“What about them?”
“That’s Mabel Stone. She owns the place. The guys she’s with are from that real estate company I told you about.”
“Premier Projects Development?”
“Yup.”
“What do they want with her?”
“No idea,” Gary Kurtz said.
Chapter 9
“A little trip out of town will be good for you, Seamus. It will lighten up your mood.” The face in the computer smiled cheerfully. Seamus Sullivan smiled back. Keep it up, asshole. See who’s smiling then.
It would be far too much to say that Seamus Sullivan was worried, more like a tad concerned. He hadn’t counted on the burial ground being discovered. An isolated spot in the middle of nowhere is supposed to stay isolated.
He had deposited sperm in all three orifices of all his illicit lovelies. He had paced himself, tightening the noose just a bit tighter each time, ratcheting up the pressure, watching their eyes bulge in their pretty little faces, feeling them writhe and shudder and convulse beneath him as he came.
What a rush.
There was always just a bit of a letdown, after the last one, when the light had finally faded from her eyes, just a moment’s regret that something so young and so beautiful had gone out of this world, that it was all over, it was finished, that he would never again be able to expel himself into this particular smooth, young and luscious little body…but they had all died for a good cause. Let’s remember that.
He had already cleared out the basement, just in case anybody came snooping. The straps, the ropes, the table with the metal rods so perfect for securing restraints, all broken down and stored away, in a rented store room in a far away town under a false ID. It was a basement. Just a basement. If they searched, they would find nothing, but there was no reason for them to search. Seamus Sullivan was one concerned citizen among a thousand others. Nothing to see here. Move along.
And if you want to come in, you better have a damn good reason and a duly issued warrant because I’m an American citizen and I know my rights!
No reason for it to come to that, though. Seamus Sullivan had spent years seamlessly blending in, bothering nobody, one fine upstanding citizen among all the rest.
Maybe the voice was right. Get away for a few days. Do the job. Get your mind off the current annoyance.
They could look all they wanted. They would find nothing. He was invisible.
Jessie Ray Jones had spent her twenties as a loyal member of the party, licking the stamps, sealing the envelopes, going door to door getting out the vote. She had never expected to be elected to anything herself but when old Boyd Sheridan decided not to run again and the Rethuglicans put up a good looking war hero, suddenly threatening to steal away what had always been a safe seat…well, the local party needed someone quick who was well established in the district and knew the way things worked, and nobody knew more than Jessie Ray Jones.
It didn’t hurt that she was a young widow with two kids, a story just guaranteed to tug at the heart strings. So, she had run and here she was, a duly elected member of the West Virginia House of Delegates.
Yep, life really was like a box of candy and you never knew what you were going to get.
What she didn’t expect to get was a visit from two men, one very large and one very small. Both wore business suits. The small one carried a brief case. The large one, Jessie saw, carried a gun in a holster under his arm. The large one sat without speaking, a small smile plastered across his face, while the other one talked.
“We would place the primary building on this ridge, here,”—he pointed at the spot he was talking about on a detailed map spread out on Jessie Ray’s desk—“with a view of the mountains and the lake from every room. Individual villas, all very private, with their own spas under an attached glass greenhouse, scattered through the woods. Nothing better than soaking in a spa with the lights turned low, drinking a glass of wine, while the snow drifts down over your head at night. In the summer, the ceiling panes would open so you can get that real outdoor feel.
“It’s old growth forest, which normally would be an impediment to construction but in this case, we intend to leave almost all of it in place. It adds to the ambiance, the feel that this is an old, rich, elegant structure that’s had a long and storied history.”
The little guy, who had introduced himself as Jefferson Edwards, First Vice President of Premier Projects Development, had a very slick smile and a practiced patter. Truthfully, it was a well thought out plan. It might even work. Jessie Ray had her doubts, though. This resort they were so enthused about was still in the ass end of nowhere, at least so far as the high rollers in New York, Chicago and LA were concerned, not to mention London, Paris and Dubai.
