The Vulture Fund

by Stephen W. Frey

  “Yes. The rumor is that he’s worth almost three hundred million dollars.” Mace suddenly thought about Webster’s meeting in Washington, the one Sarah Clements had told him about that day on the executive floor.

  “So why would he do it?”

  “To save the partnership, I suppose,” Mace answered. “It sounds outrageous, I know. I can’t see why he would take those risks either. But it’s the only explanation I can come up with.” It was a hole in his theory, and of course she had homed right in on it. “Please don’t misunderstand me, Rachel. I want you out of that city now.” Mace’s voice was firm.

  She did not answer immediately. “What about Leeny Hunt?”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you think she is involved?”

  Mace inhaled slowly. “I have to think so. She raised the money for the fund way too fast. And—” He stopped. And it all came from Washington.

  “What, Mace? What is it?”

  “Nothing.” He did not want to tell her what he was thinking. The implications were too severe.

  “But have you gone to the authorities with this?” Her voice was high-pitched, nervous. If what he was saying was true, there would be people after him.

  “I can’t. I don’t have any proof.”

  “But you can’t do nothing.”

  He nodded. “I know. I’m just waiting here for some information from a friend. Then I’m coming to New York. There’s one more thing I need before I can go to the authorities.”

  Rachel hesitated. “You’re going after Leeny.” Her voice was hollow. “She could tell you everything, I bet.”

  She was smart, thinking exactly as he was. “No, something else.” There was something else he had to do, but Leeny was his primary target. He couldn’t tell her what the other something was. He didn’t want to scare her.

  “Please go to the authorities, Mace. Right now. Please.”

  “All right.” He couldn’t go to the authorities because he didn’t have enough to prove that his suspicions were correct, but he had to calm her down. “Look, I’ve got to go. So do you. Get out of the city. In case I’m wrong about all this.”

  A strained silence followed. They both realized that there was a chance they might never see each other again if Mace was wrong and the bombs were real.

  “Rachel?” Finally Mace broke the silence.

  “Yes,” she responded quickly.

  “Do you remember asking, ‘What about us?’ at dinner that night?”

  “Yes.”

  Mace hesitated. This was difficult. He wasn’t used to laying out his feelings. “I really do care about you. When all this is over…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I know.” She understood. “You know I—I care about you too.”

  He passed a hand through his hair. He had never missed someone this way. But there was nothing more to say now. “Okay, well, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Mace.” Rachel hung up the phone slowly.

  Mace put down the phone. It rang almost immediately. The caller could be only one person. “Hello.”

  “Mace, it’s Slade.”

  “Where have you been?” A wave of relief rushed through his body.

  “Sorry, Brother. I’ve been trying to get you this information.”

  “I assume you know what’s going on in New York?”

  “Yes.” Slade’s voice dropped.

  “Do you know what I think?”

  Slade answered without hesitation. “That the people who were at the facility in West Virginia are responsible.”

  “Exactly. Did you check out the Sugar Grove facility?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there was no one there, right?”

  “No, there wasn’t anyone there.” Slade removed a cigarette from the pack he held in his left hand and lighted it while holding the pay phone receiver in his right. He glanced at the Lincoln Memorial. He hadn’t smoked in years, not since the Plymouth Home for Wayward Boys. The match shook in his hand. “But it was obvious to me that there had been people there. There were spent shell casings all over the place.”

  “Lewis Webster and Leeny Hunt are responsible for the crisis in New York, Slade. There aren’t any bombs at Nyack. The whole thing is a conspiracy to speculate on Manhattan real estate and shares on the New York Stock Exchange.”

  Slade shook his head. Mace was too smart for his own good. “That sounds pretty ridiculous, Mace.”

  “Maybe, but I’m convinced it’s the truth,” he said.

  “The bombs are real, Mace. My boss is in charge of the situation up there, for Christ’s sake. The bombs are real.”

  “No, they aren’t. You have to tell him that. Otherwise, if there is a raid by government forces in some last-ditch attempt to diffuse the situation, Wolverines will die needlessly.”

  “The bombs are real,” Slade said persistently.

  “Fine, they’re real.” Mace was irritated. Why was Slade being so stubborn? Suddenly a warning bell went off. It was faint, but it was there. “Have you been able to track down anything on Leeny or Pergament Associates?”

  “No. I’m still working on it.” He did not convey to Mace what he had learned about either one. He couldn’t. Not yet. “Listen, give me another day.” He took a puff from the cigarette. It calmed his nerves immediately. He had to keep Mace in that hotel.

  “I can’t. I’m going to New York.”

  “No!”

  “I can’t wait any longer in this hotel room, Slade. It’s driving me crazy.”

  Slade glanced around the Reflecting Pool quickly. Of course New York was where Mace would go. He was convinced that he was indestructible. “All right. Look, I’m very close to the information you want. Pick a time and place to meet in Manhattan.”

  Mace thought for a second. Considering the situation in New York City, it might take time to get there. “Tomorrow night. Eleven o’clock. The skating rink at Rockefeller Center.”

  “Done.”

