"Your choice! Thanks for the call!"
His companion, Harry Mettaliou, the same man who had accompanied him when Joe Kozcinskihad met with Nick Cavalieri, sat opposite him at the table. "Successful?" he asked.
"Yeah, it nearly went sour, but Drew Garnett, the senior man from the Pensions office, went back-up on the 'hit' team, and put our nosy friend Buddy Charles down with a long rifle. I like this guy, he gets involved, and he ain't scared to get his hands dirty!"
The two men, whose common factor in life was a certain coldness around the eyes, relaxed and concentrated on their breakfast, confident that all leaks had been plugged, and they were back on course.
Chapter 17
Joe Kozcinski was in his office, after leaving the board meeting which had been going on since seven in the morning, which had decided to suspend trading on the shares, to continue working on the reduced forecasts for the Stiletto sales, when his phone rang. Answering, he heard the multiple clicks of a long-distance connection, then a voice which asked, "Is that the Joseph Kozcinski who is in charge of Marketing at Continental?"
"Sure is. Who's calling please?"
"My name is Melchek, Ken Melchek. I am with the New York police force, and I am investigating the attempted murder of a young woman named Claudia Crickell. She was in contact with a Mrs. Allison Klein, who I believe you met while she was on a trip to Detroit before she was murdered in her home in KingsBurgh."
"Hold it, Officer Melchek, did you say murdered? I thought the Coroner's verdict was 'accidental death'?"
"Well, sir, we asked the upstate force to rerun the investigation, after certain allegations were made, and it turns out the Klein family were all murdered. Now the investigation which we are looking at has turned up a fact which needs resolving, hopefully by yourself, Mr. Kozcinski. I have Miss Crickell staying with me right now, and I think we may both benefit from a meeting."
Joe, while unsure about which way to go, detected a certainty about his caller which finally decided him, "Okay, I'll be over! Where and when?" As Joe listened to the policeman giving his address, and details of how to get there, and then made a promise to arrive in New York on the following Thursday morning, a man stretched as he lifted off a set of earphones, wrote an address down on a pad, and made a call to the communications house in New York where he hoped to, and did, catch Mr. Lazarus.
"Mr. Lazarus, I thought you might want to hear this first thing. It's Carl from Detroit, I have news from the tap on Joe Kozcinski's phones. We've lost the broadcast from the house, something wrong with the transmitter, and I got our guy in the garage to pull the gear from the car before the cops ran all over it, so all we have left is the line into his office in the Continental block. I just been listening to a talk between him and some cop in New York. , who is claiming to have some broad who has proof that there is something twisted in the commercials!"
"Carl, now I want you to be very certain, did Kozcinski swallow any of this story from the cop?" asked Lazarus.
"He swallowed it enough to arrange to fly to New York on Thursday, and meet up with this cop, and the girl; he's got her staying with him in his apartment! " the man in Detroit reeled off the address, while the wheelchair-bound man taped everything which was said.
"Thanks for the quick call, Carl. Don't do anything about the tap on the Kozcinski's home, it may just be a trap to suck you in. You get ready to clear the area, and leave no trace. Get ready to pull the tap on the office telephone, but keep listening until you think it may be better to pull out. Call me when you get anything further, okay?"
Lazarus returned his stare to the Stockwatch screen, which was showing the state of shares at the close of trading on the day before. The drop in the value of the Continental price was highlit in yellow, and showed a drop in price of over three dollars over the day. He had alerted his army of nominee buyers to be ready to push in the 'buy' orders immediately after the resumption of trading, and was now counting down the minutes to the bells ringing on the 'Floor'. But his elation was cut short by a flashing message along the base of the screen, which simply announced, "Continental trading is suspended". His strategy now in ruins, Lazarus called his fellow investors on a conference call, and sounded them all on further possible purchases, or staying with what they had already bought, and attempting a take-over with a minority holding less than they had planned.
The Boston tones of Elspeth Hardesty sounded over the speaker, "What exactly went wrong with the commercials, Lazarus?"
