“At least we can hope this failed contract turns out as well as your last one,” she said brightly. “Looks like that one was a smashing success.”
Mark had been surprised when he checked yesterday’s mail and found an envelope addressed to him by name at the Charon’s Ferry address. Inside was a note from Airman First Class James R. Fenton (the Third), currently stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska.
The note consisted of just one word. Thanks.
Chapter Thirty
Henry the Eighth
“You, Ms. Woods,” Henry Childers declared, “are a perfect example of why I am here today.”
Dressed in stylish and expensive casual attire, Childers was a moderately—in Lisa’s view—attractive man in his late fifties. He was tall, slim, and possessed of a rugged-featured face topped with well-styled salt-and-pepper hair.
“Am I?” Lisa gave him a quizzical look.
“I’ve been married six times,” he told her, “and though I’ve gotten older, my taste in women hasn’t progressed—not matured, shall we say. Every one of the six was a stunningly attractive twenty-something blond such as yourself. None of them remained with me for more than a few short years.
“Unfortunately, unlike that other Henry of historical note, all of my six wives remain alive—and they’re bleeding me dry, thanks to the settlements they obtained when they departed. Worse, four of them have children by me—ungrateful little bastards who don’t even so much as send me a Father’s Day card—for whom I not only pay child support, but I’m required to maintain a huge trust fund that will allow them to attend the most prestigious and expensive colleges when their time comes.”
“I see…” Lisa chose simply to accept the compliment rather than disillusion him about her age. It had been almost five years since she could call herself a ‘twenty-something.’
“Yes, but that’s just part of it,” he insisted. “I could live with that, might even consider looking for yet another beautiful young bride—perhaps even you, if you’re available…”
“I’m not,” she told him sternly.
“No matter,” he shrugged, “it’s all finished anyway. You see, my business is on the verge of collapse. The vultures are already circling, and the stock value of the company has fallen. And unfortunately, that company represents almost the totality of my personal wealth.”
That wasn’t news to Lisa. Childers was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’d built his company—and gotten rich—by developing a marketing software package that claimed to use artificial intelligence to analyze user data and target advertising. In fact, the system produced results—an extremely high rate of return for advertisers—and was the darling of the social media giants for a while.
Then someone else had come up with an even better system, and for the last several years, Childers had been losing clients to the newcomer. Virtually all the major social media platforms had already abandoned him, and it was rumored that his few remaining customers were about to do the same.
Like so many tech wizards before him, Henry Childers had become obsolete.
“No point in even trying to sell my stock,” he continued. “If I tried to do that, its value would drop to zero, and the SEC would be upset with me—insider trading and other charges, I’m sure. So I’ve just liquidated all my personal assets.
“Sold my home, the yacht, the winter place up in Vail, the Bentley. Managed to clear a little over five million, most of which I’m leaving to a Native American missionary school in South Dakota—place I discovered during Bike Week up in Sturgis a few years back. Got five kids of my own who won’t give me the time of day, but those little Lakota kids always send me a birthday card. Of course, they also ask for money, but they don’t demand anything—and they need it more than my so-called family.
“Anyway, I’ve got about $300,000 left to pay you people for your services. Will that do it?”
“Services…as in ‘end your life’—right?” She wanted to make sure Childers was serious.
“Yes…exactly that. I know there’s a three-day waiting period, but I want it done as soon as possible. I’ve already got my affairs in order—though I haven’t yet told my ex-wives and kids that their meal ticket is about to run out. Probably won’t bother—let ‘em find out when the bank deposits stop coming.”
“That’s totally up to you.” Lisa shrugged. “To answer your question, yes—$300,000 will more than cover it, even allow you to choose the method. Do you have any specific way you’d like to go out?”
“As a matter of fact, I do…”
“Seriously?” Mark asked. “That’s what he wants? Did he give you any more specifics?”
“Nope! That’s it—just the way I listed it in the contract.”
“Death by drowning…can’t understand why anyone would want that.”
“It’s not the first time.” Lisa shrugged. “Remember that woman last year—Lola Cheng?”
“Yeah, but she was paraplegic and weighed about 90 pounds,” he reminded her. “I don’t think we’re gonna find it so easy to just hold this guy’s head under water in the Styx hot tub. Suicidal or not, people tend to struggle when they’re drowning.”
“True,” she agreed. “Childers may be a few years older than you, but he’s just as big, and in fairly good shape. We need to come up with a better way. Too bad we don’t have a nice, deep, indoor swimming pool. We could just cuff him, tie some weights to his ankles, and toss him in.”
“I wanted to put in a pool.” He shook his head. “There’s even space for it in the building plan—the big storage rooms on the first and second floors were supposed to be the pool itself, and the deck level above. It’s directly above the parking garage for easy drainage hookup. But I ran short on funds during the building, so I left the pool out.”
“Hmmm…I wondered about that,” she said. “The lower floors are convenient, but we’ve got all kinds of storage space on the third floor we aren’t using at all.”
