Fatal Deception

by Russell Blake

  “Oh. Wow. That’s great. But…I have to figure out what to do with all this stuff…”

  “Here’s my card. I can help. If we do a listing agreement, I have people who can clean the place, box everything up and move it out, whatever. How soon do you want it on the market?”

  “What’s your feeling?”

  “Anything can change, and there’ll be less demand once the weather turns, so I’d get it out as soon as possible. Next week, if you can.”

  “We can do it that quickly?”

  “Sweetheart, let me worry about that. You own it outright?”

  “That’s correct. There’s no mortgage.”

  “Then say the word and I’ll set up movers.”

  Tess looked around the room, feeling like she was sleepwalking, and blinked away the daze that was threatening to settle over her. It was time to make the big leap and either sell the place or keep it.

  Tess met the realtor’s eyes and nodded. It was time.

  “What’s the next step?”

  Chapter 8

  Gunter entered the coffee shop and looked around. His gaze settled on Paulo, who was sitting at a small round wooden table to the side of the café, and he nodded a greeting before approaching the barista and ordering his usual nonfat latte. He paid and then, coffee in hand, moved to where his associate was sipping from an oversized mug, with a sour expression.

  “Morning,” Gunter said, taking a seat across from him.

  Paulo wasted no time with niceties. “Be a better one if you had my money,” he groused.

  “Small hitch. Nothing major. I just need a few more days.”

  Paulo sat forward, angry. “That wasn’t the deal.”

  “I know, but it can’t be helped. The clients couldn’t make their appointment.” Gunter shrugged. “What can one do?”

  “Not get in over your head and string out your creditors, for starters. I’m going to have to add another week’s vig to it. Sorry. Out of my hands.”

  Gunter scowled. “That’s an awful lot for being late a couple of days.”

  “I don’t make the rules.”

  “But I just made a payment from the party…”

  “Which was only half what it was supposed to be.”

  Gunter stopped trying to reason with Paulo. “Fine. What do you have set up for next weekend?”

  “Everything the client asked for. As always.” Paulo had been working with Gunter for over a year on the special parties for his select clientele: high-net-worth individuals of a certain age whose jaded pallets required more…exotic stimulation than could be had in the mainstream. Gunter had met Paulo at a fetish club, one of many that catered to deviants of all stripes in the city, and had been intrigued when Paulo told him that he could supply virtually anything Gunter could imagine – for a price.

  That Paulo was mobbed up was apparent within the first few minutes of their discussion, but he’d always been professional in his dealings, delivering prostitutes, financing, and drugs, along with performance artists who specialized in the unusual. There was a thriving underground of Wall Street billionaires whose tastes ran to the extreme; and who, like Stibling in Connecticut, would pay top dollar for a one-of-a-kind performance designed exclusively for them. The client got to keep the props, and nothing more, but it wasn’t about possession – it was about obtaining a unique showing of a custom-tailored piece for the client and his like-minded friends to savor like fine wine – only the sort that bled.

  The costs could get crazy in a world where money was no object, and it wasn’t unusual for a show to run seven figures. The more unmentionable the request, the higher the price, and they’d carved out a specialized niche among a circle that was word-of-mouth only, whose membership shunned recognition and whose tastes could be as bizarre as anything from the Marquis de Sade’s most esoteric musings.

  The only thing Gunter drew the line at was outright killing – nobody would touch a snuff performance, for any price, at least not in the United States. He knew of those in Eastern Europe who were rumored to be able to arrange them, but had avoided any involvement even when Paulo had hinted at being able to make introductions. The heat was too great, and the last thing he needed was to invite Interpol or the feds into his life. Gunter had a good thing going with his New York clientele and didn’t want to put it in jeopardy.

  Paulo, on the other hand, was completely amoral and uninterested in anything but money, which he dealt in along with the rest of his offerings. Gunter had availed himself recently at ten percent weekly interest, his art gallery having experienced a rough patch, and the vig had quickly outstripped his ability to pay – to the point where he was now struggling to keep up with the interest payments.

  Gunter rubbed his face, his eyes bloodshot from another sleepless night. “You found someone willing to…?”

  “Yes. Someone who couldn’t service his debt in any other fashion.”

  Gunter nodded. This next performance involved a hedge-fund manager whose boyish good looks and stellar performance had made him a regularly spotlighted fixture in the financial press, and who wanted to celebrate his thirtieth birthday with something memorable – something he’d heard about from an associate who’d spent several years in northern Africa and had returned with a taste for fare that couldn’t be easily accommodated in polite society. The featured performance was to be an artist who was willing to have his arms and legs broken for the manager’s birthday amusement, at a cost of a quarter million. Gunter had put the word out, but there had been no takers – too much could go wrong, and nobody was willing to risk being crippled for life. That Paulo had found someone spoke to his tenacity as well as his connections. For a man who could secure anything from a million dollars in unmarked bills to a liver or kidney, complete with black market surgery at a topflight private South American or Indian clinic, the request had proved just another in a long line, and Gunter was again reminded that Paulo was not to be crossed.

