Illicit Intent, page 23
“Hey, sweet girl. Did you have a good day? Get all your naps in?”
Coco wagged her stubby tail and preceded her into the kitchen barking her pleasure.
Calliope smiled down at her phone, reading the incoming text from Tox: On my way.
It was such a simple, meaningless text. From anyone else, she would have acknowledged it and moved on. But with Tox, it held such promise, such reassurance. She stifled a giggle. And she was unequivocally not a giggler. Still staring at the banal message like it was a love letter, she headed for the fridge and her much-deserved wine. Coco barked again.
Fifteen minutes later, the assassin sighted the woman through the large bay window across the street. She had changed clothes. Probably had a date tonight. She wasn’t going to make that date. Her long dark hair hung around her shoulders like a veil, or, more accurately, a shroud. She was pacing, and the hitman was momentarily reminded of the rows of rabbits and bears that moved mechanically back and forth in an arcade. He allowed himself a smirk then returned his attention to the scope. He adjusted his angle, allowing for wind speed and the slight drop in elevation. The target was forty-three yards away. As his sniper school instructor used to say, a one-armed blind man could make that shot.
He was preparing for a moving target when she stopped. Her back was to the window, her arms akimbo. He moved his finger from the trigger guard to the trigger, slowly, silently blew out a breath, and fired. The suppressed subsonic bullet wasn’t silent, but it wouldn’t disturb the neighbors. Target down. The assassin packed up, gathered his shell casing, and five minutes later was in the back of a cab heading for the airport with ample time to make his flight. Easiest eighty grand he had ever made.
In the taxi, he checked his phone and saw the encrypted message from a client he had worked for numerous times. He studied the information and almost burst out laughing. The new target? The man who had hired him for this job. Using the app on his phone, he made sure he had been paid in full, then he changed his flight.
Tox rounded the corner and, at the sight of the flashing lights and black-and-whites parked at an angle across the small street, he took off at a run. The cop on the stoop made a cursory attempt to stop him, but Tox was an irresistible force, and the young rookie was hardly an immovable object. He bounded up the ten stairs in two strides and burst through the open door. There was a hive of activity in the front hall and Tox glanced into the living room where a photographer partially obscured the body of a dead woman prone on the floor.
“Tox!”
Calliope stood at the back of the hall, pale-faced and unsteady, wrapped in a throw. His icy expression morphed into relief as he swept her up and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.
“Thank God.”
Her pale eyes were wide and watery but she smiled at him. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“So…that happened.”
“What exactly was that?”
“I got home from work about an hour ago. She just appeared in my kitchen. I don’t know how she got in.”
“Let’s worry about that later. What did she want?”
“The sketches. She said they were hers. She said the easy way to do it was for her to pay me a finder’s fee and hand them over. She didn’t say what the hard way was.”
Tox eyed the Glock 43 the tech was bagging for evidence as he emptied the woman’s purse. “I can guess.”
“When I told her I’d given them to the authorities, she got upset. She started pacing around the living room. Then she just collapsed. I didn’t even realize she’d been shot until I saw...”
Tox enveloped Calliope in a hug and she buried her face in his chest. Detective Pete Brigger cleared his throat and Tox swiveled Calliope around to his side and faced his friend, a look of implacable focus quickly veiling the myriad emotions written in his eyes a moment before. The two men shook hands. Brigger didn’t mince words.
“Name’s Elizabeth Brewer. She’s some muckety muck from Boston. She got in through the apartment downstairs.”
Calliope added sheepishly, “The alarm isn’t hooked up to that door.”
Tox nodded. “We’ll fix that.” He glanced over at the corpse being loaded into a body bag. “A hitter followed her from Boston?”
Brigger met Tox’s gaze.
“She’s five-eight, dark hair, and based on the entry wound, she had her back to the window.”
Tox briefly closed his eyes. He had thought the body in the living room was Calliope when he first arrived on the scene. The assassin must have thought that same thing. He steeled his resolve. If he had to remain by her side day and night, he would. Nobody was touching a hair on her head.
