Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  .G.

  “Mallory, could you help me with something?” Dennis asked as he invaded her personal space behind her desk, causing her to scramble to close her Facebook page in the nick of time.

  Mallory Edwards was the go-to girl in the office. She knew every procedure and could usually navigate the corporate obstacle course in record time. Many a VP or sales exec tapped her resourcefulness to fast track something that was bogged down in company procedure. “Sure thing, Dennis. What is it?”

  “Do you have pump-out sheets for this quarter?”

  “No, Mr. Deloitte hasn’t released them yet.”

  “When is he due back?”

  “Not until next week, I’m afraid.”

  “Not good. I need to prepare my report for Friday because I’m on holiday next week.”

  “I see.” She let the moment hang, surmising what was coming next.

  “Mallory, be a good egg and see if you can get me a copy of the report, will you?”

  “Mr. Deloitte doesn’t like it much when I go through his stuff.”

  “Truth be told, Mallory, I am in a bit of a jam here. What do say that you do me this favor and I’ll bring you back that rare perfume you like from Paris?”

  “Mitsouko, Eau de Toilette, by Guerlain . . . That’s a very kind offer. You can’t get that at Boots.”

  “So, what do you say?”

  “I’ll do it right during lunch. Shirley’s going out today so I’ll go into his office and get a copy.”

  Dennis kissed her on the top of her head. “You are an angel. Sorry to disturb your Facebook. Carry on.”

  Mallory closed her eyes. The threat was implicit. Dennis had just informed her that if she, for some reason, couldn’t get him an advanced copy of the report, her dalliance in social media would come to the attention of either Mr. Shipsen or Mr. Deloitte. Both being old dinosaurs from the gallery and museum worlds and now the leading purveyors of art around the globe, they didn’t know or care a wit about social media. One even called it “the devil’s new plaything” . . . the old coot. She checked the upper right hand corner of her screen: 12:05. The day had moved fast. It was already lunchtime. She got up and headed for Deloitte’s office.

  .G.

  Being a septuagenarian, Deloitte had manila folders lined up in double rows on both sides of his massive, gold-inlaid desk from the Medici Florentine period. The system was color-coded and clearly marked with labels as to the account or work of art or artist’s catalog.

  Shirley kept them neatly aligned in alphabetical order and up to date, which made it easy for Mallory to put her finger right on pump in/pump out. It was a monthly chairman’s report that accounted for every deal and every prospect the huge art brokerage engaged in.

  In three minutes, she returned the folder and aligned it as neatly as it was before. Her eyes fell upon the name Normans on one of the folder’s labels. Suddenly she felt a pang of guilt. She needlessly looked up and around, listening for any inkling of being interrupted. More gingerly than she had just done when retrieving the records for Dennis, she peered into the Normans folder. Her eyes widened as a smile of satisfaction appeared on her freckled face. She gently closed and replaced the file, double-checking that it did not appear disturbed in the least.

  She placed the Xerox copies of the Pump report in a yellow interoffice envelope and walked out of Deloitte’s office with more spring in her step than when she entered. On her way back to her cubicle she placed the envelope in Dennis’s in-box.

  She could hardly contain herself at her desk. She picked up the phone and excitedly dialed the restaurant. “Russell Normans please . . .”

  “He’s waiting on six tables right now, love.”

  “I’m sorry but this is important.”

  .G.

  “Mr. Deloitte, call for you on the house phone.”

  “Can you bring it here?”

  “Sorry, sir. It is over by the front desk.”

  “Well, who is it . . . ? Nevermind.” The seventy-year-old excused himself from his guests at the table and walked the forty feet to the gold, classic-styled boudoir phone in this Dubai hotel lobby. “Deloitte here. Who is this?”

  “Mr. Deloitte, Russell Normans.”

  Deloitte pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it incredulously. “Why on earth are you calling me?”

  “I wanted to thank you for making that incredible deal on my piece.”

