by Dave Buschi
Paulson could appreciate it. It wouldn’t be that long till this would be his own MO. Then he too could afford a yummy assistant like Portino’s.
She was one luscious treat. Bobbed hair. A body snuggled into a trim pantsuit that hugged her ample curves. The soft swell of her breasts tantalizingly visible under her low-cut blouse. Yowza. He just wanted to rub his face in them and bite ‘em. Her legs were disproportionally long for her body. Add those six-inch heels and that tight little ass…
Come over, baby, and bend over for me.
Paulson typed in a web address. He flashed a smile at Alanna. She didn’t smile back. In fact, her fat ruby lips didn’t even move, but Paulson knew the type. Under that haughtiness, she wanted it—that was just her game.
He surfed some good randy porn, checking out some lovelies. He clicked to a site called Slovak bitches. In no time, he found a girl that from the neck down resembled Alanna. He grinned; if he closed one eye she could have passed for her twin. She was taking it from behind from a large black man with a giant cock.
“Do you want to see something?”
She pretended not to hear him.
“Alanna?”
“Yes.” There was chilly indifference in her tone.
Paulson’s phone beeped. He raised his finger and gave her a wink. “Hold on a sec’.” He picked it up. “What’s up?”
It was Enrique. About fucking time.
What Enrique downloaded did not make him happy. They weren’t done, yet. But there was some good news. They’d found Kolinsky.
“Get it wrapped, quick. This is taking way too fucking long. Next call I want to hear that it’s done.” He clicked off.
“Now where were we?” He gave Alanna his most winning smile. One thing Paulson could do was ooze the charm.
“What are you looking at?”
“Want to see?”
She walked over with a slight sashay. Now it was her turn to bring out the tricks. Man, Paulson thought, could he call them or what? She did want it. Sassy bitch.
He did a few clicks, as she approached. She sidled up next to him and looked at his screen.
“Oh,” she said.
She had a great sexy scent. It made Paulson wonder what she’d smell like after a good in and out.
“Do you like that one?”
“She’s so cute.”
Paulson clicked to another puppy picture.
Alanna sighed.
That’s it. The chillier they are, the more they melted.
Paulson’s phone beeped again.
What the fuck—now everybody but him could make a call? Annoyed, he glanced at it, to see who was calling. It wasn’t a phone call, but an email. The subject line said ‘ComTek’.
He frowned and opened it.
[What’s the status?]
Confused, Paulson looked at the sender’s address. It had come from himself.
“Show me another,” said Alanna.
“Hold on, darling.” Paulson typed on the screen and opened his email box. It showed the same thing. Based on what it said, he’d just sent an email to himself less than a minute ago?
Paulson’s brow furrowed.
Alanna pouted. “No more puppy pictures?”
Paulson lightly touched her thigh. “Sure, baby.”
He minimized his email box and clicked to some more pictures. “Oh, this is a good one.”
Alanna practically cooed. Paulson glanced down at his phone, wondering…?
“You smell good,” he said.
She raised a teased eyebrow.
“Is that perfume or just your natural scent? Which I must say smells wonderful.”
She pursed her lips, coyly. “I know what you’re doing.”
“You do?” He feigned innocence.
She smirked.
He smirked, as well. “I’m just a sucker for puppies.” His eyes briefly flicked to her lovely ta tas.
“I could look at you all day.”
She feigned annoyance. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”
“But I am working. Rex told me to find you a puppy. You do want one, don’t you?”
She laughed and his eyes flicked to her puppies again, watching them do their delicious little jiggle.
He was beginning to forget all about that email.
67
THEY waited longer than they should of, not knowing if the men were gone. By the time they smelled the smoke, unknown to them, the fire had spread.
Hannah and Katie were pressed against their mother. Bob was looking at the metal pipe that tracked near them, in-between the joists. It wasn’t insulated like the others. It was a gas line.
“They’ve set the house on fire,” Sue mouthed to Bob.
He nodded. He gripped the pistol, which he’d taken from inside. “They may still be out there.”
“What should we do?”
“We can’t wait here.”
They were deep under the house. They’d moved as far to the center as they could, so as to be completely hidden from sight. Stacked cinderblock obscured the view towards the front of the house. Behind them slivers of light from the late afternoon sun were coming through the latticework. It seemed very far away.
“Girls we need to go back to where we entered.”
They started crawling. Black smoke was coming through the joists. The air was perceptibly becoming warmer.
Hannah whimpered, but kept crawling. “Mommy I can’t see.”
“I’m right behind you, baby. You’re doing good. We’re almost there.”
A loud crash sounded and suddenly red flames were visible.
“Mom!”
“Katie, keep going.”
Sue looked back and couldn’t see her father.
Smoke was everywhere. It stung their eyes and hurt something fierce. Tears streamed down Sue’s cheeks. She was forced to shut her eyes. “Girls, are you okay?”
