Wracking my brains to remember the procedure, I tentatively picked up his wrist and held it between my thumb and forefinger. Okay, no pulse. Not a good sign. I braced myself and tilted his head back. Spittle had formed at the corners of his mouth and was working its way down to his chin. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I mentally went over the checklist. His skin felt cold, he wasn’t breathing, no heartbeat and I’m pretty sure he’d shit his pants. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
“Nick,” I screamed. “Get in here. I need you!” I began pacing around the room wringing my hands, trying to digest what had happened.
Obviously they’d sent him an advanced copy of the magazine, and he was so freaked out by it he committed suicide. He drank some scotch and downed a bunch of pills and—
I stopped, suddenly aware that this scenario sounded very familiar. But why?
“Nick!” Where was he? I peered out the French doors, searching the back yard for signs of life. “Help!” I screeched, panic rising in my throat. I was stuck in a room with a dead guy and I didn’t know where Nick was.
I reached for the phone to call the police, when someone came up behind me and rested a hand on my wrist. “Oh thank God,” I breathed, turning around, but my relief was short-lived. The grip tightened.
“We meet again, Ms. Alexander. How delightful.”
Philip Gruber and I stood inches from each other, his left hand still wrapped around my wrist. In his right was a .38 caliber pistol, its cold nose pressed against my side like a persistent puppy. I froze as the blood drained from my face down to my legs, rendering them useless. “What? No hello?” He shrugged. “And here I thought we were pals. How’s the article coming along?”
Dizzy with panic, I fought to remain calm. Cautiously I glanced down. Maybe Gruber was known for his practical jokes, and what I’d mistaken for a real gun was actually a life-like water pistol. He’d “pull the trigger” and I’d get soaked and we’d both have a good laugh. “You sure fooled me,” I’d say. Oh shit Brandy, focus!
I found my voice. “Mr. Gruber I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I was invited here by the mayor. I doubt he’d appreciate you manhandling me.”
“Oh I don’t think my friend Bradley is in a position to appreciate anything at the moment.” He shook his head mock ruefully and gestured towards the mayor’s inert body. “Shocking turn of events.”
“And what’s your part in all of this?” The words flew out of my mouth before rational thought had time to catch up to them.
Gruber’s mouth curved into a tight cruel smile. “You’re a bright girl, Ms. Alexander. It will be fun watching you unravel the mystery.” He said the last part in a Bella Lugosi accent. The man was clearly nuts.
Gruber prodded me with the pistol, toward the couch. He remained standing, one arm draped casually over the back of the mayor’s Lazy Boy. He was wearing a brown, turtleneck sweater under a designer sports coat, and Dockers. His feet were covered in brand new topsiders. Just your standard Ivy League psychopath. My eyes traveled to the French doors, willing them to open. Any minute now Nick would burst in and rescue me and this nightmare would be over.
“Looking for someone?”
I whipped my head back the other way. “No, I—”
“But of course, your associate, Nick. He did say he’d be right outside if you needed him.” He sighed, heaving Armani clad shoulders. “It’s so hard to find reliable help these days. By the way, you should have listened to him when he told you not to take any chances.”
What was going on? The man knew intimate details of our conversation. It was as if he’d been right in the room with us when we’d spoken. The light dawned and I leaned forward, concentrating my efforts on staying alive. “How’d you do it, Gruber? How’d you wire me for sound?”
“Bravo, Brandy. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me. Remember when you visited me at my office? I had a feeling you were a nosy one. I watched you on the security monitor, rifling through my things. Don’t look so surprised. You should figure a person of my stature wouldn’t just leave you there to snoop freely. Anyway,” he continued, “when I realized you weren’t going to go away, I decided to keep a closer watch on you.” He tossed me my pocketbook. “Take a look under the flap.” Tucked in the corner under the leather flap was a listening device the size of a baby’s little toenail. “I’ll bet my bug’s smaller than your bug. Want to compare?”