"The fools at the distribution agency, they switched the messages, and the television showed one evening of the third message ahead of time. That is what happened. I called the agency, pulled the clips, and had them replaced with the original message.!"
"I think the damage is done, we should stop any further action, allow the price to resume, and save our money," called Elspeth, "we have invested tens of millions, and we may well be left with a fatally damaged company, instead of one which we can manipulate further!"
"No, no; don't take any hasty action before I can remedy the position. We still may be able to control the company, and by buying at a still lower price. We can relocate the last commercial, which we now know works only too well, until just before the shares are to resume trading on the floor, then run the main commercial; all further confidence is destroyed, and we step in, and pick up the bargain we always planned to ."
There was a hiatus in the rumble of words, as the daring plan was diagnosed and mentally tested. Elspeth Hardesty spoke out first, "You think it will work a second time?"
"Positive! Just remember what two runs of the third message did to the share price! It was decimated. The stock dropped from just under one hundred & ten to less than one hundred & seven dollars over a five hour period. The first message created unease about the vehicles, without mentioning the shares, the third simply told people that Continental was going down, and they should get out now! It worked like a dream. Do I have your support?" The rumble of assent from the voices, all of which were tinged with greed, made Lazarus sit straighter in the wheelchair. "There is always an announcement of re-listing, at least two days before trading recommences, and on the evening of the second day, we run the third message, and the next day, Continental shall be ours. Good day, lady, gentlemen, you shall be hearing from me shortly!"
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The senior Detroit surgeon stood, pulling the gloves off his hands, and throwing them to the ground in frustration. "I just can't understand it! That guy should be alive, right now; instead of which he's a passenger on a gurney doing the run down to the morgue!" He referred to the man who had just died, after the surgeon had operated for a routine colon resection. The word had just been given to the surgeon by one of his team, the anaesthetics specialist; "What the hell happened?"
The anaesthesiologist replied, "Apparently he was doing fine, then just took a turn for the worse while still in the recovery room, and never came back up again. We called the 'crash wagon' but it was too late. You were still in the theatre when he died."
"Hell, I gave him the run-down myself, he was in pretty good shape; hell, he only had just started taking his pension. Shit, what a way to go, he works his ass off at Continental for near on thirty-five years, takes retirement, comes to us for a routine operation on his guts, and dies. Hell, that makes me really feel useless. I persuaded the old man to have the operation, told him it would be a home run! I think I'll get a check done in pathology, just to make sure I didn't miss anything!"
The anaesthesiologist nodded sympathetically, sure that the surgeon would find nothing wrong in his procedures, and equally sure that the drug he had given the patient would not show up on any scan, as it metabolized very quicky, even after death had taken place. He mentally checked his second bank account, and then added another three thousand dollars to the total.
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The gathering had been arranged, as usual, on the spur of the moment, with the only advance planning being
done by the three bulky men, who had scanned the back room at the small restaurant in Jersey City for taps and wires. Having pronounced the area clear, the visitors arrived, each walking from a separate limousine to the entrance, each protected by at least one armed back-up man. The last to arrive was the occupant of the Battery Park office, who had called the meeting, in order to update his partners on what was being done in their name. Don Guido Soncini had, in his rise to power, been responsible for seven deaths, all of either opposing Families or, in one case, his own Family.
He tapped the water glass before him, and the talk died away. "You are all aware of our involvement in the Detroit auto company, and the scheme we introduced; we called it the Selection file. We all agreed that the risk was worth the try, because if we could get inside a Fund such as Continentals', we would be able to use it as our own laundry. The man who approached us, together with two associates, had taken over forty million dollars, from the fund, for a 'buy' on the Market, and hoped to repay within two months. That did not happen, and the leader, who is, as you know, related, came to me for help." The speaker paused, his eyes going around the table.