“Well, we’ve got the money now,” he said. “Maybe we should look into putting in a pool. Just with the existing floor plan, we could make it 20 by 40 and 8 feet deep, and still have room for a nice poolside lounge area. It’s even got one-way windows on one wall for light and a view. It’s not something we’d use often for business, but it’d be nice for the two of us…”
“Yeah…I’d enjoy it,” she agreed, “but unfortunately we can’t get it built by Friday, so we need to think about how we’re going to do Childers. I think I’ve got an idea about that…”
“You want me to take my clothes off?” Childers gave Lisa a leering grin. “Why?”
“It’s sort of a tradition here,” she told him. “You go out the way you came in—naked. Besides, we’re going to donate your clothing to charity, and we’d rather you don’t mess it up. A lot of our terminations are messier than yours will be, but still…”
“Oh…well, all right.” He proceeded to strip down and, at her direction, tossed his clothing into a pile on the balcony.
“Now,” she told him, “turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
To her relief, he complied without question, and she locked the handcuffs in place. Now I’ve got you under control—the rest should be simple.
She led him out onto the red square, where a small plastic chair had been placed.
“Just sit down here—put your hands behind the chair back, please.”
Again he complied, and she knelt down in front of him. “Now…just pick up your feet, please.” He did so, and she picked up the rope from the floor and slipped the hangman’s noose around his ankles.
“Can’t have you kicking out of this,” she told him, producing a roll of duct tape, which she wrapped around his ankles and the noose. She looked up at him and realized he had been looking down the front of her blouse.
“Hmmm…enjoying the view?” she asked. He didn’t comment, but the typical male response between his legs confirmed that he was.
She got up and
walked around behind him.
“Just one more detail,” she told him. The 25-lb barbell weight on the floor had a short length of chain attached, whose free end she hooked on to the handcuff chain behind his back.
“I told you how I wanted to go out,” he complained as she got up and walked over to the control pedestal. “I don’t see why you’re doing all of this crazy hook-up.”
“You’ll figure it out,” she told him with a smile as she armed the system. “Goodbye, Henry…”
She hit the drop button.
“Aughhhh!” his cry of surprise as the floor opened ended with a huge splash of water that geysered up from below, drenching Lisa. Note to self: next time step back quickly, she thought.
Below in the drop zone, Mark had been drenched as well—the sight of which gave Lisa some small satisfaction as she slid down the pole to join him.
“Well?” She gave him a quizzical look.
“Seems to be working as planned,” he told her. “Rope’s still moving around, so he’s not done yet, but it looks like you were right about the length.”
She walked over to the side of the pool to join him. The circular above-ground pool was just 12 feet across and only 4 feet deep—the smallest (and cheapest) model they could get at the local home improvement warehouse. It had only taken them a couple of hours to set it up in the drop zone and fill it with water.
Lisa had convinced Mark they didn’t need to actually suspend Henry from the rope with just his head in the water. As long as the rope held his feet high enough off the bottom that he couldn’t manage to stand up, they would be good, she said.
“So far, nothing’s come up—except that,” Mark noted, pointing to the plastic chair floating near the far edge of the pool. “He’s stopped making bubbles, but the rope is still moving a bit.”
They waited a few more minutes, during which the rope motion stopped, and the water surface became calm. They gave it another ten minutes to make sure Henry couldn’t be revived.
“Now…how do we get him out of here?” Lisa wondered. The rope hung down into the water, a couple of feet out of reach.
“Well…we could hoist him back up to the balcony. Or maybe I can find something to hook the rope with.”
“Oh, to hell with it,” Lisa said. “We’re going to tear this thing down again tonight. Might as well get some use out of it.”
She stripped down, tossing her already wet clothes to the side.
“I’m going for a swim,” she declared. “Care to join me?”
Chapter Thirty-One
House Call
“This is uncharted territory,” Lisa said. “I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy about it. Are you sure you want to do it?”
“It’s only a short drive up to Hollywood Hills,” he insisted. “For the amount of money Nilsson’s offering, I’d drive to Alaska. Besides, at this point, it’s just a meeting. We can always say no.”
The meeting in question was with billionaire industrialist Thor Nilsson, to discuss something that had never been done in the history of the Ferry—an off-site termination. Nilsson had filed an application—and paid twice the normal application fee to cover travel expenses—stating that he wished to avail himself of the Ferry’s services. Rumors had been circulating for some months in the financial world that he had health problems, so Mark was reasonably sure his interest was genuine.
The problem was that he didn’t want it done at the Ferry’s offices. He wanted to be snuffed in his own palatial home up in the hills. That, of course, presented several other complications that Mark could think of, but Nilsson was offering no less than five million dollars to have it done his way.
So…Mark was about to climb into his Jag and drive to the prospective client’s place, hopefully to work out a mutually satisfactory contract.
“I’m more concerned about leaving you alone here,” he told her. “Wish you didn’t have that prospect meeting. You know he’s a Sambok, and they can be pretty nasty.”
