by TG Wolff
“You loved her.”
“When she passed, I felt it.” He looked over his shoulder, his gaze forbidding. “Say what you want about the Irish and our ghosts, but I felt it. I know what death feels like.” The eggs when into a pan, the sizzle the only sound in the room. “When I opened that lid and saw the charred flesh within, I felt nothing. I waited for it, told myself it was the shock of seeing you laid out, as it were, but it never came. I left that church pissed because you left me, left my life so thoroughly that I couldn’t feel you. Then I saw Ian Black with that smile he always wears. Why would Diamond’s pet be smiling at her funeral, I asked myself. Only one answer.”
“Jesus, Sam, why didn’t you leave me alone? You had to know I had a reason.”
He shrugged as he divided the eggs between two plates. “I only cared about one thing. Finding you.”
“For a man who claims to be logical, that’s fucked up.” My phone rang, returning my page. “Ian Black. Do not call him my pet,” I said to Irish before answering it. “Ian. I have you on speaker. Irish is here.”
“Morning, Ian. Long time no see.” Irish said, brogue back in residence.
Ian grumbled. “You get the money, Diamond?”
Irish crossed to the table, plates in hand. “Aye. Your Diamond is a richer dead woman.” He refilled my coffee from the pot on the table, no regret discernable on his face.
“Tell me some good news, Ian.”
“Carlo found the driver. It’s none other than Valentina’s older brother, Franco. Carlo found him in a seminary and pressed him. Franco said he raced down the street when Hugo shouldered a man into the path of the car. Franco fled to Hugo’s flat, hiding the car. He fought with Valentina, walking out when she demanded to know what he had done. Franco decided to turn himself in. He waited for Hugo to tell him what he was going to do. We both know why Hugo never showed.”
Another shot from my blindside. Valentina’s brother.
“Franco asked Carlo to pass a message to you, the widow. Franco said he’s made his peace with God but doesn’t expect you’ll be as forgiving.” Ian sounded like he was reading the statement, his voice flatter than normal. “He regrets the evening more than he can say. He was arrogant, brash, and took your husband’s life. Nothing can undo his actions, but in that horrible moment, his life changed. He found his humanity.”
“After.”
“What?” Ian asked.
“After that horrible moment, not in,” I said. “If he’d found it in, he would have turned away.” My head dropped back and landed against Irish’s stomach. His hand squeezed my shoulder. “What’s the point of his message?”
Papers rustled across the line. “He’s sorry? Hell, lot of good it does us.”
“I assume he doesn’t know who hired Hugo?”
“No,” Ian said. “All he heard were euro signs. He said Hugo was paid four thousand upfront. They split it.”
“Fucking sucker. Hugo lied. His little black book showed fourteen thousand for the deed. Four before, ten after.” It burned my biscuits Gavriil was killed for so little. I know how wrong it sounds, as if someone had put a hundred-thousand-euro hit on him it would be somehow, I don’t know, less bad. But really? Fourteen thousand? Cars cost more. “The math adds up now. The two thousand is the trunk was Hugo’s share of the advance. The balance was paid in lead.”
“The client used an alias and had texted Hugo to set it up.”
“Let me guess. Chrysanthemum?”
“Yeah. You already knew? The deposit showed up in cash in an overnight envelope from a flower shop in DC.”
I filled him in on our evening. “I have the phone Chrysanthemum called and texted to and the passwords for the recipient’s account. Do you think Dixon can weasel out the contact?”
“He started on it, then he got sidetracked.” Ian snickered. “I got him a hooker. Sort of a belated birthday present.”
Irish shouldered me aside. “This kid, Dixon, is he the one who swatted me?”
I cursed my blunder while Ian choked on his laugh, answering Irish’s question without saying a word. “Let it go, Sam. Your contract put a big price on my head. Ian was beaten and left for a popsicle. If the roles had been reversed, you’d have done a lot worse than swatting. Dixon’s mine. That makes him yours. Let it go.” I invaded his personal space, inviting him in.
