Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

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  Pratt calculated he had now personally lost thirty-six million dollars in common stock value since Virgil’s first attack, and that figure did not include the beating his bonus contract would sustain. Knowing that Virgil—Muntor—was probably making the same calculation intensified his wrath.

  In front of him, at the podium before a multitude of microphones, stood Anna Maria Trichina, looking somewhat drawn.

  “I thank you all for coming,” she said. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Anna Maria Trichina, executive vice president of marketing for Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc.”

  Pratt camouflaged his grimace with a small smile.

  “As you know,” she continued, “the terrible crimes of the past twenty-five days have rocked the tobacco industry and the rest of the world. But our concern at this time is not for the business impact of recent events, but, like everyone else, to find a way to bring this nightmare to an end. That’s why we are pleased to be able to announce today that the CEOs of the eight leading tobacco companies have agreed in principle to a bold plan for restoring the peace of mind and physical safety of people everywhere. To provide you with the specific details of the plan, I’d like to introduce W. Nicholas Pratt, president and chief executive officer of Old Carolina Tobacco, Incorporated.”

  Trichina stepped to one side. Pratt moved forward and centered himself in front of the podium.

  “Thank you, Anna Maria,” he said. “As the media has reported so widely and wildly, it is no secret that Martin Muntor, the man who calls himself Virgil, has offered to surrender to the authorities in exchange for a one-and-a-half billion dollar charitable contribution by tobacco companies to seven named university and private medical research organizations.

  “This is not a time for rhetoric, political statement, or discussion of any kind. This is a time for clear, direct, and decisive action. Today, I am taking that action. For the past two days, the CEOs of seven other companies and I have been meeting to determine how best to satisfy Mr. Muntor’s demands. We have agreed to make the transfer of funds to the research institutions no later than Monday, November 1, at 2 p.m. The agreement I will now describe would normally be subject to official approval by the shareholders of Old Carolina for reasons that will be obvious in a moment. Collectively, the other seven companies will contribute seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc. will also contribute seven hundred and fifty million dollars.”

  Pratt swallowed hard at the mention of that amount, then continued.

  “This is a considerable amount of money for one company,” he said. “The means of financing it are complex. But drastic times call for drastic deeds. The minimum time needed to get shareholder approval exceeds the amount of time available. Another, fiercer wave of fatal attacks has been threatened, and the FBI believes the threats are real and unstoppable. Neither Old Carolina nor other companies in the industry dares to risk ignoring Muntor’s demands. I am confident that Old Carolina shareholders will support my decision and ratify the course I have chosen. The only condition we require is that Muntor surrender himself to the authorities, on or before midnight on Monday, November 1. He will have ten hours to satisfy himself that the funds have, in fact, been transferred as directed. The tobacco companies have been legally committed to the transfer, and no ex post facto reversal or cancellation of the transaction is possible. Mr. Muntor is invited to call his contact at the FBI for more information about that. The transfer cannot be voided if he surrenders and is in custody by the deadline. Now, are there any questions?”

  Scores of reporters jumped to their feet, discharging a roar of shouted questions.

  109

  Brasilia Hotel and Casino

  Las Vegas

  Muntor, wearing a mustache and baseball cap, sat in the auditorium-sized Race and Sports betting area in the Brasilia Hotel and Casino. He had an hour to kill until he had to be at the airport. He was in town under the name B. Doyle and had told the front desk to page him when the airport van was ready. He had to remember to listen for that name. Planting the decoy device in the ballroom off the mezzanine had been easy. The whole contraption cost him less than two hundred dollars, and most of that went to buying an electronic timer at a hobby shop on Maryland Parkway.

  In front of him was a wall of giant televisions. Many of the screens showed horse races and football games. Many of the sets, however, were tuned to a local television station broadcasting the Old Carolina news conference. Muntor sat drinking chamomile tea. The air conditioning was too cold for his thin blood. His hands and feet were like ice, and he coughed hard and painfully.