  The words stunned him. “How did you . . .” Then he caught himself. Of course, Mallory. “Normans, where are you now?”

  “In my loft in Soho . . .”

  “Well, I am flying in at 7:30 tomorrow night. What say we meet at 8:30? Oh, and bring Mallory. I’m sure she’ll want to be there when I give you your check. Oh, and Normans, I am sure you understand how we do things. We control the publicity and release, so please, as a condition of your contract you are forbidden to discuss this with anyone. Including family! Do you understand? If you violate that agreement the deal is off and you get no check.”

  “I totally understand, sir.”

  “Good, Good. See you tonight.” Deloitte hung up the antique phone then patted his pockets.

  .G.

  At the table, the Sultan of Brunei, Deloitte’s guest and hopeful customer of rare eighteenth century Canaletto oils, tapped the British Ambassador to Dubai on the shoulder and said with a grin, “Look, Deloitte actually has a cell phone. Wonder of wonders.”

  “He does not look happy to use it, though,” the ambassador undiplomatically added.

  .G.

  At 6:45, Mallory pulled up to the Soho address of Normans’ studio. She was still mad at him for calling her employer and divulging what she had told him in confidence. But Deloitte’s generous offer to celebrate the good news softened her ire. She’d gotten her hair done and a manicure because one does not have drinks with one’s chairman of the board and her struggling artist boyfriend without looking tip top. All through her primping, she’d bitten her tongue as she conformed to the terms of the deal, not to disclose anything to anyone before it was made public. But it had killed her not to share this tastiest piece of gossip with her girl at the salon and all the other ladies who were endlessly bragging and gossiping.

  Russell came out of the converted warehouse, which served as a commune for struggling artists in this famous part of London. She could see he was wearing his best t-shirt for the occasion. She was about to chastise him when she thought twice about it and reasoned, he’s charmingly esoteric . . . a phrase someone had said of him and his work at her office. And now, thanks to her introducing him to her firm, one of his works just sold to a Middle Eastern collector for over twenty-five million pounds. That was incredible, more so because she never thought his work was really all that good; but he was cute and liked to paint portraits of her, including some of the more “intimate” studies of her as well. Tonight, though, he was a cute millionaire with a tight butt. Her smile dissolved as she noticed the man carrying a small tote who exited the building with Russell. She also saw the rather grim expression on his face.

  The man opened the door and nodded his head for Russell to get in.

  “Russ, who’s your friend?”

  “He’s not my friend. You better do whatever he says . . .”

  The man got in the backseat and brandished the .38 caliber gun in his pocket and said, “Drive.”

  .G.

  Out on the country road he had directed them to, he tapped her on the shoulder. “Turn off the road here.”

  “What? Here?”

  “Yes. Just do it!” He placed the gun at the back of her head for emphasis.

  “Okay, okay.”

  The car rolled to a clearing amidst the trees. It was a moonless night, so once the headlamps were extinguished it was pitch dark.

  The man turned on the car’s dome light. “Now,
you take your top off.”

  “What?” Mallory said.

  “I am not going to ask you again. And you, take your pants down. Underwear too.”

  “What’s this . . . ?” Normans said.

  “Look, I told you no talking or I’ll kill both of you right this instant.”

  Mallory opened her blouse and, using her arms as cover, got her top off without surrendering too much modesty.

  “Off with the bra.”

  She shook as his request rattled her. She slid off her white lace bra. Covering her breasts with her hands. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  Russell had his pants and boxers down around his knees.

  “Now the panties . . .”

  “You want me to take my knickers off? Why?”

  “Are you too stupid to realize what I am going to do to both of you with this gun if you don’t do to everything I am asking you to do . . . without talking?” He jutted the gun into the side of her breast this time.

  She gasped at the sting of cold steel.

  “Okay, now you, get on his lap facing him. Come on, you know how it’s done.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Mallory cried as she fumbled to get her leg up and over Russell.

