Illicit Intent, page 26
“Exactly, the head of The Circle, Loker Stillwater, decided to take matters into his own hands.”
Calliope had a brief flash of the carnage in her house just days ago. It must have shown on her face because Nathan soothed, “Calliope, there is not a doubt in my mind that the men Loker Stillwater sent to your house would have killed you and Tox whether or not they found that phone.”
She nodded her understanding.
Nathan kept them on track. Calliope wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“That settles the issue of the people after the money. Now we have to solve the issue of the people after the art.”
“A much less ruthless bunch.” Cam pointed out.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Nathan wasn’t convinced of that.
Twitch brought up a still shot of a man in a suit.
“The Feebies finally shared the security footage from Gentrify. This is Caleb Cain.”
“And who is Caleb Cain?” Steady asked.
“Hold that thought.” She split the screen with another photo. “This is from security cams at Columbia University. Your suspicious antiquities professor? Same guy. I ran facial recognition through all accessible security.” Another photo created a tryptic. “The DUMBO ferry pinged this guy.” The picture showed an old man boarding, and again, minus one prosthetic nose and fake beard, disembarking.
“That’s the old man who claimed to be my neighbor,” Calliope exclaimed.
“And when he searched your house, he bypassed the flash drive and files that were sitting out, so we know he’s not after the financial info.”
“He’s not after the money. He’s after the art,” Cam nodded.
“But if Elizabeth Brewer is dead, why is he still looking for it?” Calliope asked.
“Other than the fact that it’s worth a fortune?” Steady shrugged.
“Guys like that don’t tend to go off-script. I think he’s working for someone else,” Nathan said.
“Well, Elizabeth Brewer was buying that art from someone. That’s how this whole shit show started. The poker game in Vegas.” Steady tossed a pencil on the table.
“The courier hired to deliver the sketches loses them in a poker game,” Cam added.
“And Phipps Van Gent wins them without even realizing it.” Ren finished the thought.
“Makes sense. The seller lost the package before delivery. He wants it back.”
“Enter Caleb Cain. He showed up at Gentrify that night to get that art.”
“And instead finds a dead body.”
“And no art.”
“So he goes hunting.”
“I lost my wallet on Broad Street that night.” Calliope’s eyes didn’t drift from the photo on the screen.
Steady snapped his fingers. “That’s right. He was probably right behind us. It’s not a stretch that he found the wallet. Got your address off your driver’s license.”
“He poses as a neighbor and searches your house while a separate group of bad guys chases you around Brooklyn.”
“Explains why he didn’t touch the flash drive or any of the financial documents. He was looking for the tube with the art,” Cam confirmed.
“But the cylinder was at Tox’s. He took it in the car that night to fix a leaky pipe.”
“So he keeps digging.”
Twitch added a grainy image to the screen.
“Enter your fake detective. Costello. I caught an image of him from an ATM camera you passed. It’s not clear enough for facial recognition, but same height, same build except for the beer gut which is probably padding.”
“Who the fuck is this guy?” Steady rubbed a hand down his face.
“That’s a more difficult question to answer,” Nathan replied.
“Caleb Cain is on several countries’ radar, but he isn’t wanted for any specific crime. Interpol has no active warrants on file,” Twitch reported. “He’s an independent contractor.”
“A hitter?” Cam questioned.
“Nope. More of a fixer. Although, he has been in dubious proximity of a couple of suspicious deaths, most notably Frank Stoddard.”
“The DEA agent?” Cam asked.
“Never heard of him,” Steady said.
“Lucky you.” Twitch continued. “Stoddard was undercover with a smuggling ring that operated out of the Florida Keys. His penchant for young boys blew the investigation and sent him into hiding with the organization he was sent to bust. Nobody could find this guy. Then one day a John Doe shows up at the morgue, a homeless guy. Cause of death was a presumed heroin overdose. Except this homeless guy had twelve-hundred-dollar shoes and a collection of kiddy porn on his phone that would have made a vice cop sick.”
