The Grandmaster's Legacy (HOT Historical Suspense, Box Set)

by Taylor Lee

  “Good evening, Aldo. My name is Liang and the man holding his gun on you is Manchu. We are here to bring you a message and to help you prepare for this evening.”

  Aldo hovered on the floor, terrified, struggling to get control of himself. He had to get to his gun in the desk drawer and somehow hold them off until Carlos and his men could help him. He forced himself to get to his feet and glared at them as fiercely as he could.

  “You…you don’t know what you are doing, you fucking assholes. You goddamn Chink bastards! There are twenty armed men in this building and as soon they realize I haven’t called for my dinner, they’ll be here and your goddamn yellow blood will be flowing like piss across …”

  The rest of the words stuck in his throat when the man called Manchu backhanded him across the face with the butt of his gun and knocked him to the ground.

  Liang shook his head and grinned at his colleague.

  “Feisty little prick, isn’t he? You think he actually believes that he has twenty men left in this world loyal to him instead of being the last man standing?”

  Manchu took a piece of rope out of the pack he was carrying and hogtied Aldo’s hands and feet together and threw him back to the floor. He wiped some of the blood off Aldo’s face and smiled at Liang.

  “Hell, good to see at least his blood is red. And something tells me the only yellow stuff that’s gonna flow in here tonight is this asshole pissing all over himself.”

  Liang nodded and walked over to the closet and hollered out from inside.

  “Our information’s correct. It’s right here where they said it would be. Come and help me. This goddamn thing looks like it came straight out of the inquisition.”

  Manchu helped him drag a fearsome looking apparatus out of the closet. When they had all the parts together and rigged up in the middle of the room, Liang stepped back and looked at the contraption with a mixture of anger and amazement.

  “Fuck, Manchu, Ferdinand and Isabella didn’t have a thing on this cruel son of a bitch. He really is a holdover from the Inquisition. Jesus God. Who says we don’t do the work of the righteous? Just playin’ a role in ridding the world of this despicable piece of human garbage will be one of my proudest accomplishments.”

  Manchu nodded in agreement and began unloading the rest of the tools in his pack.

  An hour later, Liang and Manchu stepped back to admire their handiwork. Aldo was stretched spread-eagled on his custom made rack. He was naked and looked like a pale, scrawny pitiful little man instead of Lucifer in the flesh.

  No matter how it sickened him, Liang had to admit the device was ingenious. There were a multitude of straps that went around the victim’s appendages and were spaced so that when one bone was broken or cut off, the rest of body part remained fastened to the rack. Each arm brace had seven individual straps, not including the glove that allowed the fingers to be broken or chopped off one at a time without freeing the rest of the arm.

  “Amazing piece of machinery, Aldo.”

  Liang’s voice dripped with scorn.

  “How long did it take you to kill a man? Or did you keep cutting off parts until the poor fucker couldn’t scream anymore and gave up the ghost? We’re told the only way you could get that pea sized prick of yours up was hearing the screams of terrified men.”

  Manchu was standing back shaking his head. His eyes were dark and wide, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Christ, Liang, there are six straps here to hold the fucker’s cock. Where the hell do they all go?”

  “Tell you what. Let’s hook up Aldo and see if we can figure it out.”

  Many minutes of screaming and puddles of piss later, Liang and Manchu stood in the doorway looking back at the specter hanging on the rack. Neither one of them spoke, as though putting the evil they saw in words would diminish it.

  Taking a deep breath, Liang spoke in a quiet voice.

  “So you understand, Aldo. The reason we didn’t kill you ourselves is that it would have been too quick. Besides, there are so many people who want a piece of you it seemed greedy for us to take it all.

  “I have two messages for you from the Frenchman. He wanted you to contemplate them as you burn in hell for eternity. The first is that when you die and you will die tonight, a hideous death, know that your daughters and grandchildren will be in the Frenchman’s care for the rest of their lives. The second message is that we have dedicated your death to the honor of Jeng Ming and the women she represents.”