  Mace put the phone down. Slade was hiding something. He had known the man long enough to be able to tell when he wasn’t being totally forthcoming. But what was he hiding? And why? Mace glanced back down at the courtyard. Even though Slade had disagreed with Mace about the fact that there weren’t really any bombs at Nyack, he had suggested that they meet in New York City. Slade didn’t believe there were any bombs either. Otherwise he would never have suggested New York as a meeting place. So why was he acting as if he were convinced the bombs were real?

  * * *

  —

  Slade took one more long drag from the cigarette. Mace was right. Innocent men might die. Men of the Wolverines, men he knew. And some of the blood would be on his hands.

  * * *

  —

  Schuler sat on the edge of the king-size bed in nothing but his boxer shorts. He stared at Leeny, who stood before him naked. She was gorgeous, a goddess. Just as he had remembered her.

  He checked the television one more time. Nothing had changed. The terrorists were dug in, and the authorities were at a loss for an action plan. He reached for the remote to turn down the volume. Leeny had turned the sound up very loud, and it would distract him once they began to couple.

  Leeny intercepted the remote, sliding it from Schuler’s hand seductively and dropping it to the floor. She sank quickly to her knees in front of him, pulling his boxers off, kissing him even though there was no need. He was already as full as he could be.

  After a few moments she rose from the floor, then pushed him gently onto his back so she could mount him. Seconds later she was on top of him and he was inside her.

  Schuler watched her delicate frame as she moved up and down on him. God, it felt so good. He closed his eyes and forgot about Broadway Ventures, Chase Manhattan, and the threat of radiation. He moaned slightly as she leaned suddenly to o
ne side. She was so good.

  “John!” Leeny suddenly said his name loudly, over the sound of the television. She wanted him to see this.

  His eyes fluttered open, and for a moment he could not comprehend what was happening. Then he understood. The thought of trying to move raced through his brain, but he was never able to act on the thought. The bullet tore through the nasal cartilage directly between his eyes and out the back of his head. He twitched spastically beneath her for several moments and then lay completely still.

  32

  Following a brown Mercedes, the van moved slowly east on the lower deck of the George Washington Bridge, the double-deck suspension bridge connecting New York and New Jersey over the Hudson River. It was one in the morning, but the bridge was still crowded with people leaving the city. There was surprisingly little panic; people were generally calm. Despite the traffic, cars moved at a steady thirty miles an hour.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the span, the van stopped. Instantly the cars behind began to sound their horns loudly. But the driver paid no attention. Calmly he pulled the keys from the ignition, jumped out of the vehicle, and ran forward to the Mercedes, which had stopped fifty feet ahead. People in passing cars screamed at him as he ran, but again he paid no attention. Seconds later he was safe in the backseat of the German car. The driver stepped on the accelerator and the car jumped forward, quickly lost in the flow of traffic.

  Exactly two minutes and thirty seconds later the van disintegrated in a massive fireball. The blast blew out both decks of the east-bound lanes of the bridge. Cars and people on the bridge, those not incinerated by the blast, dropped sickeningly to the black waters below. Moments later the two ends of the east-bound lanes hung down toward the water by a few thin cables like the tongues of exhausted dogs.

  Standing in the lookout tower of the Nyack Nuclear Generating Facility, Vargus had been able to see the fiery blast very clearly in the night sky. He smiled, imagining what was going on down there: the chaos and the panic on both sides of the bridge and the effect this would have on the city’s inhabitants.

  * * *

  —

  Bobby Maxwell, the New Orleans real estate investor, owner of twelve buildings on the island of Manhattan, slowly sat up in bed. His head hurt terribly. He had imbibed much too much wine last night. He laughed loudly as he rubbed his bloodshot eyes. At least it had helped him forget the situation in New York City. He groaned as he reached for the television remote and switched the set on. At once he forgot about his splitting headache.

  The female reporter stood on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River with the sagging ends of the George Washington Bridge in the distance behind her left shoulder. Wind whipped her hair into a frenzy as she pressed a tiny speaker into her ear with one hand and held a large microphone in front of her mouth with the other. Finally she nodded and began to speak.

  “Repeating, at approximately one o’clock this morning both decks of the east-bound lanes of the George Washington Bridge were destroyed by a huge bomb apparently carried onto the bridge by a truck or other large vehicle. Witnesses gave police the license number of a Mercedes seen speeding from the scene. Authorities located the abandoned car around four o’clock this morning in Westchester County, New York. No arrests have been made, and authorities are not willing to discuss fatalities at this time. The group now in control of the Nyack nuclear plant has claimed responsibility.”

  Maxwell swallowed, then rose quickly from the bed and rummaged through the nightstand, looking for the phone number. He didn’t need to hear any more of the human-interest story. He didn’t care about people. He cared about buildings. And his were in immediate danger of becoming worthless.

  He needed to speak to Mace. Now.