  “I like to watch . . . Now get on with it.”

  Russell was shaking like a leaf and Mallory was crying so hard her nose was running. Her makeup ran down her face. She averted her gaze from the man with the gun and looked at Russell with fearful, questioning eyes.

  “I can’t . . . I can’t do this,” Russell said.

  “I know. Here, both of you breath this in.” He held up a rag he had just soaked with ether, opening a window as he did. “Breathe in fast; you won’t have a headache later.”

  “What is this?”

  “Don’t worry, it will help you, like ecstasy.”

  Cautiously they both breathed in as the nozzle of the man’s gun was between them. In ten seconds, Mallory fell back against the dashboard. Russell slumped in his seat. They were out cold.

  The man in the backseat got out. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a rock, a jagged affair that came to a point at one end, then went under the chassis of the car.

  .G.

  In two minutes, Paul had the hose from the exhaust coming around to the partially opened window of the driver’s side. A towel from his satchel plugged the opening. The car was running. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes should do it.

  He took the pointy rock and threw it far away from the car, into the woods.

  Chapter 12

  Lone Wolf Among The Flock

  “It’s a shame. She has such nice breasts,” Constable Garret said as he processed the scene. It was indeed a sad sight; two young people, in the throes of lovemaking, taken off the planet by a hole in the car’s exhaust.

  “Probably caused by a rock they hit on the road that bounced up and perforated the pipe,” the other investigator opined while clapping the dirt off his hands as he got up from under the car, “. . . based on the shape and mica residue around the pierced pipe.”

  Garret looked down at the woman’s wallet. Her company ID said she worked at an art brokerage house on Savile Row and the man looked like a musician or some other microbe on the government dole, he wagered. The kind of patchouli oil smelling stray his own daughter might drag home to her flat. “They should have gone the hundred quid for a room,” Garret said, writing their epitaph

  .G.

  At the same time as the discovery of the asphyxiated couple in the car, Deloitte was at his desk feeding the Normans folder into the shredder. The entire record of the temporarily inflated transaction, and his firm’s 2.5 million pound commission, now harmlessly dropped into the waste bin in long, spaghetti-like strands. Looking down at the multi-colored tendrils, he mused to himself that the pile of trash had more of an artistic motif to it than this “artist’s” best canvas. He then doubled checked that the catalog price of the late Russell Normans’ dreaded piece had been reset to its initial hundred-pound price point.

  .G.

  “Julius Valente to see Brooke Burrell-Morton,” the trim man in the Burberry trench coat said as he handed his card to the receptionist at the Treasury headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

  “Burrell-Morton . . . Burrell-Morton. Yes, she’s here today in the temp offices. Just a second.”

  Julius looked around as the woman dialed the extension. He wasn’t surprised the woman didn’t immediately know who Brooke was as she was only on temporary assignment with Treasury and normally worked out of the offices that she had commandeered at Prescott Capital Management.

  “Oh wait, here she comes now, I think . . . Ms. Burrell? Ms. Burrell, this is Mr. Valente, here to see you.”

  .G.

  Brooke hated being blindsided, especially in a lobby when she was running late. The man looked official enough. He was around five ten with well-coifed, more-salt-than-pepper hair, carrying a very expensive briefcase, and wearing Bruno Magli shoes. Still, it irked her to not know who he was before they met. She extended her hand. “Brooke Burrell-Morton. How can I help you?”

  “I guess you’re just coming in to work now?”

  “I guess you have a reason for asking that?”

  “I’m sorry, I just meant that Warren Cass said he would send you a heads up before my arrival.”

  “That’s a name that gets you a backstage pass.” She turned to the security guard at the desk in the lobby. “Sheila, is it?”

  “Shelly, Director.”

  “Sorry, Shelly, could you give Mr. Valente here an ‘A’ visitor’s pass?”

  In the elevator Brooke asked, “Where are you out of, Mr. Valente?”

