Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  Cass began to sweat. He tapped his chest as the acid was rising in his esophagus. If she were indeed a direct line to the president, he’d know about this in five minutes. Mitchell would suspect he had flushed her to keep him in the blind. Although this investigation was serious, it was not the sole focus of the Treasury. He still needed his boss’s, the president’s, confidence on a host of initiatives to keep his signature on the new dollar bills they printed every day. He looked across the street, at the side of the White House his windows faced. He popped off the top of his pill bottle and popped another H2 blocker. He’d promised his wife Italy. More correctly, Ambassador to Rome when his cabinet post was up. James Mitchell had agreed to the deal. He couldn’t risk that, certainly not for Julie. “Brooke, I am sorry you took this whole thing the wrong way, but you do have my confidence. Is Julius there now?”

  “Yes, sir.” She nodded to him.

  “Warren . . .” He spoke up.

  “Julius, thank you for your time. I can see your services will not be needed. Thank you for flying up today. Call me next week. The bass are still biting in Lake Wawasee!”

  “Absolutely, Warren. No problem.”

  “Brooke, carry on. Keep me apprised of any new developments.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  .G.

  She ended the call, looked at Valente and snapped her fingers. “Damn, I almost got out . . .”

  “You don’t want to do this?”

  “Nothing personal, Valente, but this investigation was screwed from the inside. Somebody leaked to Prescott. Now I am scrambling to clean up internal Treasury crap while trying to uncover a terrorist money pipeline. That’s got me looking in two directions at once. Not a good tactical situation to be in. You would have been a third distraction as I would have been forced to practice bureaucratic etiquette in your presence, and I don’t have time for that shit.”

  “I understand completely.”

  “Good. Do you mind if I don’t walk you out?”

  “No, I can see you have a full plate. I’ll let myself out.”

  “Thank you.”

  He got up and, at the doorway, turned and added, “Good luck and, for what it’s worth, I think Warren has the right person heading this up.” He turned and let the door close.

  Brooke sighed. Too bad. She really liked this guy. She decided to keep his card.

  .G.

  Warren Cass sat there. A Cheshire grin was emerging on his face. His catspaw diversion worked. He hated to have used his old friend Julie like that, but the old boy played his part well, if unaware. His man on the inside of Brooke’s team would have clear reign now that she’d found the “paw” he’d wanted her to find, satisfying her curiosity. His cell rang. He recognized the number and expected the call. “Julie, sorry to have made you come all that way.”

  “She’s nobody’s fool, that one.”

  “Never said she was, but I get your drift.”

  “She’s really sharp, Warren, too sharp to cut herself on a scandal, if you ask me.”

  “Duly noted, but I will keep my guard up in any case.”

  “So about my contract?”

  “Look, Julie, how about we call it a month and you take the next twenty-nine days off?”

  “Works for me, Warren. See ya at the lake in Indiana?”

  And with that little eighty-seven thousand dollar consolation prize, Cass said, “Talk soon,” and hung up. Then he hit the intercom. “Okay, Sally, have my wife come in.”

  Cass got up and walked to the door. His wife Sharon entered and he hugged her. “Sorry, Honey, I was just finishing up an important call. How was your flight?”

  “Fine, I slept for seven hours. Margie took a car straight from the airport so I came right here.”

  “You two have a good time?”

  “Yes. I think she found a lot of good items for her little shop. Especially in Amsterdam. It was a very productive trip.”

  “Good, I’m glad it went well. Let’s have a welcome home dinner tonight at Mario’s.”

  “Ahh, you know I love that. Usual time?”

  “Should be no problem; light day today.”

  “Good.” She hugged him. “I’ll let you get on with your day, dear.” She turned to leave.

  “Ah, ah.”

  “Oh, right.” She reached in her purse. “I almost forgot.”

  She handed him a pill bottle with ninety of the H2 blockers that weren’t available in the US. Lately, they were the only things that made his ulcer manageable. The eleven other bottles were packed away in her luggage.

  .G.

  Secretly meeting in a music rehearsal studio was very effective. Each cell member came from a different place and left separately. There were over two hundred rehearsal spaces like this in Manhattan alone, so they never had to frequent any establishment more than once. The early morning text that announced the location for that day to the nine members was innocuous enough: 351 w 130 f 105 r 106 @ 1600. The cell member simply subtracted 100 from every number so the meet was at 251 West 30th Street Floor 5, Room 6, at 1500 hours, or 3:00 p.m.

  When Paul arrived the eight other members were already there. After the noise was switched on, Shamal made his presentation on the elevations and topography of the area just above the Bronx. When the meeting was finished, earlier than the two hours booked, Dequa asked Paul to stay.

  As the others filed out, the next band entered the room.

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but we are still using the room,” Dequa said in a tone that clearly wasn’t a musician’s timbre.

  “Sorry, dude,” was all the guitar player with the pierced eyebrow said as he backed out of the room and shut the door.

  “Yes, Dequa, what is it?”

  “First, if you are going to sit behind the drums, take these.” He took a pair of drumsticks out of his case and handed them to Paul.

  “Thank you.”

  “There is something else,” he said as he meticulously coiled the wires from each set of headphones.

