by Stephen Frey
Harry pulled his Cadillac behind Todd’s Corvette, effectively blocking its escape route—just as he had done the last time. He switched off the ignition, stepped from the vehicle and stretched, as if this were nothing more than a casual visit. A large accomplice stepped out of the passenger side, and they shared a laugh about the Corvette’s damaged fenders as Todd emerged from the farmhouse front door.
“Hello, Todd,” Harry yelled across the front yard. “Wonderful day, isn’t it?”
“Uh huh.” Todd moved cautiously down the three steps leading from the small landing outside the front door to the ground.
“I’m here for my money, Todd.” Harry wasted no time.
“I thought I had more time.”
Harry stroked his neck. “The payment plan’s time frame has changed.”
Harry’s gorilla-size associate chuckled to himself.
“Why are you doing this to me, Harry?” Todd stopped twenty feet away from them. He felt the gun resting in the holster next to his chest. He would have no problem using it to defend himself against anyone but Mafia people. He might be fortunate enough to kill both of these goons, but then he’d be on the run for the rest of his life. The Mafia never stopped looking for outsiders who killed their comrades. “I’m good for the money.”
Harry began to walk slowly toward Todd. “You know I like you, Todd, I really do,” he said insincerely. “It’s my bosses that are the problem. They’ve never met you. They don’t know what a peach of a guy you are. I’ve been trying to tell them, but they just won’t listen.” Harry stopped five feet in front of Todd. “Ain’t I been telling them, Anthony?” Harry called over his shoulder to the gorilla.
“Yeah, boss.” Anthony smiled as he moved out from behind the black car and began ambling toward them. “You’ve been trying, but they just won’t listen.”
“There, you see?” Harry glanced back at Todd. “I’ve been pleading your case, but it hasn’t helped. So do you have the money, Todd?”
“I’m . . . I’m getting it.” He should have run out the back door into the woods when he first saw them coming down the driveway.
“Oh, yeah? From where?”
Todd eyed Anthony, now standing shoulder to shoulder with Harry. “My parents put some money away for me in a trust account. It’s just a matter of getting all the paperwork executed so I can get to it.”
“Oh, God.” Harry made another face, as if he had just suffered a sharp pain.
“What’s the matter?” Todd kept an eye on Anthony’s right hand as it slid down toward his belt. Todd would pull the .38 if he had to. If it was the only option. He checked the driveway for any sign of someone Harry might have dropped off to serve as lookout, but saw nothing.
“ ‘Executed’ is such a nasty word. I hope it won’t apply in your case.”
“Don’t pull that intimidation crap on me, Harry.”
“Crap?” It was as if Todd had suddenly flipped a switch deep within Harry. “Crap?” he screamed this time.
“Easy, Harry.” Todd held up his hands.
Harry wasn’t listening anymore. Veins bulged in his neck as he lunged toward Todd, hands outstretched. But Harry the Horse had collected his last payment.
The slug entered Harry’s skull directly in the middle of his massive forehead, creating a neat hole in the pallid skin before tearing out the back of his head and ricocheting off the top of the Cadillac. Harry’s eyes crossed instantly, as if he were trying to actually see the puncture wound while he staggered like a drunken man in front of Todd. Then the blood poured down his face and he crumpled to the ground.
Anthony reached for his weapon, but his fingers never touched metal. A second slug zipped through the air, smacking his broad chest with a sickening thud. He grabbed his shirt with both hands, ripping at the material, gasping for breath. A third shot cracked into the late afternoon, passing through Anthony’s hand before tearing out a lung. He dropped into a heap next to Harry.
Todd fell to the ground and rolled behind the Corvette, pulling the .38 from his holster as he took cover. Behind the car he lay as flat and still as possible, pointing the revolver in the general direction from which he believed the three shots had come. Then a man stepped calmly from behind a corner of the farmhouse and began walking toward the Cadillac, rifle at his side. Todd trained the gun on the figure.
“Put the gun down,” the man said as he moved past Todd to where the two Mafia men lay. The man knelt down next to Harry and felt for a pulse, but there was none to find. He moved to Anthony, and found the same result.
Todd kept the gun trained on the man. “Who the hell are you?” he screamed. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll explain later,” the man growled as he grabbed Anthony under the arms. “Are you going to lie there with your mouth open, or are you going to get off your ass and help me put these guys in the trunk?”
Slowly Todd rose from the ground, shaking. The man could have easily killed him too. But he hadn’t. “Who—”
“I told you. I’ll explain,” he yelled. “First we need to clean this place up.”
“Jesse, I’m sorry I took so long.” Todd moved to where Jesse sat at the bar. It was after eleven o’clock. Almost six hours had elapsed since she had called him.
“Are you okay?” She stood up and hugged him tightly. It felt so good to be wrapped in his strong arms. He was someone she could absolutely count on, she had concluded over the last few hours as she sat at the bar waiting. David’s situation was much more complicated. He had other loyalties. There was no question of Todd’s. “The bartender gave me your message about being late.”
