Diamonds and Blood (Chameleon Assassin Book 5)

by BR Kingsolver

  Chapter 28

  Wil let me in to talk with Clarissa-Adrienne the following afternoon. He also promised me he would turn off the recorders and cameras. I didn’t necessarily trust him, so I went around the room and touched each of the cameras, burning them all out.

  “What do you want?” Clarissa asked when I sat down. She looked like hell—no sleep, obviously no shower, and day-old smeared makeup. The lumpy orange prison jumpsuit really didn’t suit her.

  “How do you see through my projections?” I asked.

  She eyed me with a distinct air of hostility.

  “You’re going to a penal colony,” I said. “I can probably influence which one you go to. I hear that the ones on the moon are really nasty.”

  She stared off into space while I waited. When she turned her attention back to me, she asked, “Do you believe in clairvoyance?”

  I shrugged. “I believe in a lot of things that I can’t see or touch.”

  “When I look at you, I see you as you are, and I see you as you will be. No matter what illusion you wear, at some point in the future, you’ll wear another one, or none at all. With other people, they always look the same in the future, although they might be older.”

  “Does David Capozzi or any of his men know I’m a chameleon?”

  She shook her head. “How would that have helped me? If David really believed I can see the future, he’d turn me into a slave.”

  When I left the room, Wil was standing outside.

  “Did you have to burn everything out?”

  “If they hadn't been turned on, they wouldn’t have shorted. You told me they would be off. Don’t try and bullshit me, Wil. You’re playing with a professional.”

  He walked me outside and watched me transform into one of my personas.

  “That was for your protection as well as mine,” I told him. “She’s able to see through this sort of thing, and I wanted to know how. I’m sure you wouldn’t want any of your people to listen in on such a conversation.”

  He slowly nodded. “Did you get what you need?”

  “Yeah. Wil, what’s going to happen to her?”

  “She’ll go to a penal colony, probably for five to ten years.”

  “Which one?”

  He took a deep breath, his eyes never leaving my face. “Probably one of the mining camps on the upper side of Hudson Bay.”

  “Is that one of the really bad ones?”

  Wil shook his head. “I can make sure she goes to one that’s mostly mutants, and the conditions are reasonably tolerable.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

  I was on the metro back to the hotel when my dad called.

  “Hi. What’s up?”

  “Check your mail when you can,” he said. “Hearing some interesting tales about life in Montreal. Are you having an exciting time?”

  “Uh, yeah. Things have been a little too exciting.”

  “Are you and Nellie all right?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine.”

  “And Wilbur?”

  “Yeah, he’s okay, too. You and Mom okay?”

  I could almost hear his smile. “Very much so. We’re going to dinner and a concert this evening. You be careful, you hear? Je t’aime.”

  “Okay. I love you, too, Dad.”

  We never talked business on the phone, but that was a strange phone call for him. When I got back to the hotel, I fired up my laptop and set up a secure tunnel to my server in Toronto. There I found the message he left for me.

  Your friend has leaks from his organization in Montreal. Word has reached Alonzo Donofrio that his granddaughter’s husband is responsible for her murder. Reward is ten million.

  What the hell is going on there? Are you sure you and Nellie are safe? Money isn’t worth anything if you’re not alive to spend it. Tell Tom I’m not happy with you girls being there.

  Dad

  I read it twice. There was a lot he didn’t say, but the implications for Wil were enormous. Evidently, he had only scratched the surface on finding the rats inside the Chamber.

  As to Alonzo’s contract, I agreed with Dad. Money was only worth something if you were alive to spend it. I replied.

  Tell Alonzo that his goals and mine coincide. I will resolve the situation and he won’t even owe me a favor.

  Will tell my friend you said hello. Thank you. Nellie and I are fine, but appreciate your concern. Tom has the situation in hand.

  Love you, Libby

  Using my Jasmine Keller persona but dressed a little better than I normally did in that guise, I went downstairs and checked into the room next to mine. Jasmine was not ugly, not pretty—basically as plain as white bread. She had brown hair and was as tall as I was but forty pounds heavier—completely unnoticeable and forgettable, but big enough most people wouldn’t hassle her on the street.

  When Wil got back to the hotel that evening, I passed my father’s warning along.

  “Got a call from Dad today,” I said as we got dressed for dinner. We had made reservations in one of the Queen Elizabeth’s fine restaurants.

  “Oh? How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing great, but he said to tell you that your organization leaks like a sieve.”

  Silence, then Wil popped out of the bathroom. “What?”

  “People in Toronto know that David Capozzi killed his wife, and they aren’t happy about you letting him go.”

  He stared at me, then I could see the understanding hit him. “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah. Don’t get between David and any windows.”

  “But…how would anyone know that David…” He disappeared back into the bathroom. When he came out, he said, “Only half a dozen people knew about Adrienne Macron’s confession.”