“Stoddard.”
“Cause of death was asphyxiation as a result of administration of sodium cyanide.”
Steady gave a low whistle.
“Right around that time, Caleb Cain had arrived in Palm Beach on a Delta Airlines flight out of New York. According to the concierge at the Faena Hotel where he was registered under his own name, Cain was an unremarkable guest. Stayed for five days. Ordered room service. No special requests. Return flight to New York. He was back in The City before the body was discovered.”
“Damn.”
“The other coincidence is another pedophile, an Afghan governor known for his proclivity for very young girls. Security at the Kabul airport shows a relief worker named Carson Holmes entering the country on a British passport. Facial recognition was a ninety percent match to Caleb Cain. He flew into Kabul eight days before the governor was found dead in his bed beside a sleeping eleven-year-old girl. COD was, again, cyanide poisoning. The CIA kept that one quiet.”
“If this guy’s killing pedophiles, I say we leave him to it.” Steady grabbed a muffin from the plate in the middle of the table and peeled off the paper.
“There have been mysterious men showing up at every turn. Could they all be this Caleb Cain in disguise?” Calliope wondered aloud.
“Write down every unexplained person and alias. One of them has to trace back to something. We find out who this guy is, we find the connection to the stolen art.” Nathan passed her a pad of paper and pen.
“At Gentrify Capital he was Caleb Cain.”
“Carson Holmes in Kabul.”
“When he impersonated the cop he was Detective Costello.”
“Your neighbor from the bakery? The guy we assume broke into Calliope’s house?”
“Garfunkel. Dan, I think.”
“Seriously? Like Simon and Garfunkel?”
“Yeah. He even joked he was no relation.” Calliope jotted the name down.
“Oh, there was a homeless guy parked across the street from Tox’s building. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but Coco reacted to him. It was like she knew him. Tox’s friend who hangs out on the street said his name was Barrow. Like wheelbarrow.”
“And the art professor was Ambrose Teller,” Cam added.
“Telner?”
“Teller, like Penn and Teller.”
“Okay, I’ll start running these names and see if we get a hit.” Twitch went to work.
“Wait. Holy shit. Wait.” Nathan was scribbling on a legal pad as well.
“What is it?” Steady asked.
“Penn and Teller.” Nathan went to the board and began writing again. “Cain and Abel, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Abbott and Costello. Simon and Garfunkel. Each one of these aliases is half of a duo.”
“Why?” Calliope questioned.
“And who’s Barrow?” Steady threw out.
“He’s Clyde. As in Bonnie and Clyde,” Ren clarified.
“So, this guy is what? Half of a team? Is he working with someone else?”
“I don’t think so. He’s been solo this whole time. It’s something else.”
“Nathan?” Twitch looked up from her computer looking stunned. “I’ve been doing a deep dive on Caleb Cain. I think I know who he is.”
New York City
May 11
Tox pushed the elevator’s cage door to the side with his good arm, inserted his key into the deadbolt left-handed, and shouldered open the door to his home. He stopped dead in his tracks. A man about his age sat in the folding chair next to his ratty couch. He was dressed casually in faded jeans and a gray t-shirt, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely intertwined. He met Tox’s gaze, his face expressionless. Without hesitation, Tox pulled the Sig from its hiding place behind some steel shelving by the door and pointed it at Caleb Cain.
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“I know who you are, motherfucker.”
“No. You don’t.”
Caleb stood, extended his arms, and turned in a slow circle. He then lifted each pant leg, to show he was unarmed.
“I was never going to hurt Calliope Garland. I was paid to do a job. That job did not include a body count.”
“And this job? It’s done?”
“Let’s just say my business with Calliope Garland is concluded.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just put a bullet in your brain.”
Caleb spun into Tox in a quick move, grabbing the arm that held the gun. Tox was almost happy to let it go, a little hand-to-hand, hand-to-face, hand-to-ribs was exactly what he craved with this asshole. This wasn’t Tox’s first time fighting winged, but he needed to be very careful with his injury. Tox had the height advantage but Caleb was quick. They were equally matched. There was only one difference. Tox seemed to be the only one doing the punching. Caleb dodged, maneuvered, feinted, but he never swung a fist.