“What else have you got?” she said.
Jefferson Edwards smiled that slick little smile. “Have you ever heard of golden rainbow trout?”
“I have.” Golden rainbow trout were a variety of mutated rainbow trout, the very first example of which, with distinctive yellow mottling along its sides, had been discovered in a hatchery in West Virginia in 1955. Some bright boys took that one trout, bred it, selected the fry with the most yellow coloring and after a few generations had a fish that was a uniform bright, golden yellow, with a pretty pink stripe. Since 1963, golden rainbow trout had been stocked all over the state.
“They don’t do too well in the wild,” Jessie Ray said. “That bright color makes it tough for them to hide from predators.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jefferson Edwards said. “There are excellent trout streams all through the area, and then there’s the lake. We plan on running our own hatchery. We can count on plenty of fish.”
“Okay, so you’ll include excellent fishing. What else?”
Jefferson Edwards almost smirked. “Grouse, pheasant, quail and woodcock. The area’s got some of the best gamebird hunting in the country. Not to mention deer and wild boar. We plan on offering guided hunting and fishing, with all the amenities. These will be luxury excursions. All the guests will have to do is pull the trigger and reel in the fish. We’ll do everything else, including casting the fly and aiming the shotgun, if that’s what they want.”
Jessie Ray nodded. Expensive, she thought, but it might appeal to a certain segment of the privileged upper classes. Real hunters and fishermen would no doubt prefer a more authentic experience. “What else?” she said.
“A golf course,” Jefferson Edwards said. “A very excellent golf course. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but we’ve already been in discussions with the Nicklaus organization. We foresee no problems.”
“Jack Nicklaus?”
Jefferson Edwards nodded. “Most of his business these days is designing golf courses. Nicklaus courses are very popular and very highly regarded.”
Also, very expensive, thought Jessie Ray. “It sounds,” she said, “as if you plan on offering every amenity and recreational activity known to man.”
“Pretty much,” Jefferson Edwards said.
“The Greenbrier, which is a world famous resort not all that far away, already offers all of these things, and the Greenbrier has had its share of financial trouble. What makes you think you can do any better?”
Jefferson Edwards glanced at his bodyguard. The corner of his mouth twitched upward. He turned back to Jessie Ray. “That’s the key question,” he said, “and that’s where you come in.”
A lot of alcohol, a little blow, a long, leisurely fuck with a beautiful blonde who, thank God, didn’t try to give him her phone number or even bother to tell him her name. She didn’t say much of anything, actually, but she had drained his cock in a very professional manner. Didn’t make him wear a condom, though, which spoke against her being a professional. Not that he gave a shit.
Whatever. It had been a long evening and he was looking forward to a good, stoned night’s sleep.
Steven Kyle winced at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were red. His hair, still thick, had more gray than
he liked to see, but nothing that a little hair dye wouldn’t fix. He worked out four times a week but still couldn’t get rid of that last little bit of flab around the middle and he had the beginning of a double chin. He was fifty-three years old.
He sighed. Father Time is undefeated. Still, a man grows more distinguished as he grows older. He snickered. Well, he grows more distinguished as he accumulates more money. The two definitely go together. Who was it who said that power is the best aphrodisiac? Napoleon? Henry Kissinger? Whoever he was, he got that one right. The young Steven Kyle used to have trouble getting laid. Not any more. Not for a long time.
Steven Kyle had read an account, many years ago, of a party at which Robert Redford was a guest. Half the crowd was clustered around the famous celebrity, wanting to talk to him. Then Ted Kennedy walked in, and everybody who had been talking to Redford wandered over to suck up to Kennedy. The key line in the article (a very clever line, indeed) was, “It was a lesson in the power of charisma versus the charisma of power.”
Yep. A great line. He wondered who wrote it.