“I already got Dix on the emails. We’ll get there. Need to know what you want to do with Valentina’s brother. Carlo’s waiting on your directions.” Ian swore softly. “Diamond, Carlo believes the guy’s on the up and up but, you know, he’s Italian and raised to think priests walk on fucking water.”
Here I was, in the gray area. My mission was justice for Gavriil. I didn’t care what form or by who. I had the man who killed my husband, who hit his body with a car so hard, he’d crushed his chest. He literally broke his heart. I had the man…and he was becoming a priest.
Could I forgive him? No. Not if I lived to be a hundred.
Could I tell Carlo to take him down?
I’m thinking…
Well, if…
Maybe…
As much as I wanted to, it wouldn’t be what my husband would’ve wanted. So, I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.
Karma hated me.
“Tell Franco to feed the starving.” Gavriil would want people cared for first. “Franco has to pick up the baton he knocked out of Gavriil’s hand. I’m not talking about organizing can food drives. I’m talking about getting that church of his to teach people how to fish and use drip irrigation, how to build wells and plant quinoa.” I dropped the fifty-pound weight posing as my head into my hands.
Just because it was right didn’t mean it felt good.
Irish’s arm snaked across my collarbone.
“Good call,” Ian said. “Especially the damn quinoa. Next, the kid’s made progress on Winston’s emails. It’s a sweet hack mimicking a host email while still allowing the host access to a portion of the account. The address has a blind tag built in so a reply to sender is routed to the placebo account. It’s been blamed for security breaches in every industrialized nation. Hold on a minute, Diamond.”
Ian’s voice became muted as he spoke away from the phone. He and Dix were having another geek-to-geek conversation. Dix’s tone was triumphant. Ian shifted from skeptical to hot-damn. “He’s got him, Diamond. Dix has a picture of the hacker. Not great images but good enough. He’s texting them to you now.”
My phone chimed, confirming the download. With the swipe of my thumb, the grainy image of my husband’s killer filled the screen. A telephoto lens had been used to capture a hooded figure at a computer. Five images, taken in rapid succession as the target turned.
“Fuck!” I exploded up, knocking Irish away from me and spilling my chair onto its side. The back of the chair was in my hands. The legs cut through the air as I whipped it from over my shoulder, smashing them on the table, then against the floor. Over and over until splinters flew like missiles in all directions. Spinning like a shot putter, whatever I could wrap my hands around was launched across the open space. “Fucking bitch. Fucking psycho cunt from hell.” The vicious words stripped my throat raw, so I shouted louder. An arm came around me. I caught it and threw it, too.
Ian’s tinny voice rode atop the racket. “Irish, what the fuck are you doing?”
Irish rolled with the toss, landing on the balls of his feet, hands at the ready. “Me!?! She’s the one on the rampage.”
Obliteration. Annihilation. The gates of hell burst open and I was the demon birthed. Books flew. Glass crashed. Furniture rolled. Anything not nailed down got thrown. Anything nailed down got the crap beaten out of it. Nothing escaped my fury.
The room spun, flying by until the coarse carpet was scraping the skin from my face. “Stay down, Diamond. For fuck’s sake, stay down.” Irish’s knee was in my back, his heavy ass keeping me where I was.
“Never.” I used my head, my feet
, elbows and teeth. The man was a human octopus, countering every move until all I could do was scream my outrage.
Irish shouted over me. “Who the hell is in the picture, Ian? I’m going to rip them apart myself.”
“Chrysanthemum. That’s all I have, Irish.”
“Quili Liu. It’s Quili fucking Liu. Gavriil’s assistant.” I fought until my arms ached. Breathing like a thoroughbred after a sprint, I stopped fighting. Rational thought pushed front and center, leashing the last of the unbridled energy. Breaking Irish, turning his house into kindling, would only piss me off more. I needed to think, to plan, like Irish preached, and then, only then, would I act. “You can get off, Irish. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I heard his derisive snort as his weight lifted off. He offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet. The upscale living / dining space had been remodeled by a Tasmanian devil. Tornados did less damage. Crap. When I stood face-to-face with Irish, I said, “I’ll replace it all.”
“Sorry I didn’t get it for you faster, Diamond.” Dixon’s young voice was heavy with self-disapproval.
