He saw her shoeless feet, then bare shapely legs. The legs just seemed to disappear where her hair started. Where was the skirt? She brushed her long hair aside to reveal a black micro-mini leather skirt. She tilted her head in that now familiar “I-got-you” way and placed her hands defiantly on her hips.
“Oh” was all he could muster. He suddenly pictured her moving fluidly down the alley, ball in hand, sliding gracefully, and releasing the ball at the proper time. He was pretty sure every man in the place had stopped to watch. She certainly had an effect on everyone she met, he thought. But he wondered if she trying to send a signal to him? Or was she simply so determined to succeed she would do anything to get what she wanted? She was definitely attractive, but he felt there was no chance to melt the iceberg named Loni Chen.
“Well, are you going to ask me about what I’ve learned, or are you just going to stand there and stare at me with your tongue hanging out?”
It was the terror of a woman speaking like she knew exactly what he was thinking which had kept Detective Heinz a bachelor all these years. He took a sip of his coffee. “So, what did you find out?” the whipped puppy dog asked.
“I found out three things which I am confident will lead us to a resolution in this case.” Heinz watched her with interest as her small delicate fingers counted off the leads. “First, the Ultimate Tattoo Parlor on Route 20 is the place where Dean meets his snitches. I suspect it’s a hangout for white supremacy types. Second, most of the people in this village do not like Officer Dean. Several — I have their names and addresses — have been shaken down by him and three other guys friendly with Dean. I also have their names and addresses. I agree that it is small potatoes, but nonetheless real illegal activities. I don’t know if we can get any of them to roll over and testify, but if we can get him for something else, I think they’ll jump on the bandwagon and come forward.”
“Interesting,” Heinz replied. “What was the third lead?”
“There’s a major meeting at the Altar of the Creator church this evening at eight o’clock in Aurora. It would be a good idea to do a little stakeout, don’t you think?”
“You are special Agent Chen, you amaze me,” Heinz said and meant it. “How did you find out about the church meeting?”
“I found out from Marge, whom I met in the ladies’ room. Lots of talk in there, you know. Marge was one of Dean’s victims. He recently abused her when she was drunk. She warned me to watch out for him. She also knew about the meeting. It seems that Michael Dean has been bragging about a major type meeting at the church.”
Heinz spoke with concern. “Loni, that was dangerous. You can’t just run around asking questions about bad guys in a public place. These thugs are trouble, and you’re —”
She quickly cut him off with, “I’m what, just a girl?” The sarcasm all but dripped from her mouth.
“Yeah, okay, I deserved that,” Heinz admitted sheepishly as he wondered if she was a hardened feminist. “How’d you find out about the tattoo parlor?” He asked this in an attempt to change the subject.
She just glared at him as her face turned red. Her posture suddenly changed and he noticed that he faced a more subdued person. “I kind of went there,” she said softly.
“Well, who told you about …? Hey, wait a minute, don’t tell me you got a tattoo,” a stunned Heinz uttered.
“I needed to do reconnaissance. I found out a lot of information there. It was the right thing to do,” she said defensively as she opened her arms in surrender.
“Does it hurt?” a sympathetic Heinz asked after a few seconds.
“Hurts like hell, I can hardly sit down. But I like it.”
“Well, the cost of your tattoo had better not show up on your expense account — I can’t approve what I can’t see,” Heinz joked.
“I never cheat on my expenses — you just want to look at my ass,” she complained a little too strongly.
“Well, now I know where it is and probably half of Streamwood has already seen it while you were in the tattoo parlor.”
“Actually, it represents my name in Chinese,” she said, pulling up her micro-mini to reveal black thong panties and a smooth rounded cheek. In the center of the right cheek was a small tattoo — a butterfly.
Heinz spilled his coffee and retreated to the bathroom again. As he left the room, he said, “I’m still not paying for it.”
Part Three
The First Leads
Chapter Seventeen
Walter Pierce hung up the phone. His life’s work would be completed in just a few days. It had all started so many years ago with his good friend Wilhelm. Wilhelm Canaris was a brilliant man. He was also Pierce’s mentor. In 1941, Canaris approached him with an earth-shattering assignment. He was being sent back to America.
As the old man ruminated about the assignment he took on so many decades ago, he was lifted in spirits at the realization that his mission would finally see completion. Although he was not able to conclude the mission in 1942 as planned, he could finish it now. The timing was right. The neo-Nazi, white supremacy, and Aryan causes were taking hold all over the United States, not to mention several other countries. He knew people were tired of losing jobs to foreigners and illegal immigrants. Hell, we don’t even call them illegal aliens anymore, he thought. All airports and government agencies are now completely bilingual. You could even collect unemployment benefits without speaking English, welfare too. Come to America, you don’t even have to learn the language; we will even pay you to stay home once you qualify for unemployment benefits. The thought made is blood boil.