Before Tox knew it he was chasing Caleb around the room like a crazed child. Caleb hopped up on the couch and ran down the length of it, jumping back to the floor. They faked left then right around the folding card table where Tox ate. Finally, with a surge of angry frustration, Tox threw the table aside and charged, enveloping Caleb in a one-armed bear hug. Caleb boxed Tox’s ears, trying to break the hold, but Tox dropped his head and barrelled Caleb into the cinderblock wall, knocking the last bit of air from his lungs.
Struggling for breath, Caleb took a gasping wheeze and choked out, “Hello…”
He tried again. “Hello…” He coughed.
“Hello my baby, hello my darling hello my ragtime gal…”
Tox staggered back.
Caleb lifted a hand to an imaginary hat and mimed lifting it from his head, stopping only to cough and fill his lungs.
“Stop. Just fucking stop.”
“Miller, it’s me. It’s Miles.”
“You fucking piece of shit.” Tox charged him again and wrestled him to the ground.
Miles huffed out words as he took punches from his twin, never returning a blow.
“When we were six you told me you saw Mrs. Conroy’s boob. She dove in her pool and her bikini top came off. You hated mom’s banana bread, but you ate it anyway. You’re scared of spiders but you made me swear not to tell because you didn’t want to be afraid of anything. I put rubber spiders in your bed for weeks.”
The wrestling match had slowed, and Tox realized that he was now simply hugging Caleb, clutching him to his body. Tox rolled off of him and stared at the ceiling.
“What did we drink before bed?”
“Mom let us each take a cup of milk up, but I had the Nestle’s Quik from the pantry hidden in our closet. After she kissed us goodnight, we’d make chocolate milk.”
Tox rolled to his feet and walked to the window. Under normal circumstances, he would never turn his back on an opponent. But this was Miles. He knew it now. He knew it when he walked in and saw him sitting there. Miles’s role from birth had been to look out for him; he wouldn’t stop now. As Tox predicted, Miles stayed on the floor and let him process.
Tox had seen death, had faced it himself. He had lost both his parents and his twin. He had been shot twice, stabbed, and been nearly blown to oblivion freeing Steady from under an overturned Humvee. He had witnessed the worst kind of inhumanity, had endured pain most would never know. But standing there, looking out the window at the Bowery rowhouses, with his twin brother at his back, he did something he had never done.
He cried.
“Mile?”
“Mill?”
“How?”
“It’s a really long story.”
“Why?”
Caleb Cain, aka Miles Buchanan, understood exactly what Miller meant. Why hadn’t he found him? Why hadn’t he reached out? Their loyalty was to each other, no one else.
“We had to hide for a long time, me and my mom, the woman who adopted me,” he clarified. “Then, later, when I wanted to find you, she told me you were dead.”
When he continued speaking the rage that tinged his voice was palpable. “When I saw you on the street that day…” He shook his head, unable to articulate the torrent of emotion. “Through everything, she was the one person I trusted. I never even questioned it.”
The two men sat on the floor face-to-face, knees bent, hands clasped, heads cocked. For a long time, and no time, they just sat, mirror images, and talked. A while later, the door flew open, and the Bishop Security team with Calliope at the rear burst through the door and came to an abrupt halt.
Miller and Miles both turned their heads. They were fraternal twins, Tox was taller, his brother slimmer with more angular features, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Had Miles not been disguised each time they had encountered him, it would have been obvious.
“My theory was correct, I see.” Twitch beamed.
Calliope shoved through the group and sank to her knees beside Tox. Only her eyes moved as she scanned his gaze from one eye to the other—back and forth, back and forth. He tugged her earlobe and rested his hand at the side of her neck.
“Cal.” He cleared his throat. “This is Miles. My brother.”