“It’s not on you, Dix. It’s on me. I didn’t go there, not after the near-miss on her. Why would she plan such an elaborate rouse to throw suspicion? I wasn’t on to her.”
“They weren’t after her,” Irish said, still holding my hand.
The wheels turned. “Then they were after…” I lead with my left. He pulled back. My knuckles burned from the brush with his morning beard. He grabbed my wrist, turning me until he had my back pinned to his chest. “You ass! Fuck your furniture. I’m not replacing a stick of it. How am I supposed to solve this when you throw red herrings in my lap?”
He leaned back, lifting me so my feet kicked uselessly in the air. “If I knew what you were up to, I could have spent my money helping you.” My elbow connected with his ribs and he spun me away from his body.
Going in low, I swept his feet out from under him. “Don’t you dare make this sound like it’s my fault. I killed myself for a reason.”
He leapt over me. “You should have contacted me.”
I thrust my hand up, disrupting his graceful landing. “I had a job to do. I didn’t even know you were in the country.”
He rolled and came to his feet again, facing me. Coming at me, he moved through a sequence of blows readily defended. He wasn’t trying to hurt me, and I’d stopped trying to hurt him. He tied me up, arms over our heads, face-to-face. “It didn’t matter where I was,” he snapped into the scant inch between us. “For something this important to you, you should have called me. You called Black.” He spat Ian’s name out as he shoved me away.
The choreographed hand-to-hand was no less physical for the lack of intent to kill. It ran the temper out of both of us. He was sweaty, disheveled, and irritated. Beneath it was something else. Disappointment? I hadn’t called him for help. Before, he would have been my first call. Even before my official network. But my life changed. In accepting Gavriil’s world, I walked away from the one Irish lived in, closing the door and throwing away the key. I never intended to come back to this underbelly world where there were no good guys. Yet, here I was, and I needed help. “I’m calling you now. I’m taking her down. Help me.”
A cocky smile grew on the devil’s face. “You don’t have to ask.”
“Jackass.” Still, he made me smile. “I want to know Liu’s secrets and her mistakes. Dixon, Irish, find her connections to these Chinese hacker stories. I’ve got a hundred thousand of Irish’s money to spend on information. I want to know if any other ‘deadly accidents’ have happened to Americans or on American soil. Dixon, get a better picture of Liu and send it to Carlo. Ian, have him press Valentina, her priest-to-be brother, and Hugo’s grandmother. Tell him to hit the doorman and staff at Il Leone. Somebody saw her. She’s not half as good as she thinks she is.”
For myself, I took the task of calling my new friend, Buford Winston. After the requisite small talk (on his part, not mine), I laid out our suspicions.
“Gotta tell you, that fires on all cylinders for me. Guess I didn’t think whether or not it sounded like Gabe. Too busy bein’ pissed to pay attention to details. I went straight to thinking he mighta been hitting the vodka.” His outrage grew as the pieces fell into place, until he blasted from the pulpit, “There’s a special hell for connivers, backstabbers, and two-timers.”
I believed he was ready to send Quili there with his bare hands. So, soon as I hung up with Buford, I called Lois and gave her the heads-up. She hid his car keys.
Assignments made, the team scattered. Irish to his office. Ian and Dixon to their holes in the wall, which left me alone in the ravaged room. I righted an arm chair and sat. Realization sank in. We’d solved it. We knew what happened to Gavriil and to Francisco Thelan. In a matter of hours, we’d be able to prove it. And I had the murderer sitting on a pink bed in protective custody.
Hindsight is amazing. What was an unsolvable mystery from the outside became remarkably simple from the inside out. This one came down to an unquenchable thirst to be at the top.
Quili Liu arranged for Gavriil’s death to assume his position. She was not a woman to come in second, nor wait for her time to come. Why bother when, for a few thousand euros, she could be on the top now? The top ag producers could clamor for her attention today.
I gotta tell you, I thought this moment would be so much more…epic. I expected to be jumping and fist pumping and whooping it up because good had prevailed. After all, we solved a crime that authorities said didn’t happen.
But the satisfaction wasn’t there.
Things still felt…what? Undone? Incomplete?