"The scheme we came up with was to physically remove a good proportion of the pensioners, after insuring them, through a third party, under their own names, for half-a-million at a time. We chose the five hundred grand as a figure that all Life Companies would just pay out on, without enquiring into the deaths too much; after all, they would only find the old guy died in a accident, or an operating theatre. The money, less our fee, would be siphoned back into the fund, which would then help offset the loss of the stolen money. The Fund managers use a ratio to help determine how the damn thing is doing, and if the ratio remains unchanged, and the fiscal records remain as they were altered to reflect a loss on investments, there would be nothing to expose. We have been paid a considerable sum of money for our services, and after the File activities were complete, we would have access to a very large Pension fund, whose officers would be indebted to us. I have however, had news which may well terminate our relations with our Friend, and I think it would be best to terminate him as well; keeps things at a distance." The eyes and faces around the table never altered, as one by one, the men nodded in agreement.
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Claudia Crickell sat gazing out of the apartment window, looking at the darkening New York skyline, but seeing nothing. She was trying to figure what the reasons were to try and fool the giant auto company, with a set of phony results, when all that had to be done to overturn the scenario was to check back with the polling company. As Ken had told her, the Marketing Exec. was flying in , but he was not aware of the reason for his visit, which was to view the real graphs and results, but Claudia could not understand why he had said that he had seen the advert clips. "Hell," she mused, "I haven't seen them," not being much of a television fan at best, considering her time much more valuable than to be wasted on Game Shows and stupid Football games. She snapped on the television, and prepared herself for an evening's torture, by watching the most popular of the channels, which really meant wall-to-wall garbage. She watched for maybe an hour before the first of the Stiletto commercials came on screen, and watching, thought that they were the usual competent offering, but somehow started thinking that maybe buying a big Stiletto was not such a good idea. She saw another two clips before Ken got back from his shift, and as he opened the door, he saw her gazing at the screen, shaking her beautiful head in disbelief.
"What's wrong, Claudia?" he called as he dropped the bag of groceries he had picked up off the K-Mart shelves before heading home.
"There is definitely something wrong with either that big car, or that damn commercial! I've watched three clips for Stiletto auto's in the past two hours, and all I can remember is the one word when the name Stiletto is mentioned, and that word is 'Turkey'. Hell, I ain't even driven in one, and I just don't trust them, period!"
The tall policeman dropped down onto the couch beside the girl, and squeezed her hand in greeting, "Does this mean that you don't want to buy a Stiletto?" he grinned, ""We'll buy a Chevy when we get settled."
"What's this 'we', buster," returned the black girl, "We ain't had our first official date yet, and you are making plans, policeman!"
The response from the big man was to scoop her up, and swing her across his knees, and cuddle her close, "Let's call this our 'getting to know you time'" as he gently nibbled her ear.
She snuggled close, winding her arms tight around his neck, as she whispered, "Stop trying to have your evil way with me, you nasty man. If you don't stop immediately, I'll call a policeman!"
They kissed, but both Ken and Claudia kept to their self-imposed rules, and thus parted about five minutes later, both hazy and warm from love, and breathless from unrequited passion."You gonna make something to eat, honey; mainly because I'm beat?"
"If you want, we could go out and grab a bite, Ken. I been stuck here all day, and now all you want is to make me work! "
So it was that the pair were making ready to leave the apartment when a knock came at the front door, and Ken made his way towards it. Unaware of the ferocity of the people that he and Claudia were ranged against, he opened the door, to find himself staring at the wrong end of a silencer, fitted to a pistol. The gunman simply pulled the trigger twice, dropping Ken where he stood, before moving into the apartment to hunt the girl he had been given as his primary target. Claudia tried to run, but the killer simply waited until he had a clear shot, then sent one bullet , followed by another, clean into her chest , and the black girl fell at his feet. The gunman commenced a search of the apartment, before finding the computer, and all the discs, in Claudia's briefcase. He simply closed the case up, and took all the evidence with him, pushing the policeman's legs aside so he could fully close the door.