“Can I get you something?” Todd’s arrival was obviously a disappointment to the bartender.
Todd saw the bartender’s disappointment. Men were drawn to Jesse so fast. It had always been like that, and suddenly Todd felt the jealousy rising again, the same emotion he had felt watching her kiss David this morning in front of the hotel. He glanced cautiously around the restaurant, wondering once more—as he had since she had called this afternoon—why she had called him and not David. The jealousy burned hotter as the vision of their kiss became more vivid. “Coors Light, please.”
The bartender put a glass under the tap and began to draw the beer.
Jesse sat back down, took Todd by the hand, and pulled him onto the seat next to her. “Thanks so much for coming.”
“It’s not a problem at all.” He checked the restaurant once more, then shook his head. “Listen, I really want to apologize for the way I acted in the parking lot. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was inexcusable.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said reassuringly. “The whole thing’s forgotten.”
The bartender placed Todd’s beer down, then moved away.
“I was just a little overcome. We hadn’t spent so much time together in a while, and I guess I’d forgotten how great it was to be with you.”
“I told you, it’s okay.”
Todd smiled and took a sip of beer. “Thanks.” He gazed at her lips. Mitchell had kissed her there this morning. “So what’s wrong? You sounded really upset on the phone.”
First Neil, now Sara, Jesse thought to herself. And it was supposed to be me. “Sara’s dead.” A lump came to her throat as she thought of Sara.
“Your friend Sara from the office?”
“Yes. Her car ran off the road and burned.”
“That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think it was an accident, Todd.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think she was murdered by the people Neil Robinson suspected of manipulating the Elbridge Coleman campaign. By the people who murdered Neil. They must have believed Sara was the one who took the file from Neil’s house on the Severn.” Jesse squeezed his hand. “I’m really scared.”
Only forty-five minutes ago, Todd and the stranger had pushed the black Cadillac, with the bodies of Harry and his sidekick locked in the trunk, down a steep embankment
into the deep waters of a lonely cove of the Loch Raven Reservoir. For a few agonizing minutes the sedan had floated, tilted forward by the weight of the engine. Then it had finally slipped below the surface with its human cargo. He only prayed to God the stranger hadn’t been able to follow him here.
“We’ll be out of here in no time,” Jesse called over her shoulder to Todd as they climbed the darkened steps to her apartment. “I need to get the cat. I can’t leave him here like this with no food or water.”
Todd did not respond. He was concerned that the man who had killed the mobsters might be here.
Jesse inserted the apartment key into the lock, pushed the door open and flipped the light on. “Oh, my God.” First she saw the destruction, and then the cat, dead in the corner. She turned around and buried her face in Todd’s shirt. “Get me out of here, Todd! Get me out of here!”
Chapter 30
As the stretch limousine cruised down Interstate 95 toward Washington, D.C., David gazed through the tinted glass into the darkness. He hadn’t slept in a day and a half and should have been exhausted. But four cups of coffee and nervous energy were keeping him wide awake. Their destination hadn’t been made clear, and suddenly he realized he shouldn’t have so willingly honored Mohler’s request to enter the limousine waiting outside Sagamore’s Towson offices. However, there wasn’t much he could do about it now.
Jesse hadn’t been in her room at the Sheraton Hotel all day. He had called once an hour but never reached her. Perhaps despite all his efforts to conceal her they had found her anyway and she had met with the same fate as Neil Robinson. Perhaps he was headed toward that same end at this very moment.
Mohler sat on the other side of the limousine. “Where are we headed, Art?” David asked him.
“I told you,” Mohler said quietly, “I’ve got a meeting with the CEO of a small computer software company. They’ve got what I understand is a revolutionary product but don’t have the money to develop it. This could turn out to be a nice investment opportunity for Sagamore. You have experience in this area. I want you there. I’m a member of the executive committee. End of discussion.”
“You scheduled a meeting with a CEO at eleven-thirty at night?” David asked suspiciously.
“They need money fast. There are other investment firms knocking on the company’s door. What can I say? We work when we have to. You know that.”
“Can you show me some financial information on the company so I can be prepared for the meeting?” David gestured toward Mohler’s briefcase lying on the seat.
“I don’t have anything yet. It’s a private company and the CEO is stingy about divulging any information without a face-to-face meeting first. You know how these entrepreneurs are. They think everyone’s out to steal their idea.”
Mohler was doing an excellent job of avoiding the questions. David suddenly had a very bad feeling about this little excursion, as Mohler had called it in Baltimore.
Fifteen minutes later the limousine turned off Interstate 95 at the Laurel, Maryland, exit several miles northeast of the Capital Beltway.
“I thought you said the meeting was in downtown D.C.”
“Relax, David.” But Mohler’s voice was not at all reassuring.
How stupid could he have been? There could easily have been a hidden camera in the hall of records last night taping his actions, David suddenly realized. If so, they would be well aware that he had made copies of the trading records.
