Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1)

by Cristelle Comby

  “But you recognize it, which tells me that there’s at least one copy out there that made it,” I said.

  “At least two copies,” Zian corrected me. “The one that I have and the one that Arete is using to help build Orion.”

  “Well, what about those things that Kurtzenberg was working on just before he died?” Kennedy asked. “What were they?”

  “That’s something I wish I knew myself,” Zian admitted with a sigh. “But what they were doing inside these buildings was kept off-record.”

  “Looks like we’ve got the makings of a hell of an exclusive,” Kennedy said, leaning forward like it was a meal she’d been waiting for all day. “I’ll just need to prune the details a bit.”

  “If you need any help with the pruning or some proof that isn’t quite the truth, just let me know,” Zian volunteered with a goofy grin.

  If I had said that to Kennedy, I’d have probably gotten a scowl, but she just shook her head. “You, my friend, need to get out more.”

  Go figure.

  Chapter twenty-four

  Exit interview

  The back of any business building always has the same look. No matter how slick or glitzy the front is, the back end has the feel of a warehouse gone shabby: plain concrete or brick walls, at least one dumpster, and a nondescript door giving access to the inside. The back of Smoke & Mirrors was just like that, with washed-out gray concrete walls and the additional detail of a pair of De Soto’s Super Secret Service standing by the door.

  As I walked up the no-neck white guy with the crew cut on the left greeted me. “Good evening, Mr. Vale. You’re expected.”

  “You boys always stand watch on the back door?” I asked, remembering how Kennedy had slipped in unnoticed the last time I was here.

  “Only when los jefes are expecting trouble,” said the bald black guy on the right. His Spanish pronunciation made me think he was from somewhere in South America.

  “Well, last I checked, I hadn’t given them any,” I joked.

  “Just the same, I’m afraid you’ll need to stand for a frisk, sir,” Crew Cut said, stepping forward a little to let me know that this wasn’t a request.

  I raised my arms and let the pair of them pat me down. I’d left the Sig in the car. If I wasn’t safe from the likes of Vito while either of the De Sotos was in the same room, then I was in a lot more danger than I thought.

  Two minutes later, the black guard tapped the door twice. Estella was standing on the other side with a welcoming smile on her face. Tonight, she was wearing a strapless black dress that hugged most of her curves like a second skin. The only exception was at the legs, where the skirt ended at mid-thigh to show off her stupendous muscles. She beckoned me through the door and it shut behind us with a clang.

  “It’s good to see that you are okay, Bell,” she said, leading the way inside. “It is fine that I follow Ramon’s practice of calling you by your first name, si?”

  “I’ve been called much worse,” I told her.

  “I can well imagine,” Mrs. De Soto said with a slight grin. “By the way, I insist that you call me Estella from this night forward.”

  I wondered if the tone she gave that request in was the same one she used when she had to issue orders to her men that had to be obeyed at all costs.

  “Ramon is waiting in the office,” she said, waving one of her thick-veined arms towards the right.

  What little I could make of the dimly lit surroundings showed the place to be a bit more posh than the back entrance, but more low-key than the club out front. The carpet was so deep that it nearly swallowed my shoes with each step. Lighting came from Art Deco style fittings on the walls.

  Two more guards stood at attention outside the office door. They gave Estella a respectful nod as she opened the oak door. Ramon De Soto was standing inside, a tumbler of a drink in hand. He had been looking out at the club floor below through a window that took up the upper half of the wall on my left. On my right the room was dominated by a desk the size of a Barcalounger, with a pair of plain, straight-backed chairs drawn up in front of it.

  A practiced smile appeared on De Soto’s lips at the sight of me. He walked over to shake my hand.

  “You never fail to impress, Bell,” he said by way of greeting. “Thanks to your assistance, the matter of Bran Connor has been … resolved to our satisfaction.”

  “You’re welcome,” I replied, not wanting to be told the specifics of how that had been achieved.

  “I am certain that Bell would also appreciate what you promised him, Ramon,” Mrs. De Soto suggested.

  “Ah, of course,” her husband agreed with a slight chuckle. “Forgive me, mi amigo, but my wife is quite correct when she reminds me that you did not do this for free.”

  He walked to his oversized desk and we followed. Opening up the nearest drawer, he pulled out a bound stack of twenty-dollar bills and handed them to me.

  “I trust that cash is acceptable?” he asked.

  I eyed the stack. “This looks like a little more than—”

  “—the agreed five hundred? Si, you did us two additional favors that warranted the extra money.”

  “Would I be out of line if I asked what favors?” I inquired.

  “Ramon”—Mrs. De Soto, who’d been standing near the window, interrupted us—“he is here.”

  There was no need to ask who she meant … it had to be Vito.

  De Soto nodded and beckoned me towards a chair. I noticed that he had never gotten around to answering my question and decided not to push it.

  Vito arrived in the doorway half a minute later. He was wearing a three-piece suit, all in black, right down to the tie, and his brogues gleamed. His eyes latched onto me with burning hatred but before he could open his mouth, he noticed Mrs. De Soto standing by the window and seemed to shrivel a bit.

