False Move, page 14
Po didn’t rush her, only helped when she cast around for her shoes by toeing them towards her.
‘Did you get any rest?’ she asked.
‘Coupla hours in a chair.’
‘Then you should sleep now.’
‘I’ve had coffee. Now I need to smoke. I’ll check around the block while I’m at it, while you freshen up.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Twenty after seven.’ He didn’t check his watch, but it was no mysterious divining trick, he must have taken note of the time prior to rousing her. ‘Stella and Pinky are already up and about.’
‘You should’ve wakened me before now.’
‘You needed to sleep. Your body crashed after the crap that happened yesterday.’ He didn’t only mean the shooting at the Shady Pines motel. ‘Make sure you eat somethin’, and drink somethin’ sugary, it’ll help.’
‘Maybe you should follow your own advice. You can’t subsist on coffee and nicotine alone.’
‘I’ve eaten,’ he said, but without conviction. ‘Now I need a cigarette or you’ll see a side of me you won’t like.’
She asked for her overnight bag and dug out her toothpaste and brush. ‘I’ve got to do this before I eat or drink anything,’ she said, ‘my mouth tastes foul.’
He leaned in and planted a kiss on her lips. ‘It doesn’t taste too bad to me.’
He left and Tess saw to her ablutions in the guest bathroom. She brushed and flossed, but when she joined the others in the kitchen she could still taste pennies in the back of her throat. Stella had dressed down since yesterday, choosing sneakers, jeans and a pale blue sweater, and she’d pulled back her blond hair in a ponytail. Tess’s stomach turned over when it struck how much they looked alike; the coppery taste flooded her mouth. She sat down heavily at the breakfast counter, even as Pinky shoved a jug of coffee towards her. The Polaroid tucked into her shirt pocket burned against her heart, demanding she show it to Stella. It stayed put, and would until necessary.
‘Isn’t Po back yet?’ Tess asked the obvious.
Pinky mimed blowing smoke towards the ceiling. ‘He’s multitasking: smoking and looking for trouble.’
Tess checked the clock on the microwave. It was approaching eight a.m. and it was as Po had said: daylight was burning. They should get on, start knocking on doors in Hell’s Kitchen, but she hadn’t the drive to get moving yet. While Pinky and Stella chatted like lifelong friends over their breakfasts, she was silent and only once the buzz of caffeine perked her up did she stand and again look for Po. What was keeping him, anyway?
She went to the window and peered down onto the street. She could see his Mustang parked in Paul Dewildt’s allotted spot, but there was no sign of her partner. She took out her phone and called him.
‘All’s quiet,’ he announced.
‘Where are you?’
‘Thought I’d widen the perimeter,’ he explained, ‘see if those asshats had pulled back after Pinky arrived, but I haven’t spotted anything suspicious.’
‘That’s worrying,’ she said.
‘F’sure, means they’re busy elsewhere, right?’
‘Maybe they’ve finally realized it’s pointless wasting their resources staking out Stella’s place.’ Hearing her name, Stella shot a look of alarm her way, and Tess gestured that everything was OK. ‘Are you going to come up or should I join you?’
‘Pinky’s OK with babysitting duty?’
‘I assume so,’ she said. ‘He’s got his feet planted under the breakfast bar and doesn’t look ready to get up yet.’
Pinky was close enough to hear both sides of the conversation. He waved a strip of bacon. ‘Hey, Nicolas! I took your comments to heart last night, me. You needn’t worry about me losing more weight; I’m happy to stay here and work on getting back into shape. Ho ho!’ He chomped down on the bacon and chewed like a mad man so Po got the entire message.
‘I’ll come down,’ said Tess.
She briefly updated Stella and Pinky with her game plan, which she conceded didn’t amount to much.
‘Why Hell’s Kitchen?’ Stella asked.
Tess didn’t want to go into a full explanation of how they’d plotted Lacey’s ATM usage, from which she and Po estimated where he was hiding on the island.