He strolled over to me, leaning in to grasp the bottom of my shirt with his fingers. He was so close I could smell the Listerine on his breath. The thought of him touching me made my skin crawl. Quickly I reached under my shirt and grabbed the worthless mic and flung it across the room, all hope of rescue gone.
“What have you done with Nick?” I demanded.
“He’s—indisposed.”
“What do you mean, indisposed?” I shouted wildly.
His face twisted into a frightening grin. “Like I said, you’re a bright girl. You’ll figure it out.”
Oh my God. When I was in Gruber’s office he planted the bug in my purse, which meant he’d overheard our conversations. He knew Nick would be outside the house and he had him ambushed. It was naïve arrogance to think I could outsmart a mad man. I’d been warned; by his college classmates, by Bobby, by the sheer terror in his ex-wife’s voice, but I wouldn’t listen. All Nick wanted to do was keep me safe and now he was dead. I felt as if I’d been punched hard in the gut. A deep and abiding sadness washed over me and I blinked back hot tears. No way would I give this monster the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
“I should’ve—”
He laughed, interrupting me. “Shoulda, woulda, coulda. It’s all water under the bridge now. Cheer up, kid. It’s time to play ‘What’s My Secret?’ Here’s how we play. It’s very simple really. I’ve got a secret and you guess what it is.”
I stared at him, despising every breath he took. “You’re insane.”
A hand shot out and smacked me hard across the face. I felt a blinding pain as shock mingled with rage and tears welled up in my eyes. My cheek began to throb and swell. He cocked his head slightly, waiting for me to catch my breath.
“Ready to play?”
He was serious. He wanted me to reconstruct the crimes. For every right answer I earned another five minutes of breathing time. Every wrong answer earned me another smack in the mouth.
“So,” Gruber started, settling comfortably on the couch, “you’ve already earned five minutes for figuring out the mayor and I had a special arrangement. I’d finance his campaign and in return he’d award me city contracts. But unfortunately things took a downhill turn when Curtis Maitlin showed up with his private party pictures. Your turn.” He smiled expectantly.
My head was reeling from the news about Nick, and I had to fight to comprehend what Gruber was telling me. Self preservation kicked in and I opened my mouth and hoped for the best. “When the first murder took place six months ago,” I began slowly, “the mayor hired a cop to pull the evidence on Maitlin. But then six months later he killed again, so you hired Thurman Williams to get rid of John, because he could potentially identify Maitlin. Then somehow you were able to get your hands on Maitlin’s original blackmail photos, which eliminated the need to protect Maitlin anymore, so you had him killed too.”
“Correctamundo! Tell her what she’s won, Vanna.”
I wasn’t about to make the mistake again of pointing out he was crazy, so I just continued to pick my way carefully through the events of the last week and a half, trying to put it all together. It wasn’t easy. My head was throbbing and my heart was breaking.
“Ms. Alexander,” cooed Gruber in a singsong voice, “the clock’s a tickin’.” He waggled the index finger of his free hand in a tick tock fashion to illustrate his point.
I ventured another guess. “Maybe the cop was killed because he knew too much, and since you didn’t need him anymore it was safer to just get rid of him.”
“Right again. You know if this were a real game show you c
ould make a lot of money.”
No more than five minutes had passed since he’d entered the room, but it felt like a lifetime. Blood was beginning to cake at the corner of my mouth and I licked at it gingerly. My thoughts wandered to my family, my friends, to Nick and I almost burst into a fresh set of tears, but that wouldn’t get me out of this mess. I had to keep the conversation going, so I proffered another guess.
“You and the mayor took care of everyone who could have potentially ‘turned’ on you. But then someone got a hold of the pictures of Maitlin and the mayor and sent them in to Secrets magazine, which effectively ruined the mayor, so he killed himself.”
“Who do you think ratted him out?” he asked almost gleefully.
“His political opponent?”
A hard crack across my other cheek sent my head flying backwards and immediately I could feel it start to puff up. At least now I’d be symmetrical.