As the limousine rolled to a stop at the end of the exit ramp, David gently tugged at the door handle but it was locked. Subtly he pushed the lock button on the door’s console, but there was no sound. The dominant controls were up front with the driver and the ones in the back had been disengaged. There would be no leaving the vehicle until Mohler allowed him to.
The driver turned onto a lonely road. David squinted through the window but saw nothing except the vague outline of trees and fields in the night as the limousine cruised through the farmland outside Washington. It was too damn dark out here. Too remote.
David’s eyes flashed to the bar tucked into the side of the limousine. In a rack on top of the small wooden counter there were several large bottles that could be smashed and used as weapons. They wouldn’t be very effective against guns, but at least they were something. One always had to have a plan. Even if it wasn’t a very good one.
But then David looked back out the window and his fears slowly subsided as the landscape became dotted with house lights. Then there was a strip mall and then a Marriott Hotel. By the time the limousine had turned in to the hotel and pulled up in front of the main entrance, his pulse had returned to normal.
“Here we are.” Mohler grabbed his briefcase as the limousine’s locks popped up. “Let’s go, David.”
They stepped out of the limousine and moved through the Marriott’s lobby to the elevator. It rose quickly to the fifteenth floor, where they exited, turned right, and walked down a long hallway. Finally Mohler stopped in front of a door and knocked hard three times, then pushed. The door swung slowly open, and he moved into the suite.
David stood in the hallway. Would they risk trying anything here? Wouldn’t they have taken him someplace less public if they intended to cause him harm?
Mohler leaned back out of the room. “Come on.”
As David moved hesitantly into the foyer, the strong scent of cigar smoke came to his nostrils. He waited for Mohler to close the door, then followed him around the corner into the large living room. Seated there were Senator Webb and Jack Finnerty.
“Good evening, David,” Finnerty said calmly. “Have a seat.” He smiled politely, gesturing toward a wing chair on the opposite side of the coffee table from where he and Webb reclined.
David stood next to Mohler at the foyer’s edge and watched as Webb inhaled from the cigar. Two and a half years ago he had come before this man to bribe him. He had believed the millions he would siphon out of Doub Steel would influence Webb to award GEA the huge A-100 contract out of the black budget. And that Sagamore would make billions when GEA’s stock surged. Then he could keep his high-paying job and profit personally from the GEA options he had so cleverly negotiated for himself. He had believed that with guile, moxie, and guts he had brilliantly engineered a transaction that would be the answer to all his problems and make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. But those had been the beliefs and presumptions of a pathetic neophyte, David now knew. They were all in league together, and they had craftily led him down the garden path. They were the masters. He was just a babe in the woods.
Mohler tapped David on the back and smiled warmly. “Have a seat, young man.” He placed his briefcase on a table and took a seat at one end of a long sofa.
Still David stood in the foyer entrance, staring at the three men who had so easily manipulated his life for the last two and a half years. “You three must have enjoyed some long laughs at my expense over the last few years,” he finally said.
For the first time Webb removed the cigar from his mouth. He placed it in an ashtray on the coffee table. “We don’t find humor in any of this,” he replied curtly. “In fact, there is nothing we take more seriously. Now sit down.”
David finally obeyed. “So what is this little gathering all about?”
“Information and explanations,” Webb answered. “The time has come to let you in on a few things.”
“Such as?”
“The GEA transaction was a setup. We had you execute the dirty work in case anything went wrong. So there was no way to link us to any aspect of the transaction.”
Finnerty crossed his arms, and Mohler removed his half-lens glasses. The discussion would clearly be a dialogue between Webb and David.
“And so that I was trapped,” David uttered, almost to himself. “The money I believed was going to you as compensation for your influence on awarding the A-100 contract to GEA actually went to an account in my name. I know that now.”
Webb smiled. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Very good, David. All things we planned to inform you of tonight, but I see that we don’t have to worry about that.”
“You would never allow yourself to be so easily connected to bribery.”
“Of course not.”
“And that money I sent myself has all been swept away from those accounts so I could never reverse the transaction if I did find out about it. It’s probably all waiting for me in some Swiss account. But I’d never be able to find it.”
“The authorities could be made aware of it quickly.”
“I’m sure.” David had never been madder at himself. “God, I should have known what was really going on that night I came to see you.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Webb was enjoying himself. “You were eager to make a deal. Eager to save your job.”
“I should have figured out that you would never just let me send you money that way. And I should have known that you were looking for a much bigger payday than the three million dollars we finally agreed to.” David glanced up at the senator. “Your payoff is a piece of the Sagamore action, isn’t it? A big piece. Probably the biggest.”
“Of course.” Webb picked up the cigar again. “Why shouldn’t I have the biggest share? I approached Elizabeth Gilman fifteen years ago when her little investment fund wasn’t as successful as it is today. In fact, it was going down the drain. I saved her. I set up this whole infrastructure and risked losing everything. I ought to have the biggest piece.”