  “It was recorded, wasn’t it?” I asked. “If that recording wasn’t secured, then you have no idea who knows its contents. I could duplicate the chip in thirty seconds, and you’d never know it.” I put my arms around his neck and kissed him. “Start with those six, but you’re going to have to search beyond them, too. If you want to implement a truly secure set of processes for handling sensitive material, call my office in the morning.” Turning around in his arms, I held a necklace above my shoulder. “Be a dear and latch this for me.”

  He did, with roving hands and enough body pressure against my backside to make the experience very enjoyable.

  “Okay, are you ready?” I asked, spinning out of his grasp.

  We took the elevator most of the way down, then switched to the stairs. I was taking no chances, and the reservations had been made in Tom’s name.

  After the waitress took our orders and poured the wine, I said, “Wil, Donofrio is not happy. I don’t know how much Alonzo knows, but if there is any way of keeping Benito locked up, do it.”

  “What about David?”

  I took a sip of my wine, then shook my head. “Nothing you can do. He’s a dead man. You could send him to the moon, and you’ll only extend his lifespan by the length of the trip.”

  Wil sighed. “You’re probably right. Answer me honestly, did you take the contract?”

  He almost never asked me such questions, which was good because I didn’t like lying to him.

  “I told them to cancel the contract.”

  He raised one eyebrow in that way he had.

  “You said yourself that I’m not safe as long as David’s alive. I don’t need anyone’s money to take care of my own business.”

  After a long look at my face, he picked up his wine and sipped it. “Be careful.”

  We had a lovely dinner and didn’t talk business or murder or any other unpleasant topics the rest of the evening.

  I set out in my Jasmine Keller persona to stalk David Capozzi. He lived on the ninth floor of a fifteen-story luxury apartment building popular with young single professionals—stockbrokers, bankers, computer geeks, and the children of corporate executives.

  That last classification denoted almost-crowned royalty. In times past, the children of th
e rich either made their own careers or debauched their way through life without a thought to the work someone had done to amass that wealth. In 2203, the daughters mostly married the sons of other corporate executives, and the sons collected wives and mistresses while taking jobs at the same company daddy worked for, expecting in time to rise up the hierarchy. But in their twenties and early thirties, they were a hard-partying bunch. David fit right in.

  The Morgans were quite rare in that regard. Joseph had taken a small, local company and expanded it into a powerful international one. Michael had pursued his own course as an artist. I had seen a number of his paintings, including two in Joseph’s apartment, and he was quite good, although not to my taste. He evidently sold well, and for respectable prices.

  David wasn’t a particularly early riser, which I appreciated. He usually left his home between eight-thirty and nine and arrived at Montreal Waste Disposal Corporation about thirty or forty minutes later.

  Or at least that had been his normal routine. With Benito in jail, he had additional responsibilities thrust upon him. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t joyously embracing his new duties.

  The garbage business was the largest of the Capozzi family’s visible empire, but not their only business. They ran a chain of pizza parlors, a chain of hair salons, a construction company, and the small casino where Wil and I found Teddy Smith. Then there were the illegal businesses, including drugs, weapons, white slavery, smuggling, and extortion. Oh, and passing off man-made diamonds as natural gemstones.

  Benito’s office was in a building that included the headquarters of the construction company. That was ten miles from the waste-disposal headquarters. Benito also religiously showed up at Carmine’s mansion for lunch five days a week and dinner on Sundays. My sources informed me that David skipped the Sunday dinners most of the time.

  So, David showed up at Montreal Waste in the morning, then went over to the construction company, then to Carmine’s for lunch, then back to the construction company in the afternoon. Instead of taking off for a round of golf in the afternoons, he ended up working until dark most nights.

  A security detail accompanied him everywhere he went. Even in the evenings, his trips to the mutie and gay bars included armed thugs who didn’t act like they enjoyed the surroundings.

  Dad sent an email saying that Alonzo had pulled the contract, but the level of security around David led me to believe word of Alonzo’s displeasure had gotten out. During my first four days of watching David, I had seen him outside of a building or armored limousine fewer than a dozen times. A long-range sniper shot didn’t look like my best bet.

  On Friday evening, David picked up a guy at a bar and they spent some time dancing and making out in a booth. It appeared that David wanted to take the guy home, but his bodyguards nixed the deal. After a heated argument, they hustled David out of the club and into his limo.

  Then on Saturday, David slipped out the back of a restaurant and ditched his handlers.

  Chapter 29

  Chez Roman, a nice little pasta bistro in Little Italy, had a delightful upscale menu and an intimate, elegant decor. David Capozzi sat a few tables away from me, and as far as I could tell, had wasted little if any attention on Jasmine Keller. Two of his bodyguards had a table next to his, but David sat alone.

  The lobster cannelloni and a very pleasant French white wine had most of my attention when David got up to go to the men’s room. But he walked past the hall to the washrooms and turned down the next hallway to the kitchen. From where his bodyguards were sitting, they couldn’t see what he had done.

  I stood immediately and followed him. He went through the kitchen door and picked up his pace. When he reached the back door, he glanced quickly over his shoulder, then pushed through. I approached the door more cautiously, pushing it open a crack, then a little wider when I didn’t see anyone on the other side.

