Malice

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  He glanced at the fireplace, where, in a single concession to modern times, blue flames of natural gas licked around ceramic logs; then he turned his attention to the cliché bearskin rug in front of it. He took note of a pair of cherry-red high-heel shoes—Gucci, I believe—cast aside at the end of one rear claw, waiting for their owner to retrieve them. Unfortunately, that will never happen, he thought, more as something else to file away rather than any sentiment.

  The mantel above the fireplace had been decorated for the Christmas holiday with what smelled to be real cedar boughs but with suspiciously uniform, and therefore fake, red berries attached. A few more holiday items—a flickering, cinnamon-scented red votive candle surrounded by plastic mistletoe, as well as a stack of Christmas cards—adorned the desk that dominated the room. There was also a photograph of the man who lived in the mansion, as well as his blue-eyed, blond Barbie of a wife and their three college-age daughters. The smiles on the faces of the parents looked about as real as the berries and the logs.

  Now for “the talk,” he thought. He had a carefully honed ability to assess a situation and make a decision almost instantaneously. This was, after all, what made him successful. His business card stated: “Discreet risk assessment and mitigation.” It was an ambiguous way of saying that he made prodigious amounts of money by quietly and definitively “fixing” problems for wealthy and powerful people who messed up.

  In fact, most of those who received a business card, which bore only the inscription and a toll-free telephone number, knew him as the Fixer. That’s how he was referred to—usually by satisfied former customers, who then passed on his information to others in need of such services. And it was how he preferred the relationship to remain, though as he also traveled in some of the same social circles as his clients, they occasionally bumped into one another. His clients had been instructed on what to do in the event of a chance meeting. They knew better than to behave as if they’d ever met him anywhere else or as anyone else. For all intents and purposes, he was Jim Williams, a quiet and unassuming investment banker.

  Of course, that was not his real name, but it was perfect in its forgettable-ness. Physically, the Fixer didn’t stand out, either. He looked like the typical middle-aged businessman who kept in shape at the local health club and watched what he ate but was otherwise unremarkable. Average height. Average looks. Average slightly receding hairline above a bland oval face. Then again, it was an asset in his line of work not to be noticed or remembered from a casual glance.

  If there was anything that stood out about him, it was his heightened state of alertness, evidenced by the way his dark eyes seemed to record everything they saw, and the calm confidence he exuded when dealing with clients and their issues. But even that he kept under wraps unless he was working. He did have a way of standing that a trained eye might have concluded meant a military background, and indeed he’d gone from Special Forces many years earlier to the Company before going into the business of fixing problems for people with money. Speaking of which . . .

  The Fixer’s attention shifted to the man in the plum-colored smoking jacket sitting on the edge of a Chesterfield leather chair in a dark corner of the room. The object of his attention was bowed over, his tanned, ruggedly handsome face buried in his hands, as his shoulders and silver mane of hair shook with each muffled sob.

  Crying . . . and with good reason, the Fixer thought clinically. There was a young woman lying naked, and in a state of rigor mortis, on the master bed upstairs, and this apparently despondent family man had killed her. And for what? A shortcircuit between his brain and his balls?

  The Fixer shook his head. It never ceased to amaze him how people with as much station, power, and money as the man in the corner could be so good at throwing it all away for some ass, or more power, more recognition, or a few more bucks they didn’t need. Like heroin junkies, they were addicts: the more they got, the more they needed. Then they’d refuse to acknowledge that they had a problem until they really had a problem.

  Good thing, he told himself as he began to cross the room toward the man. Or I wouldn’t be in business.

  Upon arriving at the house, he’d spoken briefly with his new client’s assistant, a young man named Peter, who’d placed the call to him. Thank God someone in the house was thinking with something other than, well, you know. The Fixer had then directed the semihysterical client to make himself a stiff drink and have a seat in the library. “Don’t make any calls. Don’t touch anything,” he’d warned.

