THE CARBON STEEL CARESS

by GC Smith

  Donal had Capers’s life history in his notes. An equally crammed dossier on Joan Wiley-Capers detailed her background and highlighted the dichotomy of her well concealed mental illness and her outstanding academic record and brilliant early promise in her law career.

  The psychiatrist who had treated Joan Wiley as a youth had been closemouthed, claiming Doctor-patient confidence, but his attitude, despite his tight lips, had spoken volumes. It was clear that he had found his former patient distasteful in the extreme, if not downright frightening. Interviews with former teachers and fellow students tended to fill the psychiatrist’s blanks.

  Joan Wiley Capers was painted as an academic genius with a vicious, vindictive streak. She had accused several of her teachers of sexual improprieties while a high school student. She didn’t discriminate. Her victims were male and female teachers, and, all claimed that it was she not they who acted with impropriety. They also all claimed that they had to rebuff her advances. With her accusations she had made their lives miserable.

  Harry Trent, a senior partner with Trent, Goodsell, Archer, and Windsor had told Donal that he was aware that Joan Wiley-Capers had had problems as a youth, but that he had been assured that she had matured and was stable. Her exemplary law school record and her selection for the Yale law review confirmed the assurances. Trent had recommended her to his partners because, as he put it, ‘the firm owed one to her father,’ a senior State political careerist. Trent also told Donal that in recent months Joan Capers’s work had slipped and that, the firm’s debt to John Bertram Wiley paid, he had recommended against a junior partnership, a recommendation considered in the legal profession to be tantamount to asking a lawyer to resign. Joan Wiley-Capers had, of course, done so.

  Among the facts Donal compiled in his dossier on Micah Capers was the information that he had enlisted in the Army in the nineties and had trained for the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He spent time in Mexico and Central America, ostensibly as a trainer-advisor, but, in fact, engaged in covert actions. His confidential service record was available only to a select few army intelligence officials.

  For the two years that Capers was in Mexico and Central America he lead FATS —acronym for Find and Terminate Squad— an elite assassination team that operated across borders in several countries, both friendly and non-friendly.

  Jack Faulkner, currently with the SC State Law Enforcement Directorate (SLED), Donal was told ran FATS from an office in Managua. As Donal’s informant, a retired R.A. Colonel, living in a nearby Sea Island gated golf community, put it, “Faulkner sat on his ass and passed out orders.” It seemed that arrangement was fine with Capers who pretty much operated as an independent contractor. Faulkner back behind the action and far away from Capers allowed him autonomy to lead the Squad of ‘hand picked hard asses’ --again the Colonel’s description-- as he saw fit. Pete Hammil, Everett Richter, Jack Billings and Sam Wolfe; Capers a civilian with Army Intelligence, the other four, R.A., detached TDY to FATS.

  The Colonel described FATS as action with none of the regulations that screw up life in the regular army. The FATS squad had the Army by the short hairs. Its members could do and did do anything they wanted with no fear of reprisals from the regular military command.

  Between assignments Capers and his men lived high off the hog, the Colonel told Donal. Women, dope, ample opportunity to pocket their share of the cocaine money that floated freely throughout Mexico and Central America. When the Colonel spoke about Capers and FATS his voice had swung between envy and scorn. Donal sensed that envy won.

  Donal got the next part of Capers’s history from Jeremy McMichaels, a fellow refugee from South Philly transplanted to South Carolina and SLED. Donal had known Jeremy all his life.

  Jeremy told Donal that when the U.S. politicians got bored with further action Faulkner retired and returned home to South Carolina. He found an executive position with SLED and brought Capers back with him to the State Policing Agency.

  In South Carolina, Faulkner, with SLED funds, backed Capers who opened an imported leather goods shop on Hilton Head Island. The business was made to order cover and Faulkner used its proprietor for dope buys, money laundering schemes, and occasional political cases. McMichaels said that Capers, under the tutelage of Faulkner, had been a top SLED undercover agent. Until something happened.

  What the reason was for Capers’s sudden departure from the SLED, McMichaels claimed he didn’t know. Donal believed him. ‘Need to know’ compartmentalization at SLED effectively limited the usefulness of a single person as an informant.