Gruber hopped off the couch and began pacing around the Persian rug. His eyes landed on the empty bottle of pills, and he picked it up and absently began playing with it. “If I were going to kill myself, I’d do something really spectacular like take a flying leap off of one of my buildings.”
I watched him toss the pill bottle idly from hand to hand, and as I did, something in the back of my mind slowly wended its way to the forefront. In an instant I had the last piece of the puzzle. Oh my God. “The mayor didn’t kill himself, did he, Mr. Gruber?”
His face creased into a broad grin and he patted me on the back. I flinched at his touch but he didn’t seem to notice. “You are one sharp cookie, Ms. Alexander. What gave me away?”
“The pill bottle.” He tilted his head, questioningly. “I remembered an article I’d read about your partner. It was an obituary, actually. It said that he had been depressed and he died of an accidental overdose from mixing alcohol and anti-depression medication. You killed your partner and made it look like suicide, and you did the same with the mayor. But why?”
Gruber grimaced as if caught up in a painful memory. “I’ve got no patience for weak people, Brandy. May I call you Brandy?” He had the gun. He could call me anything he wanted. “My partner was a gutless wonder. We hooked up because he had access to start up money for the company. I was the proverbial ‘brains behind the operation.’ The risk taker, the mover and shaker. Hoffman was content to remain a low budget company, doing penny ante jobs. But I was going to take this company to the top.”
“So you started a slush fund for the mayor in exchange for a guaranteed pay off when he got elected. But Hoffman disapproved, I take it.”
“Exactly. You know, you seem to have a real head for business. Under different circumstances I’d be recruiting you for my company.” He sighed. “C’est la vie.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “Hoffman made some noises, yada, yada, yada,” he rolled his hand over and over to fast forward the passage of time, “and I realized he’d become a liablility. So I did what any good businessman would do. I dissolved the partnership.”
I looked at him as if for the first time. He seemed to have absolutely no concept of right and wrong, only what was to his advantage or disadvantage. Gruber was a man without a conscience, which made him as dangerous as a man could possibly be.
He began speaking again but I was only half listening. I was desperate to find a way out of the God forsaken library. “It’s a wonder Richardson got elected in the first place,” he was saying. “The man had the personality of a sponge. And what a whiner, boy, I’ll tell you. First he begs me for my help with Maitlin and then he complains when I do something about it. He was just so damn squeamish about all the killing. I would have knocked him out of the loop a long time ago, but I had to wait until that last big city contract was signed, sealed and delivered. After that, Bradley was expendable. But I had to make it look like suicide.”
“You were the one who sent those photos to “Secrets”. You made it look like the mayor killed himself over the public exposure, and then you shredded up the magazine and left it under the chair, as if he’d torn it up in a fit of rage.” The man was brilliant. Crazy as a loon, but brilliant.
“You know I like you, Brandy. I really do. You’ve been a good sport and I wish there were a better pay off for you, but you’re going to have to die.” Without warning he yanked me off the couch by my hair. Pain shot up my neck and I screamed in surprise.
“Oh, you’re going to have to be a lot more quiet than that if we’re going to get out of here unnoticed.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked thickly.
“If I told you, it would spoil the surprise.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a roll of duct tape. Deftly he bound my hands behind my back and placed a strip over my mouth. Then he wrapped his hand tightly around the back of my neck and led me out the door.
A black Audi was parked around the other side of the house. Gruber opened the back door and threw me unceremoniously inside. I landed on the floor and he quickly tossed a blanket over my prone body. As I struggled to right myself, he issued a gruff warning to lie there and behave myself or else he’d cut my fucking head off and mount it on his wall. Remembering the goat’s head, I opted to behave myself.
As the car started to roll away from the curb I stretched my legs out, my body vibrating with pent up adrenalin. I wanted to bang my feet hard against the side of the door, kick out a window, anything to get out of there. I hated being tied up. Hated it more than anything. It made me crazy.