‘Just a hunch,’ she admitted. ‘But it’s as good a starting point as anywhere. If anything happens –’ she meant a return of the Elite surveillance team – ‘let us know immediately and we’ll be back.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t keep all the fun to myself,’ said Pinky, and she read the undertone of his words. He was desperate to join the hunt with his best friends, but alas, he better served them watching over Stella for the time being. She gave his hand a conciliatory squeeze, then turned to leave. As much as she loved him as a friend, she had something to do that she didn’t want overheard by anyone but Po.
She joined her partner at the Mustang. ‘Take the drive over easy, Po,’ she instructed, ‘I’ll see if I can narrow down the search a bit.’
Once seated in the car she steeled herself with a couple of deep breaths for round two with her mother.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The tinny strains of unfamiliar music jolted Si Turpin out of sleep. It wasn’t the first time he’d conked out in his workshop. He often worked into the wee hours on difficult repairs and by the time they were finished he lacked the will and energy to shamble the five blocks home to his apartment. On those occasions he usually made it to a camp bed in the storeroom before passing out. This was a first for him: falling asleep at his work counter, with his hand cupped over the cell phone he’d stared at for hours before sleep took him. Startled awake, his hand snatched away, and he floundered a few seconds as his brain attempted to make sense of where he was, and why. The ringtone – no longer muffled by his palm – was loud and annoying. Yet he didn’t immediately pick up the phone to answer. After his resolve to beat Lace to the punch and get rich yesterday evening, he wasn’t confident he’d done the right thing by contacting Elite Custodian Services. If – when – he answered the phone his life would be changed forever, for good or … more worrying … for bad.
Initially he’d decided to call direct and demand to speak with Ben Holbrook, but had dithered. He wasn’t the most erudite speaker, his profound nasal drone made it difficult for him to make his point clearly, and there must be no confusion when making his demands to ensure he was taken seriously. So he’d chosen to message Holbrook instead, using an anonymous email account. In the email, he’d left his instructions to call him with the brief notation that ‘Nobody need die before dawn’, a clever, he felt, play on words most associated with Jon Cutter. If ever it fell into the hands of law enforcement nothing in the message could incriminate him, but its recipient would understand exactly to what he was referring.
The phone continued ringing.
Si’s stomach gurgled, and deeper down he felt a loosening of his bowel. It was one thing scamming desperate or vulnerable women out of their savings, another when it came to a potentially dangerous foe. He almost hit the cancel button, with a mind to breaking the phone and burning the SIM card. But greed won out.
He depressed the answer button and held the cell to his ear.
‘Am I speaking with Si Turpin?’
Si almost dropped the phone, emitting a croak of dismay.
‘Please don’t hang up,’ said the voice. ‘You might as well speak considering we already know who you are.’
‘H-how?’
‘You took pains to make anonymous contact with us, Mister Turpin, via the Hotmail account and what we imagine you consider a burner phone. All we can advise is, in the future, should you attempt a similar stratagem you should be more careful how you source your product.’
His error came to him in a flash of disappointment: he’d made a fool’s mistake. He’d crowed to Lace about buying flash drives in bulk, and he’d done the same with his goddamned supply of SIM cards. The purchase was linked directly to his business account. Ordinarily his scams went off without a glitch, because his victims lacked the technical ability to connect a cell number to a corresponding SIM, but Holbrook’s people evidently could.
‘I sense your embarrassment,’ the voice went on, ‘but never mind. We can all make mistakes, Mister Turpin; the important thing is that we never repeat them, eh? For instance, should you attempt to record this conversation, you should know it has the probability of coming back to bite you.’
‘Uh, I’m not … uh, not making a recording,’ Si spluttered.
‘That’s good. I can also confirm it’s a practice we’re no longer engaged in.’
‘Uh, yeah … bite ya. Right.’
‘I take it from your carefully selected wording that you believe you’ve something we want from you.’ The tone was incredibly sarcastic, and at Si’s bumbling response rather than his original message.