  Donal had even tracked down an aged aunt of Micah Capers. Found her sitting, worn bible in hand, on the top step of a rickety porch half-hanging off the front of an unpainted house in the outskirts of Bluffton, South Carolina. She told Donal that she believed that her nephew to be the devil incarnate. That she believed that he set fire to his mother’s house when he was a child. That he burned his mother and stepfather to death and got away with it. She claimed, that it was only by the grace of God that she had been minding Capers’s infant half-sister in her own home on that fateful day. Whether or not there was any truth to her claim of Capers’s pyromania, she firmly believed it.

  Maybe it was true. What the aunt told him fit with what Donal knew and felt about Capers. But, still the information led him nowhere. He’d asked her for a name and where he could locate the half-sister but the woman refused to provide that information. She told Donal that the girl had, in her words, ‘had been taken off to be raised by another aunt, and had, like her half-brother, also grown up to follow the ways of the devil.’

  She had ‘left the path of righteousness to become an actress and a singer of lewd music,’ the aunt said. She also said, the girls name was ‘banished from her lips as her memory was banished from her mind.’

  Nothing that Donal had unearthed told him what he needed to know, where Micah and Joan Capers were now? The sum of Donal’s interviews boiled down to same story from everyone he had spoken with. Micah Capers was a loner who had no close friends and his wife was the same. The reams of facts related to Capers and Joan Wiley-Capers that Donal had in his files didn’t amount to a damn as far as leading anywhere on the cold trail.

  Donal had to try to tap Capers’s ex-bosses, Jack Faulkner and Brad Ellerby. Faulkner, Donal knew only by reputation; Ellerby, who was with SLED contemporaneously with himself, Donal knew somewhat, but still not well. He didn’t trust either of them. Yet, if Faulkner or Ellerby could or would come up with Capers’s whereabouts, he had a shot at putting this case to rest. Otherwise ...

  Donal pushed his case papers away from him and stood up from his desk. “God damn this case.”

  BOOK II

  CHANGING THE GAME

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Hilton Head Island

  Beaufort County, SC

  ... September 13

  A tanned, leanly muscled man stood on the terrace of the Beach Palace penthouse suite watching through binoculars. Actors and a filming crew clustered under brilliant Carolina blue skies at the resort hotel’s swimming pool. That the shooting wasn’t going well was evident even from the distance that separated the man from the actors and camera crew several stories below.

  The man smiled through exhaled cigar smoke.

  As the director called again for a retake an actress threw up her arms in despair. The distance rendered her words incomprehensible except for a piercing, “I can’t, not again, Art” and, “....my ass will get sunburned.”

  The man to whom she spoke, apparently the director, walked to where the actress, attired in a Barely Legal thong bikini, stood.

  The man on the penthouse terrace puffed on the cigar and grinned. He said to himself, “nice tight little can, wouldn’t want it sunburned.” He watched the director’s attempt to mollify his star. The guy and the actress exchanged what from the distance were indecipherable words and, as the man on the balcony watched, the director pointed out masking tape Xs on the concrete
patio that surrounded the pool.

  The actress resumed her place in front of one of the Xs. A male actor dropped into a shooters crouch, handgun extended toward the actress. The camera angle was pre-set to cover both the actor and the actress. As the actress registered terror and screamed, the cameraman swung his equipment to two men with short barreled automatic weapons. They moved in from the right side of where the actress stood.

  The camera swung back toward the man in the shooter’s crouch as weapons chattered and the crouched shooter pitched backward into the pool. A red trail streamed from the shooter’s body through the pool’s water. One of the shooters ran forward to the actress who threw her arms around his shoulders and buried her face in his chest, sobbing, and repeating again and again with choked voice, “Oh, oh thank God.”

  The man on the terrace heard the director call out. “Cut.” And, “terrific Claudia, perfect.”

  The director called a 'wrap.'

  The man on the terrace ground out his cigar butt on the protective rail. He watched as the actors and film crew disbanded.