  Liang and Manchu picked up their packs, turned, and left the room, closing the door behind them.

  ~~~

  Aldo screamed until his throat was raw. He ranged from wild screaming rage to disconsolate frantic sobbing. Still no one came. Every inch of his body throbbed and nothing he could do relieved the pain. He was immobile held in a way that nothing of substance supported him. The rack that he conceived was designed so that the victim could be suspended for hours, the weight of his body tearing at tortured shoulder joints, bent elbows, fragile wrists. The hideous supporting bands were attached to the most vulnerable of places: finger and toe joints, neck, his shriveled penis. The least motion sent a torrent of agony raging through his body.

  When several hours had passed, he heard footsteps outside in the hallway. He screamed over and over as loud as he could.

  “Help, help! Somebody, help me! Carlos, Harry, Somebody help me!”

  The door opened and he saw Carlos. He couldn’t hold back tears of relief and blubbering like a baby, he cried out, “Thank God, Carlos. Thank god. Oh God, I thought you would never come. I thought…Help me, you stupid asshole. Don’t just stand there staring at me! Get me down!”

  Carlos stood in the doorway and looked at the hideous little man hanging on the rack. His gut roiled, remembering how many men he had helped Aldo hang on that malevolent rack.

  He couldn’t say what had finally broken through his resistance to the evil. He’d been around it so long. He’d participated in it, condoned it; it was part of his life. But something broke through. Hell, maybe just the weight of it, the magnitude. Or maybe it was that last little girl Aldo sicced his dogs on after he sodomized her with his iron poker. Carrying her shattered body out to the incinerator, Carlos knew it was over, he was done.

  It was a small relief to know that, like Aldo, he would not survive the night. In some miniscule way, it assuaged his guilt to hand over Aldo’s records to Tom Caldwell when he’d learned from one of the syndicate bankers that Caldwell was the Frenchman’s financial impresario. Tonight’s activities would also help.

  He focused on Aldo’s face, concentrating on the purple fury, the enraged beady eyes, the spittle spewing from his mouth.

  “Good evening, Aldo. You have company.”

  Ignoring Aldo’s screams of rage, Carlos stepped aside to let in the enforcers of five of the gangs Aldo had terrorized. Each man represented a gang that had lost at least one man to Aldo’s torture rack. None of the men were strangers to violence or cruelty. It was the centerpiece of their lives. They were the mob’s enforcers, after all. But every one of them paled when they saw the rack and the enormity of the evil it represented.

  Aldo cried out, sobbing, begging for help.

  “Carlos, for Christ’s sake. Tell them, Carlos. Tell them it wasn’t us. Tell them or they’ll…they’ll…Christ, Carlos, help me! Carlos, please tell them it was that fuckin’ Frenchman.”

  When Carlos didn’t answer, Aldo began screaming at the other men.

  “Don’t you understand? It was that fucking Chink, the Frenchman! Don’t you see? He’s trying to make us kill each other. Can’t you see? Are you so stupid that you can’t see that Chink is trying to take us all down?”

  One of the men from D’Maggio’s gang, who had lost two men to Aldo’s rack, turned to the others and said with a sneer, “Listen to the cowardly bastard. Jesus, what a fuckin coward you are, Aldo. First you try and blame it on the Micks and now the Chinks.”

  He walked over and spi
t in Aldo’s face.

  Aldo screamed again, his face contorted with terror.

  “Carlos, for the love of God, help me!”

  Carlos ignored him and put a tray of ten inch knives on the table in front of the rack. He walked back to the door, then took a last look at the terrified man. Carlos’s face was emotionless, his voice flat.

  “Good night, Aldo, and good bye.”

  He turned and closed the door behind him. The screams lasted long into the night.

  ~~

  Chapter 29

  Greg sat at his desk, his face tight with strain. The past ten days had been the most challenging of his life. At times, even his iron clad control slipped. He yelled at subordinates, challenged the governor, and plunged into moody bouts of self doubt. Hell, it was no wonder. What with Martin rushing hysterically in his office five or six times a day with one frantic message after another. Yeah, it was bad, but that fat little prick, weeping like a girl, convinced the end was near, didn’t help. By the end of the week, and as the Governor’s Ball approached, he had regained his equanimity and was presenting his usual composed face to the world.

  It should have been a night like any other the past three years. The process which never failed, should have demonstrated that Marcello’s brilliant operation was as flawless as ever.

  But something went terribly wrong. The first report was that five Irish gangsters boldly attacked the warehouse, the site of the money drop. They killed all eight off- duty cops guarding the perimeter, took out the six Marcello guards surrounding the warehouse, then brought down the four men loading up the loot. Two men survived and told the lurid tale of the brazen Irishmen who wiped out a force three times their size.

  The Irish protested their innocence, and within a couple of days Rory Calhoun took the blame off his gang by producing a signed manifest documenting the receipt of the funds by Marcello’s men. Moreover, the document confirming that Marcello had the monies was signed by none other than Aldo’s lieutenant, Carlos Santali.

  Within three days, there wasn’t a gang in New York that wasn’t gunning for Marcello, convinced that the despised gang leader stole the money and tried to blame it on the Irish. Perhaps if Aldo was admired or at least respected, he might have been able to turn the tables, calling it the fraud he knew it was. But he had zero credibility with the other gangs and their hatred for him made his guilt a foregone conclusion.