‘I want to speak to Ben Holbrook directly,’ he said, forcing a little grit in his tone.
‘Yet you are speaking with me.’
‘You’re Clarissa Glenn,’ Si stated. Yeah, you Limey bitch, two of us can play at that game! ‘I want to speak with your business partner.’
‘You’ve done your research. That’s good.’ Glenn waited a moment before dropping her next bomb. ‘Then you should be aware that we are not amateurs. We know who and where you are.’
‘Is that some kind of threat?’
‘Yes, Mr Turpin. Wasn’t I clear?’
‘There’s no need for threats. I made contact with you because I can give you what you want; I’m prepared to give you it. We can come to a reasonable agreement, right?’
‘How much?’
‘A million.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Turpin.’
‘No! Wait! Don’t hang up.’ Si scrubbed a hand over his face, his unshaven bristles rasping under his fingers. ‘I’m prepared to negotiate an agreeable price.’
‘Then go ahead. Try again.’
‘Five hundred thousand.’
‘No.’
‘Come on, that’s a pittance compared to what you’ve made off—’
‘Don’t mention his name.’
Both their names had been spoken, why did she care if Jon Cutter was mentioned?
‘You’re worried somebody else could be listening in?’ he asked.
‘No, Mr Turpin, as unlike you we have followed the proper channels to decrypt this conversation and to ensure it can’t be traced back to us. I simply ask you don’t mention his name as it turns my stomach to hear it.’
‘You don’t like him, but you don’t mind skimming the cream off the top of his income.’
‘That’s as it may be, but as a woman I can’t conscionably abide him or the actions he pays to conceal.’
‘As a dude, I can’t either,’ Si admitted.
‘Ah,’ said Glenn, and Si realized he’d been sucked blindly into a trap. ‘Then you have viewed the surveillance footage?’
He was caught, and lying would only weaken his position in the negotiation. ‘If it gets out, he’s going to prison, and so are you and Holbrook. Your cash cow will run dry, and your company will crash and burn. Does five hundred thousand still sound a high price to pay for my silence? In fact, fuck that, I’m not going to budge from my original demand. It’s a million bucks straight, or the deal’s off the table.’
‘We are not giving you a million dollars.’
‘You will or I’ll release the footage to the press. All I need do is press a key on my computer and it’s gone … and you’re all finished.’
‘Mr Turpin, something has been irking me since first we spoke: did you eat supper at your counter last night?’
Si was stunned into silence.
‘You might have cleared away the debris after you finished your pizza and wiped that unsightly glob of melted cheese off your shirt.’
Horrified, Si glanced once at the pizza box delivered last night while he awaited a response from Holbrook. He rubbed at the streak of cheese on his football shirt, even as, open-mouthed, he tried to spot where he was being surveilled from. His gaze lit on the tiny web camera embedded in his personal computer screen.
‘You’ve hacked my system?’
‘Of course we have. We wouldn’t trust you to delete all those files, even if you did hand over the physical copies you’ve undoubtedly made. Therefore we’ve already done that for you, as well as the poorly worded email you drafted offering the files to the highest bidder in an online auction with the media. Had you sent that email already, we would not be speaking now, nor would I be enjoying the stupid look of defeat on your face.’
In a panic, Si reached for his computer.
‘I wouldn’t do that. If you try switching it off, in fact if you were to press any key now, your entire system will be fully wiped, except for the images of child pornography we’ve planted on your hard drive, which I’m certain any reasonably adept tech guy at the NYPD will be able to recover.’
‘You’re fucking bluffing!’
‘Being a reasonably adept tech guy in your own right, I’d tell you to check, but doing so will initiate the self-destruct of your computer, and your life.’ Glenn’s triumphant smile could be heard in her voice. ‘Before you threaten to give the files to the police and claim you are the victim of a hack, hear us out. You earlier mentioned coming to reasonable agreement. Well, we’ve heard your demands, now you can listen to ours. You hand over every copy of the files, for which we will not give you a cent in compensation. However, there is something more you can do for us we will reward you for. Interested, Mr Turpin?’