  The actress, Claudia, pulled a cover over the swimsuit and left the site. Minutes later, in her hotel suite, on the cocktail table in the living room she found a porcelain vase overflowing with wine dark roses.

  A key scratched in the suite's door-lock and the man who had earlier watched her from the penthouse terrace entered the room. A startled but theatre-trained Claudia Chatrian grabbed instant control of her self and demanded, “Who are you?” Her voice, ice, belied her fear.

  The man flashed a white toothed smile and moved toward her.

  Claudia reached down, picked up the vase and threw it. Her throw missed the man by several feet; the vase smashed against the door frame, shattering, scattering water and roses.

  The man's hand flew up to a mock defensive position.

  “Hey, hey, easy now. Those flowers were from me.”

  “Whoever you are, get out. Now.” Claudia moved determinedly toward the phone.

  Quickly he said, “Please calm down and let me introduce myself. I'm Nick MacAndrews and I own the hotel. I missed the cocktail reception when you arrived and I'd like to remedy that by taking you to dinner tonight.”

  “Your hotel or not, you've got no right to walk unannounced into my suite. Get out. And send someone to clean that up,” she said, gesturing to the sodden mess on the floor.

  “Miss Chatrian, I apologize for walking in on you. But,” he smiled a charmer’s smile, “I do what I have to do to meet a lovely woman.”

  The brash approach worked, Claudia laughed. “Breaking and entering is a bit on the extreme side,” she said.

  He shrugged, turning the palms of his hands outward, showing the pass key. “Please, reconsider my invitation and let me show an evening you'll remember. You'll enjoy yourself, I guarantee.”

  “Thank you, but ...”

  He cut in, “Please.”

  She had been working with little break since arriving on the island. Despite the man's crude entry his raffish charm and unorthodox approach to the idea of an evening out appealed. His manner exuded something slightly primitive, perhaps dangerous. Definitely interesting.

  “All right, but it will have to be an early evening. I have a shooting in the morning.”

  “I'll pick you up at nine o'clock.” He stepped through the door and turned, smiling, “Wear your best dress.”

  “I'll wear what I please,” she said to the closed door.

  But she smiled as she conjured up an image of herself in her newest Albert Nippon.

  Well, she thought, his invitation is better than sitting around the hotel arguing with Art Silverman, her director, about the next day’s shooting. She stripped the swim suit and stood naked, reflected in the triple mirror. Silky black hair reached almost to her waist; skin tone creamy, flawless. Enormous dark brown eyes were her best feature; high cheek bones framed a delicate nose and a full pouting mouth. Lovely indeed. Overall, a smoldering, almost Latin face.

  She showered, slipped into a Calvin Klein tee shirt and lay on the bed to nap.

  Two hours later, refreshed, she wandered out into the living room. The broken vase and wilted roses were still scattered where she had thrown them. “Damn him,” she muttered and stooped to pick up the mess. She dropped the flowers into the waste basket, called Art’s office and left a message that she was going to spend the evening with MacAndrews.

  At exactly nine o'clock Claudia heard a tap at her door.

  “Am I forgiven,” he asked?

  Claudia, in the simple white silk Albert Nippon dress with a wide belt and Manolo Blahnik sandals, replied, “Perhaps.” She picked up a small evening bag from the console table and preceded him out the door.

  They left the resort grounds, MacAndrews’s Ferrari's exhaust pipes throaty, playing automotive beach music. He drove fast, effortlessly, gearing down for the tight turns and accelerating into the straights, finally turning into a narrow sand road cut through a loblolly and palmetto forest.

  A little over a mile down the road, he slowed, approaching wrought iron gates. A guard stepped from a kiosk and waved them through to a live oak avenue. The trees, Spanish moss depended from gnarly branches, canopied the road. A quarter of a mile through the live oaks he pulled into a paved area and parked.

  They stood on the drive surveying a massive plantation house left over from the days of the sea isle cotton planters. Immaculate white paint glistened, highlighted by spotlights, concealed in lush semi-tropical landscaping. A broad two-story gallery, traditional low country adaptation to plantation Georgiana, encircled the house. The building sat on a dune shelf, the Atlantic Ocean lay beyond. Breakers crashed on the shoreline, washing over the beach.