The next morning, Brad Davis stood in front of the elderly black woman, who's face was crumpled and racked with grief. "Why, Officer Davis," she asked? AYour Officer said he would protect my girl, and she is nearly dead!@
"That officer is lying in hospital on a life-support machine, in the same intensive care ward as your daughter, Mrs. Crickell! We don't know whether he is gonna make it! The only thing that saved both their lives is that the gunman used a 'twenty-two' calibre pistol, which was too small to kill them straight away. I don't know exactly why this happened, but I promise you one thing, we will get the people who did this, and make them pay!"
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The three who had masterminded the Selection File met in a smart roadhouse to the north of Detroit proper. The meal was consumed, and coffee ordered before any business was discussed, as was usual in any meeting which included Nick Cavalieri. "Can you update us on progress with the File activities, Drew?"
The sharply dressed black man leant forward and spoke to the others, "We have so far, this month, terminated fifteen, out of a planned File total of ninety; three having died from natural causes before our teams could come to them. The only extra activity resulted from my involvement in the unfortunate demise of our late friend Buddy Charles, from the Computer Section. He became a little too nosy, after talking to our other friend Kozcinski, presumably about the spreadsheet that Kozcinski inadvertently broke into. I talked to Vince, and he gave me the name of a usually reliable hood in Detroit, but somehow the cops were warned, and it fell to me to put our friend Buddy down with a rifle. The cops had killed one of the two we sent, and also used a shotgun on Jerry Touche, that's the guy I contacted. They would have got a sniff from this Charles guy, I'm sure; so I dropped him!"
"Will Touche remain silent?" asked Virginia Horrigan, sipping her coffee calmly.
"He had been contemplating being unwise, but after the target got a shell in his head, he suddenly took a vow of silence," remarked Garnett, smiling broadly, "we also got him an attorney, and after he got word that there would be a plea bargain down to maybe 'carrying an unlicensed weapon', plus word that the Family would be looking out for him
, he is maintaining his lack of verbal endeavour."
"Great," remarked Nick, "are we any further forward in stemming our problems in the fund itself?" he asked of Virginia.
" Because the other clunks on the committee are not up to scratch, they don't know which questions to ask, and after all, who ever heard of a huge pension fund like Continental ever having problems. But the lousy results and performance of the portfolio, which left us exposed to losses, is still a problem. The loans, which we three had from the pool, and which went bad so spectacularly, have not been detected, as we are in control of the fund listings, and since the records are in our hands, and the ratio of investment savings to pensioners is fast coming back into line, that doesn't seem to be a problem. The payments from our friends are fast coming up to the halfway mark, and we can always put it down, in the minutes, to an unfortunate investment by the last set of Investment Managers. No-one reads the damn things anyway! Our payments to our friends in New York, are covered by the resultant savings by a factor of fifteen, so we are still getting extremely good value for money from our efforts to stabilise the fund's resources!"
Drew Garnett leant forward, "Is Joe Kozcinski gonna be able to get any further forward with his little ideas about computer searches?"
"Nope," replied the Finance VP, "I went into the file server, and put a simple information block on the search for terminals, and any query about fourth level files will simply result in a null answer!"
"Excellent! Thank you both very much, Virginia, Drew; a most successful meeting!"
Chapter 18
In a dark Harlem bar, SixThree, the firebomber who originally hit Claudia's car was negotiating the price for another job. Word had spread about his undoubted talents at making all the evidence burn up, and he was in demand, which of course had encouraged him to raise his prices. His ear glued to the payphone, he was screwing an extra two hundred out of his contact, who needed to produce results. The intended victim, who had run up big debts with an uptown bookmaker, had then decided that gambling debts were not enforceable in law, telling the bookie to go jump. This New York bookmaker, who's commercial existence depend on customers being aware of what may happen if someone welshes on a bet; had simply called a friend, who agreed a price and laid a straight contract on the victim. The result was 'SixThree', agreeing a price of a thousand dollars to kill the man in his car, in the way he had perfected and used eight previous times.
Continental Attack: Murder and Mayhem in Detroit's Auto Industry Page 17