“Mom?” Katie said, “It hurts, I can’t see.”
“Keep going,” Sue said.
There was another crash. Closer this time. It sounded like the joists were caving in. A flash of heat like an oven opening blew over them. It made Sue gasp. She coughed. The smoke was thick and oppressive and cut off her air.
“Dad? Cough…”
No answer. Sue coughed some more and pushed her girls forward.
“Mommy, I can’t go anymore,” Hannah cried.
Sue tried opening her eyes, but the smoke was stinging and made her eyelids clamp shut. She pushed what must have been Hannah in front of her.
“Mommy? Cough, cough…”
Sue was moving blind. Her girls had stopped crawling.
“Keep going!”
Her girls still weren’t moving.
“Help! I can’t open it,” Katie said.
Her girls must have reached the lattice.
“Hold on,” Sue said coughing uncontrollably now.
She groped and found the lattice. She coughed, pushed, but it was no good. They must not be in the same spot they’d entered.
There was no telling which direction they’d gone. They couldn’t waste time searching for the opening. The fire was too close. Sue could feel the heat.
She pushed harder. The wood slats, rough and splintery to the touch, bent, but didn’t break. They were nailed to the posts and along the tops and bottoms. The trim piece on the bottom was just a few inches from the ground. There wasn’t enough room to crawl under.
Hannah and Katie were coughing uncontrollably. Sue wiggled around. She positioned herself and kicked the lattice with her feet. She started to feel weak, dizzy, like she was going to pass out. She kicked again. Behind her there was another crash.
Her leg went through the lattice. She’d succeeded in breaking some slats. She felt the wood scratch and dig into her leg as she tried to pull it out. She had to maneuver and use her hand. She pushed the broken slats away. The edges, where they’d been nailed to the trim, had detached.
“Girls, see if you can get through.”
Hannah was through.
Now her turn.
In a daze Sue pushed the slats forward trying to make an opening big enough. It was too tight. The girls were so much smaller than her. She wasn’t going to fit. She couldn’t even get her head through.
She gasped. She could feel darkness closing in, her head getting tight. Not like this, she was thinking…
“Sue!”
Her name snapped her back from the abyss. The slats in front of her were wrenched away. There was the sound of slats breaking and wood being pulled off wood trim.
“C’mon!”
A hand reached in and grabbed hold of her. Sue pushed with her feet and was pulled through. She coughed, gasped. Large hands got hold of her and pulled her the rest of the way.
There was another crash. Sue blinked her eyes through the stinging pain and saw it was her dad pulling her.
“My girls?”
“Here, don’t worry.”
Sue coughed and looked back towards the house. Flames were licking the roof and coming out the windows. The heat was strong.
Popping noises were going off. A window upstairs blew out.
“Oh my God,” Sue said.
There was a flash and then an explosion. Sue shut her eyes and saw red.
“Girls!” she cried.
“Mommy!”
68
Zurich, Bahnhofstrasse
THOUSANDS of miles away, a much more sedate scene was playing out. The world was not yet awake in this part of the hemisphere. It was the dead of night and most people were sleeping.
The corner office had a cold efficiency to it, which suited its owner just fine. The man was the no frills type. He had his blinds closed. They were always closed. Even during daylight hours, he kept them closed. Unlike others, he didn’t care for the million-dollar view, which overlooked Paradeplatz, a famous square near the end of Bahnhofstrasse.
This area was known as the financial and banking district, and the headquarters of Switzerland’s two largest banks overlooked the same square. The man had chosen this location nine years ago because it was the best. A prestigious address had done much to elevate his small, privately owned bank in those years. In a relatively short period of time—unusual in an industry known to move glacially where banks took decades, in some cases centuries, to make a name for themselves—his boutique bank had earned a sterling reputation for itself where it catered to an exacting clientele that expected only the finest customer service. Having offices here was considered de rigueur; there was no choice in the matter.
Only the best in the world. His clients were fussy creatures. He occasionally likened them to annoying insects.
His bank’s vaulted lobby, which was just down the corridor, met his client’s expectations to a tee, and during the day coddled them in the lap of luxury as soon as they entered through the arched paneled doors. It was not unlike an elite spa in some respects. Clients could work out and even take showers in the expansive men’s and women’s private adjoining areas.
He thought such expenses vexatiously frivolous. But he reminded himself that his bank’s clients paid through the nose to have such fringe benefits. Let them eat the chocolate bon bons and confectionary treats in the lobby, which came from Confiserie Sprüngli just down the street. He would gladly take their millions and bilk them for all they were worth.
Of course he needed profits to lure ever more clientele and feed his bank’s voracious appetite. And lately those profits were getting harder to come by. But that would all be behind him soon.
Gottlob!
His liquidity problems were about to be solved and then he could rid himself of the worries and demons that kept him awake at night and made him come into the office at all hours, like now, when most reasonable people were sleeping.