Calliope squinted at Miles with all the skepticism she could muster.
“Oh shit, do I have to do the dance again? My ribs hurt.” He gave a pleading smile revealing twin dimples.
“You’re really his twin?”
“I have the DNA to prove it,”
“You better not be fucking with the man I love.”
“I love him too, Toots, so back atcha.”
Miles and Calliope stared at each other with intent, perhaps each confirming that the other was sincere.
Steady broke the silence. “This feels personal. Maybe we should go get a pizza.”
Miller and Miles both looked up, heads cocked just so. Nathan burst out laughing. “Well, if you didn’t think they were twins before…”
Calliope scooted into Tox’s lap and took over dabbing his bleeding lip with the end of his tee-shirt.
“I’m the man you love? You mean that?”
“Sim, senhor.” Yes, mister. “In Portuguese, we say ‘alma gemêa.’ You are my soul’s twin.”
Tox glanced at Miles, his body’s twin, then at Calliope, his heart’s twin. He rested his forehead against hers and took a deep breath.
Outside, it started to rain.
New York City
May 14
“How does a guy waltz into an FBI field office and take possession of the most valuable piece of evidence they’ve ever handled?” Cam chuckled at the sheer stupidity. Nathan’s office was, once again, a flurry of activity.
“Pretty simple actually,” Twitch explained. “You see, the art wasn’t technically evidence. The statute of limitations expired on the theft years ago. While the art remains ‘stolen property,’ both people who could be charged with transporting or receiving stolen goods—the courier and Phipps Van Gent—are both dead. The Degas sketches are basically recovered property being returned to the owner. So when the Gardner Museum called the Feds and said they wanted their art, that was that.”
Ren took over. “The call from the Gardner Museum was legit. Dr. Risa Kamil spoke with special agent Turner Banks and made arrangements for the pickup. There was no press. They wanted to wait until the sketches were back in Boston to make the announcement. The only oddity in the entire exchange was that Dr. Kamil didn’t come herself. She rescheduled the pickup time and sent her associate, Dr. Maynard Peele, who arrived as expected from Reagan airport in a black suburban with a small security team. He had the proper paperwork, identification, and was familiar with the transfer procedure. The fucking D.C. Bureau Chief shook his hand.”
“Nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary?” Steady asked.
“Until the Suburban never made it back to Reagan,” Ren confirmed.
“So that’s it? They’re just gone again? Are they gonna spend the next thirty years sitting in some mobster’s vault?” Cam threw up his hands.
“Let’s hope not. It’s a different world now. Transfer DNA, CCTV cameras, electronic tracking. Those sketches will turn up.” Nathan mollified his team.
“And this asshole, Maynard Peele?” Steady leaned forward on the conference table.
“Facial recognition came up empty.” Twitch gave Nathan a pointed look.
“Peele? As in Key and Peele?” Ren cocked a brow.
“Tox, where’s your brother?” Nathan drummed a pen on his desk.
“He said he had a job to finish.”
No one pretended not to put the pieces together.
“Well, when he gets back I want to talk to him.”
Paris, France
May 15
Caleb Cain slept peacefully. His flight from JFK to Charles de Gaulle had been uneventful, and he was pleased to be in the one residence he actually considered home. From his bed, he could see the only personal item in the flat: a framed photo of two young boys playing in leaves, the same photo he discovered in his brother’s loft. Brother. He basked in the intoxicating joy of the word. The distant sounds of the city hummed like white noise as he rested. He had completed his assignment.
He neither knew nor cared what Reynard was planning to do with the two Degas sketches, currently in the case beside him, now that the buyer, Elizabeth Reardon Brewer, was dead. He postulated that Reynard would get as far away from the rest of this mess as possible…for the time being. Mademoiselle Brewer had been in possession of some extremely valuable art at the time of her demise; Reynard would watch and wait as her affairs were set in order. He wasn’t an impulsive man, but he was not about to ignore what he suspected sat in a Boston bank vault or hidden in plain sight.