I lay there gulping hot air, tears and sweat co-mingling on my face. Oh jeez, my parents will be so bummed when they find out I’m dead. And Paulie, and Johnny and the twins. And Bobby. We finally put our past and all the bitterness behind us and then I have to go and get myself killed. Fucking typical.
Then my thoughts turned to Nick, and I cried silent tears for someone I barely knew but who had come to mean so much to me. Maybe it was the injustice of it all, or maybe it was the point beyond hysteria where you suddenly feel invincible, but I knew I would not go gentle into this damn goodnight. I was going to figure a way out of this stinking mess or die trying.
After about twenty-five minutes I heard the crunch of gravel under the tires as the car slowed and stopped. Gruber cut the engine and pulled the blanket off of me. “We’re here,” he announced in that bizarre childlike singsong.
I wanted to belt him one, and I would have if my hands hadn’t been strapped behind my back. I was so beyond reasonable thought it wasn’t even funny. I struggled to sit up and peered out the window.
We were parked next to a plywood and chain link fence which ran the length of a city block. On the fence was a large rectangular sign. I could barely make out the words in the darkness. Gruber flicked on the high beams momentarily so that I could read the printing. FUTURE HOME OF MEMORIAL SPORTS COMPLEX, and under that in only slightly smaller letters, HOFFMAN AND GRUBER CONSTRUCTION.
“It never fails to give me a thrill,” he commented, dousing the lights.
I cast a furtive glance around, searching for signs of human life. We were parked in the middle of a major metropolitan city, for Christ’s sake. Where was everyone?
I didn’t have time to ponder the question, because at that moment Gruber yanked open the back door and hauled me out by my elbow. I lost my balance, stumbling and landing hard on the gravel surface. My chin hit the ground and started to bleed. Bits of stone and glass ground into my knees and I whimpered in pain. He pulled me up, a look of annoyance crossing his face. “You haven’t said one thing about my building. You are very self absorbed, you know that? Now pay attention, you might learn something.”
It was hard to keep up with his mood swings. He changed from southern gentleman to east coast Mafioso in a heartbeat, and I couldn’t decide which one was creepier. As he guided me towards the construction site, he slung a companionable arm around my shoulder and I flinched at his touch. His gentleman mode was definitely creepier.
Cement mixers and other heavy equipment littered the u
npaved parking lot. The building, a gigantic state of the art oval shaped structure looked very near completion. It was all steel and glass, about ten stories high. It must’ve cost over three hundred million to build, with a good-sized portion going to my host for the evening.
“Just think, Brandy, when this place is completed it will be able to seat twenty thousand sports fans. Imagine your friends, comfy-cozy in their luxury boxes, knocking back a couple of brewskis while rooting for the home team. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
I nodded, my mouth still covered in duct tape.
“Now, I don’t want you feeling all left out because your friends will be having fun without you,” he continued, a maniacal note lacing his voice. “I’ve thought long and hard about how I can include you in the festivities, and I think I’ve come up with a darn good solution.” What the hell was he talking about? If the man had his way, the only festivities I’d be participating in was pushing up daisies at Forest Lawn.
“Brandy, our time together has been fun, but I really am going to have to bid you adieu fairly soon. The trouble is what to do with your body? And then I got to thinking.” He rubbed his gun softly along my cheekbone, edging me towards the cement mixer. “I shoot you, then I hack you up in convenient disposable pieces. After that I toss you in the hopper, where, with the flick of a switch I grind you into pulp. Tomorrow morning when the dry cement is mixed with water in the cylinder for the paving of our new parking lot, you will be added to the mix. So you see you’ll live on in the very pavement beneath our feet.”
A great swooshing sound filled my ears as my legs buckled beneath me. He hauled me back up, laying a hand on the back of my head and pushing it forward until he was sure I wasn’t going to pass out. Wiggling out of his grasp I began to make incoherent noises through the duct tape.
“Come again?” He ripped the tape off my mouth, leaving my lips swollen and sore.
“I want my fifteen minutes,” I shouted.
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