  When the news hit California that not only was the Marcello gang being held responsible for the theft, but that Aldo had been killed by members of the gangs he had raped, Greg knew without a doubt who was to blame. He didn’t need to hear that Aldo was strung up on his own torture rack by rival gang members and murdered piece by piece to know who was behind it. The audacity, the fucking brilliance of the attack could only have been conceived of by one man. Even though Aldo tried desperately to swing the blame from the Irish to the Chinks, no one was buying it. From the distance, Greg watched and knew what had happened. The Frenchman had struck at the belly of the beast and scattered its bloody entrails for all to see.

  The final confirmation came from the men critically important to the money laundering operation, the bankers Greg had put in power. The day after the heist, he received the first call from one of his banking cronies, describing the squeeze on him. Greg dismissed it, assuming the banker was trying to pull a fast one, taking advantage of the uproar. By the end of the day, Greg heard from all twelve bankers in the syndicate. Every one of them had received an invoice detailing the precise amount of money they personally made over the last three years from the money laundering scheme. They each had five days to deposit the monies in Capital Financier Intégré or face personal and professional ruin.

  As angry as he was about losing his share of the Friday night haul, the takedown of the bankers was more alarming to Greg. He waited two days for Franklin Pierce to return his call and he opened the conversation with a bark.

  “Frank, you son of a bitch. I’ve been trying to reach you for two days.”

  Franklin’s distain was palpable from three thousand miles away.

  “Sorry if I seem rude, Greg. My apologies. I’ve been a mite busy these last two days, trying to pick my fucking life up off the floor. What can I do for you, Greg?”

  Greg ignored the sarcasm and tempered his response, knowing that he needed Pierce’s cooperation to get the rest of the money.

  “One thing and one thing only, Frank. I know about the invoices and the threats. Sorry you guys lost the money you made from the syndicate. Investments don’t always pay off the way we hope. I have a greater concern and you are the only one who can lay it to rest. I know Aldo put all of his personal wealth with you and Gordon Lincoln. The two of you hold multi millions of Aldo’s money.”

  “Save your breath Greg. They got that, too. Every goddamn cent that Aldo made over the last three years is now sitting in Capital Financier Intégré via Tom Caldwell.”

  “You cowardly son of a bitch! You mean you turned over Aldo’s entire fortune to a goddamn bunch of Chinks? You better hope I heard you wrong, Franklin, because if I didn’t …”

  Franklin broke in and didn’t hide his contempt.

  “Tell you what, Greg, do what ever you goddamn well want to do. Why don’t you call Tom Caldwell and tell him that it’s your money now that Aldo is dead and see if the Frenchman will give it to you.”

  He took an audible breath, then continued.

  “Greg, they knew to the penny how much of Aldo’s money was in our bank. To the goddamn penny, I tell you. And no one from my operation gave them that information. Listen to me, Greg. You are in way over your head. I’ve never seen an organization more skillful or more frightening in my life. I’m just surprised they didn’t kill us all, as well.”

  Greg’s voice was cold, threatening.

  “You are a banker, Frank. One goddamn thing even you understand is that the money wasn’t yours to give away. I don’t know how you are going to do it, but you need to get that money back and get it back now or…”

  Once again Franklin interrupted and this time his voice was as cold as Greg’s.

  “Three things, Greg. First, even though I will grant the similarity, as far as I know, you are not Aldo’s son or heir. Second, it’s not your life on the line, and third, you fucking piece of shit, I don’t ever want to hear your voice or see your sorry ass again as long as I live. Connecting with you was the single biggest mistake in my life. I hope you rot in hell, Greg”.

  Greg listened to the silence and managed to quell his fury. After several calls to New York, he confirmed that by tomorrow evening, Franklin Pierce wouldn’t have to worry about seeing or hearing from Greg. For that matter, he wouldn’t be seeing anyone except his scummy cohorts in that special level of hell reserved for bankers and their ilk.

  The thought of Capital Financier Intégré made Greg’s blood boil. For three years, Greg watched Bai buy up failing European banks at bargain prices and consolidate them in a Swiss entity he called Capital Financier Intégré. The purpose of the entity was to give wealthy businessmen a safe harbor for their monies with no questions asked as to the source of the funds. The price of guaranteed secrecy was high, but those who required anonymity willingly paid the exorbitant fees.

  The brilliance and boldness of the initiative both impressed and enraged Greg. It was the kind of enterprise he would kill to create, but he didn’t have the resources, the contacts, or, frankly, the balls to pull it off. Instead, he watched from the sidelines as Bai created what became the leading Swiss banking enterprise in the world. The fact that Bai and Wyatt McManus, his partner in the venture, had conceived and implemented CFI and become exponentially wealthier in the process incensed Greg. The irony didn’t escape him, as he was sure it hadn’t escaped Bai, that most of CFI’s clients were businessmen who had tangled and lost to Bai or Wyatt in the past. The rogues may have despised the two men, but knew from their past thumping that their money was safe because no one cared for money the way Bai and Wya
tt did.