  Paulo drained his cup and stood. “You have forty-eight hours for the next payment, or there will be consequences, Gunter. Even I won’t be able to call the dogs off at that point. Which would be a shame. We make a good team.”

  Gunter was struggling to frame a response when a couple of laughing jocks in rugby shirts and jeans bumped into Paulo, and one of them spilled coffee down the front of Paulo’s shirt. The kid barely noticed and muttered a halfhearted apology as he continued his loud conversation, leaving Paulo to stare holes through their backs as they shouldered their way through the line of customers and out the door.

  Paulo’s face was a mask of fury as he followed them to the exit and down the sidewalk, keeping his distance until they turned the corner. He picked up his pace and spotted the youths descending the stairs to the subway, and hurried down the steps after them.

  He paid his way onto the platform, which was quiet, only a few late-morning travelers headed uptown, and shadowed the jocks, which was painfully easy to do given their loud and boisterous behavior. There were no transit cops in evidence, and he pulled a knit cap from his peacoat and pulled it low over his brow, sunglasses firmly in place. The clatter of an approaching train sounded from down the track, accompanied by a rush of wind pungent with the smell of oil and dank concrete. Paulo waited until the train was rolling to a stop, and then flipped out a collapsible truncheon and moved quickly to where the pair was standing.

  The first blow caught the big lummox who’d spilled the coffee across the back of the head, and he dropped like a sack of wet cement. His buddy turned just in time to get slammed across the face. The boy’s nose exploded in a gush of red, and Paulo swatted him in the jaw with the club before kicking the larger youth in the side. He smiled when he heard the crack of bone from his steel-toe combat boots and then collapsed the truncheon and spun toward the stairs.

  Disembarking passengers gasped in shock at the sight of the youths twitching on the platform. Paulo was gone as quickly as he’d appeared, leaving the downed youths to find their way to a hospital on t
heir own. If it had been dark, he’d have extracted further vengeance, but he couldn’t take the chance, satisfying as it might be. He passed a security camera and gave it the middle finger before climbing the stairs with surprising speed, and was back on the street in under a minute – far faster than any police would be able to make it, he was sure.

  Once two blocks away, he removed the cap and glasses and shrugged off his coat, revealing wiry arms covered in full-sleeve tattoos, now just another anonymous pedestrian in a city of nearly two million going about his innocuous business, the episode all but forgotten save for the sticky warmth of the coffee on his chest and the tingle in the palm of his hand from the truncheon’s grip.

  Chapter 9

  Tess tilted her head back so the hot needles of water from the showerhead could rinse away the shampoo. She’d pulled her bicycle out of storage and ridden like she was being chased around the island, and after a four-hour run felt spent, but she was glowing from the flood of endorphins released during the grueling trek.

  She held her black mop of hair up as the stream of water washed the last of the suds from her neck and shoulders, and her fingers brushed the smiling sun tattoo at the base of her hairline, hidden by her ebony mane unless it was pulled into a ponytail or worn up. That and the kanji script on her bicep and the yin/yang at the small of her back were remnants of a past so distant as to be unrecognizable to her now, just as her bicycle messenger days seemed a lifetime ago and not a mere hundred days.

  Tess shut off the shower and toweled dry, the heavy rough terrycloth hotel towel stimulating against her skin. She closed her eyes and a vision of Ron Stanford sprang to mind, merriment dancing in his eyes as he approached her. She shook off the image, still wondering why she was so attracted to a man ten years her senior, who came from a background the polar opposite of her own – a conservative father figure, if anything.

  Only none of the feelings she had for him were in the least bit familial. One of the main reasons she’d come back to the city was to see where things with Ron could lead; their parting had created more questions than answers.

  But she wouldn’t rush things. Tess had learned to trust her instincts, and they were telling her that there was no need to force the situation, that whatever happened would be for the best. Tonight they’d meet for a late cocktail, but she didn’t expect anything more. He’d been preoccupied with his work when she spoke to him on the phone that morning, and for good reason – the Rose Killer was the lead story again during a slow news cycle, the lurid details too savory for the media to let die. But he’d again promised to free himself up and see her, which she considered a win, given the number of hours he was putting in.

  She ran a comb through her damp hair and then slipped on a fresh pair of panties before moving to the hotel strip closet and donning a sparkly crème blouse and black jeans that could have been painted on. Tess inspected the ensemble in the full-length mirror, twisting to see it from all angles, and opted for a pair of four-inch heels that made her already long legs seem endless. One of the benefits of years of rigorous exercise as a messenger was the near complete absence of body fat except in desirable spots, and she’d ensured that she remained trim while in Europe by running for an hour every morning, regardless of the locale. But for Tess, nothing beat the bike, and as she glanced at it leaning against the wall, she resolved to repeat the day’s performance as often as possible, even while living out of a suitcase.

  She glanced at her watch and felt a twinge of sorrow. The white gold Rolex President, with its vibrant blue lapis lazuli dial, always reminded her of her father and Nick, her boyfriend, who’d also been murdered by the hit team that had upended her existence. One of the last things Nick had done was to give her the watch as a keepsake from her father’s shop, and she couldn’t look at it without a wave of guilt washing over her. Why had she been spared? She knew the answer – dumb luck, and later, because she’d taken steps to defend herself – but it still felt inadequate, given the number who’d lost their lives in the crime spree.