Brush your teeth. Check. Always floss. You have to take care of the dental hygiene. No matter how much money, power and charisma you manage to accumulate, it won’t protect you against dental caries, and nobody enjoys getting a cavity drilled. Check. Face washed, clothes in the hamper, temperature adjusted to a pleasant sixty-six since Steven Kyle slept better when it was just a bit cooler at night.
He yawned. An important meeting in the afternoon, a less important meeting at 10 AM but one that nevertheless would require him to be sharp. Undressed down to a pair of briefs, he turned off the light in the bathroom and walked back to the bedroom.
“Hello, Steven.”
He blinked. A very large man stood smiling at him. Steven Kyle stared and opened his mouth and suddenly, a very large hand was wrapped around his throat. He didn’t even see the steel baton that hit him in the head.
Nearly unconscious, his vision flickering in and out, he tried to struggle. He felt himself being lifted and carried and then the door to the balcony opened and he was floating through the air. This can’t be right. Can it? My mind is going, Dave. I can feel it. It’s getting a little cold outside. Is this the end of Rico? He giggled. Yes, he thought. Yes, it is.
But what a way to go.
Ken Lerner sighed and looked up at the balcony, nearly forty stories above his head.
“Long fall,” Greg Jennings, his partner, said.
“Yep. Poor fucker.”
Convenient, Lerner thought. The wife leaves you, taking the kids, the estate in the Hamptons and at least fifty percent of the brokerage account. You can’t deal with the grief. You commit suicide. Hey, who wouldn’t?
The note seemed to be in Steven Kyle’s hand writing, the sentiments remorsefully expressed, along with the sad, sorrowful declaration to end it all. All neat and tidy.
Lerner had a bad feeling about this one. The CSI team was already going through the apartment, vacuuming up every last bit of lint, hair, dust mite and stray DNA, all the possible evidence, but at first glance, there wasn’t any.
Steven Kyle had been a rich man who donated generously to the campaigns of numerous politicians throughout the city of New York. Lerner had to investigate. He had to at least go through the motions, but Lerner knew that some crimes were never solved, were never even identified as crimes. A body that falls from forty stories suffers a lot of trauma. If any of that trauma happened to occur before Steven Kyle went splat on the sidewalk, there was no way whatsoever to tell.
A professional would know that.
Lerner sighed and looked at his watch. It was going to be a long morning.
Chapter 10
Might as well scratch the itch, Seamus Sullivan thought. He was far from home. Nobody knew his name. There was nothing to link him to New York City and tomorrow he would be gone. Perfect.
Times Square had been cleaned out years ago but there were still plenty of neighborhoods in New York where you could find what he was looking for. Brooklyn, particularly Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights and Corona, offered easy pickings. Most of these girls were recent immigrants. A lot of them didn’t speak English, but that was okay because cash is a universal language.
Tonight was a typical night in the neighborhood. Cops were nowhere to be seen. Pimps and barkers plied their trade from open doorways. Cars cruised slowly down the street. Scantily dressed women, most overweight and middle-aged, wandered up and down the sidewalks, pretending that they had someplace to go. Perhaps one in ten were young and pretty enough to activate Seamus Sullivan’s radar.
There…oh, yeah, she was the one, alright, the one he was looking for, very young, tottering along on high heels, red shorts, tight black top showing off a smooth, flat midriff, a push-up bra, thick, black hair pinned up on top of her head. Seamus Sullivan’s mouth almost watered at the sight of her.
He pulled the van up and rolled down the window. “Hey, Chica,” he said.
She took a deep breath. She almost hesitated, then walked slowly over to the window. “What you want?” she said. Her voice was low, almost husky. She smiled and Seamus almost moaned.
“You’re the prettiest little thing I’ve seen all night.” Seamus grinned. “I’d like to take you away from all this.”
“Yeah?” She straightened her shoulders. “I got to go to work,” she teased. “My Mama and my little brother need the money.”