He also knew why the white supremacy movement was gaining steam. After 9/11, many began to fear immigrants, avoiding people who were not white. The ineptness of the government agencies — lack of communication, turf issues, and failure to report career-threatening information — was a critical factor. The current administration was chock-full of bureaucrats who said they were working to stem the flow of illegal aliens, while they actually campaigned for amnesty for them. Pierce knew the real reason was for the chance to capture their votes. This all would change when his mission was finished. Pierce had believed in his mission for a very long time; he would stop at nothing to complete it, and was sure it would come to a conclusion soon. This made him happy.
Yes, everything was falling into place, just as Wilhelm and i had planned it so many years ago, he thought. Canaris and Pierce would go down in history as the ones who changed everything. It was all going to happen in just a few days.
Pierce sat on his couch thinking. He knew that Dean was lying and couldn’t be trusted. Pierce was a master at reading and manipulating people. Dean was a subhuman moron. He had suggested Pierce was a sleeper. Pierce realized he was somewhat like a sleeper, but he had activated himself. No one was making him finish his mission.
Walter Pierce was, in fact, a born and bred American citizen. He had lived almost all his life on eastern Long Island. He had spent only a little over a decade away from the island in Europe. He wanted people to remember him and what he had done. Sometime back he decided to write down his early life. He wanted people to see who he really was back then, before the mission. He sat down at his desk and continued to record his history on a Dictaphone that he kept on his desk next to the outline of what he wanted to say.
Chapter Eighteen
Walter Pierce spoke into the recording machine. “I was born on November 14, 1911. I am almost a hundred years old as I speak. My parents were Emma and Wolfgang Becker. They resided on Speonk-Riverhead Road in Speonk, near Westhampton, New York. The house my father built did not have a street address. It was simply RFD #1. My father came to America in 1870 and opened a nursery on land he bought from a local farmer. He was a gentle man and kept mostly to himself. Since he was often lonely, he sent back to Germany for a wife. My mother came to America, but never accepted it, and hated the many different people she met here.
“She was quite a bit younger than my father and had a difficult time li
ving in ‘the country,’ as she called it. My first memories were of walking around the yard watching my father tending to trees and bushes. He had people to run the nursery. The back of the yard had a huge smokestack which burned coal to heat the greenhouses in the winter. Our home was also heated by coal and Father constructed an underground tunnel which led from the smokestack pump house directly into the basement of our house. There was a hidden door in the basement of the house, behind the furnace. I had often played in the tunnel. Coal could be brought over from the pump house without getting dust and soot all over the house. Father was clever that way.
“In the early years, I had a wonderful life. There were people to take care of me. We had a maid and a butler. When I was twelve, father bought a sailboat, and we would sail the Great South Bay for hours. High school was easy for me. I played baseball for the Westhampton Beach high school team and was in the chess club. I had many friends; some of them were very wealthy. When I was old enough, we would take the train to New York City to go to the many nightclubs.
“The problem was my parents. They never seemed to get along. One day, I got home early from school and found my mother in the arms of the butler. Actually, they were shamelessly frolicking on the parlor room couch. She didn’t even stop when she saw me come in. She just stared at me and said, ‘I dare you to tell your father.’ It was then I realized Mother didn’t care about Father at all and the butler was imported from Germany to be her lover. I wondered about the maid, since she was also from Germany. I didn’t have to wonder long.
“Heidi, the maid, was about thirty years old. She was not particularly pretty. That night, she knocked on my door naked. I didn’t know it at the time, but Mother put her up to it. It was either have sex with me or be sent back to Germany. Heidi was also having sex with the butler, Willy, and didn’t want to lose those privileges, not to mention being sent back to Germany. So the choice was easy for her.
“In my senior year, I found out about several secrets my house held. Father was home and in his bedroom at the bottom of the stairs. My door opened to reveal Heidi, dressed in only a short nightgown. ‘How did you get by Father?’ I asked. She opened the door to the upstairs closet and pressed a latch in the back. The whole wall opened out and I saw a small landing and a ladder running up and down. She closed the closet door while we were inside and went to the ladder, climbing up toward the attic. I followed her, watching her fine ass sway as she climbed. She pushed on the hatch and we were suddenly in the attic. She stretched out and pulled a cord, lighting up the dark space.
“We entered the large unfinished attic. She whispered in my ear that there were other doors. I was stunned: I’d lived in this house for all these years, and the maid knew more about my house than I did.
“She walked a few feet and opened another trapdoor, and motioned for me to look down. I saw a closet. There was a trapdoor in the closet. She closed the trapdoor and walked over to a third door in the corner. This one had another ladder, and we climbed down.
“We only went down one story. She pushed the wall and it opened into the front attic. The house had a second attic which ran the length of the front of the house. It was just an open area and was low, as it was the leftover space from the intersection of the roofline and the inside walls of the rooms. The main entrance to that attic was in the guest room. I was amazed. But we weren’t done yet. We made our way back to the original ladder and she climbed down to the main floor. There was a small landing there and she showed me that it led into the back of the pantry. Finally, she climbed down to the basement and we found ourselves in a small room between two of the bricked-up basement rooms. It was bare and had only one light hanging from the ceiling.