Calliope broke the strained silence. “Where’s your partner?” She asked Brigger.
“Outside. She’s asking if any of the neighbors saw anything.”
“She?”
“Ronny Garcia,” Brigger confirmed.
“What happened to Costello?”
“Who’s Costello?” Brigger and Tox both awaited her reply.
“Um, the detective who came to my house the other day. Said he was your partner. He had I.D.”
Tox growled. “What did he want?”
“He said he was working on the Van Gent murder investigation and was just going over some facts to clarify…” Calliope’s eyes widened.
“What?” Tox squeezed her hand to mitigate his impatience.
“He wanted to know about the tube the painting came in. Why it wasn’t at the scene.” She turned to Tox. “I told him I gave it to you. He just asked so matter-of-factly, I didn’t even think about it.”
“What tube?” Brigger asked.
“It’s irrelevant now. Calliope took a container with her when she left Van Gent’s office that night. There were some valuable sketches hidden inside that a lot of people seem to want to get their hands on.”
“And where is it now?”
“In a vault. The art was stolen. The Feds are going to handle returning them to the museum that owns them.”
Seeing Brigger’s look of frustration, Tox was quick to mollify him. “It doesn’t play into your murder investigation. Van Gent came into possession of the art that night. Your killer wouldn’t have even known about it.”
Brigger nodded. “Good. This case is already hairier than a barber’s floor. Between the Feds, the SEC, the IRS, and a handful of bean counters, I’m about to start day drinking. A murderer is going to walk because I can’t do my job.”
“You’ll figure it out, man. You always do.”
“I don’t know this time. It’s like there’s this big piece of the puzzle that fell on the floor and nobody can seem to find it.”
New York City
May 4
Caleb Cain sat at his desk in the spare bedroom of his Upper East Side apartment. The place was nondescript, in a forgettable building—one of hundreds, probably thousands of fungible apartments off of beige hallways in characterless high-rises on interchangeable blocks. The perfect apartment for a ghost.
Despite its irrelevance to his business, the Van Gent murder was nagging at him. He flipped through the employee files an associate had acquired for him and sighed.
All the employees were accounted for. They only had to swipe their access cards to enter or exit the building before 8 a.m. or after 8 p.m., so it was impossible to track who had remained at Gentrify Capital that night. The lobby security camera would be useless for such an exercise as employees and clients came and went in droves, faces in their phones. Any one of the fifty-some-odd Gentrify employees could have stayed behind that night.
Caleb, however, had one piece of information the police lacked. In Caleb’s assessment, the killer was not a professional hitter; the choice of weapon, the number of shots, and the clumsy exit all spoke of an amateur. Why then, would a nervous, inexperienced shooter stop at a vending machine for a soda? He glanced at the open file on the desk, then flipped through a dozen more. That’s when he saw it. Freddy Kerr. He was a Canadian, single, and a recent college grad.
He was also diabetic.
Gotcha.
He woke his laptop and started digging. He wanted to find out everything he could about young Freddy Kerr. Two hours later, he changed into running clothes and headed downtown.
On the corner of Spring Street and Lafayette, Freddy Kerr passed off the last incriminating piece of evidence, the Knicks duffle, to the homeless man in a team hoodie and wandered down the street to grab a slice.
Freddy had loved Phipps once—back when Phipps was Phil Malone—maybe even more than he loved his mom. Phil had taught him to snowboard and ski, had praised his schoolwork, and encouraged his love of astronomy. He had sat with him when he had the chickenpox; they had binged classic comedies and talked about nothing. Phil was just getting his investment business off the ground, but he always had time for Freddy, taking him to Canucks games and playing one-on-one in the driveway. Freddy would close his eyes at night and thank God—thank you, thank you, God—that his mother had been so lucky to meet and marry Phil Malone. A kid couldn’t have asked for a better stepfather.
Then his grandmother died.