“Call in sick,” Seamus said. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
She opened the door and slid into the front seat. He looked at her for a long moment. She preened, thrusting out her chest and raising her head, showing off that smooth, swan-like neck, smiling as seductively as she could, which was pretty damned seductive even if it was an act, which, Seamus was fairly certain, it wasn’t.
“Beautiful,” Seamus Sullivan said. Smiling happily, he put the car in gear and drove off.
The back of the van had a nice soft mattress. It would do nicely, and he knew just where to drop the body.
The Stone House was without a doubt the best restaurant in town. No reason not to wander in for lunch. Not quite as exotic as the dinner menu, mostly soup, salad and sandwiches. Interesting sandwiches, though. He briefly considered the bison pastrami on a Kaiser roll and finally decided on barbecued leg of lamb with coleslaw, pickled red onions and honey mustard on sourdough. No beer. He still had patients to see.
“You ready to order, Hon?” The same red-headed waitress from the other night. She smiled at him.
“Yes, thanks.” Kurtz ordered the leg of lamb with a side of fries and a coke. The waitress wrote it down, then walked back into the kitchen.
Not a lot of people here at lunch, just a few businessmen in suits and Kurtz. He sipped from a glass of water and nibbled on some pita chips as he waited. A few minutes later, the waitress came back with his sandwich. “Anything else I can get you?”
“I was wondering,” Kurtz said. “Is Mabel Stone around? I’d like to talk to her.”
The waitress blinked. “She’s in the office. Can I tell her what it’s about?”
“A business deal,” Kurtz said.
The waitress shrugged. “I’ll let her know.”
“Thanks.”
The sandwich was terrific, smoky and tender. He ate it slowly.
Mabel Stone walked out of the back and came over to his table. “Can I help you?” she said.
Kurtz quickly swallowed. “Maybe,” he said. “I’m Richard Kurtz. I’m a surgeon. I’m helping out Jerry Mandell for a few weeks.”
She blinked, seemed to hesitate, then slid into the opposite seat. “I’ve heard of you,” she said. “Local boy makes good.”
“I guess you could say that. You’ve done pretty well, too. The food here is great.”
This was less of a non sequitur than it might have seemed. Premier Projects Development must have had a reason to be talking to Mabel Stone, and maybe, just maybe, Mabel Stone had a reason for talking to them. It was certainl
y true that the Stone House served terrific food but plenty of restaurants that served terrific food went out of business. Maybe the location was too hard to find, or the rent on the building was too high or the service was too slow or there just weren’t enough potential customers to keep the place going, in what was, after all, a very small town. Whatever.
Kurtz was very curious about Mabel Stone’s business. “I wanted to talk to you,” Kurtz said.
She barely cracked a smile. “Okay, so talk.”
“You, my father and Jerry Mandell have all been nominated to the House of Delegates.”
“Jerry Mandell? I knew about Gary.”
“And I’ve been told that you and my father have both been talking to Premier Projects Development.”
She looked at him and gave a little sniff. “Well, it’s not exactly a secret.”
“Okay. Good. So, I was wondering what the deal was.”
“Not that it’s any of your business.”
Mabel Stone was a trim little blonde. She wore a light blue business suit, suitable for the owner of an upscale establishment. The Stone House looked solid, professional and inviting and Mabel Stone looked like a woman who knew what she was doing.
Kurtz grinned. “I thought it wasn’t a secret.”
Mabel Stone slumped back in her seat. “You see this place?” She waved her hand out at the dining room. “The service is excellent, the food is great, the décor is attractive. Two years ago, we got a write-up from the New York Times. They gave us three stars. The New York Times doesn’t give three-star reviews very often. There are maybe four or five restaurants in New York that get four stars, and forty or so get three. This includes Daniel, Bouley, Nobu, Acquavit…” She shrugged.
“You seem to know your competition.”
She sniffed. “Oh, please. I only wish.” She looked down at the table, then up at the red-headed waitress, hovering nearby. “Frannie, could you get me a glass of wine, please? My usual.”
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