The Samboks were a gang. They’d originally been members of an elite North Korean military unit until they’d hijacked a transport and flown to Japan, where they’d demanded asylum. The Japanese knew a Pandora’s Box when they saw it and had handed the group off to the United States—which had promptly granted the asylum request and transported them to Southern California. The Samboks had immediately established themselves in the area known as Koreatown near central L.A. and attempted to take charge of the community.
But Koreatown was not a typical ethnic enclave. Its residents were educated, affluent, and—being of Korean immigrant stock—accustomed to dealing with North Korean aggression. It only took three LifeEnders hits on Sambok leaders before the group decided to find themselves a more submissive community a few miles down the road, where they became just another gang warring for turf. In that environment, they had thrived.
“Well, that’s the point.” Lisa shrugged. “According to what we’ve got, he’s a very low-level Sambok, and a disgraced one at that. Don’t know what he did to piss them off, but now it’s either come to us, or let the gang deal with him.
“By their standards, coming here is the honorable thing for him to do—the only thing that will atone for his disgrace. I expect a 15-minute meeting at most, he signs the contract, and you’ll be here when he shows up three days from now for the actual termination.”
“If I don’t have to be back at Nilsson’s place three days from now,” he reminded her. “That’ll take priority.”
“That’s just scheduling,” she insisted. “We’ll work it out.”
“Mr. Pak,” Lisa got right to the point, “it’s my understanding that you wish to have yourself terminated—to end your life by the use of our services. Is that a correct statement?”
Pak Song Yi was a middle-aged Korean with a lean, hard look about him. He wasn’t particularly tall or heavy, but he moved with a certain nervous energy that made Lisa watch him very carefully.
Whatever his current status, he survived on the streets for some time with these people. In his own environment, he’s probably dangerous.
“That is not quite correct,” he told her. “I have come to discuss your services, but not in regard to my own life.”
Lisa sat up and put her hands on the desk in front of her. Alarm bells were ringing in her head.
“Perhaps you’d better explain…” she suggested.
“I have come here to advise you that it would be best if Charon’s Ferry not have any dealings with Mr. Thor Nilsson,” he replied. “For your own sake, of course…such dealings could be very dangerous.”
Lisa’s alert level went from yellow to red in a nanosecond, but her face showed no reaction.
“Mr.…who?” she inquired.
“Do not play games with me, Ms. Woods,” he directed. “Your partner, Mr. Marshall, is even now on his way to a meeting with Nilsson. You need to call him and tell him not to make that meeting…right now!”
“Hmmm…suppose instead I just call security to come in here and forcibly remove you from the premises?” She returned the hard look he was giving her.
“There is no security,” he told her with an evil smile. “With Marshall away, you and I are alone in this building. Please…” he produced a polymer dagger from inside his sleeve, “keep your hands where I can see them. I am incredibly good with this little tool.”
Lisa looked at the weapon. Plastic—that’s why the entry detectors didn’t pick it up. Won’t have much of an edge for slashing, but stiff and pointed enough to stab through clothing. The dagger also appears to have a cone-shaped skull crusher pommel that—plastic or not—could probably do some damage.
“Whoever gave you that information was wrong,” she told him. In plain sight, she reached up and touched an icon on her desktop screen.
“Carla?” she asked, in a perfectly normal voice.
“Yes, Ms. Woods. How may I assist you?”
Startled by the pleasant, feminine voice, Pak jerked his head to Lisa’s left to l
ook at the screen. He never saw the small panel slide open under her right hand.
“Call security,” she ordered. “Tell them to come in here and castrate this little prick.”
Pak turned back to look at her just in time to take a 225-grain hollow-point .45 round between the eyes. The back of his head exploded, splattering the contents of his cranium all over the far wall of the office.
“I’m sorry,” the voice from the screen replied. “I don’t know anyone named ‘Security,’ and I don’t understand ‘castrate this little prick.’ Please restate your request.”
So much for artificial intelligence, Lisa thought. The voice-activated “digital assistant” was good, within its limits. Maybe not as good as some of the cloud-based versions available to the public, but this one ran entirely on the Ferry’s own server. She and Mark were firm believers in tight cyber-security.
“Cancel request. Thank you, Carla.”
“You’re welcome, Ms. Woods.”
“I have a lot of questions I would like to have asked you, Mr. Pak,” she told the dead man, “but you managed to convince me you were dangerous, so I couldn’t take the chance. I’ll leave it to NorthStar to sort this one out.”
By force of habit, she got up and checked to make sure he was dead, keeping the suppressed Glock 30 pointed at him, and her finger on the trigger—totally unnecessary, since the back half of his skull was missing altogether.
“Think I’ll keep this little souvenir,” she muttered as she took the polymer dagger from his hand. “Might come in handy someday.”
“I can turn around at the next exit. I’ll be back within an hour.”
“Please do not do that,” Lisa insisted. “That’s exactly what Pak wanted. I’m fine, he’s dead, and the building is locked down. The entire Sambok gang couldn’t get in here now. If they try, the coroner will be picking up their bodies for a week.
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