by Mike Gomes
The cross hairs sat on their mark freezing in time.
And then she pulled the trigger.
Chapter 2
Some people called Tristan Duke insane. A chance taker. A man with no fear.
But for Tristan Duke this was all just part of life. One had to take chances to succeed. The bigger the leap the better the reward.
He had office space in the new Freedom Tower in downtown New York City. He was in the heart of the financial district where he always dreamed of being. The 55th floor wasn't exactly the penthouse but it was nothing to shake your nose at.
He rose himself up from nothing. A small time broker who did what he could do just to get by. He bought and sold big blue chip stocks and in-between would cold call name after name after name and a directory of people with six-figure incomes. It was all a numbers game. Make 100 calls. 50 hang up on you. 20 let you keep talking. 5 will be interested. And two might actually buy some stock. The more phone calls you make the more the numbers work for you. More money to be had more work to be done.
Nights were often long as the young man pushed and pushed himself to achieve more and more clients. And he knew there had to be a better way.
Ten years later he sat in his corner office on the 55th floor of the Freedom Tower. Glass walls to his left and right, behind him showed the skyline of the city. He got the good side of the building where they gave you some of the city and some of the river. Holding a cigar he looked out the window of his office. Dozens of brokers all working for him, phones ringing, arms waving, pounding on their desks to get runners to take their slips for new buys. It was more than he had hoped for. It was a bit old fashioned still having runners but it helped in maintaining control over his brokers.
He no longer reached for the phone to make cold calls to unknown people. Now he made targeted calls to unions and pension plans. He planned their money into his funds and reaped massive benefits.
A 120 foot yacht, a Ferrari, home in the Hamptons with 8 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. A luxury life by any standards and all achieved before he hit his thirty-fifth birthday.
There was just one problem it was all a house of cards. The statistics he flashed to prospective buyers were falsified. It was easy, really. You just printed up the information any way you like with any statistics you like. A fund with a small loss could be made to be a big winner just by changing a few numbers. Then people were happy to give you their money. Sometimes you didn’t even need to meet them face to face. The world was open to whomever wanted to take it and Tristan Duke was doing just that.
A cigar dangled from his mouth as his speaker phone had another buyer on the other end begging him to take the pension fund of a California school system; 28 million dollars in all. Taking his fee of ten percent on the buy would grab him a cool 2.8 million dollars regardless of whether money was made or not. Tristan simply didn’t care what happened with the money after the deal was made and he could collect the fee.
“Let me send you the forms today and we can make some room for you guys.” he said acting as if he gave the president of the school union a favor.
“Thanks, Tristan. I will be waiting.”
The line went cold and he puffed the cigar holding in the smile and inspecting the tip filled with the red amber twisting it side to side.
A commotion erupted at the far side of the office. The receptionist opened the intercom “Mr.Dule, the FBI and police are here.” she shouted, her voice filled with fear.
“I told you no calls in or out.” shouted a man in the background and the line went blank.
Six FBI agents and six policemen entered the business making a bee-line to Duke's office not stopping to look at anything on their way.
Several brokers headed for the emergency exits and ducked out of the way fearing that mass arrests were on the docket for the day. But no such thing was going to happen. The FBI and police had just one fish to fry and that was Tristan Duke.
Forcing the door open to his office the young man sat with his feet up on his large cherrywood desk puffing on his cigar and smiling.
“Mr. Duke. My name is special agent Rosewood. I am here to place you under arrest for violations of the Security and Exchange Commission for insider trading and falsification of distributed information about your funds resulting in fraud.”
“So you boys don’t want to open an account?” mocked Duke smiling. “I have some literature you can take with you to see what kinds of gains you can expect.”
Duke stood up from behind the desk and turned away from the agents and officers placing his hands behind his back. “Come on guys, cuff me. I have a squash game at 6:30 tonight and I want this done with by then.”
The cuffs slipped over his wrists and the lead FBI agent grabbed the short chain that lead between them and started to usher him through the office while reading him his rights.
Weaving through the desks of the brokers all eyes were on their leader being taken out like a common criminal.
Pausing by the front desk the receptionist stood with tears rolling down her face looking at her boss being removed.
Duke looked at her and smiled. “Tracy, give my attorney a call and ask him to meet me at the FBI office. Oh, and the school in California needs the preliminary forms sent to them.”
The elevator door opened and Duke was pushed into the elevator facing the back wall as the doors closed.
Chapter 3
At the far end of the bar sitting in a pleather red seat the color of burgundy sat a ruggedly handsome young man nursing whiskey from a glass. The bar was made of mahogany strong and firm. It sat on the ground floor of the local Hilton Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. The man's tie was loose and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. The scruff of whiskers covered his cheeks and chin acknowledging that he hadn't shaved in several days.
Holding the glass with a limp wrist he swirled the whiskey and the single large ice cube in it. His mind was focused on one thing and one thing only. 24 days.
