Blood Money

by James Grippando

  “All right, don’t hang up. But I want you to memorize her number,” he said, and then he gave it to her.

  “I’m not calling the FBI. You’re my lawyer. You have to protect my not-guilty verdict. Please, please. I’m begging you. I can’t come back for another trial.”

  “Maybe you can come back, if you call the FBI.” He blurted out Andie’s number again.

  “I can’t! You have to do whatever it takes to stop that judge from throwing out the verdict. No way can I put myself in a courtroom or any other box where he can find me.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “His name is Merselus.”

  “Merciless?”

  “Might as well be.” She spelled it.

  “What’s his last name?”

  “That is his last name. Or maybe not. I don’t know. He just goes by Merselus. He found me when I was in jail, said he was a Hollywood agent. When he actually followed through and got the money for the private airplane to my father, we figured he was legit. Or at least I thought my fucking dad would have checked him out to make sure he wasn’t just another crazy son of a bitch with a hard-on for Shot Mom.”

  “Your father—”

  “I gotta go. I gotta go right now!”

  “Sydney, wait!”

  “Just help me, okay? He tried to strangle me, Jack! Don’t you get it?”

  Jack started to reply, but she was gone. He put the phone on the nightstand and glanced at Andie. She’d heard only one side of the conversation, and Jack wasn’t ready to share the other half. He was thinking of Celeste. And Rene. Then he touched his own neck, recalling his personal encounter with this Merselus.

  Yeah, Sydney. I do get it.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Merselus entered his apartment and locked the door—two deadbolts and a chain. It was dark inside, save for the faint glow from the closet, and the room smelled of mildew from the afternoon rain. A forty-year-old roof was no match for Miami’s summer cloudbursts. Merselus could have afforded a much nicer place, but he preferred the anonymity that came with a cheap apartment, no questions asked. He didn’t need a team of Ritz-Carlton servants trying to memorize how he liked his eggs in the morning, what newspaper he preferred, or what time he wanted his bed turned down. The longer-lease apartments in his complex faced the river, but his week-to-week rental was on the street side, directly across from a nightclub. Even on the third floor, his boarded window was no barrier to the urban-jungle noise rising up from the sidewalk outside the club. Men growled like lions with an aching sack, the modern-day version of chest beating. Women laughed like hyenas in heat—some way too loud, giving away their eagerness. The pulsating music from a passing set of gangsta wheels was familiar to him, and Merselus fudged a lyric here and there until the song came clear in his head: “Not Afraid” by Eminem.

  Definitely not afraid.

  Merselus placed his phone on the nightstand and plugged in the charger. The glowing crystals said 2:32 A.M. He was tired, but he couldn’t lie down and close his eyes. There was something he needed more than sleep. Much more.

  How Sydney had slipped through his fingers—literally—was beyond him. Prior to her release, they’d spoken to each other only on the jailhouse telephone, and she’d totally bought the Hollywood-agent story he’d fed her. Selling the movie rights to her trial was only the beginning. Sydney wanted to be a star, and her first performance had proved her a natural—that passionate embrace on the runway, as if she were reuniting with a long-lost lover, exactly the way he’d choreographed it.

  In your face, Swyteck.

  After three years in jail, Shot Mom would have jumped on the casting couch with the first guy to throw money at her. It was their second night together when her pants had come off. He remembered how she loved his hands, his huge strong hands, and how he’d worked her so hot that she was tasting herself from his long, wet fingers. And then he’d made his move. One hand still working her loins into a frenzy, as he remembered it, and the other rising up from her breasts to her neck. Gently at first, his hand slipped into position. Then his fingers closed around her throat, but not too much pressure, nothing too alarming, just enough to bring about the enhanced sensation of genital stimulation and oxygen deprivation. Months of planning were on the verge of becoming reality, working Sydney with both hands. There was a fine line to maintain, and it wasn’t between her wanting it and fearing it. Merselus knew from experience: They wanted it because they feared it. The line not to cross was fearing it too much. That line would be crossed only when he so chose, when it was no longer her moment, but his, for the taking. At least that had been the plan. Somehow, he’d pushed Sydney too far, too soon, and when she scratched him like a cat across the face, he instinctively let her have a taste of what he’d given Celeste Laramore. Not enough to send Sydney into a coma, but enough to put her out for at least an hour—at least as long as Swyteck had lain unconscious alongside Main Highway. Thirty minutes later, when he’d returned to check on her, he discovered how badly he’d miscalculated—how she’d fooled him. Sydney was gone.

  It wasn’t surprising, he supposed, the way he’d undershot on the application of pressure to Sydney’s carotid sinus. Just two days before, he’d pushed it too far with Celeste Laramore, sending her into a coma. He’d overcorrected on Sydney and pulled back too much, allowing her to recover too fast. This was an art, not an exact science. It was all a matter of touch. He wondered if he was losing his.

  No way.

  Merselus got his laptop computer from the closet and carried it to the bed. He removed his shirt and opened his pants. With a click of the mouse, he entered the dark side of the Internet, the world of file swapping and peer-to-peer trading. Return to the virtual world was risky. If he weren’t careful, he could exhaust himself and chill his drive to conquer the real thing. That very possibility made him all the more angry with Sydney. It was her fault. She had left him this way, left him with no choice but to go back to this place. It was easy to get caught up, to stay here night after night, till the rage subsided.