  “Julius, please. And I am usually in DC, but as soon as we are in a secure place I’ll explain what I thought Warren had already told you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Brooke wrangled a secure conference room on the seventh floor. She closed the door and turned on the interlocking signal-jamming and shade-closing “Remo” switch. In three seconds, the room was isolated from prying eyes, ears, radios, the Internet, and satellites.

  Valente handed her his gold-leafed card. “My card, Mrs. Burrell-Morton.”

  “Please, Julius, that’s a mouthful. Just call me, Brooke.”

  “The secretary has asked me to join your investigation, now that it has been extended, and you’ll be working more closely with the department. I have worked extensively with Treasury in the past and might be able to help you navigate some of the bureaucratic maze,” Valente said.

  Brooke sat silently; she took in the measure of Mr. Valente. She remained silent. It was becoming uncomfortable. Still, she held her silence.

  Finally Valente broke the stillness. “I assure you, I am in no way here to intrude or monitor your investigation.”

  A small smile escaped Brooke’s lips. “And yet that’s exactly what I’m thinking.” She hit the “Remo” switch and the green-lit “SECURE” indicator in the center console flashed “UNSECURED” in red, meaning the room was vulnerable to electronic eavesdropping and hacking. There was a clunking sound that connected the phone. It was a dead switch and an old mechanical relay, not digital. It physically broke the wire connection so that no one could hack it or use the wires to listen in. It was old-style “tech” blocking cutting-edge hacking and eavesdropping techniques. “Sweet” was how she remembered Peter Remo, the super geek and science whiz, describe it. He’d created them for the government after the Hammer of God affair, to take any system immediately off-grid.

  Peter Remo lives in New York was the thought that momentarily flashed through her mind then was immediately replaced by the task at hand. She punched a phone number into the now-connected conference call phone in the middle of the table. As the speaker phone rang on the other end, she looked Valente in the eye. He never flinched. She respected
that.

  “Secretary’s office. Mrs. Pretiger speaking.”

  “Sally, Brooke in New York. Is he in?”

  “Hi, Brooke, sure. He’s just finishing up a call. Can you hold a second?”

  “Sure thing. How’s your sister?”

  “The cesarean knocked her out, but the baby’s doing fine in the incubator.”

  “It must have been a tough call, but it sounds like she made the right choice.”

  “It was scary there for a minute, what with the car accident wracking her body like that.”

  “Still, saving the baby was a risk she’ll be glad she took.”

  “I think so too, Brooke. Thanks for asking. By the way, you’re coming in on the headquarters line; not uptown today?”

  “I’m here just for the morning . . .”

  Sally then put the call on hold.

  Valente had a slight look of amazement on his face. Brooke just looked at him blankly.

  “Why are you calling the Sec Tres?” Valente said.

  Just then Mrs. Pretiger got back on the phone. “I’m connecting you now, Brooke.”

  “Brooke. What can I do for you this morning?” Cass was being very courteous.

  “Mr. Secretary, you can start by telling me why you think you need to have me bird-dogged.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your old classmate you sent along to babysit me . . . judging from the Harvard ’67 ring that he is now self-conscious of.”

  Valente caught himself turning his hand over to hide the ring.

  Brooke opened up the throttle. “Warren, if I have lost your trust, then I am fine with packing it in and heading back to my life in Hawaii that was already in progress.”

  .G.

  In his office, Warren Cass shifted in his seat. Then he stopped as if Brooke could see him. “Brooke, I assure you, I asked Julius to assist you because now that your investigation has been derailed . . . a little . . . I thought you might need an extra hand, somebody I trust . . . to . . .”

  “So you don’t trust me?”

  “No, Brooke, that’s not what I meant . . .”

  “Sir, you can’t . . . you shouldn’t be forced to work with anyone you don’t trust. Why don’t I just get on the next plane back to Pearl? I’ll even rescind my contract at the end of the month. You’ll be able to assign someone who has your confidence and the world will go on.”