24 days didn't seem like very long. But to him it had been quite a long time. It had been filled with sweats during the night. Thrashing back and forth in his bed. A visit to the emergency room. And 5 days at a detoxification center. They wanted him to go to a sober living house to spend the next six months building on his sobriety but there was no way he was willing to do it. He returned home and dealt with a newly sober life one day at a time just the way people kept saying to him.
The pamphlets for AA and the big book that had been given to him by a fellow alcoholic at the detox sat on his coffee table untouched. He knew there were local meetings throughout the city but he never once felt the need to go attend one. Meetings like that were for losers, he thought; guys who couldn't get out of their own way. Those people were real alcoholics not like him. People like him were dealing with trauma. Awful situations that filled their heads. The alcohol was just a means to get away from it like taking medication.
24 days was how long he had been sober. He stared at the glass and the whiskey spinning counterclockwise in it. Just a sip he thought to himself. One sip how bad would it be. I just need some to make the flashback stop.
The night before the flashbacks came raging into his head. They occupied his dreams and even the times between when he was awake. Visions of a beauty long-lost. The dying look on her face and the blood that covered her from the crashing pickup truck that hit their car. She blamed him. The trauma was brutal. It took the love of his life. The car crash that swept her away from him in the blink of an eye. An inner voice would ring back to him during the night in his dreams and sometimes in his consciousness. She told him it was “his fault” that he had “done this to her. He killed her”.
Falau knew he wasn't psychotic, the voice in his head was a manifestation of his own feelings. His own doubts about what had happened that day. He could clearly remember the light turning green and pulling forward but why didn't the man in the pickup truck stop? Why didn't he slow down to the red light? Why crash into him? Maybe t
he light wasn't green? Maybe she was right he did kill her and it was his fault.
The whiskey was the relief he was looking for. The fight to stay sober was a fruitless battle when it matched up against the flashbacks and the trauma. Falau was no different than the millions of others that turned to substances to self-medicate. He knew he was running away from the fight of his life but what else could he do? This wasn't a bad guy that you could punch or kick or even shoot and kill. This enemy is deep inside him. Once before he did try to silence him using a belt and a pipe that hung from a ceiling in his apartment. But now that seemed like a million years ago. He did have something to live for. A purpose. A meaning to his life. Righting some wrongs that needed to be done.
His old friend whiskey sitting in the glass was the only thing that would control the flashbacks. And even a stomach full of whiskey and an empty bottle at his side it was no guarantee that the night still would not be filled with horror and dread.
24 days. 24 long difficult days of detoxification and trying to put his life in order. 24 days of trying to change but knowing he wasn't fully invested. 12-steps seems like a long way to go. Alcohol was easier. It was on the corner of every street in the city. A bar, a liquor store, or just some guy with a bottle. Everybody always wanted someone to drink with. One sip was easier than 12 steps any day of the week.
The big man brushed his hand back through his hair still spinning the whiskey slowly in the glass watching the ice bounce off the sides doing it's rhythmic dance spinning and spinning faster and faster. 24 days was a lifetime. A total change. But one that he hadn't bought into.
The big man let out a soft groan, staring at the glass he could smell the sweet aroma of the whiskey drifting up and going into his nostrils. The brown color with a slight golden edge to it glistened in the glass from the lights behind the bar. It was perfect. It was everything that he wanted.
Some people killed the demons with smoking pot on their stoop and not acknowledging those who went by. Others, numbed their mind with cocaine sniffing or smoking, doing whatever it took to enter another world devoid of contact with a real human life. The worst was hardcore junkies with the opiates. It always had been heroin on the street, shoot some up in your arm. Take a ride leave the world. But now pills were the rage, Oxycontin, oxycodone. They ruled the streets and a lot of people that run to get away from their problems.
Michael Falau needed none of that. His vice was the whiskey. Always had been. Never a drop until after the accident.
The desire to have it touch his lips and roll down his throat and calmed the thoughts that entered his head each night that give him an escape from the torture. For the first time in his life he looked to escape rather than take a problem head-on.
He remembered the man he once was. The man who he was with the woman. The woman who now controlled his mind. The one who drifted into his head each night in a horrific display of blood and battered bones. The one slumped down in the well of the passenger seat in the front of the car lifeless like a demon child from a horror movie. She'd been his everything and now she was gone. Or at least until she came back that night to haunt his dreams.
Lifting the glass up slowly Falau put it to his lips looked at himself in the mirror that sat behind the bar. He watched himself tip back the glass of whiskey finishing it in one long chug. He swallowed hard dropping the contents down into his stomach banging the glass down on the bar.
“Bartender another. And leave the bottle.”
Chapter 4
“Come on man. Just help me move it over to the other wall and I promise it will be the last thing I will ask for.” pleaded Falau to the older African American man who had been his close friend for the better part of a decade.
“Come on yourself. First this wall then that one. Now back to this one. Just make up your mind and be done with it.” said the graying man with deep wrinkles on his face.