  After that, he’d gone upstairs with the members of his team and Peter to view “the problem.” She was lying on her back, her head and waves of auburn hair hanging over the edge of the four-poster bed. Her pale blue eyes were wide open and upon closer inspection revealed subconjunctival hemorrhaging, which occurs when tiny blood vessels break just underneath the clear surface of the eye—a common feature of death by strangulation. As if the bruises around her neck weren’t proof enough of what happened here, he thought as he knelt beside the bed.

  Despite the waxy pallor of her skin and the bluish tint to her lips, he could tell that she’d been a real beauty. But all she is now is a liability. He stood and left the room to make his way back down the stairs to the library, leaving his men to begin their work.

  He’d put on gloves before entering the house, as had all of his men. Their job was to remove evidence, not add to it. However, the tuxedo wasn’t his normal business attire. He’d been at a holiday party in Manhattan when he got the call, and there wasn’t time to change clothes before climbing into his Porsche 993 and rushing to this home in Westchester County. He wasn’t happy about the call, as it meant leaving his beautiful girlfriend surrounded by wealthy, better-looking men who thought that she could do better than a boring, if financially well-off, middle-aged banker. But part of being the Fixer was that he was on call anytime of the day or night; for the kind of money he commanded, he had to be.

  There will be an extra fee for that tacked onto tonight’s invoice, he noted in his mental ledger. The bill would go to the people Peter really worked for, and they’d gladly pay it. They had a lot invested in the man’s future potential.

  At least they’d had the sense to keep someone on the payroll to monitor their prize rooster. Peter might have saved the day. He was a little surprised it had taken so long for the proverbial shit to hit the fan with this man. The rumors about his serial philandering had been out there for years, but a friendly liberal press had not tried very hard to confirm the allegations, and the missus was apparently resigned to the role of a stoic cuckquean.

  However, that was before her famous husband killed a young woman. Now neither she nor the press nor the police would be able to look past this transgression.

  “What was her name?” he asked, sitting on a corner of the desk. His voice was quiet but firm.

  The man looked up through tear-filled eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

  It was a pretty typical reaction, and the Fixer let it go the first time. In these sorts of situations, clients felt the need to express remorse for their fuckups. But part of his job was to remove the emotion from the moment and keep the client focused.

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” he said dryly. “But it doesn’t matter now, and it’s not my concern. Most respectfully, sir, my job is to make sure the problem goes away. Was this an affair or a ‘professional’ relationship?”

  “It was . . . it was both,” the man said. His lip trembled, and he moaned. “Oh, God, help me . . . she was a call girl, but I fell in love. I was going to buy out her contract so that she could be with only me. And maybe someday, when the timing was better, I was going to divorce my wife and marry her.”

  Now the man was starting to annoy him. Most of the people he had to help were idiots, but some were worse than others and needed to be brought down to earth, or they could make his job impossible.

  “Yes, and let me guess, the two of you would then ride off into the sunset and live happily ever aft
er,” he said, his voice still flat and emotionless. “Instead, you killed her. Judging by the bruises on her throat and the position of her body, I’d say you were engaged in something pretty damn kinky, things got exciting and before you knew it, she wasn’t moving anymore.”

  “It was an accident,” the man said, now scowling slightly. He wasn’t used to being dressed down. “She liked it rough, to the point of passing out just as I . . .” The scowl faded as the man rubbed his eyes; his lip quivered again. “But we loved each other. You make it sound so cheap. I should just . . . I should just turn myself in.”