  On the screen, an unseen reporter shouted a question. “Mr. Pratt, do you have any personal message you wish to convey to Virgil?”

  “Yes, I do.” Pratt looked down at the podium as if he were collecting his thoughts. “We are acting in good faith solely in the interest of putting an end to this unprecedented number of product-tampering homicides.”

  Pratt hesitated for a long moment and looked straight toward the cameras. “I implore you, sir, in the name of all that is holy, to abide by the terms you yourself established. A tremendous number of people, now and in the future, will be well served by the medical advances that will inevitably occur as a result of this transfer of funds. You have gotten what you wanted. You will be treated fairly by the authorities.”

  Muntor sipped the tea, his face impassive, thinking, who are you to tell me what is holy? You who have sold poison? You are the moneychangers in the temple, and I will root you out.

  110

  Philadelphia

  As darkness fell on West Philadelphia, Dr. Trice sat at her desk, just about to take the first bite out of a wedge of cheesecake layered with dark chocolate fudge.

  Rhoads poked his head in.

  “Hello, Dr. Trice.”

  “T.R.! You’re in Philadelphia? You caught me,” she said, nodding at her cheesecake.

  “I won’t tell anybody.” Rhoads entered almost sheepishly, took off his jacket, and sat down in the chair facing her desk.

  “The FBI is setting a trap for Virgil in Las Vegas. We raided his house and found clues that point to a casino there.”

  “Las Vegas?”

  “They’re convinced he’ll be there.”

  She grimaced. “If you found evidence pointing to Vegas, he’s not going to Vegas.”

  “That’s what I think too, but all we have is you and me. On the outside, looking in. Trying to see what we can see through a foggy window.”

  “Maybe what needs to be seen isn’t on the inside,” she said. “Maybe we have a better view from out here.”

  “Bea, I know Muntor is the bad guy, he’s killed close to four hundred people. He’s obviously insane, and he has to be stopped. But the other night, I got into a fight with the woman I’m in love with because there I was, curled up with her in bed, defending Muntor.”

  “Go on.”

  “The thing is, more and more, I find myself agreeing with him. I understand his rage at the tobacco business, at all of us who work in it and don’t think we’re doing anything wrong because we’re not pulling a trigger or killing people instantly. I mean, he’s made me think about things I’ve done in the past, or things I should have done and didn’t. If he’s so evil, why do I feel like he’s got more courage than I have? Like I’m the guilty one?”

  Dr. Trice put down her fork.

  “Do you believe in God, T.R.?”

  Rhoads paused. “Not the kind of God they teach you about in Sunday school, anyway. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You don’t sound very convinced.”

  Rhoads shrugged and looked into his lap at his hands. He had interlaced his fingers.

  “No one can tell you what to believe,” Dr. Trice said. “And I’m certainly not going to. But I can tell you what I believe. I believe without a doubt that there�
��s some kind of… consciousness… at work in the universe. It’s nothing anyone can understand very well, nothing we need to understand very well. I believe there’s a tiny spark of that consciousness in each one of us. I believe that it is the physical world itself that comes between all the sparks and separates them, breaks the connection. When the connection is lost, we spin out of control. Sometimes more or less subtly, like your zeros. Sometimes wildly, like Muntor. Being separated hurts. The horror some infants experience at separation from their mothers catapults them over the edge into the abyss labeled schizophrenia. But for most of us, it is through faith, hope, and charity that we can diminish the gap. If we work hard enough, we can reconnect with that consciousness. In some quarters, they call that salvation. I call it going home again.”

  Rhoads took a deep breath. He tried to listen. It was difficult for him. God-talk always had been. But Dr. Trice wasn’t preaching. She was trying to make a point. He could see that.

  “I know, T.R., you believe, on one level or another, that you have a part to play in this matter, that you feel some bond with Muntor. Something beyond the fact that you are both lost and lonely men. And that gives you a special responsibility. And you hate that. It’s work, and you’d rather play.”