  * * *

  —

  At nine-thirty, despite what had happened on the GW Bridge, the Stock Exchange opened for business. The brokers and specialists who had come to the floor this morning, about half the usual number, were unusually quiet as they moved about the floor. They kept one eye on the tape at all times and traded only halfheartedly. By noon the Dow Jones industrial average had dropped one thousand points and the exchange governors closed the Big Board for trading; it was useless to continue. But the early closing bell did not sound before Broadway Ventures had made many extremely attractive purchases through sanitized numbered accounts.

  * * *

  —

  Mace stared at what was left of his apartment. It shocked him. It had been gutted like a cow at the slaughterhouse. The leather couches and their cushions had been torn apart so that their innards spilled all over the floor. Pictures had been removed from the walls and smashed so that glass lay in and around the innards of the couches. There were large holes in the walls. Looters? It couldn’t be, he thought. Most of the stereo components were shattered but still here.

  Glass cracked sharply beneath his hard-soled shoes as he moved into the apartment and toward the bathroom, where he had hidden the package Rachel had given him, the package detailing Leeny’s involvement in the LeClair and Foster insider trading scandal, a package the person who had broken into his apartment might have been interested to find.

  Mace removed a tile from the bathroom ceiling as he stood balanced on the edge of the tub. A tremendous wave of relief surged through his body. It was still where he had left it. He removed the envelope carefully. Now Rachel was safe. Now they couldn’t connect her to him. At least as far as getting in the way of their plans. If they had seen this package and the name of the addressee, they would have realized that she was involved, and she would have been in mortal danger.

  He stepped down from the tub. It was time to find Leeny. Then he would go to the authorities with what he had.

  * * *

  —

  Leeny sat in a booth at Joey’s Place—a twenty-four-hour diner directly across the street from Mace’s apartment building—sipping slowly on a cup of coffee. Her eyes were sunk deep into her face because of the lack of sleep and the stress she had endured. She gazed through the diner’s window at the apartment building’s front door. Mace knew what was going on with Broadway Ventures. There could be no doubt. And he was going to destroy everything. Because of him, she would go to jail. Unless she could stop him first.

  The image of John Schuler’s dead body lying on the bed raced through her mind. She laughed out loud, then looked around to see if anyone had heard her outburst. But no one had.

  From her purse she removed the Polaroid she had taken in the room of the Stamford Marriott. There was no need to have to look at his corpse in her mind. She could see the real thing. She put the photograph, a close-up of Schuler’s bloody face, in her lap and glanced down at it. She ran a hand through her hair as she gazed at the horrible expression on the little man’s face. A smile crossed her face as she admired her handiwork.

  “Do you want anything else, lady?” The waitress stood next to Leeny, trying to see what was in her lap.

  Leeny covered the picture quickly with her hands, glanced at the door of Mace’s apartment building again and then up at the woman. “No,” she whispered.

  The waitress shook her head. This blonde was a strange one. She had been in here several times over the past two days to sit in that same seat for hours, watching the building across the way. The waitress on the graveyard shift had reported the same thing. She was a weird one, all right, and they had considered having the police haul her away. But she hadn’t really caused any problems, and she tipped with twenty-dollar bills even though she only purchased coffee. “You sure you don’t want anything else?” The waitress eyed the twenty-dollar bills spread out on the table.

  “Yes.” Her voice was almost inaudible.

  “Okay. Well, listen, miss. We’re closing down in a couple of hours and getting out of here. I suggest you get out of town too. Because personally I think those people are serious.”

  Leeny nodded at her but sai
d nothing. She turned again toward the front door of the apartment building. She had to kill him. Otherwise he would tell. She felt helpless just sitting here, but it was the only thing she could think of to do, the only way she might possibly find him.

  The assassin sat at the back of Joey’s Place, watching Leeny from behind the side of a newspaper. Webster had finally given him the order to kill her. He smiled to himself. She was a goner at this point. The pressure had clearly overwhelmed her. Some people couldn’t handle a situation as stressful as this one, and Kathleen Hunt was one of those people.

  The assassin sipped from the glass of Pepsi. Webster wouldn’t be happy if he knew what was going on. Webster had wanted the woman dead immediately. He had wanted the assassin to go down to her office this morning and take care of her right there, which seemed out of character for so rational a man. Then again, Webster was obviously rattled. Something the assassin had never witnessed. But the assassin had convinced Webster that killing Kathleen Hunt in her office was not a good idea, that he needed to wait and kill her in a quieter manner.

  On the corner, just down the street from the entrance to Joey’s Place, a lone figure waited, eyes glued to the diner’s door. The person had been fortunate to find Leeny Hunt this morning, fortunate that Leeny had gone to work at Walker Pryce for a few hours as if everything were normal. She pulled the heavy winter coat up around her face.

  Suddenly Leeny bolted from her seat and headed for the door. Nearly knocking over what remained of his soda, the assassin rose quickly from his seat, grabbing his wallet and keys from the table. What the hell was her problem? Had she somehow realized that he was following her and was she making a break for it? He raced toward the diner’s door.

  The waitress watched both of them run from the eatery. First the blonde and then the man obviously stalking her. She shook her head. It was a crazy city, full of strange situations. It was best not to get involved.