Freddy’s mom had been in a good place financially. She was an executive at a pharmaceutical company, and they were never strapped. Freddy’s grandmother, however, was rich. Phipps, aka Phil Malone, had bided his time. He set up Canada Sky Investments and managed about eleven million dollars from a dozen clients, including Freddy’s mom. When Freddy’s grandmother died, his mother inherited six million dollars and immediately handed the money over to her husband to invest. A week later, Phil Malone told his wife and stepson he was going to Toronto on business, packed a bag, kissed them both, and disappeared off the face of the earth. Freddy had been one day shy of fourteen.
Despite his mother’s suspicions, for years Freddy was convinced his stepfather had been murdered, or some bizarre tragedy had befallen him causing amnesia or paralysis. The brutal reality hadn’t settled in until Freddy was seventeen, and he, quite by accident, came face-to-face with his stepfather.
He had been on vacation with the family of a school friend in Gold Coast, Australia. After souvenir shopping in town, he’d stopped to watch a street performer when the door to Up and Over Investments opened, and his stepfather and another man walked out into the blinding sunshine.
Freddy raced to Phil Malone and threw his arms around him, tears racing down his cheeks. Phil had returned the embrace with equal enthusiasm.
“Who’s this guy, Flip?” The other man inquired.
“My stepson, Freddy. I never get to see him.”
Freddy cocked his head at his stepfather’s Aussie accent.
The other man smiled and walked off tossing over his shoulder, “I’ll see you Saturday, mate.”
Phil Malone, now Flip Treavor, embraced Freddy again.
“Damn, Fred, you’re a man. It’s so great to see you.”
Freddy was flabbergasted by the greeting, confusion marring his features. But Flip continued, “Are you free for dinner? I want to catch up, hear all about your life.”
Freddy met Flip for dinner at a posh oceanside restaurant. Flip ordered a $2000 bottle of ‘94 Lafite, and they each had the most expensive steak on the menu and the restaurant’s signature dessert. His former stepfather expertly steered the conversation, turning the evening into a bizarre reunion.
Halfway through dessert, Flip excused himself to use the washroom. Freddy was urgently texting his mother when the next thing he knew, the waiter was presenting him with the bill. When Freddy explained that his stepfather was treating him to dinner, the manager insisted that Flip was a regular customer, and he had left saying Freddy had offered to buy him dinner to pitch an idea for a financial app.
By the time Freddy’s host family arrived to help, and the local police had been apprised of the situation, Flip Treavor and the thirty-three million dollars he had under management had vanished. The locals were left reeling from the understanding that they had been harboring a con artist. Freddy, however, had come to a realization: Phil Malone/Flip Treavor wasn’t a con artist; he was a psychopath.
From that moment, Freddy was primed for vengeance. He figured out how to find his former stepfather by creating a computer algorithm that tracked trading and investment patterns—it was that invention that had gained him admission to Vanderbilt. The man who now went by Phipps Van Gent had gone to New York. Phipps had taken a position at a well-respected investment bank, and by Freddy’s junior year, Phipps had established Gentrify Capital Partners with staggering success.
That’s when Freddy had hatched his plan. His senior year, Freddy flew to New York and met with his former stepfather. Freddy explained that he wanted to learn the business. He would work hard and do everything he could to make Gentrify Capital a financial giant. Phipps had beamed with pride and hired Freddy on the spot. Both men agreed that their former connection was irrelevant, and Freddy would begin work upon graduation as a junior associate in client relations. If Phipps had been suspicious of Freddy, his suspicions were misdirected. He hadn’t the slightest inkling that Freddy was there to kill him.
Freddy’s grandfather had taught him to hunt and had given him the 12-gauge for his tenth birthday. The widow next door had given the old Winchester to Freddy’s grandfather when her husband passed away, a memento from their hunting trips. The thing was a cannon, but untraceable.
