s locker room.

  It took about a week to get approved for a locker at Bird Bowl, and Merselus had reserved one with a stolen ID and fifty bucks in cash. The bait was inside the locker. It was just a matter of minutes before the dumbest fish in the sea came along to take it. Merselus recognized him the minute he walked through the main entrance doors.

  The dossier Merselus had compiled on Brian Hewitt was pretty simple. Twenty-seven years old. Unmarried. Unemployed. Two years of community college. He’d lived the fast life during Miami’s real estate boom, once upon a time having owned a town house in Coral Gables, a duplex in Hollywood, and six waterfront condos from Fort Lauderdale to Miami Beach. His typical Friday night had involved two lucky friends and a table full of women who were thrilled to take turns going down on a guy who could shove enough fraudulent mortgage applications through the system to afford a thousand-dollar bottle of Cristal at a South Beach nightclub. The burst of the subprime bubble had left him sharing a shitty two-bedroom apartment with three other losers who had been on a downward spiral since their glory days of high school football. Bankruptcy had seemed like the only answer to seventy thousand dollars in credit card debt. Until Merselus had come along. Not that Mr. Hewitt would ever hear the name Merselus, or have even the slightest idea who he was dealing with.

  Merselus allowed himself one more check of the time: seven P.M. Hewitt probably wasn’t as stupid as he looked, but he was prompt. And desperate. Not to mention way out of his league.

  Merselus watched Hewitt weave through the crowd, past the game room, past the billiard tables, past the ladies’ lounge. He walked briskly, a man on a mission, a complete newbie who had never been on the receiving end of a drop in his life. The clincher was the telltale glance over the shoulder before stopping at the water fountain. He knelt down and pretended to tie his shoe—ah, very smooth—and found the key exactly where Merselus had promised it would be: in the gap between the loose rubber baseboard and the wall beside the fountain. Hewitt tucked the key into his pants pocket, gave another nervous glance over his shoulder, and disappeared into the men’s locker room.

  Merselus drank his beer and waited. He had no fear that Hewitt or anyone else would recognize him. The eyeglasses, the flat-billed baseball cap, and the three-day stubble were disguise enough for this simple task. Across the bowling alley, he could see the agents in plainclothes moving into position, which gave him a rush of excitement and satisfaction. His call to the FBI had been anonymous, and he was pretty sure that he’d shared enough details to make his tip credible. But there had been no guarantee that the bureau would act on it. Thankfully, they’d not only acted on it, but they’d been smart enough to figure out for themselves that flooding the bowling alley with uniformed police officers would have scared off Hewitt and blown the setup.

  A minute later, Hewitt emerged from the lounge with a bowling-ball bag tucked under his arm—the same bag Merselus had left inside the locker. The excitement on his face quickly turned to fear. Two men stopped him right outside the men’s lounge. One flashed a badge. The other took the bag, zipped it open, and looked inside.

  There was no bowling ball in there, of course.

 
; A split second later, Hewitt was up against the wall, feet spread, hands cuffed behind his waist as the FBI read him his rights. The bowler who was working on the perfect game in lane fifteen had suddenly lost his audience. The curious crowd was gravitating toward the men’s lounge. The manager stepped out from behind the counter and pushed toward the center of the commotion.

  Merselus finished his beer and headed for the exit. The heat and humidity of another summer night hit him as the doors opened. He was in the parking lot, halfway to his car, when he noticed that someone had followed him out.

  “Hey, asshole,” the guy called out.

  Merselus kept walking.

  The heckler kept coming, now just a few steps behind him. “Hey, you owe my wife an apology.”

  Great, the thin-skinned fat chick sent her husband.

  Merselus wanted to ignore him, but the footsteps were closing in from behind. Merselus stopped, turned sharply, and cast a laserlike glare that very few people had seen and lived to remember.

  The guy nearly screeched to a halt.

  “Back off,” said Merselus.

  Two simple words and the expression on Merselus’ face were enough to make the guy’s voice shake in response.

  “You are, uh, gonna go back in that bowling alley and you’re gonna, uhm, apologize to my wife.”

  The fear was audible. Merselus approached slowly, looking him straight in the eye, not stopping until they were nearly nose to nose.

  “No. I’m not.” His tone wasn’t agitated or even argumentative—just a simple statement of fact, which made it all the more effective.

  The guy was built solid, obviously no stranger to the gym, and there was no question in Merselus’ mind that he’d successfully defended his wife’s honor in the past. This time, however, the knight in shining armor nearly dissolved on the spot, smart enough to sense that he wasn’t dealing with just another bully at a bowling alley. Not even close.

  The man took a step back, then turned and started away, walking at first, but nearly at a trot by the time he reached the doors and retreated into the safety of the bowling alley.