‘How much are we talking about?’
‘You’re more interested in how much rather than the task we’re about to set you?’
‘I’m not an idiot: you want me to give you Aaron Lacey. How much for me to put him in your hands?’
‘Ten thousand dollars.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Animosity will get us nowhere. How much would you like?’
‘I told you my price and I’m not budging.’
‘You have no leverage and you will budge or get nothing. You can lead us to Lacey a little quicker than we can find him at present, but it’s inevitable we will find him and the clock is ticking down. This is a time sensitive deal, Mr Turpin. Give us Aaron Lacey and we will pay you twenty thousand dollars … but if you dally it will be too late.’
‘Fifty.’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘What will you do with him?’
‘Why should you be concerned?’
‘I’m not. He’s a piece of shit. Twenty-five you say?’
‘I’m feeling generous today. Thirty, Mr Turpin.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You have a way in which you can contact him.’
Si supplied Lacey’s burner phone to him: of course he could contact him.
‘Call him. Have him meet with you at your workshop,’ Glenn instructed. ‘Don’t try to warn him; remember that we are watching and listening.’
‘Trust me, I’m not going to warn him; I want that son of a bitch out of my hair.’
‘That’s what we all want, Mr Turpin. Once he’s in our hands you’ll be richer to the sum of … oh, why not? Fifty thousand is a pittance skimmed off that cream you mentioned.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Hayden James held up a finger.
‘Try to keep things down over there, huh?’
Megan, her face set in a rictus, craned her captive’s spine over the back of his easy chair, hissing to convey the demand for silence. ‘You heard him, asshole, one word and you’re toast.’
Hayden frowned at her rough-handed tactics, but admittedly they got what he wanted. The old doctor, so frail he was ready to snap under the manhandling, wheezed in agony, unable to speak. Hayden listened intently into his phone.
Ten minutes earlier they’d gained access to Dr Grover’s home on the pretence that Megan was injured. She’d feigned a dislocated shoulder, gritting her teeth in pain as she supported her elbow with her opposite hand, and allowing Hayden to assist her over the stoop. The charade was unnecessary, because once he’d answered his door, the old man couldn’t have stopped them from entering. Immediately they were inside, Megan straightened, swore at her miraculous recovery, and Hayden heeled the door closed behind them. Megan grasped the lapels of Grover’s plaid shirt and propelled him backwards into his sitting room.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Grover demanded. To his credit, he was more outraged by the invasion of his private residence than afraid.
Megan slapped his face. ‘You don’t ask the questions, Herb, we do.’ Her hands grasping his collar again, she swung him around and parked him in the easy chair. She gave way for Hayden, who offered the elderly man an apologetic shrug.
‘I’d prefer we didn’t have to do this, but I’m afraid I need some answers from you and haven’t all day to get them. Please answer me quickly and truthfully and I swear my associate will not lay another finger on you.’
‘Get out of my house,’ Grover snarled.
Hayden crouched in front of him, reached out a questing hand. Doctor Grover batted it aside.
‘Megan,’ said Hayden.
She slipped into place behind the chair, grasped Grover’s head in both hands and forced his skull into the headrest. Crying out in dismay, Grover’s legs and arms flailed. Megan adjusted her grip and tilted up his head, so Hayden had a good view of his whattled throat. He nodded at the line of paler flesh cutting obliquely from below his left ear towards his collarbone. ‘Half an inch to the right and you wouldn’t have survived that wound. I bet you’re thankful to the man that came to your rescue, before that psycho fully sliced your throat with your own scalpel?’
‘You’re here because of Aaron Lacey?’ Grover halted his pitiful attempt at escape. His hands dropped in his lap, curled upward. To Hayden, the arthritic fingers, stained orange with cigarette tar, were like the legs of a sickly spider. He took no pleasure in torturing the weak old man, but needs must.
