Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

  He inched forward, gun pointed into the dark. He saw no figure there now. He could not cry out for help. He heard his own panicked breathing.

  The fireman stepped forward, facemask awry, a fire extinguisher held between both hands.

  Why did he hit me?

  The form moved toward him. The sound of labored, wheezing gasps grew louder. Rhoads stood up now, coming back to himself. He looked at the fireman. The uniform was bright yellow but different than those of the firemen who had just left.

  Rhoads understood.

  This was Martin Muntor.

  Rhoads began to bring the automatic up but lost his balance as a wave of dizziness washed over him. He was fading out, knees unable to support the weight of his body. The warm wet dripped from his head. Without a word, the man in the fireman’s uniform bolted back into the dark alcove. Rhoads heard a heavy door slam. He regained his balance and followed, stumbling over a large cardboard box. Glass jars filled with something rolled against each other.

  Rhoads easily caught up with him. The man, almost unable to breathe, had braced himself against a storage shelf. The man turned to Rhoads, eyes wide and wild behind the protective faceplate, able only to concentrate on catching his breath. He had no capacity to resist Rhoads.

  Rhoads raised his gun and started to speak when everything slowed down and grew dim like the settling of a sudden fog.

  Dizzy, dizzy. His knees weakened, and he felt himself slowly, slowly sinking, fading, melting into the floor. Rhoads was passing out and he knew it, and there was nothing he could do.

  117

  11:20 a.m.

  New York

  Dr. Trice took a cab from Penn Station to the Royal Carland. She checked her coat and. carrying her handbag, followed the signs to the Grand Imperial Ballroom.

  Although uninvited to the event, she felt that as a stockholder in Old Carolina Tobacco, Inc. she had every right to be there.

  At one of the ballroom doors, a greeter handed her a schedule and a large information packet emblazoned with the Old Carolina logo. No one questioned her presence. She entered the ballroom and, without realizing it, took the seat next to the one Rhoads had been sitting in.

  When she looked at the word “RESERVED” on the Old Carolina envelope next to her and saw the peculiar, childish block letters, she recognized them instantly as Rhoads’s handwriting.

  “Have you seen the person who was sitting here?” she asked a man seated nearby, pointing to the empty chair next to her.

  “I think he went in there,” the man said, indicating the banquet kitchen’s swinging doors.

  Dr. Trice nodded. “Thank you.”

  She rose and headed toward the swinging doors.

  118

  11:24 a.m.

  The Royal Carland Hotel

  New York

  The ice numbed Valzmann’s hip. He kept reaching under his jacket to make certain nothing was leaking. What a mess that would be. Stuffed into one of the Royal Carland’s huge industrial trash dumpsters out back by the service dock was the body of a hotel plumber, minus an appendage. They’d probably never find him. Valzmann had the man’s severed right hand in his pocket, wrapped in plastic and enclosed in a bag filled with ice. The fingers would leave convincing fingerprints on Dallaness’s body. He hoped the plumber’s prints were on record.

  Valzmann made his way through the service corridors behind the banquet kitchen. His cell phone chirped and he answered it before it rang a second time.

  “What’s the situation with Mrs. Dallaness?” Pratt asked quietly. “I’m pulling up to the hotel now. My presentation begins in a few minutes.”

  “I’m ready sir,” he said. “At the next break, I imagine she’ll need the john. If she uses the one in her room, I’ll do it then.”

  “What about Rhoads?”

  “He’s here. In the audience. Playing undercover.”

  “He’s here? Perfect.” Pratt laughed softly. “Prick’s supposed to be in Vegas. He walked into a buzz saw this time. Now you can work your magic on both of them and make sure we’ve got all the disks.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, sir. Late word from Asheville. Trichina had only one set, and we got those from her lawyer Finch. She tried to bluff when she said she had a second set. I was able to verify that the disks I took from Rhoads’s apartment were the actual ones Dallaness made.”

