“Tess! You made it!” Dakota called over the hum of the crowd and the thumping music.
“Of course. You were awesome,” Tess cried back, narrowly avoiding a shoulder to the face as a man spun from the bar with a drink in hand.
“I think I did okay,” Dakota said, and then gestured to her companion. “Tess, this is Jeremy. Jeremy, my cousin Tess.”
Jeremy held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Tess smiled. “Likewise. What are you drinking?”
He seemed unsure and looked to Dakota. “Mineral water, with a lime,” she said.
“Vodka Collins,” he said, and Tess twisted around to relay the order to the bartender, who nodded and went to work.
“So, you’re in the financial industry?” Tess asked. Jeremy cupped his hand to his ear, and she repeated herself louder.
He nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I focus mainly on client acquisitions, that kind of thing,” he said.
“Really? For what company?”
“A broker on the street.”
“Which one?”
Jeremy pointed at his ear and shook his head. She was going to try again, but the bartender flagged her with the drinks.
An upbeat song blared over the speakers, making it even harder to talk, and after several aborted attempts to continue their discussion, they settled for smiling at each other as Dakota chirped in Tess’s ear. “Isn’t he amazing?” she asked, eyeing Jeremy the way a cat does a mouse.
“Sure,” Tess said, reluctant to discuss someone standing three feet away as though he wasn’t there, even if he couldn’t overhear. “You going to have dinner?”
Dakota pouted. “I wanted to, but Jeremy said it’s too crowded. He’s taking me to a place downtown he knows. It’s supposed to be way cool.” She paused. “Kind of a bummer. I was hoping you guys could have more time to get to know each other – and isn’t your date supposed to be here? I told Jeremy I thought you were meeting someone…”
“He works odd hours. He’ll be here when he gets here,” Tess said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Go have fun. Don’t wait on my account.”
Jeremy made short work of his drink and, five minutes after they arrived, laid a fifty on the bar next to Tess and leaned toward her. “We’re going to hit it. It was a real pleasure,” he said as Dakota rushed to finish her water. “Have a nice night.”
“Yeah. Thanks. You too. Take care, Dakota. It was a beautiful performance.”
Dakota flashed a bright smile and sidled up to Tess. “He’s really private,” she said, and Tess nodded as though she understood. The truth was that Jeremy looked like every other Wall Street barracuda. His pedigree was no doubt impressive, but he hadn’t said or done anything Tess hadn’t seen a million times before. But this wasn’t about her peccadillos, it was about Dakota, and Tess kept a smile frozen in place as Jeremy led her cousin out of the bar with confident strides, her hand in his, as the crowd parted like the Red Sea before him in a way Tess had to struggle to keep from finding annoying.
Ron appeared a few moments later, looking slightly frazzled and out of place. He spotted Tess at the bar and made for her, squeezing past a group of women who were sizing up their male counterparts with the professional detachment of breeders eyeing stallions.
“Hey,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “Sorry I’m late. Another crazy one.”
“No problem.”
“How was the ballet?”
“Gorgeous. Dakota can really dance. It wouldn’t surprise me if she became a big star.” Tess glanced toward the entrance. “You just missed her. She was here with her boyfriend – they were probably leaving when you came in.”
Ron nodded. “Was she wearing a red top? Blondish hair?”
“That’s the one. You met her?”
“No. But they almost ran me down on the way out. She’s cute. I mean, I’ve got shoes older than her, but…”
“Yeah. She’s so young, and she’s already dancing in front of thousands of people.”
Ron eyed her cocktail. “What are you drinking?”
“Cosmo. Can I buy you one?”
He sighed and gave her a sad smile. “Ten would be better.”
Tess appraised him. “That bad?”
“Let’s not ruin the night with my problems. I’m probably lousy company already without talking shop.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You have a certain crusty charisma.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day,” he said.
She turned to the bartender, pointed at her drink, held up two fingers, and then smiled at Ron by her side. “I’ll ply you with alcohol and bide my time,” she said.
“I could get used to that.”
Tess winked at him and gave him a glimpse of her tongue piercing. “All part of my evil plan.”
Ron grinned and then felt for his phone, his face falling as he pulled it from his jacket. He checked the message that had come in and grimaced. “I have to make this a short one, Tess. Things are heating up. Did you see me on TV tonight?”
She shook her head, her eyes clearly disappointed. “No. What happened?”
“Task force. I’m heading it. But there’s too much to do and not enough time. This guy’s on a short tether – the videos have been five days apart. That means the next one will show up in…”
Tess handed him his drink and did her best not to frown. “Four days.”
He took a long sip of the cocktail and toasted her. “Next time I’ll turn my phone off, Tess. I’m sorry. If there was any other way, I would have.”
“I understand,” she said in a tone that said she didn’t, and drained her first drink before raising her second in the air, returning the toast. “You did warn me.”
His eyes held hers. “I promise next time will be different.”