“Just this last move. I am sure that I want it there.” said Falau holding his hands together like he was preying. “You help me with this and I will order us some pizza to go with these beers. It’s all on me.”
“All right. But that’s unfair. You know good pizza is my weak spot. We get it from Malronio’s.”
“Deal. Thanks.”
The two men grabbed different sides of the long leather sofa that they had earlier dragged up three flights of stairs. With a grunt and strain the sofa lifted off the floor and the two men shuffled their feet in short chopping steps until it finally came to rest on the far wall. Grady pulled himself in front of the sofa and dropped himself onto it with an exhausted sigh.
Falau coughed trying to pull more air into his lungs. Moving the sofa was yet another example of how out of shape he was becoming. A bit of money and fully paid bills had Falau enjoying more than three square meals a day. It had been the first time in years he could afford such a luxury.
“Fresh beer?” questioned Falau reaching down and opening the mini refrigerator on the floor.
“Always good for some fresh suds.” Grady held up his hand and Falau tossed the can of beer to him hitting him directly in the hand.
Falau walked over to the window and looked down at the street below. Just a few short weeks before the room looked entirely different. A mattress without a box spring or frame sat on the floor. No sheet and stains decorated it. A lamp without a shade and countless cigarette butts were on the floor. The old sofa had holes in it and had strips of Duct tape patching them. The sofa had been covered in a sheet attempting to make it look more presentable but just made it look all the more ratty.
Sitting on the new leather sofa with his longtime friend Falau let his head rest against it. A smile crossed his face at the softness and the feeling like it was taking his body into a warm embrace.
“Falau, you mind if I ask you a question?”
“No man. You know you can ask me anything.”
“Why the hell did you buy this building?”
Falau shifted in his seat and glanced out of the corner of his eye at Grady. “I like it here.”
“Ya. You like living two steps outside the projects and in a neighborhood where you have to be in by dark. That’s bullshit.”
“No man. I like it here. People around here have been good to me.”
“So good you had that security system put in before you got the furniture.”
“I like it here but I am not stupid.”
Grady’s forehead crinkled as he shook his head. “You know what I am talking about. You spent money on a place that could never make you any money. Then you decide to make the whole brownstone a home for just one person.”
“Not just one. You’re going to be staying down stairs.”
“Ok. Two people. Then you go and help find places for the other people who were living here. Makes no sense. You could have just moved out of the area and been a lot better off.”
Falau reached to the center of the sofa and picked up the remote control and turned on the TV to the Red Sox game. Taking a long sip from the can of beer he gathered his thoughts.
“The people around here were cool when I came here. I had nothing and they treated me good. I was just this white guy that was a mess for years and they didn’t jump me or steal from me. They could see what I was. I can’t turn my back on that. Besides I need you around to keep me straight.”
Grady let out a hearty laugh and took a sip from his can of beer. “I want to ask you about all this money you got but I am afraid what the answer will be.”
“Are you my friend Grady?”
“You know I am. You're my boy.”
“Then don’t ask about the money if you want to stay my friend. All I can tell you is that I am the good guy in this world. You can count on that.”
Grady nodded his head with a confidence that Falau could read on his hardened face. “Ok, I won’t ask. But what I will ask about is what’s the risk?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“No that’s where you're wrong. I do want to know.
Money can make people do a lot of stupid things. In the time I have known you there have been several stupid things you have done. I need to know what level of stupid we are talking about.”
“I can’t talk about it.” said Falau pulling himself up off the sofa and downing the rest of the beer that was in the can. “Sorry. You're my best friend in the world but I can’t let you know what I am doing. It is nothing personal. It’s the rules that my bosses give me.”
Grady scratched his head with the hand that still held his beer. Pursing his lips hard together he looked to be holding back the words he really wanted to say.
“Just say what you want to say” demanded Falau staring hard at his friend.
“All right, I will say what I want to say. I think you're running drugs.” snapped out Grady.
Falau let out a gasp of derisions and turned away and walked to the window looking down on the street below.
“What else am I supposed to think. You have no money then you're gone for these chunks of time. When you come back you have money falling out of your pockets and it’s all cash. You tell me another way that a guy comes across the money to buy a brownstone in Boston without a normal job?”
“I have my cab!”
“You have to be kidding me. You spend about ten hours in that cab a week. What do you take me for, a fool? I grew up in this city and I can tell a cover job when I see one!”
“What are you talking about. What the hell is a cover job?” said Falau turning back to Grady with frustration covering his face.
“A cover job. You know what I am talking about. It’s a job a guy gets when he is deep into illegal stuff. You just push that illegal cash though the cab and it launders it for you.”
Falau walked over to Grady and sat down next to him looking him in the eye and speaking in a calm and relaxed manner “I am going to be straight with you as much as I can. I am not running drugs. I am not stealing or doing anything I am ashamed of. Trust me. This is something greater than anything I had ever thought that could happen.”