He was in the middle of typing an internal memo to his employees when the email came. He usually disregarded emails, letting his two assistants handle such perfunctory duties when they came in the morning. But this one caught his attention, as it came from his personal account, which his assistants couldn’t access.
The email’s subject line said: ComTek.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end as he looked at the screen. He stared at the email and did not open it. This was not part of the arrangement.
There was to be no communication. Not for seventy-two hours. He stared at the screen for over a minute. Something must have happened, he realized.
With trepidation he clicked on the email.
[What’s the status?]
London, Canary Wharf
NIGHT owls were abounding, and not just in Zurich. While night pressed its heavy blanket outside on the Thames, not everyone was gone from the shiny offices that overlooked the dank dark river.
The name on the faceplate outside the office was a common name. The man liked common. He’d selected such a name for that specific purpose.
Common was discrete. Common was anonymous. Common didn’t draw attention, but blended like a dark suit at a funeral.
Common.
John Smith.
Name notwithstanding, there was nothing common about the man lounging in the sophisticated chic environs of his wall-to-wall glass office.
At one time he was considered a financial wizard, a master of the universe without peer. Back at the market’s height before the crash, no one had been better at creating and moving structured instruments, CDOs, SIVs, you name it. He made piles of money. In one year he made more than the GDP of several small nations. The next year he lost twice as much when the market turned. Of course it was only investor’s money; his money was safe. He was never obtuse enough to put his own money in the investment vehicles he spun to his clients. When he walked away from it all, he was a very rich man.
His name, however, was a little worse for wear. The London Evening Standard, Financial Times, The Sun, Daily Telegraph, and all the other arses out there that called themselves newspapers had a field day with him. Due to some trivial technicalities, such as investing in certain funds without his clients’ consent, he was blackballed from ever working in finance again. That wouldn’t have bothered him, except there wasn’t any other profession out there that he enjoyed as much. So he got back into it. Only now he used an alias—John Smith—to match his new face.
He never thought he’d have the opportunity like the one before him. But fate was a strange lady. Some men were destined to be around money.
His was such a life, he firmly believed. He made money, moved money, and spent money. Money made his orbit. Just so long as he was around money, life was good. It’s what he lived for.
That and a few other things.
Across from his zebrawood desk, on a floating island-wall, six 55” plasma screens were playing on mute. Each was tuned to a different news channel that was doing around the clock coverage of what was now a global crisis. He paid no attention to the newscasts.
He’d seen enough earlier and was bored with them. In an hour or so he’d leave his shiny office. At the moment, he was flipping through a leather portfolio for Gulfstream’s latest private jet. Pictures of the beautiful craft showed its impressive attributes, its twin Rolls Royce engines, its technology-filled cockpit, its sleek refined lines. The craft had a top speed of .925 Mach and a range of 7,000 nautical miles. The price was only £45 million. A pittance.
He was looking forward to replacing his tired G5. The G6 was it. The new bombastic paradigm. It flaunted and pranced while others were left flat, their bubbles dissipating like left out champagne.
Coverage of a riot in LA flashed on one of his screens. People were breaking into a Walmart while the cops just watched. A news reporter in Shanghai was speaking w
ith people worried about their savings who were standing in a line that went around six city blocks. A Japanese woman was covering what was happening in Tokyo. Young and old alike had taken to the streets. It was a big ugly mess.
And so blah, blah, blah.
In a few hours the world would be changed. How droll. A week from now all this would be over. And a scant month from then he’d have his G6 and would be able to look down on the world from 51,000 feet.
He smirked. He soon would be buying everything he wanted, just like he used to, except this time, there would be no budget, or island that he couldn’t buy.
He would be flush. Richer than any fat Arab sheik. Able to thumb his nose at anyone or anything that stood in his way.
As he idly dreamed, the computer on his desk received an email. Oblivious, he kept reading his personalized portfolio embossed with gold leaf. He was envisioning being in those roomy seats that would be so much more comfortable than the ones he had now, looking out on that wide expansive ocean.
Ahh… he was so close he could taste it. It had the sweet taste of money.
Beijing
LO San had just finished beating an old woman. He’d left her for his men to finish up. It had been a while since he’d gotten his hands dirty. He’d forgotten how much he used to enjoy it.
He seldom took time for such small pleasures anymore. He was getting too removed from it all and not taking time for the little things. That was the problem with being the mountain master. As head of the most powerful Triad on the mainland, his life had dribbled down to endless meetings and fiduciary duties, which all swirled around the running of his holding corporation. And the bigger and more legitimate it became, the less he enjoyed running it.
He longed for the days when he was a young ambitious red pole, who’d risen from the gutter, and was making a name for himself with each contract killing. Everything was too easy now. His human trafficking business, counterfeiting, money laundering and extortion operations, and all of his lucrative businesses: toy companies, textile factories, software manufacturing plants… his entire empire… practically ran by itself.