She broke the contact and nodded. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Chapter 12
Charles Stibling stood at the window of his renovated apartment in the Meatpacking District, glaring out at the buildings across the street as he listened to the robotic voice emanating from his cell phone. His left eye twitched when the call disconnected, and he turned to a hatchet-faced man by the door as he slipped the phone into his jacket pocket.
“He gave us half an hour to get to a garbage can at East Sixty-Eighth Street, just inside the park wall,” Stibling growled.
The man nodded as Stibling moved to the dining room table and flipped open the latches on a slim-line eel-skin briefcase. He swung the lid up and removed ten bundles of hundred-dollar bills, and then stalked into the kitchen to fetch a brown paper sandwich bag from one of the drawers. Back at the table, he slid the money into the bag before looking at the man.
“As usual, he warned me to come alone and to tell no one. But I’m tired of this. Do whatever is necessary to mount surveillance that won’t be spotted. I want to know who this cockroach is so we can deal with him for good,” Stibling said.
“Any constraints?” the man asked.
“None, other than don’t trip up. I want photos, and I want him followed. Whatever it takes, do it. Budget’s not a consideration.”
The man glanced at his watch. “I’ll scramble a team. But it’ll be tight.”
“Just do it.”
The man nodded and departed, and Stibling waited for several minutes before leaving with the bag. It would take him twenty minutes at that hour of the night if his driver pulled out all the stops, which he would if he wanted to keep his job.
The apartment was an acquisition from the prior decade, where Stibling had enjoyed the company of paid female companionship before his wife had passed away from a sudden stroke. She’d always had a taste for cocaine and meth, and he’d paid a small fortune for her drug-induced passing to be covered up by his private physician, who’d signed the death certificate and ensured a scandal-free funeral. Stibling had been relieved by her death – her behavior had become inc
reasingly antagonistic as she’d aged, and the bizarre mood swings and hallucinations from a lifetime of hard-drug abuse grew to dominate her life. Thirty years his junior, and once a revered beauty and socialite, she had gone dramatically downhill as she’d approached forty. The last few years she’d been a virtual shut-in, living out a waking nightmare of drug abuse, her habit catered to by the wait staff who kept her Park Avenue condo clean and her three Pekinese rat dogs fed and watered. Stibling had viewed her departure from the planet as a blessing, enabling him to keep the several billion dollars he’d have had to pay in a messy divorce. He’d already had one turn on that dance floor with his first wife and had resolved never to do so again, no matter what the circumstances.
He swallowed the fury that threatened to overwhelm him as he descended the stairs to the Maybach waiting in a red zone in front of the dumpy building. Some shitgrub had been blackmailing him for four months, a hundred grand at a swat, and it was time to put a stop to it. The money wasn’t the issue; it was more that Stibling didn’t dance to anyone else’s tune, regardless of the circumstances. A demigod in the hedge-fund world, nobody told him what to do. He’d more than earned his position of privilege in a dog-eat-dog world, and he’d see to it that whoever was extorting him would pay for their impudence.
But he’d have to be surgical. Stibling couldn’t afford rumors of his twisted proclivities to circulate – his reputation would be ruined, and with it, his legacy as a Wall Street giant. He’d still be rich, but he’d be a pariah in the New York social scene if his sexual appetites were revealed; and in his universe, becoming an ostracized nobody, or worse, the punchline to a season’s jokes, would be the ultimate punishment.
That wasn’t going to happen. He’d see to that.
Benjamin, the head of his security team and his main dirty-tricks expert, would do whatever it took to track the blackmailer, after which Stibling would make a call and have him neutralized. He’d had sufficient business dealings with questionable elements to know the right person to contact. He wasn’t worried about the law; people in his circle never did. Rules were written to keep the general population in check, not him – he bought and sold politicians and judges like schoolyard boys had traded baseball cards when he was a boy. No, he’d provide whatever information he could discover to an anonymous voice on the phone, and the blackmailer would be squashed like a bug without any risk to Stibling – that was how things were done.
The worst part for Stibling being that he had no idea who had dared to take him on.
The lack of control was intolerable for him. It couldn’t continue.
His driver held the car door open and Stibling grumbled the address to the man. “Break records getting there. It’s of paramount importance I arrive before midnight.”
“Yes, sir.”
The powerful motor pushed Stibling back into the leather seat as the driver floored the accelerator. Stibling nodded in satisfaction as they blew through a yellow light at triple any sane speed and slowed to make a left onto a major artery. The driver glanced at his master in the rearview mirror and then back to the road, traffic thin on a Monday night by Manhattan standards.
The vehicle pulled to the curb at Central Park with four minutes to spare, and Stibling got out unassisted, his long overcoat gripped tight against the cold that each year crept deeper into his aging bones once the leaves began to turn. The area was deserted, and his Ferragamo heels clicking against the sidewalk were the only sound as he made his way to the shadowed park entrance.
When he was a young man, Central Park after dark had been a death sentence, but over the last generation it had become as safe as anywhere in the city, the gentrification of the island complete, costs in Manhattan so high that the criminals could no longer afford to live in even the worst areas. He had little fear of being mugged, and wasted no time in finding the metal trash container and dropping his bag of money inside, unable to spot any signs of surveillance.
