The Successor

by Stephen Frey

  BETH STOOD next to Christian on the balcony of his two-story Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park. “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, gazing up into the clear night. “I never thought you’d be able to see stars out over New York City. I thought the lights here would be too bright.”

  “It is nice,” he agreed.

  She leaned against him. “Have one glass of champagne with me. Please, Chris,” she begged. “One glass won’t hurt.”

  “Finish that one and we’ll see.” There was no way he was having champagne. He’d brought her up here to tell her everything because he couldn’t bring himself to do it at dinner, but he was still finding it difficult. She kept looking at him in that way.

  She tilted the glass, took three gulps, and the champagne was gone. “Okay, finished.”

  “Yeah, well, I—”

  Beth’s cell phone rang loudly from inside the apartment. “Sorry, but I’m worried about my mom,” she said, heading back through the open sliding-glass door. “I’ll be just a minute.”

  “Take your time.” He watched her go, trying to figure out how to do this.

  SANCHEZ CREPT QUIETLY down the tile floor, the smell of formaldehyde heavy in the long hallway. It smelled like death to him, which was fine. He didn’t mind death. Death was why he was here. Death had been his career.

  He reached the room number he’d been given, glanced up and down the corridor, and moved inside. He cringed as the door squeaked slightly, but there was no reason to worry. No one else was in the hallway at this late hour, and the woman was fast asleep. According to his information, she was dying but she didn’t want to wait. The pain was excruciating. Victoria Graham had explained it all to him in Miami.

  Sanchez moved to the bedside, making certain the woman wasn’t plugged into any monitors that would alert a nurse in a station somewhere that she was flatlining. He placed the small bag down on a table beside the bed, next to a half-finished jigsaw puzzle, opened it, and pulled out two lengths of cord. Gently securing her wrists to the retractable metal railings on either side of the bed—she never showed any signs of waking up. Maybe she was already dead, he thought to himself, pressing two fingers to one of her wrists. That would save him the trouble. But she wasn’t dead, there was still a pulse—still strong, too.

  He pulled out a rag and a needle already filled with the solution from the bag and with no hesitation pried open her mouth and jammed the rag far down her throat, covering her mouth with one of his hands. Her eyes flew wide open instantly and she began to scream—but her cries for help were muffled by the rag. She fought furiously, straining against the ropes binding her wrists to the bed, kicking wildly, which Sanchez found fascinating. Supposedly she wanted to die, but the body’s natural instinct to live was so strong. At the moment of truth, what your mind wanted had nothing to do with it. At the moment of truth, it was all about millions of years of survival instinct completely taking over.

  Sanchez had secured her right wrist—the one closest to him—firmly and made certain her arm was extremely extended. She could barely move it. He slid the needle into her forearm deftly with his right hand—left still pressed firmly to her mouth—and injected the solution. She fought for another thirty seconds. Then her fight subsided, her eyes rolled back in her head, and her body went limp.

  He pulled the needle from her arm, untied her wrists, stowed his gear in the bag, and headed out. When the nurses made rounds, they would find that the woman had died of heart failure. There would be no evidence of murder whatsoever.

  Now it was back to Miami and Mari, he thought to himself as he pushed through the door that led to the stairway he’d climbed a few minutes ago to get up here. One more night of her glorious body, then the end of her life, too. Then it would be time for Christian Gillette.

  ALLISON HAD GONE BACK to the office to print out the pictures she’d taken of Christian and the girl sitting at dinner in the restaurant. It was late, almost eleven, but she couldn’t wait.

  She taken the shots with a digital camera from across Columbus Avenue. Managed to do it without Quentin’s guys noticing because they were all inside. She felt guilty about spying on Christian like that, but it was for his own good, for his own protection. She was simply carrying out Ms. Graham’s orders, as self-serving as that sounded.

  Allison held up one of the prints. Taken through the glass at the front of the restaurant without even using a telephoto lens and the quality wasn’t too bad. A little grainy, but still, you could tell who they were. She shook her head. Today’s technology was truly amazing. Tomorrow’s would be out of sight.