  “What?”

  “There is 7.5 million missing from the Denver transfer.”

  “That woman, the spinster from the bank . . .” Paul said.

  “Do not,” Dequa said dismissively. “Paul, I understand you are not born to the faith.”

  “But Dequa, I converted, freely of mind and spirit and . . .”

  He raised his hand. “Enough. I do not judge you or your faith. That is for Allah to judge, praise be unto Him. Again, your belief may not be as strong as your lust for material things; this is of no consequence to me. But the money will be deposited within seventy-two hours or you will find your throat slit from ear to ear.”

  Paul attempted to protest.

  “Enough.”

  The men left the room in silence.

  Out on Eighth Avenue, Paul walked aimlessly. He was trying to decide what to do. He could kill everyone in the cell. Then kill off his own identity and surface in Australia, Bora Bora, or the Dominican Republic. He had safe houses in each of those countries. Dequa was right; he wasn’t in this for the glory or the virgins at the end of the highway to heaven. Stay or go? To stay would cost him 7.5 mil, but he was in line for ten million for his part in the cell after the attack. Except, the chance of survival with the cell was ten percent; well maybe fifty percent with his own personal escape plan that he’d put in place. He weighed the numbers: the 7.5 now or maybe live to get the full ten mil. Either way it was far less than the 17.5 million he had planned on.

  “Fuck it,” the American-born jihadist uttered out loud as he crossed Forty-Second Street on the way to the Port Authority bus terminal. “I’ll kill ’em all.”

  On the New Jersey transit bus to Hoboken, where he had a one-bedroom apartment in the lively college town that many considered the sixth borough of New York, he hatched a plan. His guitar cas
e! He could hide an AK-47 in there and at the next meeting, shoot them all in the soundproof room. Leave early and have at least a two-hour head start before the bodies were even discovered. Forty-five minutes to JFK by cab, twenty minutes through security, 9:15 to Punta Cana . . . He could be in the DR three hours after the bodies were discovered. Perfect.

  Chapter 13

  Killer Rehearsal

  The weight of the AK-47 made the guitar case heavier than usual. It made a thunk as he hoisted it up onto the overhead luggage rack of the NJT bus in Hoboken. None of the other passengers noticed the pronounced thud that wouldn’t normally be associated with a lighter Fender bass guitar. As the bus entered the Lincoln Tunnel, he reached into his shirt pocket and double-checked the airline ticket: One-Way. Punta Cana. Departing JFK Terminal Five at 9:45 p.m. tonight. He had paid the fee for extra legroom that also gave him a breeze way through security and first boarding. The plane would be buttoned up and sealed before the rehearsal room door was knocked on as a five-minute warning preceding the next band that rented the room for ten o’clock sharp. They would find the eight bodies and never realize there was a ninth that had escaped. Especially since he had his strategy down pat. The .38 caliber snub nose, which was also in the case, being the key.

  First, he’d ask one of the other men to sit behind the drums tonight. A band could have many guitar and keyboard players, but usually only one drummer, so he needed someone to die at the drums so as not to raise any suspicions. At 8:05 p.m., he would have to shoot fast. First he’d shoot Dequa in the head with the revolver then immediately spray the rest of the men in the room with the machine gun. He knew that the studio’s soundproofing ensured that no one would hear the shots. After the shooting, he’d wipe down the rifle and put it in Dequa’s hand, so his would be the only finger and palm prints on it. Then he would wrap Shamal’s hand around the similarly cleaned snub nose. Orienting his body in the direction of Dequa. The police would deduce that Dequa went homicidal crazy and Shamal got a shot off, killing Dequa while he was dying. With everybody dead, he’d then don the hat and sunglasses Dequa always used when coming in and out of the rehearsal studio. Anyone who cared, which was a low probability, would just think the guy who’d booked the room for cash was leaving early. No one in the place knew or cared how many other musicians were in the room and so there was no record or head count of whom was in the studio in the first place. With the iPod running for two hours, all would seem and sound normal as people walked by.

  Escaping to Punta Cana was a double precaution because there could be others, unknown to him, who were associated with the cell. And if his body weren’t in the room, those others, if they existed, would look to find him and behead him.

  The bus pulled into the Port Authority terminal. It was 7:40 p.m.

  .G.

  “Anything else, Brooke?” George said, poking his head into her office.

  Brooke looked up from her piles of printouts and glanced at her watch. “Wow, is it quarter to eight already?”

  “Time flies when you are . . .”

  “Not having fun . . .” She turned one of the large books of printouts around to face him. “Actually, George, can you look at this?”

  George came in and placed his coat on the other chair in front of her desk and sat.

  “Here’s the PCM general ledger from last month. There are three figures here, each followed by a code number. That code number isn’t in the index.”

  “Hmmm, 14TGG . . . Nope, that’s a new one on me, too.”

  “It’s out of format too; the codes are usually alpha numeric, two and two.”

  “This is two numerics, followed by three alphas. I never saw this kind of expenditure code while I was undercover here,” George said.

  “As far as I can tell, it adds up to 15.7 million. Anything on the T&E reports?”