  Tess gathered her purse and jacket, checking her cell phone and patting her back pocket to confirm she had the room key card, and then made her way to the door and flipped the do not disturb card over to alert the maid that she could enter. The hotel was nice, but she wanted her own place, and one of the things on her list was to look at apartments for rent.

  Only not today. She’d reserved the afternoon for Dakota, who’d confirmed that morning that Tess was on the list for the dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House, wherein the company would do a walk-through of the night’s performance – an unusual step usually reserved for several days prior to an opening, but because of the scheduling, in this case slotted for the same day.

  Tess opted to walk the twenty blocks to the Lincoln Center complex, enjoying the snap of the crisp fall breeze that blew down Eighth Avenue. She paused at the park to watch a pair of street musicians in Columbus Circle busking for spare change, and tossed a few dollars into their open guitar case before continuing north to the theater.

  At the stage door, a stern elderly man checked her name on the list and then demanded to see her identification before directing her into the bowels of the theater. The strains of recorded music echoed from above as she made her way along the passageway that skirted the backstage area and terminated at an exit leading to the front of the house. Another man who could have been the first’s twin held the door open for her and advised her that she could take whatever seat on the lower level she liked, but was forbidden to film or take photographs.

  She agreed and walked into the massive marble-floored lobby of the famous theater, and then to the double doors in the center of the long space. Once inside, she settled into a seat at the edge of the hundred or so other people watching the rehearsal. In the center of the group, a desktop with a glowing lamp occupied six of the center seats, and three figures made notes as the dancers went through their paces, most avoiding any exertion, saving their energy for the evening’s performance.

  Dakota had explained to Tess that she’d be featured in the pas de quatre as one of four swans, and was a villager in the first act. All the corps de ballet did double or triple duty in walk-on roles that consisted of standing around and appearing interested; the chore was a time-honored tradition, a rite of passage many never advanced beyond. Such was the nature of the ballet, where even those promising enough to make it to the big time weren’t assured of anything but an opportunity to continue practicing their craft as they waited for their elusive break.

  An hour and a half after Tess arrived, following numerous starts and stops, Dakota and her companions made it to the stage in their swan tutus, their legs swathed in knit wool legwarmers and sweaters over the glittering white costumes. The ballet mistress clapped her hands, the music started, and for several magical minutes her cousin was transformed from a slight girl barely on the threshold of adulthood to an ethereal creature that inhabited a world of evil sorcerers and love-struck princes, her movements achingly precise and, to Tess’s untrained eye, vastly superior to those of her peers.

  And then the little routine was over. The rehearsal continued, and the stage filled with ersatz swans as those around her in the audience murmured observations. Most of the spectators appeared to be other dancers or people associated with the ballet or the theater, and Tess felt self-conscious, as though she were violating the sanctity of a rarified space to which she had no claim.

  When the rehearsal concluded, Tess waited for Dakota to materialize from backstage as ushers arrived to tidy up the theater. After about twenty minutes, she poked her head from the stage door and smiled at Tess.

  “So? What did you think?”

  “That was incredible. And you’re going to do it all over again this evening?”

  “For real this time, though. Everyone was just phoning it in.”

  “So what’s on the agenda?”

  “Oh, I promised some of the girls I’d grab a snack, and then we have company class
at the theater before the show,” she said. “You want to come eat something?”

  Tess glanced around. “I don’t want to get in the way of you and your friends…”

  “You won’t. It’s just a light meal – you don’t want to dance on a full stomach. Can you wait a few minutes?”

  “Sure. I need to buy a ticket anyway. The box office wasn’t open.”

  “Do that, and meet me outside in ten.” Dakota’s eyes glittered. “Thanks for coming, Tess. It means a lot to me.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  Tess returned to the lobby and pushed past a guard to exit the building before swinging around to the box office. She purchased a nosebleed-priced orchestra seat and slipped it into her purse, and then ambled to the rear of the theater to wait for her cousin.

  Dakota appeared with three other ballerinas who could have been cloned in the same factory: all thin, with hair pulled back in severe buns, carrying oversized dance bags, and walking with the particular waddle caused by turned-out feet. None could have been over twenty, and Tess felt ancient as her cousin introduced her, the girls chattering, Dakota almost manic. Tess supposed it must be wildly exciting for her to be fulfilling her dream, dancing on the Met stage. She sat quietly, not having much to contribute, as the girls picked their way through salads at a moderately priced hole in the wall four blocks from the theater.

  When they were finished, Tess said her goodbyes and promised Dakota that she’d meet her after the show for a drink at Z, a trendy restaurant popular with the theater crowd.

  “Jeremy’s supposed to be there, too. I can’t wait for you to meet him,” she gushed. “Performance is over by eleven, so we should be at the bar about half an hour after that. I’ll be out of makeup pretty quickly.”