  Allison stared at the young woman in the picture for a few seconds. She was leaning in toward Christian, her hand on his. She was beautiful, Allison had to admit. And it certainly looked from the body language as if she was sincerely into him. It was just that with all Victoria Graham had told her, Allison was suspicious of everything at this point. It wasn’t that a younger woman couldn’t be attracted to Christian, she could easily see that. It was just that it had happened now. It seemed so coincidental.

  She shut her eyes tightly, then put the print down and glanced at the file lying on the right side of her desk. She’d found it this afternoon before heading out to follow Christian. It was a file from the Dead Deal room. A room of cabinets full of folders with information about transactions Everest Capital had turned down as long as fifteen years ago. Investment opportunities the firm had looked at, but had, for whatever reason, elected not to pursue—all arranged by industry. Christian kept the files so that when someone at Everest looked at another deal in the industry, they already had a significant amount of research on hand in the file as well as the reasons they’d decided not to invest in that specific company. He was all about efficiency, she thought to herself with a smile. God, she loved that man. Even if he loved someone else.

  The file had to do with an insurance company based in Ohio. Allison glanced at the cover memo on top one more time—she’d already scanned it this afternoon before bugging out quickly when she found out from Debbie that Chris was leaving the office. Apparently, Victoria Graham had tried to persuade Christian to use Everest to buy the Ohio company a couple of years ago. Obviously, he’d refused. And it didn’t actually say so, but as she read between Christian’s lines on the page, it implied that something not quite aboveboard was going on with Graham’s proposal. Christian was much too savvy to ever write anything down in a file that could be used against anyone later, but it looked to Allison as if he were concerned about Ms. Graham’s motives. Allison got at least ten e-mails a day from Christian and she’d gotten used to his writing. She’d gotten used to reading the words—then understanding what he really meant. She could feel his voice in the words on the page and there was suspicion.

  She let her head fall slowly to the desk. What in the world was really going on?

  SO CLOSE. A couple of more lonely miles and he’d be home, Alanzo Gomez thought to himself happily. Just down the big hill, a right at the dead end at the bottom, a left, then another right, and he could swing into his driveway, walk inside, and climb into his nice, cozy bed beside his plump, little wife with the secure feeling that tomorrow morning he’d wake up, go to the office, and save Cuba. The roadblock had strengthened his resolve to do it now, not to wait another day. It was too big a risk to wait any longer because perceptions were everything on this island. Being reactive could mean prison, even death. Being proactive could mean being a hero.

  He could just picture the Central Bank president’s face when he broke the news tomorrow morning. The man would try to grab the glory—as all high-level bureaucrats in Cuba regularly did—but Gomez had a plan for that. He’d tell his boss just enough to get the saliva dripping, but no more. Not enough for the man to be able to walk into the Party office across the street and grab anything by himself. Just a little taste so the man would have to take him along on that walk across the street.

  Gomez eased off the accelerator as he approached the top of the
hill. It was steep, very steep, and long—at least a quarter of a mile. At the bottom of it was his lovely neighborhood and the house he would live in until he died. Unless the hero thing really took off and the Party urged him to move because a man of his stature needed to live in a bigger, fancier home. He would do whatever they told him to do. Mother Cuba forever, he thought to himself, making a tight fist with one hand.

  Gomez put his foot on the brake when he reached the crest of the hill and pressed. The Studebaker slowed slightly, but the reaction didn’t feel normal to him, didn’t feel as if the brake pads grabbed the way they usually did. He pressed the pedal harder. It went straight to the floor with a bang—but didn’t come back.