  This time, just a quickie.

  Merselus knew the exact file he was looking for, and he found some loser in Budapest offering it for swap. It was cumbersome for Merselus to put himself in the position of having to trade to get his own videos back. But releasing his work to a peer-to-peer network, where it would be traded thousands of times on computers around the globe, put a safe distance between Merselus the creator, and Merselus the consumer. No one in law enforcement could ever unravel the chain of custody and trace the obscene file back to its creator. It was the pornographic version of laundering money.

  Merselus clicked DOWNLOAD, and the thumbnail came into focus. At first he could see the top of a woman’s head, her chestnut hair. Then her face came into view, eyes wide with fright. Then her long, slender neck wrapped in a leather collar. She was on her knees, hands and feet bound, naked except for the collar and spiked harness that was strapped so tightly below her breasts that she was bruised and bleeding at the ribs. The image was a bit grainy, which was a good thing. It made her face a little fuzzy.

  It enhanced her vague resemblance to Sydney.

  Merselus scrolled to the bottom of the page, to a message that was superimposed on the image, written in bold red letters: CHOKE ON IT. And she would, too. Some pervs got off on the kiddie porn, turned on by underage girls having sex for the first time. Others—guys like Merselus—got off on women having sex for the very last time.

  He moved closer to the bed, towering over the image on the screen, preparing himself for two minutes of insanity that would leave him and her—especially her—breathless. This one had shown such attitude at one time, real push back, just like Sydney. She’d even tried to talk him into reversing roles, to let her try erotic asphyxiation on him, but he was no fool. The hotel maid would have found him the next morning hanging in the closet with his dick in his hand. No one, however, would ever find little Miss Choke-on-It. These two minutes were all that remained. His self
-made films didn’t come close to capturing the excitement of the conquest, but they were better than raw memory. They were his movies, his moments.

  With a click on the START arrow, there began another dark night down memory lane.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Jack and Andie did a Saturday-morning run through Crandon Park to the beach and back. It wasn’t a race. Still, it bugged him that the only way to make his pace a workout was for Andie to run backward while pulling along a dog on a leash.

  “I think Max wants to go again,” she said.

  They were in the driveway, Jack hunched over with his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath. “We’ll see how spry he is when he hits forty.”

  Andie took Max for another three miles. Jack recovered in a hot shower.

  Jack’s to-do list was chock-full. Sydney’s remark about Merselus—“he found me in jail”—had put one more thing on it. Jack wasn’t sure if that meant he called, wrote, or came to see her. He sent Theo to the women’s detention center to get a log of every visitor, every caller who had contacted Sydney. By the time Theo returned, Jack had killed a pot of coffee and mapped out the strategy for the upcoming hearings.

  “We’ll have it this afternoon,” said Theo.

  On a weekend, that wasn’t a bad job of cutting through the red tape. “We can check on it after we see Mr. Bennett,” said Jack.

  A follow-up with Sydney’s parents was at the top of Jack’s task list. He’d called them immediately after his phone conversation with Sydney. Sydney wasn’t a minor, but they were her only family, and Jack felt they should know that their daughter was apparently on the run and in danger. Her mother had seemed appreciative of the call—enough so that she’d promised Jack that both she and Mr. Bennett would meet with him in the morning. But that was before her husband had snatched the phone away from her and bid Jack good night. Jack decided to show up anyway.

  Theo drove. They were in Miami Gardens before lunchtime. The garage door was open, and Geoffrey Bennett was inside, lifting weights on his bench press. He was dripping with sweat, his arms and chest pumped up from too many reps. He was actually in better physical shape than Jack would have expected—a reminder that even though the Bennetts were grandparents, they were just a few years older than Jack. Still, the nylon shorts were way too formfitting for a man his age, and the thick leather weight belt was a notch too tight, as if vanity refused to let him admit that his waist had expanded even an inch in the previous ten years.

  “Is Ellen here?” asked Jack.

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’d like to speak to your wife.”

  “She’s not feeling well. What do you need?”

  It was the same old story. No one got to Mrs. Bennett except through her husband.

  “I need to know who Merselus is,” said Jack.

  “Who?”

  “Sydney says that’s the name of the man who met her at Opa-locka Airport on the night of her release.”

  “You mean Merselus,” said Bennett. “I thought you said merciless.”

  “It’s becoming a common mistake.”

  “I like that name,” said Theo. “Merciless. Has a bad-ass rapper ring to it. Like Killa Sin or Gangster Starr or—”

  “Shorty Shitstain?” said Jack.

  “Whatta you know about Shorty?”

  “More than I want to,” said Jack.

  Bennett glanced at Theo, then back at Jack, as if not sure what to make of them. “Why would I know who this Merselus is?”

  “He tried to strangle your daughter after they left the airport.”

  Bennett paused before answering, staring at Jack. “That’s disturbing, to say the least. But that doesn’t mean I know him. To the contrary, do you think I would put my daughter in the hands of someone like that?”