  “Still dressing as sharp as ever, Vito,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

  “Still pushing your luck further than you should, Vale,” he retorted, heading for the empty chair.

  It felt surreal to be sitting this close to Vito. I could feel anger ebbing off him in waves. Hells, I was certain my own dislike of the man was easy enough to spot on my face too. Yet, we kept our cool, as if this was nothing more than a casual meeting between business partners.

  De Soto sat down, looking like a high-school principal ready to give two bullying children a lecture.

  “Mr. Vale has several questions for you, Alonzo. He has paid us very handsomely for that privilege. I know that you and he have had your differences but for tonight, these are to be set aside in the interest of satisfying his curiosity. Tu comprendes?”

  “Si, El Jefe,” Vito answered, turning his attention to me. To my ear, it felt as though it burnt his Italian tongue to have to speak in Spanish.

  I got right to it. “Did you kill Henry Kurtzenberg?”

  “Who?”

  “Public works supervisor for the city,” I said. “Got killed Mafia-style near the Cinema Leone. Ring any bells?”

  “Not even alarm bells,” Vito said, folding his arms.

  A manicured hand landed on his shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze.

  “Alonzo, you have two choices,” Mrs. Do Soto said as Vito’s face started to register pain. “You can answer Mr. Vale now or you can answer me later. Which one do you prefer?”

  Just as suddenly as it had landed, the hand was removed.

  “Okay, okay,” Vito said, rubbing his shoulder. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Of course not,” I responded, unimpressed.

  “No—really!” Vito protested, mindful of Mrs. Soto just behind him. “What’s some old jerk who works for the city to me? He wasn’t part of our thing so I had no reason to waste him. But somebody went out of their way to make it look like I had.”

  “Like, say, a former business associate who cut
ties with you when they got a better offer?” I asked. There was no need to bring Bran’s name into this conversation but I wanted to do something to make the two-cent kingpin squirm.

  “Maybe,” Vito said carefully. “I don’t know … and I’ve got no idea why they would, all right? Bangers getting dropped around there is just part of the day to day. But whacking a citizen is just asking for trouble nobody needs.”

  “So you know the area, done business there?” I asked.

  Vito started squirming in his chair like a worm on a hook. “Not exactly.”

  “Either you have or you have not,” De Soto pointed out. “Which of the two is correct?”

  Vito writhed some more. “Jefe … I swear on my mother’s grave that I did no business that would be at odds with our—”

  “That was not Mr. Vale’s question,” De Soto insisted gently, sounding like a father handing his son a mild rebuke.

  Vito nodded and found the right words at last. “I was doing some work for an outfit called Arete. They had me doing a little … pest control so that guys like Henry could do their job.”

  I wondered how much money Vito’s “pest control” had cost the man at the desk. “So you knew Kurtzenberg?”

  “Enough to say hello to, not enough to ask out for a drink, if you get my drift,” Vito said. “He was all right but boring, you know? Not anybody I’d ever figure rating a slap, let alone a hit.”

  “Before he died he was building something special at a couple of places,” I said, playing a hunch. “Any idea what they could have been?”

  “Near as I can tell?” Vito said. “Pyramids.”

  The disbelief on the two De Soto faces matched my own.

  “I know, I know,” Vito protested, holding up his hands. “I don’t get it either. But I swear to God that’s what he was making. They were all in this weird blue stone and came up about three feet from the floor.” He was drawing figurative pyramid shapes with his hands to illustrate his meaning. “Never did get why he built those things himself when he had a whole crew that could have made them in about an hour. But he always came in after hours, did the work himself.”

  “So the crew he was supervising wasn’t involved at all?” I asked.

  “Just in cleaning up the area,” Vito said. “And even then, he only wanted certain spots to be … well, spotless. He was just as careful about where those pyramids went too, did everything short of line up their exact coordinates with a GPS. You’d think he was painting the Mona Lisa or something.”

  “He ever mention any more of those that he needed to do?”

  “I told you before, Vale,” Vito spat back with irritation. “We weren’t tight. All I can tell you is that if he had any more to do, he didn’t get to them before he died.” Then he barked out a short laugh and added, “Hell, he didn’t even get to finish that pyramid he was working on before he died.”

  “So that one never got done?” I persisted.

  “Oh, it got done,” Vito countered. “After Henry got killed, some other golden boy took over and finished it. Main difference was that Choice Number Two was guarded like the president.”

  “Where was the unfinished pyramid at?” I prompted.

  “That was the other weird thing,” Vito admitted with a shrug. “It was in a building that Arete didn’t even own yet. Must have gotten some kind of clearance with the owner or maybe he didn’t know that it was going on.”

  “Who was the owner?” I asked.

  “Ian Townsend … yeah, that Ian Townsend. Mr. High And Mighty Savior of Cold City was getting an offer from Arete. But word was he was getting another, better one from somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “Does it matter? All Arete cared about was that it wasn’t them. So they had me grab his kid as leverage for a deal.”

  I felt the blood in my veins starting to boil but did my best to ignore it. “It’s a bit of a leap to go from grabbing a little girl to help out your boss to sending her father a ransom demand if he ever wants to see her again.”