  The restaurant was one level down from the street, and the door opened onto a service corridor. Ten or fifteen feet away, David stood with another man. They quickly embraced, then walked off down the corridor holding hands. Blurring my form, I hugged the wall as I followed them. They descended a set of stairs down three levels, then continued through a door that I soon discovered let out onto a metro stop. It was there that I realized the other man was his make-out buddy from the previous evening.

  They rode the train through two stations and got off at the third. An escalator took us up three levels, and they exited onto the street. There had been a storm outside earlier that evening, and I found it had only gotten worse. I pulled a hooded windbreaker and umbrella out of my bag before I followed them. Being discreet wasn’t a problem in that weather, as they never looked back.

  Our destination turned out to be a bar with a live band. It took me a minute for my eyes to adjust as the bar was even darker than the night outside. My first clue as to what I’d walked into was when I realized the band was all male and dressed in drag. A hurried look around revealed that normal females were in a distinct minority—me. Sliding into a dark corner, I morphed into one of my male personas.

  For the next hour, I watched David and his friend drink, dance, and make out a little bit. During that time, several guys hit on me, and I decided that I should have chosen a less attractive persona.

  Eventually, David’s boyfriend pushed away from the bar and headed toward the men’s room. I was surprised, when I entered it, at how empty it was. Sounds from one stall told me it was occupied by more than one person, but otherwise, it seemed the guys didn’t stay too long. My quarry entered a stall at the end.

  I waited until it sounded like he was finished, then pushed the door and entered, crowding him into the wall.

  “What the hell—”

  The knife I raised in front of his eyes cut off anything else he might have said. I memorized his facial features, then scanned down over his body. He hadn’t had time to zip up yet, so I took a good look at that, too. He seemed rather effeminate, confirming the impression I had formed outside—definitely a different attitude than the masculine athletic vibe that David projected.

  I bodied him up and kissed him. A kiss is one of the most intimate of human acts, and everyone does it differently. For the spur-of-the-moment plan forming in my mind, I knew I had to feel the way the guy kissed to fool David.

  While we kissed, I groped him, feeling his chest and arms, his abdomen, and his genitals. He resisted at first, but then gave in, kissing me back. The speed of his submission and how aroused he became told me what I needed to know. I had pegged David as a dominant personality due to his interactions with Clarissa, and Mr. Pickup confirmed it.

  I spent about five minutes kissing and feeling him up and stripping him and making him talk to me so I could hear his voice, then slipped the knife back into my bag and pulled out the jet injector I had used on Clarissa.

  “You should be more careful,” I told him. “That guy you’re humping out there is a mass murderer. I’m saving your life tonight.”

  His eyes about bugged out of his head. I gave him a shot of sleepy juice and eased him onto the toilet seat, propping him against the wall. His clothes didn’t fit me very well, but I could fix that with illusion. For what I had in mind, I needed his real clothes. My clothes I rolled up and put in my bag. I slipped out of the stall, went to the mirror, and adjusted my appearance to match his. Pleased with the result, I exited the washroom and went looking for David.

  My dad thought what I did was a psychic projection, and the fact I didn’t show up on cameras or trigger movement detectors was due to an interaction of that psychic ability and my curious relationship with electricity. When I was young, my parents fought a constant battle to keep me away from anything electrical, and spent a fortune replacing lamps, refrigerators, computers, and anything else that I touched and burned out.

  I had learned to control both talents—the chameleon thing and the electrical thing. I could open an electric lock without permanently shorting it out, and I could don any kin
d of persona I wanted or blend into any background. People saw what I wanted them to see. With a couple of exceptions. A girl I met in Chicago once and Clarissa were glaring exceptions.

  My various personas weren’t just visual. If I decided to look like Nellie, even people who touched me thought I was five-foot-five, like Nellie. If I took on a lycan image, someone who touched me would feel fur. And if I projected as male, a lover would feel my male muscles and genitals. Attempting to perform as a male in bed wasn’t something I had tried, and couldn’t imagine how I could make it work, but that wasn’t what I had in mind. But if David took boyfriend’s clothes off, the clothes hitting the floor needed to look like boyfriend’s clothes and not Libby’s.

  David looked irritated when I brushed against him and picked up boyfriend’s drink at the bar.

  “It took you long enough. What were you doing? Blowing someone in there?”

  I tried to look hurt. “No, there was a line, and then some asshole got in front of me. I thought I was going to pee my pants.” I rubbed up against him with my head bowed and looked up at him through my eyelashes. “Don’t be angry, or if you want to be, take me home and punish me.”

  The expression on David’s face slowly changed to a delighted, but cruel smile. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”

  We braved the storm again going back to the metro, then rode it to the stop near David’s apartment. On the elevator ride from the lobby, he was all over me, ripping off my filter mask to kiss me and grope me as fervently as I had David’s real love interest. It gave me ample time to frisk him and identify the pistol he wore in a holster under his left armpit. Inside his apartment, he tore his clothes off and then started on mine.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Let me go to the washroom and freshen up for you.”

  After a few more kisses, and some more rough groping that was close to painful, he panted, “Yeah. Freshen up. Hurry,” and let me go.