He got to know the security guards, the most affable and least attentive of whom was Griff, a retired New York City beat cop. Freddy suspected he took the job to spend less time at home in Long Island City–his wife monitored his diet like, as he put it, she was handing out rations at the zombie apocalypse. Freddy’s morning greeting and occasional box of donuts bought him a reprieve from having his bag inspected.
Freddy brought in the shotgun in a sports duffle and slid it between his desk and the wall of his cubicle. Then he waited. For ten months he worked, went out with his friends, and seethed. He watched Phipps hug aging grandmothers as they signed over their nest eggs, shake hands with union reps entrusting him with the pension fund, assure representatives from non-profits that their assets were in good hands. Freddy had worried that seeing his former stepfather day in and day out would awaken that dormant love he’d had for the man; it hadn’t. Phipps was a study in psychopathology. He operated without fear, guilt, or remorse, taking someone’s life savings with the indifference of a convenience store clerk—as if he had no comprehension of the devastation he wrought. Freddy’s observations were only augmented by his own experience; Phipps had stolen more than money from Freddy, so much more.
When the day finally came, it was almost too easy. The office was empty once the new assistant had left. He had logged out of the system hours earlier, as was his habit when he stayed late waiting for a window of opportunity. He retrieved the loaded shotgun and entered the executive office to find Phipps passed out on his couch, still holding a drink. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t waver. This was for the greater good. Freddy felt like a soldier hunting down a terrorist. Bam. That’s for all those people whose lives you ruined. Bam. That’s for me.
He had planned every detail—the gun, the coinciding of an event downstairs, the exit strategy—the only security camera that he couldn’t avoid was the one by the elevator so he simply repositioned it with a broom handle. What he hadn’t accounted for was the adrenalin crash that tanked his blood sugar, so he quickly guzzled a soda from the vending machine and made his escape. Then, three days later, he had reached out to the UK-Saudi Bank in Riyadh to accept their open-ended offer to sell them the data analysis and tracking software for derivatives he had developed, along with a job to install and monitor the program. Six banks had wanted his system, but only one was in a non-extradition country.
Just a few more loose ends and he was home free. Freddy Kerr could finally start living his life.
“Anchor down!” A thirty-something man in running clothes nodded to Freddy’s Vanderbilt t-shirt with a grin.
“Go ‘Dores!” Freddy replied, smiling.
“Are you still in school?”
“Graduated last year.”
“Good for you. What are you doing these days?” The man joined him as they walked down Bleecker Street.
“Working in finance.”
“Oh yeah? I’m at Morganstern. What about you?”
Freddy cleared his throat and mumbled, “Gentrify.”
“Oh shit,” The man chuckled. “Crazy what happened over there.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to shoot me your CV? Always happy to help out a fellow Commodore.”
“Thanks, man, but I’ve taken an offer out of the country.” Freddy stepped out of the path of a man pushing a grocery cart full of empty cans.
“Good, good. You’ve got everything wrapped up at Gentrify?”
“Yeah.”
“Time to move on then. You balance the books and start fresh.”
“Yes. They’re balanced.”
In front of them, a woman holding several packages was getting into an Uber when her wallet fell from her tilted purse and landed in the street. The woman, oblivious, closed the car door. Freddy raced up, snatched the wallet, and waved it at the woman through the rear window. The woman lowered the window, took her wallet, and thanked Freddy profusely as the Uber pulled into traffic.
The stranger met Freddy’s guileless eyes and nodded once as if satisfied with what he saw.
“Good luck to you, Freddy. I hope the new job works out.”
Caleb Cain waved over his shoulder and walked on down the crowded street as Freddy stopped at the door to a pizza place. Freddy lifted a hand in farewell, wondering how the stranger had known his name.
San Francisco, California
May 6
The ice cubes clinked as Roman Block drained the last of the bourbon from the glass. After receiving the confirmation that the work had been completed, he woke his laptop. The first half of the payment had been made upon engagement of services. Now that the eyewitness, Calliope Garland, had been eliminated, he completed the transaction. When the confirmation appeared on the screen, he nodded once and exited the site. One problem solved.