  “And is our executive vice president moping today?”

  Valzmann paused. “I’m sorry, sir. The operation was a success, but the patient died.”

  Pratt exhaled from his mouth like a kid blowing out candles on a cake.

  “You sure?” Pratt asked.

  “Sir? She’s dead.”

  “No, Valzmann. You sure we learned the truth? I’d hate to think…”

  “Billy took care of it, Mr. Pratt. He said she fought hard, much harder than he expected. But no one can withstand the blowtorch.”

  119

  11:29 a.m.

  A long black limousine pulled up at the Royal Carland’s main entrance. Pratt emerged in the company of Arnold Northrup and three security men. Two doormen opened glass doors and they entered the lobby, taking took note of the greeting sign.

  American Investor Relations Society

  Welcomes

  the Visionaries of the Tobacco Industry

  Second floor, Grand Imperial Ballroom

  Earlier, Pratt’s attorneys had circumvented Franklin and gone straight to the Director of the FBI to complain, considering Virgil’s unimpeded progress, about the inadequate security plans for the conference. The Director personally assured the attorneys that there would be more than met the eye at both the Brasilia and the Royal Carland.

  Hotel personnel led Pratt and North to a private elevator that arrived instantly and took only a few seconds to deliver them to the second floor. As they stepped off the elevator, Northrup pulled out a chirping cell phone and answered it.

  “Hold on, please.” Then, handing the phone to Pratt, he said, “The FBI.”

  Pratt took the phone. “Yeah?”

  He listened. He beamed, snapped the telephone closed and handed it back to Northrup. He leaned in toward him and spoke out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Looks like we finally got someplace Virgil was headed before he got there. The FBI was waiting for him to show up at the Specialty Retailers’ show in Las Vegas. They’ve found some kind of a device they think he planted in the Brasilia, and they’ve got the building sealed off. Arnie!” Pratt said, thinking that there was suddenly an excellent chance he wasn’t going to have to spend seven hundred and fifty million dollars at two o’clock on Monday. “They don’t think he had time to get out. They think they have him cornered.”

  Pratt lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.

  Like a dog and its master, Northrup walked behind Pratt. At a respectful distance, Northrup stopped and stood still. Pratt continued to the podium by the head table. A roar of applause greeted him.

  120

  11:32 a.m.

  In darkness and freezing cold, Rhoads came to.

  His head pounded with excruciating pain, and his arms and hands were tied with something to an icy pole behind him.

  Shit! My head. It pounded and ached.

  He had no way to reach up to stop the bleeding bruise, his blood warm as it ran down the cold skin of his forehead. Somehow, he reasoned, Muntor had dragged him here and bound his arms behind him.

  The scent of food. Frozen meat. Locked in a freezer, freezing to death. He thought of the freezers on the boat he and Teddy had meant to buy. The clients would catch fish and their catch would be held in the freezers for them to take home. The dream of the boat evaporated. He would never buy the boat, and Teddy’s family would have no one to look out for them.

  Instead, he thought, he’d die right here, in a frozen puddle of
his own blood. Locked in here with the flesh of the butchered.

  121

  11:35 a.m.

  “Step aside,” the uniformed Martin Muntor said to one of the young models hired to greet the American Investor Relations Society conference attendees. “Building safety violation inspection.”

  Muntor’s words made no sense—they were intended only to confuse. His fire department hazardous materials outfit had authority. The model did as ordered.

  Muntor stepped forward, pulled the doors to the ballroom closed, and laced heavy chains through the handles of the exit. He secured the chains with a heavy padlock he took from one of his pockets. Then he strode as fast as his Biphetamine- and Dilaudid-fortified body would go to the second of the three ballroom exits. He chained those doors, too.

  Only the main entrance remained accessible.

  122

  11:38 a.m.