  The Fixer remained still as stone, but he allowed the intensity of his voice to turn up a notch. “Cut the shit. I need you to wake up and smell the coffee. We’ve got a real problem on our hands, and just because I’m here now doesn’t mean it’s over. You choked the life out of an expensive prostitute while getting your rocks off. It was not a beautiful thing, and it ended in murder. If you don’t get your shit together, they’re going to lock you up and throw away the key, if they don’t stick a needle filled with poison in your arm to execute you. Is that how you want to go out?” The Fixer looked down at his client. “You knew this was bound to happen,” he said. “People like you are so seduced by your power and money that you believe you can do anything you want and get away with it. But then the high isn’t high enough, so you do just a little bit more. And the more you get away with doing, the more you think you can.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Oh, no? You want to tell me that you didn’t get an extra kick out of screwing a prostitute your daughter’s age, in your marriage bed, while the wife and kids were out of the house? Why not a hotel or her place? In fact, I’d bet it was a thrill to think that even if the chance was remote, your wife might come home early and catch you. Of course, you would have been up shit creek if she had, and they would have called me then, too. But that still would have been better than this; making a sordid little affair go away is a lot easier than hiding a murder. So right now, I need you to quit sniveling about your hopeless love for a hooker and answer my questions as quickly and accurately as you can. Now, I asked you once before if you knew her name; I need an answer.”

  “Brandy,” the man replied. “Brandy Fox.”

  The Fixer blinked once. “Brandy Fox? Now, that doesn’t sound like a stage name, does it? Any idea about her real name?”

  The man held up a small black purse that he’d had in his lap. “This was hers. Maybe there’s some ID.”

  The Fixer’s eyes darkened. “Where did you get that?”

  “She left it on my desk.”

  “You were told not to touch anything.”

  The man looked frightened. “I wasn’t thinking . . . this is such a shock . . .”

  The Fixer held up his hand. “I don’t want to hear it.” He took the purse as he continued to glare at his client. “Did you touch anything inside this purse?”

  “What?”

  The Fixer let his breath out slowly. “Did you put your hands inside this purse for any reason? Would your fingerprints be on anything other than the outside?”

  The man swallowed hard and shook his head. “I didn’t open it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  The Fixer opened the purse and removed a wallet. He glanced through the contents and placed it back. “Fake ID. You said she was a call girl. Was she an independent, or did she work for a service?”

  “I was introduced to her through the Gentleman’s VIP Club,” the man said. “It’s an online, um, dating service.”

  “Do you know if she told them or anyone else that she was coming here tonight?”

  The man shook his head and offered a slight smile. “Tonight was . . . she said it was her Christmas present to me, off the books.”

  “I saw the jewelry box on the floor, so I presume the two-carat diamond earrings were your Christmas present to her. Not exactly a freebie, but I guess it’s a matter of perspective. . . . The people who run this club, were they aware that ‘Brandy’ was seeing you? They know who you are?”

  “The owner is a woman. Actually, an old acquaintance, and I’m sure she can be counted on for discretion.”

  “I’m sure . . . at least under normal circumstances, but that might not include someone killing one of her girls,” the Fixer responded. “But the ‘Christmas present’ could be a bit of luck. Tomorrow I want you to contact this woman and try to make another date with ‘Brandy.’ Two reasons. One, you’ll know then if ‘Miss Fox’ was telling the truth and her boss didn’t know about this Christmas present. And two, if you’d just killed a prostitute, would you call her pimp and ask for that girl again?”

  The man nodded. Hope crept into his eyes. “I see. Of course. That’s clever.”

  “Clever is what I do,” the Fixer said. “In fact, I want you to try to get a date a few times over the next couple of weeks. Get angry when it can’t be arranged. Accuse them of holding out on you. . . . And I’ll need to know how to contact this club. I’ll want to keep an eye on this friend of yours. Did Miss Fox ever say anything to you about her personal life—tell you about her friends or family, maybe a boyfriend she actually fucked for free?”

  The man’s eyes hardened, and his lips set in a tight line, but he shook his head. “We didn’t talk much about our other lives.”

  “Yet you were going to marry her someday,” the Fixer said with a hint of sarcasm. He was purposefully goading his client and was glad to see that, like many powerful men with big egos, he functioned best when angry.

  “Why is it important?” the man demanded.