  “Oh, Jesus!” His eyes shot to the speedometer—forty-five and increasing quickly because the steepest part of the hill was at the top. Within seconds he was at sixty. “My God,” he whined pitifully, zigzagging on the two-lane road in an attempt to stop, careening ahead, tires screeching. The trees on both sides of the road flashed past—suddenly two big blurs now out of the corner of each eye as the speedometer’s needle blew past seventy. “Help me! Someone help me!” he screamed, stomping on the brake pedal with his foot, trying to get it to come off the floor. Instinctively, he yanked on the emergency brake—nothing there, either. “Stop, stop, stop!” he shouted, pounding on the steering wheel. He should have pulled into the trees as soon as he realized the brakes were gone, he realized now. Taken his chances then on some bad injuries—but not death. But it was much too late for that—the needle was on eighty and the cement wall at the bottom was rushing up to meet him. “Oh, Geeeooood!”

  As the car raced toward the wall, Gomez jerked the steering wheel to the left, trying to turn onto the level street, but the forward momentum flipped the car over. It rolled twice before slamming into the wall at eighty-five.

  THE TWO FAR JEEPS pulled up to the crash, and the officer who had taken Gomez’s identification at the roadblock hopped out. While he had been keeping Gomez occupied, another man had slipped beneath the car from behind and cut the brake line—in such a way that Gomez could drive a few miles, but when he really needed to stop, the brakes would fail.

  The officer leaned down and looked into the front seat. Gomez was a bloody mess, obviously dead. There was no need for any follow-up. He stepped back into the jeep and nodded to the driver. A car was coming and they couldn’t be seen here.

  IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT and Christian was headed to his study to check e-mails. Beth was asleep on his couch. She’d fallen asleep there, cuddled up next to him while they were watching Hoosiers. One minute he was explaining something about the movie, a rule of basketball, the next she was breathing heavily, eyes closed.

  Guess it wasn’t going to be her favorite movie, he thought, chuckling as he sat down and clicked to his e-mail. Well, you couldn’t expect a twenty-two-year-old woman to care much about high school basketball in the 1950s.

  Christian clicked into his received-messages folder, still thinking about Jim Marshall—God, that thing was haunting him. His eyes opened wide as the list of new e-mails popped up. There it was. A message from JRCook. His eyes skimmed across the screen. It was going down tomorrow. Everything was going live. He reached for the phone to call Quentin.

  “Chris.”

  Christian spun around in the chair and dropped the phone, taken completely by surprise by the voice from behind him. It was Beth, and through the dim light he could see she was crying. Tears soaked her cheeks, and her mascara was smudged all around her eyes. He got up and moved to her, subtly shoving the code card into his pocket. “What’s wrong?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her. She melted into him.

  “Chris, I just got a call from the hospital in Baltimore. My mom died tonight.” She burst into a loud sob. “And I wasn’t there for her.”

  17

  CHRISTIAN EMERGED from the entrance to his apartment building on Fifth Avenue with three bodyguards as Quentin pulled up in his silver 760. It was only six o’clock in the morning, so traffic was still light. They’d had no problem spotting Quentin coming from up the block.

  As he moved across the sidewalk toward the BMW, Christian searched for signs of anger on Quentin’s face, but, as usual, there was nothing. No hint that Quentin was in any way surprised or pissed off about Beth coming toward the car, too. Christian opened the back door of the spacious car for Beth as Quentin rose up out of the driver’s seat and gestured back toward the entrance. When Beth was in the car and Christian had shut the door, he followed Quentin back across the sidewalk to the bottom of the steps in front of the building.

  “What’s going on?” Quentin asked calmly, glancing at the car as he took a bite of a granola bar.

  Christian spread his arms, watching one of the bodyguards load bags into the car’s trunk. “Going on? What do you mean?”

  “Chris, we don’t have time for—”

  “Okay, okay.” For some reason, every once in a while Christian enjoyed trying to get a rise out of Quentin, liked trying to penetrate that cool veneer. He hadn’t been able to often over the past few years, but when he had, it had been fun. And right now, he needed a tension breaker. “Sorry I didn’t call you. She lost her mother last night. She’s a basket case.”

  Quentin’s eyes narrowed. “So, what are you saying?”