“Heidi knelt down and pushed on a section of the brick wall, it opened. We found ourselves in the furnace room. She told me Mother showed her all the hidden passages and made her swear not to show them to Father. I knew Mother had designed the plans for the house; Father just paid the money. Now I realized just how devious my mother was. She had designed the house so she could travel throughout the house without my father ever knowing, probably to dally with the butler.
“On August 29, 1929, I left for college at Yale University. I told my parents I would come home every two weeks and meant it at the time. College was the ultimate rush. There were football games, parties, and an incredible number of good-looking women. I was in heaven and soon forgot my promise to my family. My new friends were a ‘who’s who’ of industrialists’ children.
“Then disaster struck, beginning on October 24, 1929. The stock market fell. It continued for several days and soon about 40 percent of the total market was gone. Several of my friends had to leave school. I was concerned for my own family. By phone, Father told me we were fine, and I should continue at school. I decided to come home for Christmas.
“We were rather subdued during that holiday season. Father really didn’t know how bad his business was, as there was never much activity in the winter anyway. He would have to wait until later in the year to know exactly where he stood. Mother was quite different. She was now talking about Germany and how it was going to rise. She was getting German newspapers and magazines at a regular rate, and she told me her family’s business in Germany was growing again. The name of Hitler started to crop up in her discussions. I couldn’t wait to get back to school to be with my friends.
“Spring came and not only was my family a lot poorer but everyone at school wanted to discuss politics. We discussed Communism and the problems in Europe. It didn’t interest me much, but there was romantic talk about war and who would win. School had turned to drudgery and I was glad when the semester ended.
“When I came home, I realized that much had changed. Father’s business was hanging by a thread and he spent most of his time wandering around the yard. Mother had become militant and was talking about the stupid American president and how Germany was going to teach everyone a lesson. She wore a kind of uniform — it was all brown — and she started discussing Hitler’s plans. From school, I knew Hitler was a fanatic and had a shady way of campaigning.
“Things got worse the next day when Mother announced she was leaving Father and going back to Germany to run her father’s company, at least for the next few years. Willy and Heidi were going back, too. Father didn’t appear to even hear my mother’s announcement.
“I followed my father into the yard and tried to talk to him. He was a stubborn person and told me I should go with my mother to protect her from herself. I asked him to go with us, but he replied he could never go back to Germany. He had too many enemies there and besides, he wanted to stay in America. He’d been in the USA for over fifty years and this was now his home. It was my homeland, too, but I feared for Mother. She was acting so strangely.”
At that point, Pierce decided that he was very tired and he had other plans to put in motion. He shut off the Dictaphone. He would finish his story at his lawyer’s office. He would do that soon, as there wasn’t much time left for him — the voices in his head told him that.
Chapter Nineteen
Colton Banyon sat nervously on the bed in the Patel’s bedroom. He didn’t know what to make of his situation. Here he was locked in a room, waiting for breakfast from a lovely creature who displayed all the tendencies of a sexually crazed predator. She wanted to hire him, yet it was a job he didn’t want. He did not want to go back to his old house. People were chasing him for something or some reason, and he didn’t even have a clue as to what they wanted from him. The local police considered him a wacko. He was broke and couldn’t even return to his house. Does any of this make sense?
The sound of a knock filled the little room. “Come in, it’s open,” he said sarcastically. When the door slowly opened, Banyon considered making a break for it, but hesitated. In walked Pramilla’s sister Previne. She was dressed in a multicolored sari, and the dot was clearly visible on her forehead. She carried a tray of food.
“Good morning,” she said demurely.
“Where is Pramilla? You didn’t have to bring me food, Previne,” Banyon said.
“Pramilla had to talk to some people in India,” the shy woman said as she flowed into the room gracefully and placed the tray on a coffee table. She then turned to leave.
“Wait,” Banyon said. “It would be impolite for me to eat alone.”
She turned, flowed to the chair near the little couch, and sat down with her knees together and hands folded on her lap. She bowed her head slightly. On the tray were fruit, dry toast, orange juice, and tea.
“You’re quite different from your sister,” Banyon remarked, trying to draw her out.
“We’re actually the same.” The reply came in the same voice as her sister. For a quick second, Banyon wondered if this was Pramilla, dressed up to be Previne. Could even Keri tell them apart? “We are identical twins, except I’m wilder than my sister.”
Banyon looked up at that remark. “Why would you say that? Pramilla is very outgoing and aggressive and you’re lovely and quiet.”
“First looks are sometimes deceiving, don’t you think?”
“I’ll agree to that,” Banyon replied as he wondered where she was going with the remark.
“In India, my sister and I were both dancers. We were always in demand because we were twins. I always earned the most money.”
“What kind of dancers?”
“Why exotic, of course.” Previne announced it proudly and sat up straighter. “It’s not quite the same as your strip clubs here, but it was fun for everyone.” A smile lit up her face.
Based on the early morning performance by Pramilla, Banyon was now stuck with images of the twins twirling and swaying sensually, sitar music filling the air in the background, candles burning, and myriads of mirrors reflecting their provocative images. I would be throwing money at them, he thought.
Colton Banyon Mysteries 1-3: Colton Banyon Mysteries (Colton Banyon Mystery Book 20) Page 9