  The Fixer smiled slightly. “Because I’m going to have to invent a plausible story to explain her disappearance, and to do that, I need to know who’s going to miss her and what lengths they will go to in order to find her. She’s obviously not someone you picked up at the bus station. She had some pretty expensive dental work, I would guess when she was a teenager. Not exactly a Forty-second Street hooker. I want you to rack your brain and see if you can come up with anything she might have told you about her ‘other’ life.”

  The client seemed about to say something, but he was interrupted by the appearance of a muscular-looking young man in the library doorway. He, too, wore white gloves, as well as a knit cap, a black turtleneck, and warm-ups.

  The young man held up a plastic lawn bag. “Sheets, pillowcases, mattress cover. Danny’s vacuuming the carpet now.”

  “Thanks, Josh. Will we be able to match the linens?” the Fixer asked.

  “Yes, sir. Dreamsack silk sheets, pricey but easy to find. The comforter can be bought at any decent home-furnishings store. How much time do we have?”

  The Fixer looked at his client and said, “Your assistant, Peter, told me that the family is due back from the Bahamas on Christmas Eve. Is that correct?”

  The man nodded. “In the afternoon. I’ll have Peter check on the exact time.”

  The Fixer smiled; he liked to reward cooperation, make the client feel like part of the team so long as he did what he was told. “That gives us until tomorrow, practically an eternity.” He leaned forward so that he was nearly at eye level with the man. “Did you use a condom?”

  “What?”

  “A condom . . . when you were banging this girl, did you use a rubber? I don’t intend for anybody to find the body, but it’s always good to be thorough.”

  “She didn’t make me wear one,” the man said. “We both took blood tests to show we didn’t have any diseases. It’s part of the requirements with the VIP Club.”

  The Fixer looked incredulous. “You submitted to blood tests so that you could fuck a prostitute?” He gave Josh a knowing look. “Add it to the list of gets.”

  The young man nodded.

  Turning back to his client, the Fixer said, “I need you to think carefully about this next question. I need to know where else we should look for any body fluids.”

  The man looked puzzled. “Fluids?”


  “Yes, semen, blood, sweat, urine, hers or yours, anywhere you might have had sex or deposited some bit of DNA. That includes the kitchen counters, toilet paper, or the sheets like my friend Josh has in the bag.” He pointed at the bearskin rug. “For instance, did you have sex on old Smokey there?”

  “Um, yes, I suppose there could be something,” the man admitted.

  The Fixer nodded and looked at Josh. “Get a photograph of the bear and send it to the Russian and see how close we can get. If he has a suitable replacement, let’s get it out of here; if not, clean it the best you can. I assume the high heels are Miss Fox’s, yes? Okay, get them packed up. Now, where else was there sexual contact?”

  The man pointed to the ceiling. “The shower in the master bathroom.”

  The Fixer turned back to Josh. “We’ll want those towels and whatever looks used. Make sure the tile gets scrubbed, and run drain cleaner down the pipes.” He looked back at the client. “Anywhere else?”

  The client shook his head.

  “All right,” the Fixer said. “We’re making real progress. We’ll be wiping obvious areas of fingerprints, and we already found the champagne flutes and bottle in the bedroom. What else did she touch? The refrigerator? The good china? Maybe you let her fondle the wife’s jewelry? No? Well, let’s walk me through what you did from her arrival up to the moment I got here. You’ll be surprised what will jump out at us.”

  After the man had provided the chronology of his evening and had been asked to repeat it several times, the Fixer moved on.

  “Now, what about her clothes? I saw what I assumed to be her underwear upstairs. We’ll pick up anything we see there. But did she undress anywhere else?”

  “Her coat is in the hall closet. The black mink,” the man said.

  The Fixer favored his client with another smile. “Very good. We might just get away with this.” The man smiled back like a schoolboy praised by his teacher, who now said, “I assume the smoking jacket could have something on it, her hair perhaps? Please, take it off and hand it to Josh, as well as any other clothes you might have worn in the young woman’s presence.”