  Rhoads swallowed and looked again at his hands. He couldn’t recall arranging his fingers that way since he was child, instructed by his father to kneel beside the bed and say bedtime prayers.

  He looked up. “So what am I supposed to do about it? I’ve got a lot riding on being there when Muntor goes down. All I have to do is be there, and Pratt gives me my seventy-five thousand dollars. You know what that means? That means I get my boat. I refloat The Deep Blue if I’m there. I save my brother, maybe save myself, whatever that means.”

  “I understand the impulse, and it’s a noble one. And still, you’re not on a plane to Vegas.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then common sense suggests that you should follow your gut, not the percentages.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If you’re not in Las Vegas, and Muntor is, I agree, you lose,” Dr. Trice admitted. “You lose the seventy-five thousand and that will hurt. However, if Muntor does show up in New York while you’re standing around in Las Vegas, you lose. And that will cost lives, plenty of innocent lives along with the few guilty ones Muntor’s gunning for. That will cost you something else, something much more precious. If Muntor shows in Las Vegas and you’re not there, you’re no worse off than you are right now. But if he shows in New York and you lose because you were playing it safe, well, it could finish you. By trying to risk little, you find you are risking much. You’ll never forgive yourself. In a way, T.R., this is your big chance to believe in yourself. Trust your hunch.”

  Rhoads took a backwards step toward the door. “One of the most important decisions of my life, and I haven’t the slightest clue which way to go. Isn’t that pitiful?”

  “No, it’s not. We all want to be on the winning side. It takes real guts to risk being wrong. If Virgil’s in Vegas, the FBI will get him. All you have to do is decide what to do if they’re wrong.”

  “That’s all, huh?”

  “You think they’re wrong, and you have to act on that. You’re the only one who has that freedom. Maybe because if you know something, you have a responsibility to act. If you know nothing, you have no responsibility. Responsibility’s a burden most of us like to minimize. I remember once reading a book review by the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. The New York Times assigned him a book called The Nazi Doctors. In the review, Bettelheim wrote he didn’t know if he could do the book justice because its author believed that to understand is to forgive, and Bettelheim said he didn’t subscribe to that belief.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t believe Bettelheim. I think he does subscribe to that belief—that to understand is to forgive, but in his mind he didn’t want to forgive the Nazi doctors. Through the book, he had acquired a greater understanding of them and then found himself accountable in God’s eyes to forgive them. And he resented having to do that.”

  “Now how does that relate to me?” said Rhoads.

  “If you know something, you have a responsibility to act. If you have a gut feeling, you have the responsibility to act on it. You may not like it, just as Bettelheim didn’t like his conflicting feelings about forgiving Nazi doctors.”

  Rhoads stood in the hallway, awaiting the elevator, when Dr. Trice stepped out.

  “I didn’t want to make it part of our conversation in my office there, T.R., but now that you’re leaving, how’s it going with the drinking?”

  Rhoads looked down at the mat in front of the elevator. “Not so hot, Doc. I got pretty thirsty last weekend.”

  “And since then? Today’s Friday.”

  “Bone dry. And now I’m going to find an AA meeting here in Philly and take the first flight to New York tomorrow morning.”

  “Is that how you plan to celebrate finding Muntor’s house? Going to a meeting?”

  Rhoads hadn’t thought of it that way. “Yeah, Doc. I guess so.”

  “That’s my boy,” Dr. Trice said. “That’s my boy.”

  111

  8:40 p.m.

  Asheville

  “Ms. Trichina,” Larry the doorman said over the intercom. “Sorry to bother you, but there’s a deliveryman here from Really Good who insists Unit 1202 ordered a pizza. But I know you always tell me if you’re expecting a delivery. Is it yours?”

  “Not guilty, Larry.”

  Trichina could hear the deliveryman arguing with Larry.