That he was being watched by at least his own men was a given. That his blackmailer was also nearby was an assumption, but a safe bet. The thought that the prick was within spitting distance enraged Stibling, but he kept his fury in check and marched back to where his car was waiting. His part in the night’s adventure was over.
A figure shuffled from the depths of the park toward the can six minutes after the expensive sedan’s brake lights disappeared around a corner. A soiled climbing jacket with a rip across the back enveloped the figure’s upper body, baggy jeans and construction boots completing the ensemble.
The vagrant stopped at the can, reached in, and after ferreting around for a moment, retrieved the paper bag, peered into it, and stuffed it inside the folds of the jacket. His gaze roved over his surroundings, and then he made his way toward Park Avenue, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to ensure he wasn’t being followed. If he sensed the multiple cameras filming him from three angles, or the interest of a man on a motorbike a block down, he gave no indication. Two minutes later he vanished down the stairs of a subway station, leaving the streets to late night revelers and taxis racing downtown – and the surveillance team that had captured his every move.
Chapter 13
Jeremy checked the time as he slid the key into the lock of his Upper East Side brownstone and cursed under his breath. It was later than he’d realized, and he had to be at work in only a few hours – as always, well before the markets opened. Time had gotten away from him by the point his night with Dakota had ended, a constant refrain in their sojourns.
He stepped through the doorway, pulled the antique iron and glass door closed behind him, and dropped his keys into a ceramic bowl on an end table in the foyer. Running his fingers through thick hair still damp from his shower at the downtown apartment he kept for his trysts, he headed down the hall to where a light shone from the living room.
A man about Jeremy’s age with a scraggly beard and bloodshot eyes sat on one of the butterscotch leather Scandinavian sofas, a blanket over his legs, thumbing a gaming console. In front of him, a commando toting an assault rifle bounced behind cover on the massive wall-mounted flat-screen TV.
Jeremy frowned and sniffed the air. “Were you smoking something in here, Bob?” he asked, his voice low.
“No,” Bob said, not missing a beat with his shooter.
“Smells like weed to me.”
An exasperated sigh issued from Bob and he paused the game. “What are you saying, Jeremy? That I’m lying?”
“I know what I smell.”
“You’re probably picking it up off my shirt or something, dude. Just chill out.”
“Bob, I’m not going to chill out. This is my home, and I have rules.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve heard all about them. Relax. I’m not smoking in the house.”
Jeremy eyed the bottle of rotgut vodka beside Bob and the remains of pizza crusts in a half-open container on the floor. “Clean this up before morning, will you?” he snapped, and then turned on his heel, unwilling to escalate the argument at the late hour.
“Sieg heil, mein Fuhrer,” Bob muttered. Jeremy let it go, pretending not to hear him.
Jeremy climbed the stairs to the second floor and slipped off his shoes, leaving them by the stairs. He padded down the wood-floored hallway toward a dark room at the far end and then stepped across the threshold and moved silently to a twin-sized bed. He leaned over and kissed the little boy slumbering in it, and then did the same to a little girl in the second bed. She stirred and he gazed at her for a long moment, holding his breath. She turned over and adjusted her pillow, and then resumed her regular snuffling, her allergies a constant concern in the autumn and spring.
The hallway floorboards creaked under his weight as he returned to the stairs with measured steps. He paused to scoop up his shoes and then continued to the third-floor master bedroom. He paused at the door and blinked several times to allow his eyes to adjust to the nearly complete darkness, the heavy velvet curtains on the window drawn shut, blocking out the stre
etlights.
The hinges squealed softly and he winced at the sound, having forgotten to oil them in the constant battle against entropy in a building more than a hundred years old. He’d bought it with his annual bonus from a particularly good year when he’d seen over ten million dollars for landing several whale customers. It had appreciated considerably since, but no matter how skilled the refurbishment, it was impossible to stave off all the effects of age. As with the floorboards, he’d just gotten used to the cranky home’s idiosyncrasies, but tonight they all seemed to be conspiring against him.
A stirring from the king-size bed stopped him in his tracks, and a woman’s groggy voice called out to him.
“Honey?”
Jeremy swallowed and blinked. “Yes, sweetheart.”
“What time is it?”
“Two thirty. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. The night ran later than I’d hoped.” Jeremy approached the bed and sat beside his wife.
“Did it turn out well for you?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not really.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Maybe after I brush my teeth. Try to go back to sleep.”
“What is it, honey?” Elizabeth asked, concern in her voice, which was now more awake.
“I…nothing.” He paused and looked around the darkened room. “Bob’s turning the living room into a disaster area again. I think he was smoking a joint in there, too.”
“He’d never do that.”
“He denied it, of course.”
“I’m sorry. It’s only for another week or two, until he gets back on his feet.”
“Why don’t we put him in a nice hotel down by the Bowery, where all the other ex-cons and dope fiends hang out? It’ll be like homecoming for him. He’ll probably know half the flophouse.”
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