  “Thank you,” Pratt said, nodding to a few people. “Thank you. Ladies and gentleman, I don’t think anyone will mind if I depart from the scheduled agenda to make an important announcement.” Pratt hadn’t smiled like this in almost a month. The audience hummed and grew excited. “We have just learned that, at this very moment in Las Vegas, the FBI is closing in on Martin Muntor. And, we are all hoping that…”

  Boom.

  Boom. Boom.

  From the back of the room, something banged loudly three times, breaking the mood.

  Pratt looked up.

  All heads turned. Martin Muntor announced himself by hammering on the doorframe with the long black gunmetal trigger nozzle attached to the tank strapped on his back.

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. And law enforcement officers,” he said, his voice both strained and strong. The faceplate of his gas mask was flipped up, enabling him to be heard.

  Some could see the large green-and-white tank strapped to his back. He held the orchard-fogger’s trigger nozzle by his side.

  He raised his free hand high. He held a small object. “A dead-man switch,” he said. “This is a mechanical engineering term for any device similar to the one I have here in my hand.” His arm straightened and jutted forward in a kind of Sieg Heil salute. “It’s designed to take care of business if its operator loses consciousness.”

  A frightened murmur rippled through the room.

  The six or eight FBI agents seated at the tables tensed, ready for instructions from the command post through their earphones.

  They all slipped their weapons from their holsters and into their hands without any obvious movement of body or limb.

  Conference attendees seated near Muntor could see that the device he held was no larger than a deck of cards. With his right arm high, Muntor took two steps forward into the ballroom.

  “Should I be harmed or rendered unconscious before I complete my presentation…”

  From somewhere behind him in the hallway, a uniformed New York City policeman had been watching. Instead of calling for backup, he charged in, gun drawn. He stood four feet from Muntor. Muntor turned toward him and snapped down the gas mask’s faceplate with a brush of his right forearm and, with his left hand, raised the long black trigger nozzle and squeezed once. A small puff of white gas shot into the policeman’s face. He dropped his gun and crumpled to the floor in a spasm of choking. In a moment, he was still.

  No one else dared rise.

  Muntor trudged back two paces and pulled the doors behind him closed, slamming them in fury. As if there had been no disturbance, he raised his faceplate, held out the dead-man switch, and continued. “Should I be harmed or rendered unconscious before I complete my presentation, my thumb will come off the button I am depressing here, there will be a massive explosion, and I will perish. And so will everyone in this room and most of those in this hotel. In a moment, I’ll give a harmless demonstration to prove my capability. In the meantime, remain seated. And you over there by the swinging doors,” he pointed to the kitchen staff, “you all move over toward the head table, away from the kitchen.”

  The workers moved as one. A small shriek came from one of them. At the head table, Pratt’s face had turned bone white.

  Two FBI agents rose in defiance of Muntor’s instructions to remain seated. Another agent, apparently their superior, shouted out to them. “All posts, do as the man says. Take your seats.”

  The agents sank back into their chairs.

  “And no radio communication,” Muntor warned. “A device has been activated, and radio transmission could trigger it.”

  Without turning away from the people in the ballroom, Muntor tucked the nozzle under his arm, took a third chain from one of his suit’s oversized pockets, and secured it to the door behind him.

  123

  11:42 a.m.

  Dr. Trice, out of breath and shivering, knelt beside Rhoads in the frozen-food locker and struggled with the nylon rope that bound his hands to the pole. She couldn’t get it loose.

  While she worked, Rhoads spoke to her in a calm voice. “I thought I was going to die. That I’d never get that boat.”

  “Can we talk about this later, T.R.?” she said, jerking with little success at the rope. “You’re not dying so soon. But I can’t get your wrists free.”

  “Leave me here and go find a knife. Over by the prep tables.”

  The seventy-two-year-old woman stood up uncertainly and stumbled out of the locker, her hands numb after only a long minute in the freezer. The prep tables were on the other side of the huge food service area. Rhoads listened forever to the clicks Dr. Trice’s heels made on the kitchen tile until they faded.