  “Yeah, at some point prior to our raid, somebody pulled the actual receipts from the forty-first floor stack. But we have been going through the American Express, MasterCard, and Diner’s Club statements of all the executives down to the MD level to find corresponding expenses in those cities where we know transfers were made.”

  “If a managing director was the go-between how would he or she cover their tracks?”

  “They are the work horses here. It’s the higher ups that can lollygag on a golf course or Amazon River cruise and do the slow seductive dance to land a deal. But MDs are in the thick of it. Someone once suggested adult diapers for MDs because they calculated that pee breaks cost the company 1.1 million on average.”

  “Talk about pissing money away . . .” Brooke said.

  “Nah, for my money, MDs don’t figure into this; it’s got to be a forty-first floor guy.”

  “Or gal!” Brooke said rifling through the Prescott roster of employees.

  “Sorry, of course. I didn’t mean to be chauvinistic . . .”

  “No, not that. I mean, here, here she is. Cynthia Davidson, CCO,” Brooke read the name at the tip of her finger on the needlessly small, ten-point-sized list of officers of the company.

  “Oh right, sure. She’s chief compliance officer. She’d certainly know.”

  “Find her, George.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No, George. I’m beat. Let’s call it for tonight.”

  He got up, grabbed his coat, and threw a casual, friendly salute and walked out. When he reached the street, he made a call he couldn’t make in the office.

  .G.

  Paul got on the elevator with a crush of musicians, many with guitar bags slung over their shoulders knocking into everyone else on the way in and as they settled in the elevator car. They were all trying to get to their various rehearsal rooms before eight. Paul got off on the sixth floor and found room 5, as the “R105” part of this morning’s text indicated.

  By one minute after eight, everyone was in the room including a face he had not seen before. He had asked Yusuf to sit behind the drums tonight and handed him the sticks. Dequa passed out the headsets and started the rehearsal tape playing loudly through the room’s thunderous PA speaker system. Through the headsets, Dequa welcomed Ramal.

  So this was the guy in Bolivia, Paul thought. Too bad you picked tonight to show up. He patted his guitar case and checked his watch. Three minutes to go. Paul hefted his case onto his lap and opened the latches.

  One of the men spoke up, addressing the new face. “You are here to report on Bolivia?”

  “No,” Dequa jumped in. “Actually, Ramal has been in Elkhart, Indiana.”

  “Dunlap, actually, Dequa.”

  Paul’s head pounded.

  “Ramal is in charge of our internal security. After disposing of a loose end in Bolivia, he went to Indiana to ensure a certain package will get delivered.” Dequa looked right into Paul’s eyes.

  Paul closed the latches on the case and nodded.

  The meeting continued without incident.

  .G.

  The next day Paul was at the Merchant’s Bank as the doors opened at 8:00 a.m. He went inside and in the name of Harry Wilson—his real name—of Dunlap, Indiana, transferred 7.5 million dollars from his private account into the same main account to which he and Marsha had transferred the other 67.5 million the week before. When it was done, he called his sister Eunice, who lived with his mom and her three kids back in Dunlap, just to see how they were doing.

  Chapter 14

  14TGG

  11 days until the attack

  “There’s a mister Peter Remo on line two,” the voice on the intercom announced.

  Brooke looked at the phone. Her eyes wandered. She was about to speak, but hesitated.

  “Shall I put him through?”

  “Actually, I am on a conference call on my cell. I can’t take any calls right now,” she lied. She immediately felt guilty, which caused her to pick up the receiver and hit 0.
“Okay, I’ll take the call . . .”

  “He’s already off the line. He left a number . . .”

  “I’ll get it later.” She reflexively let out a sigh of relief. Then she caught herself. Why was she feeling guilty? It was a nonsensical emotion for her to experience. She’d done nothing wrong . . . yet.

  “George would like a word.”

  Happy for the distraction, she overreacted. “By all means, send him on in.”

  George popped his head through the door smiling. “I got her!”

  An hour later, Brooke and George were up in Westchester County, at the Bronxville home of Cynthia Davidson, who was the chief compliance officer at Prescott Capital Management. Her lawyer was also there.

  Josh Wasserman was a crack attorney out of a big, white-shoe law firm. An office CCO at a hedge fund could bring in seven figures a year, so she could afford the best.

  Brooke took out the small voice recorder, which she had planned to use to make sure she had an accurate record of the interview.

  But before she started it, Josh put his hand over it and laid out the ground rules. “Nothing contained herein, no testimony that my client will give, is admissible in court and/or in any proceedings directed against her. Furthermore, in exchange for this cooperation, my client shall receive immunity from any and all crimes, misdemeanors or regulatory infractions, if any, are deemed to have occurred. Sign here please.”

  He slid two copies of the same statement that he just read over to Brooke, who scanned and signed both.

  He then slid them over to George. “If you would sign as a witness in the space provided.”

  Wasserman collected the papers and, making sure it was all correct, placed one in his briefcase and handed the other one to Brooke. “For your records.”

  The interview started with the usual questions. “Is your name Cynthia Davidson . . . ? Do you reside . . . ? Did you work at . . . ? Did you know . . . ? Were you aware . . . ?”