  Claudia said, “Magnificent.”

  Her escort smiled down at her and, tucking her arm through his, led her up the steps and across the first floor gallery.

  As they were about to enter the mansion, two men stepped from the shadows and grabbed Claudia's arms. A wide adhesive patch was slapped over her mouth and she felt a stinging sensation in the flesh of her upper right arm. She was carried from the gallery to a customized Mercedes Benz, over-the-road bus, outfitted as a luxury motor home.

  The bus left the grounds by a back road, avoiding the main entrance and the guard's kiosk.

  Micah Capers sat at the wheel of the bus that he had stolen from the Beach Palace garage. The bus belonged to Hootie and the Blowfish, a still successful, if aging, southern rock group. The Blowfish had been in Hilton Head for a week’s gig at the Beach Palace before going on to a roots concert in Myrtle Beach, the ocean resort where the group had gotten its start playing rhythm and blues for South Carolina shaggers.

  Pete Hammil –Nick MacAndrews- in the right side seat said, “Super bus, hoss. How long before the law gets on to the fact it's hot?”

  “We'll be through with it long before anybody notices it's missing.”

  “Better be.”

  “Relax.”

  “Hey, I got plans and jail ain’t among ‘em.”

  “Back in Hawaii?”

  “Nah, Macao. It’s wide open. Throw in with me there’s beaucoup smack bucks to be made.”

  “Can’t do it, other stuff needs tending to,” Capers said, shutting his mind, driving, bored with Hammil's chatter that equated the riskiest of risks with security.

  . . . Capers, nine days earlier had finally hooked up with Hammil who had shown up stateside after having been contacted by Sam Wolfe. Capers, sitting in a dimly lit bar in Savannah outlined his plan for Hammil.

  Hammil balked at first but swayed by the enormity of the ransom that Capers planned to demand agreed to throw in for the job.

  That accomplished, Capers went to the interview with Nick MacAndrews that he had arranged before leaving Moultrie Bay. Backed by a phony resume' and ersatz references who had been paid to talk him up he swung a job as an assistant manager of the Beach Palace. That allowed him the run of the place and opportunity to set Claudia Chatrian u
p for Hammil.

  Silent for half an hour while Hammil carried on with

  inanities that interested only himself, Capers finally said, “Check on our passenger.”

  “Victor's back there.”

  “More's the reason to look in on her.”

  Hammil pulled himself up from the right hand seat. “If the lady ain't comfortable I can do something for her.”

  “Keep it in your pants, Pete. Claudia Chatrian is

  business, she stays business.”

  “No need to get bent out of shape, chill.”

  Capers repeated, “Check on her, Goddammit.”

  “Lighten up man. I was funnin', just funnin'.”

  Hammil stood at the partially open door to the bedroom suite of the luxury bus. He watched as Victor Rustico grasped Claudia's thick black hair with his right hand and pulled her forward, inches from his face.

  “Kiss, pretty lady.”

  Claudia recoiled from the creature. “Get away from me,” she hissed.

  Victor hooked broad, dirty fingers more tightly into her hair and twisted. He pushed Claudia into a chair and fumbled with the brass buttons of his wrinkled painter's pants, exposing a ropy, thick veined penis.

  “Kiss here, pretty lady.”

  Claudia cringed, pulling her whole body against the backrest of the chair, face averted.

  Victor grasped her by the neck and forced his penis toward her lips.

  “Kiss nice. Bite, I break your neck.”

  Hammil stepped into the luxury bus's aft cabin. “Get away from her.”

  The rancid creature, eyes darting toward the voice, backed away. His hungry animal gaze returned to Claudia; his fingers fondled his semi-erect penis.

  “Get out, Victor.”

  Victor's features took on an expression of servile fear as the realization that Hammil had caught him with the female seeped into his weak mind. Understanding the unspoken threat implicit in Hammil's tone Rustico scuttled from the compartment, darting a fear filled glance at Hammil, primitive instinct telling him that his fear was justified.