  ~~~

  His reaction to Aldo’s death surprised Greg. It wasn’t grief he felt or even sadness. It was surprise. He didn’t expect the Frenchman to get Aldo. It was disquieting. After he had time to absorb his surprise, he felt relief. He admired Aldo, but always knew he was smarter than him. Aldo was a tyrant, a vicious and feared tyrant. But Aldo’s power came from the scum of the earth, his gang members. Greg could care less about the fucking gang members. He was relieved that the gang literally disappeared after Aldo was killed. To Greg, they were subhuman, no better than the vermin skulking in the alleyways of New York. They scattered like a flock of pigeons scared up by a round of buckshot, too stupid to know that that by flapping their wings they gave away their location and became open targets for the hunters and, eventually, carrion for the buzzards. With the remnants of the gang gone, Greg could put his own enforcers in place, the kind of men who were polished as well as dangerous. The kind of men who surrounded the Frenchman, he thought with a grimace.

  Unlike Aldo, Greg got his power from a different class of people. People like the bankers, like Louie Sinclair and the fifty other ranking politicians and financiers in his pocket. The class of people who bought, lied, and cheated their way to power and cut corners to get there. Greg knew how to find the dirt in those corners. He captured each grimy compromising particle in his ultimate source of power--the leather bound ledger locked in his desk. Every illegal or embarrassing act his flock of pigeons committed was documented in that book. And every penny – either the bribes they took or the hush money they paid--was listed in the columns after their names.