Justice hadn’t been served.
A text notification came through. I had a voicemail. Seconds later, Montgomery Rand was in my ear. “Don’t get mad, but your woman is gone. She just left. I tried to talk her out of it. She said the danger was all clear. I asked if you’d called, and she blew me off. I tried to stop her, but she pulled a karate move on me. I think she cracked my back. That’s got to be worth—” Delete.
Quili Liu left the safe house. Well, somebody was feeling cocky.
Of its own accord, the seed of a plan planted itself in my brain. It wasn’t nice but it was good, in the bad kind of way. All I needed was a realtor, an electrician, and a king.
I’ll Take the Coup de Grȃce with a Side of Fries
Gray clouds boiled with the fury of the gathering storm. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a low, growling threat sending animals with any sense to shelter. Rain closed in, the scent heavy in the wind that tore across my newest property. I walked the perimeter one last time, Ian and Dixon in my ear.
“Exit camera three aaannd enter camera four,” Dixon said in my ear.
“That’s less than a two-second gap between camera angles,” Ian added. “She brings company, we’ll see them coming.”
“Maybe we should come in there with you.” Dixon had been puppy-dog enthusiastic about setting up the warehouse for the final act but had been giving me sad eyes since learning he and Ian would be in a van a half mile away. After finding Ian in his building, Dixon had lost some of his fearlessness when it came to where Ian and I were at any given time.
I kept reminding him I was dead.
“This is between me and Liu. You did your part,” I said. “Time for me to do mine.”
“Trust Diamond, Dixon.” Ian sounded as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time she hijacked a ferry?”
Again, with the stories. “Borrowed, Ian. Sheesh. I gave it back to the captain just as soon as those river pirates were under arrest.” The teasing balanced out the tension. I didn’t interrupt as Ian told a highly exaggerated version of a tiny incident Dixon swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
The sky darkened, bringing night on two hours ahead of schedule. A flash of white lightning and a roll of thunder announced the storm’s arrival. Heavy drops of rain fell, splatteri
ng on the weed-infested parking lot.
I entered the warehouse. The cavernous space was too dark to see the ceiling. Only when lightning flashed could the true size of the room be appreciated. This had been an assembly facility. Gears and tools, twisted sheets of metal, and half-assembled machines littered the waist-high tables. It was as if an entire crew had gone home at the end of a shift and never come back. White LED lights set within the castoffs created shadowy monsters, hungry and lurking.
I walked the path my quarry would follow to the raised platform, approving of the ominous atmosphere created by the black-on-black motif. The stage held only a wide-armed chair resembling a throne that held court over the dilapidated ruins. Here I reigned, the queen of Diamonds in a fucked-up Wonderland of my own concoction. I dressed for the occasion, continuing the monochromatic theme. Lycra pants finished in boots made for fast moves. A corset allowed free arm movement. A leather coat flowed like a cape, a twin to the one Irish wore at my funeral. My eyes were the stalking green of a cat about to dine very well. I painted my lips to match.
I sat and allowed the stillness to take me. At last, everything was ready.
In the two weeks since this plot of mine hatched, I debated if I was going overboard. Wouldn’t I be satisfied with a straight up end to this story? In a moment, it could be over with the sting of a bullet, at the end of a rope, or the bottom of a glass.
I watched Quili Liu die a hundred times since that day in Irish’s house.
While the fantasies were cathartic, they were too fast. Quili Liu did not deserve fast and it wasn’t because Gavriil’s wife was pissed. It was because Liu deprived an entire population of the good that the geeky scientist was doing. In killing him, she murdered a population.
Since fast and easy were out, I stuck with plan A. Slow and terrifying.
Ian tapped into his connections and fed information into the closed Chinese network. The Chinese liked order and predictability. Doubt and suspicion made them nervous, and nervous made them dangerous.
Dixon hacked into things I didn’t know could be hacked into. He messed with Liu’s computer, the control system on her greenhouse, and her Stitch Fix account. He giggled as he imaged her hard drive, cancelled appointments, insulted the university president’s wife, instigated an ice age, and had her clothing delivery include only orange articles.