  Then he heard other steps approaching. Whoever was out there stopped.

  A moment later, from beyond the freezer door, a large man entered, holding a gun.

  “Here you are, Rhoads.” He grinned. “Looks like your day’s had a poor start. And it’s about to get worse.”

  A bright light streamed in from the kitchen behind the man.

  Rhoads squinted. “Valzmann.”

  “Quiet, Rhoads. You are about to die. There’s a loose end down in Asheville that has put Mr. Pratt at risk. And I’m going to tie it up—with you.”

  Rhoads’s head spun. “This is about Benedict…”

  “Good boy, Rhoads. Now, before I ice you, I’m dying to ask you something.” Valzmann grinned. “If you want to hide something, why hide it in your house? You’re smarter than that. It didn’t take me ten minutes to find the disks.”

  As he spoke, Rhoads noticed a shadow flit by behind Valzmann.

  “Flying here, flying there,” said Valzmann, “chasing that bonus so you could buy your boat. Too busy to take care of the details. Sloppy.”

  “You’re going to pin Benedict’s death on me.”

  “Already done,” Valzmann said. “Last words?”

  Rhoads mumbled.

  “Speak up, Rhoads,” Valzmann said. “Make your last words meaningful. You want to give me a message for your brother?”

  From beyond the freezer door, a woman spoke. “Excuse me, sir. Where do you want me to put these salmon hors d’oeuvres?”

  Valzmann turned towards the voice.

  Dr. Trice, an arm extended forward, stepped boldly into the locker.

  Valzmann screamed and dropped his gun. He turned, putting his shoulder between himself and the woman. His hands flew to his face and eyes. He coughed and spat.

  Dr. Trice stood firm, emptying her canister of cayenne pepper spray at Valzmann, trying to hit his upper lip where he’d breathe the spray through his mouth or nose. Getting the eyes wasn’t as important as making him choke. A blinded attacker can still grab hold of you and break your neck, but one choking half to death is effectively incapacitated.

  “You whore!” he gurgled through the saliva and mucous flooding his eyes and nose and mouth. She had gotten him square in the face. He couldn’t see.

  Dr.
Trice advanced with a serrated kitchen knife and plunged it hard and high into Valzmann’s leg. She aimed for the external iliac artery she knew ran from the groin down the front of the leg. She twisted the knife resolutely. The blade had hit bone, and it stuck. She pulled her hand away. He was a broad, solid man. If she had hit the femoral artery too, his blood pressure would drop like a rock in a pond. He’d go down fast. She had had big men, patients, go berserk on her and knew from training to keep her thinking under control. It gave her a vastly superior position.

  “Ahhhh…” Valzmann screamed and clutched at the wound.

  He fell to the floor.

  “Get over here with that knife,” Rhoads yelled, jerking against the rope. His breath condensed in the cold air.

  “I can’t, it’s in his leg.”

  Valzmann screamed in pain and tore the knife out. It fell from his hands.

  Very accommodating, Dr. Trice thought. This is a man who wants to be punished.

  She picked it up. “I have it now.”

  Valzmann started to move.

  “You keep pressure on that wound, or you’ll be dead in three minutes,” she told the coughing, choking man. Valzmann slumped over onto his back, doing as told. She walked around him, crouched by Rhoads and felt behind him for the rope. She found a place with her fingers where it would be safe to cut. She freed Rhoads with a few quick flicks of the gory knife.

  Rhoads was up in a second, one eye swollen shut and warm blood still dripping. In the dark, he stumbled on Valzmann’s gun, stooped, and took it.

  Dr. Trice found a cloth and handed it to him. “It’s not sterile, but pressure, Rhoads, pressure. Head wounds bleed.”

  Rhoads looked at Valzmann. “You sure he’s down?”

  “He’ll stay for a while,” she said.

  Valzmann made a fruitless effort to get up. “Get the paramedics, Rhoads.” The man was crying. “Please. I’m bleeding to death.”