  “Ms. Trichina,” Larry said. “This guy says the pie’s been out too long to take back, and he wants to know if you want it. Large, onion and green pepper. Half price.”

  She took her finger off the intercom button and thought about it. She hadn’t eaten a thing since lunch.

  “How much is half price?”

  Larry consulted the man from Really Good. “He says four-fifty.”

  “Tell him two bucks and a buck tip. Take it or leave it.”

  Larry repeated the offer.

  “He says he’ll take it,” Larry said into the intercom.

  “Okay,” Trichina said. “Let him in.”

  On the way up to Trichina’s, Valzmann’s assistant pressed himself into the one corner of the elevator the security camera couldn’t focus on. He snapped on a pair of surgical gloves and felt like a million bucks.

  112

  30th Street Station

  Philadelphia

  Dr. Trice entered 30th Street Station, bought a muffin, a cup of coffee, and a newspaper, and sat down. The terminal was mobbed with Northeast Corridor business travelers, students, and local passengers.

  Several pigeons had gotten into the building and flew about high overhead. An indigent man walked up to Dr. Trice and held out an empty soda cup, begging for change. Dr. Trice shook her head “no,” and the man moved on. She donated to the city’s twenty-four-hour shelter instead of handing out money to those who’d likely buy a bottle of cheap wine or a cap of crack.

  The Amtrak information board updated itself electronically and indicated Dr. Trice’s train would be ten minutes late.

  That meant time enough for another muffin.

  113

  The Royal Carland Hotel

  New York

  Getting dressed in the cab from the airport was awkward and inconvenient. Rhoads changed from his jeans and turtleneck to his most expensive business suit, an Italian-cut black wool job. He had brought a light gray tie and an out-of-character thick-linked gold ID bracelet and polarized sunglasses. He had borrowed the bracelet from an attorney who lived in his apartment building.

  The suit jacket fit snugly. He certainly was not packing a weapon on his hip or under his arm. Anyone could see that.

  The cab pulled up at the Royal Carland. Rh
oads gathered his wallet, carry-on, and the leather portfolio that contained a nine-millimeter semiautomatic, a pair of plastic handcuffs, and his mini-aerosol container of PinPoint Mace. He paid the cab fare and jumped out.

  Outside the Grand Imperial Ballroom, at a quarter past ten, Rhoads tried to walk the way he imagined a successful big-portfolio investor would. Strides that were long and fast, supremely confident. At least in a bull market.

  He had a little less than an hour until the meeting was to begin.

  He glanced at the headlines in the USA Daily and other papers in the racks in the lobby newsstand. The FBI had successfully kept the Las Vegas angle out of the news.

  As Rhoads turned away from the newsstand to make an informal perimeter observation of the property, he noticed the open cigarette display. How simple it must be for Muntor. Maybe that would all be coming to an end. Rhoads moved around the inside of the hotel in a methodical concentric circle. Working the two elements of luck—preparation and attentiveness—Rhoads studied a brochure that provided a simplified floor plan of the Royal Carland.

  Someone once told Rhoads that belief in luck was nothing more than lack of confidence. With that in mind, he walked faster to cover more ground.

  114

  7:20 a.m. Pacific Time

  Brasilia Hotel and Casino

  Las Vegas

  The attendees filed in, packing the Majestic Ballroom. A banner displayed near the head table announced the Specialty Retailers Marketing Symposium. Beyond the four or five armed hotel security officers, there was no sign of other precautions.

  In a corner at the back of the room, Franklin, dressed in the uniform of the hotel’s maintenance workers, first listened then spoke softly into a cell phone.

  “… Received. A no-show at the airport. He hasn’t been spotted here, either. The situation here is Condition A-Andy. Nothing happening. Out,” Franklin said and punched a button on the phone, then snapped it closed and slid it into one of the deep pockets in his overalls. Almost immediately, the unit chirped again. He retrieved it.