  Down deep, beneath the steel exterior, Quentin was a compassionate man. Christian knew he felt sorry for Beth, but his first reaction had been to stay focused on the matter at hand. He was the consummate professional. “I’m saying I can’t let her be alone right now. She wouldn’t be able to handle it. She doesn’t have anyone else to lean on.”

  “You can’t be serious. I’ve planned every detail of this trip right down to the letter. I can’t have another variable like this one suddenly thrown on top of everything else. Not if you expect me to make this go off like we want it to. You coming back alive, I mean.”

  “I think you’re overblowing this just a tad,” Christian said, holding his thumb and forefinger up barely apart. “I don’t think this is the trip to worry about. Now, when we’re about to go into Cuba, we’ll both do some worrying.” He noticed Quentin look past him up Fifth Avenue.

  “Hopefully, we’re dropping her off in Washington,” Quentin said, taking another bite of the breakfast bar.

  Christian shook his head.

  “She’s going with us to Florida? Is that the bottom line?”

  “Yup.” For the first time in a long time Christian thought he saw a flash of anger cross his best friend’s face.

  “No talking you out of it?”

  “No.”

  “You realize that we really know next to nothing about this woman. Only where she’s from and where she went to college.”

  “I know about her,” Christian said firmly. “I know she’s a good person. I also know this is a pain in the ass. But I’m not going to let someone else down.”

  “Someone else?”

  Christian looked down at a cigarette butt wedged into a crack of the sidewalk. “Yeah.”

  “You mean Jim Marshall?” Quentin put his hand on Christian’s shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself for what he did. My God, you were going to pay for him to go to a rehab clinic out of your own pocket.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get him there.” Christian gritted his teeth. “I was too busy being tough on him. I’m not going to be tough on her, too.”

  Quentin glanced at Beth, who was sitting beside one of the bodyguards in the back of the BMW. “Just for the record, I think this is a very bad idea.”

  “I know.” Christian’s expression brightened. “I also know you’ll get me through it.”

  Quentin popped the last bite of granola bar into his mouth. “Speaking of which, if you take a quick look up Fifth Avenue while we’re walking to the car, you’ll see a blue sedan at the curb about fifty yards away. That sedan’s been following me ever since I left my garage to come pick you up.”

  SHERRY DEMILLE sat in Christian’s office at Everes
t, typing password after password into his computer—the two older men from Maryland had sent her a long list of possibilities last night by e-mail and ordered her to try them, ordered her to look for anything that might be relevant on his computer, in his desk, on his credenza. But none of the passwords were working and she was getting more and more frustrated. Not only that the passwords weren’t working, but at what she’d let herself get wrapped up in. For letting Jim Marshall have his way with her at the hotel just so she could get closer to him. Then finding out he’d been fired anyway because the two men no longer had any use for him. She was certain Marshall’s drop from the balcony of his apartment building hadn’t been suicide, which was the only reason she’d broken into Christian’s office this morning when the two men had told her to. She didn’t want to end up like Marshall. Nothing but a stew of flesh and bones on a sidewalk. The men had been beside themselves last night on the phone, almost panic-stricken.

  “What are you doing?”

  Sherry’s gaze snapped from the screen to the doorway. Allison was standing there, eyes ablaze.

  Sherry rose deliberately from Christian’s chair and walked slowly to where Allison was standing, not taking her eyes off Allison’s. Then bolted past her toward the lobby.

  QUENTIN PULLED the silver 760 into a freight warehouse in Newark, New Jersey. As soon as they were inside, the huge door that had been raised to let them in descended again. Quentin steered the BMW to the right and eased to a stop beside an identical 760—except that this one’s windows were tinted.

  “Everybody out,” he ordered, climbing from the car, careful not to bang his door into the maroon-colored minivan to the left.

  Christian, Beth, and the bodyguard who had ridden in the back with Beth climbed out.

  Within fifteen minutes, Quentin’s 760 had been outfitted with window tinting and new license tags. Now there was no way to see into the car, and no way to identify it from the silver 760 they’d pulled up next to.