  “Hey, we all know how loaded Townsend is,” Vito said. “All Arete cared about was getting him to sell. I figured, why not make some money on top of it? To me, it was win-win. Arete gets their building, Townsend gets his kid, I get a little extra dough on top. Everybody’s happy.”

  “Then I crash the party and turn it into lose-lose,” I said, letting an edge in my voice show.

  “Yeah, why did you have to go and mess up a good deal, huh?” Vito asked, his eyes throwing daggers at me.

  “Is it my fault that Marion’s father and mother were a little concerned that you’d have given their little girl back to them in less than pristine condition?” I asked.

  “Whatever,” Vito snapped, the irritation back. “All I know is, thanks to you butting in, my extra-curriculars got found out by El Jefe here.”

  “Self-flattery will get you nowhere here,” Mrs. De Soto growled. “I knew you were working for some other organization from the very start.”

  “And because she knew, I knew,” her husband added, giving Vito a pointed stare. “The only thing we were waiting for was definitive proof, which was provided for us by Mr. Vale.”

  I perked up at that. Could it be one of the things I had been paid extra for? If it was, I couldn’t have been happier that it’d been at Vito’s expense.

  “Okay, last question,” I said. “Who was in charge of the people you were working for?”

  Vito barked out another harsh laugh that made him sound like a braying donkey. “If you think they are the kind of people who just hand out that info, you’re dumber than I thought, Vale.”

  “And if you didn’t check these people out to make sure you weren’t being stung by the cops, you’re a sloppier crook than even I thought,” I shot back.

  Vito grunted and sighed in the same breath. “Okay, okay … Arete is a shell corporation for somebody else … I’ll give you that much.”

  “Not good enough,” I pressed. “Who’s this somebody else?”

  Vito sneered at me. “You’ve got no clue, do you? Some PI … you got to come to me to find out that the people you’re talking about go straight to the top of the local food chain? Give me a break.”

  “A name, Alonzo,” De Soto said, and it sounded as though he was as interested in the answer as I was.

  “Galatas,” he replied, teeth clenched.

  I had to work hard not to let the shock register on my face.

  “Anything else?” De Soto asked.

  “There was another name that they kept tossing around a lot … might be the guy who was in charge of all the weird work like Henry was doing.”

  I made a “go on” gesture.

  “Horace,” Vito said. “That was the name. Horace.”

  “Horace what?”

  “Like I’d know,” Vito said, some of the arrogance coming back.

  I leaned back and sighed in satisfaction, nodding to De Soto to let him know I had what I’d come for.

  “Now if you’re done with your questions,” Vito said as he got up, “I’ve got other things to do tonight.”

  “Before you go, Alonzo, there are some matters we need to discuss privately,” De Soto said, his hand slipping just below the lip of the desk.

  Vito sat back down as a couple of men came through the office door, more casual than the steroid brigade I’d come to think of as the Do Sotos’ security. They were both wearing club clothes and holding a knife. I recognized the blades as being obsidian by the dull sheen.

  Though I hated him, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I had to give Vito a chance, some kind of warning at least.

  “Why so sore, Vito?” I asked, doing my best to walk the tightrope. “It’s not like I tied you to a chair and threatened to kill you if you didn’t tell me.”

  I was hoping that somewhere in that very addled brain of
his he would take the hint I was tossing him.

  “You’re not always gonna have my boss’s mini-skirt to hide behind,” he sneered, crossing his arms over his chest and making sure to look straight ahead. It was his way of giving me the cold shoulder, but it was also preventing him from seeing the real danger coming in from behind him. “So why don’t you get your sneaking, scheming ass out of here before I do something we’re both going to regret?”

  Way too late for that, I thought.

  Mrs. De Soto had walked around to where I stood. “I shall see you to the door, si?”

  It took everything I had not to scream at Vito as she led me away from the desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two knifemen move as the office door shut behind us. A couple of seconds later, I thought I heard a scream. I kept walking.

  After Estella De Soto had given me a quick “Vaya con dios,” she closed the back door behind me. Bald Guy gave me a funny look. “Is something the matter, Mr. Vale?”

  Guess it must have shown on my face. “Nothing a good night’s sleep can’t take care of.”

  He and Crew Cut looked unconvinced but both gave me a nod. As I walked away, I knew that sleep was the last thing that was going to help me with what I’d just seen. Could I have just witnessed the end of the Vitorini Empire?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Final countdown

  The sound of keystrokes greeted me as I stepped into the offsite’s office. I expected it to be Zian hammering away at his laptop like a woodpecker on a redwood, so was a little surprised to see Kennedy working on a duplicate of his laptop at the other end of the desk. Zian had both hands sitting in his lap as he read from his screen.

  “So who’s winning the latest Overwatch match?” I quipped.

  “Compared to what we’re looking at, hoss, Overwatch is about as exciting as checkers,” Kennedy said.

  “We’ve been crunching data ever since noon,” Zian chimed in, his eyes glued to his screen. “Kennedy called in sick and I got her set up just as soon as she got here.”