  “Sydney said they connected when she was in prison. More to the point, she thought you had checked him out before she trusted him to be her agent.”

  “Well, that would be just like her to blame someone else, wouldn’t it?”

  Theo grumbled. “Just cuz she’s the one doin’ the blamin’ doesn’t mean you ain’t to blame.”

  “The big guy actually has a point,” said Jack.

  “Look, her mother and I did what Sydney asked us to do. She told us she had a big-shot agent who was going to take care of her, but they needed us to lease the plane in my name to keep the Hollywood connection out of the press. The money landed in our bank account, and I took care of the plane. That was my whole involvement. And her mother’s. We never met the guy, never talked to him. That was the end of it.”

  “You didn’t ask—”

  “I didn’t ask anybody anything,” said Bennett. “I wanted Sydney out of jail and out of our hair.”

  Jack studied his expression, taking a read. “That’s a good story.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “What do you think, Theo?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Theo. “I think somebody in this house needs a good ass-kicking.”

  Bennett took a step back. “Is that a threat?”

  “No, that was purely an expression of opinion. See, the man asked me what do I think. I told him what I think. That’s an opinion, and if you want to get legal about it, the opinions expressed here are solely those of Theo Knight and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of Jack Swyteck, P.A., the Florida Bar, or the pansy-ass association of nonviolent white guys who keep friends with former death row inmates just in case they might need to call up an ass-kicking. You got a problem with that?”

  “I—I don’t think so.”

  “Good. Cuz if I was threatening you, I would—”

  Jack extended his arm, stopping Theo before he could take another step closer.

  Bennett made his chest swell. “Y’all need to leave my property.”

  “You need to think about what I said,” Theo said.

  “Let’s go,” said Jack.

  They walked back to the car, and Bennett returned to his bench press, the free weights clanging as Jack and Theo climbed inside and closed the doors.

  “Pansy-ass association of what?”

  “Sorry, dude. Was just makin’ a point.” Theo started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask for another opinion, but what do you think? Does Mr. Bennett know Merselus?”

  Theo put on his shades, eyes on the road. “Just like his daughter. Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  Jack glanced out the window as they passed the Bennett house. He noticed Mrs. Bennett watching from the front porch, her gaze following their car down the street. A bright yellow sundress made her perpetual tan look even darker than usual. Colorful sundresses were what she had worn almost every day for Sydney’s trial.

  “The key here is to talk to someone in this family who doesn’t wear pants.”

  “Then let’s do it,” said Theo.

  Jack thought of all the times he’d tried to have a one-on-one conversation with Sydney’s mother. “It needs to be handled just right. Ellen literally hasn’t left the house since the trial started. She doesn’t even have a cell phone. We can discount a lot of what her husband says, but I don’t doubt that she’s battling depression.”

  “Just call her, Jack.”

  They stopped at the STOP sign. The Bennetts’ street was in his passenger’s-side mirror, and Jack could see down the block to their house in the reflection. Ellen Bennett was still standing on the porch, having watched their car all the way to the intersection.

  “No,” said Jack. “Once a seed is planted, the worst thing you can do is dig it up to see how it’s growing. Give her a little more time. She’ll come around.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Andie finished her three-mile run with Max in record time. She showered and spent the rest of the morning on a chaise longue in the backyard, struggling her way through one of those recorded instructional CDs that promised complete fluency in a foreign langu
age for ninety-eight percent of users faster than you can say, I must be part of the two percent. Max was in a perfect “sit/stay,” head cocked, ears peaked, and a puzzled expression on his golden face. Apparently, he didn’t speak Chinese.

  “Max,” she said, followed by her best attempt to say “Come” in a language she hadn’t spoken since her days in the Seattle field office. It was part of her training for her undercover assignment, Operation Big Dredge. Counterfeit goods galore from China were expected to come through the widened Panama Canal and the expanded Port of Miami. A brushup on Mandarin Chinese would be useful.

  “Max, please. A little encouragement.”

  He cocked his head the other way.

  “I think we’re hopeless, buddy.”

  Andie removed her earbuds, shut down her iPad, and went back inside the house. She was pouring a cup of green tea—that part of China she got, no problem—when her cell rang. She had a feeling about the unknown number on the caller ID.

  “This is Agent Henning,” she said.

  There was a slight pause, then a voice that Andie recognized, even though they had never spoken to one another: “Swyteck told me to call you at this number.”

  Andie gripped the phone. “Sydney?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you called. You’re doing the right thing.”

  “He didn’t give me much of a choice.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “Jack,” she said, and just the mention of his name seemed to bring an edge to her voice. “He thinks he can just pass me along to you, like I’m not his problem. I am his problem. He’s part of this. He’s as much a part of this as I am.”

  “Okay. I understand you’re angry.”

  “I’m angry, I’m tired, I’m fed up with the whole fucking world treating me like I’m some kind of monster. Tell Jack he needs to help me.”

  “Jack can’t help you. Work with me and the FBI will—”

  “No, this isn’t a call to the FBI. I’m talking to Jack’s girlfriend. You tell Jack that if he wants to find out what happened to his other girlfriend, he needs to help me, okay?”