“How you doing, honey?” he asked.
“I’m feeling better. Went for a ride and just got out of the shower. You?”
“I feel like shit. They must have poisoned me last night.”
“Let me guess, cigarettes were involved?”
“Yeah, and Jagermeister. It was ugly and stupid.” Nick was in the remorse phase of the hangover.
“Sounds like it. Well, I’m okay, so you can stay in bed and recover. I’m just going to hang at the house.” Tess didn’t enjoy being around Nick when he was hung over. She was in no mood to play babysitter. Besides, he’d done this to himself; it wasn’t like somebody had held a gun to his head.
“I might do that. Maybe we can hook up tomorrow? I need to take you to the shop and go through the insurance claims. Why don’t I call when I get up?” Nick was relieved she sounded stable. Not the old Tess by a long shot, but at least she was off the mat and swinging again.
“That’s fine. I’ll be awake fairly early.”
She wanted to tell him about her sister and what a bastard her husband had been, about how Duff had called and extended his sympathies, how Stan was pitching in to be supportive—but she realized that wasn’t his role in their relationship.
For the first time in her adult life, she felt like she wanted more. And when she thought about that want, Detective Ron’s face was the first thing she saw. Too weird.
She hardly knew him; she was probably projecting all kinds of qualities he didn’t even possess. Plus, he was at least in his mid-thirties, and so straight-laced. The trauma of losing her father was causing her to go off the deep end. She really had to get a grip on herself.
Still…
* * *
Saul’s intercom buzzed.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“Ben.”
Ahh, his cash cow had arrived. He pushed the buzzer. A few moments later his doorbell rang. He looked through the peephole and saw a diminutive Asian man with an envelope in his hand; he methodically unlocked the deadbolts and opened the door, speaking as he did so.
“Welcome, welcome. Your boss called and—oooofffff…” Saul was interrupted as the small man drove his leg into his considerable midsection. A second man entered and closed the door. Saul realized he’d been duped even as he struggled for breath.
“Get up,” said the taller of the two.
Saul grappled to get to his knees, laboring to breathe. His discomfort from the blow to his stomach was eclipsed by his fear from the two men’s appearance at his apartment. He crawled down the hall to his living room and used his favorite chair as support to rise to a bent-over standing position.
“Where the bills?” the shorter one demanded.
Saul looked at the man, slowly realizing what he was talking about. Shit. The counterfeiters were there, and they wanted their bills back. These were probably the same men who’d killed Stan’s friend—which meant Saul was also a dead man, barring a miracle. Then again, Treasury was supposed to be there any minute, if Ken hadn’t lied to him. It was now after three, so if he could keep them talking he might stand a chance. It was hope, even if unlikely.
“What are you talking about? Why are you attacking me? What have I done to you?”
The little man approached him and delivered a strike to Saul’s groin, collapsing him into the chair. The taller man pulled a roll of duct tape out of his windbreaker, and secured Saul’s feet, then taped his hands to the arms of the chair.
“Where the bills?” he asked one more time.
“I—what are you…I don’t know…” Saul was stalling, trying to recover from the blinding pain in his crotch.
The taller man went into Saul’s kitchen and returned with a large butcher knife. He waved it in Saul’s face.
“You lie. Tell truth where bills, or I cut fingers.” His English might have been marginal, but his message still came through loud and clear.
Saul was a physical coward with a low pain threshold. His face went white when he saw the knife.
“No…please…I’ll tell you what you want. I swear…I’ll tell you anything…”
“Where the bills?”
“Just let me catch my breath, and I’ll tell you…” Still stalling.
The taller man moved quickly, nonchalantly, and severed Saul’s right index and middle finger. It was so fast that for a moment Saul didn’t feel anything, just watched in horror as his blood spurted from the stumps. He looked up in terror. Then the pain shot up his arm and exploded in his head, a white-hot supernova of agony. He screamed, and the smaller man stuffed a dishrag into his mouth.
The taller man flicked the two fingers onto the floor with the tip of the blade and grinned at Saul. He spoke slowly, deliberately.
“You tell where bills are, or cut pee-pee after fingers.” In order to make the point clear he hacked off Saul’s other hand at the knuckles, leaving only part of a thumb. Saul shrieked into the dishrag and blacked out.
The smaller man cracked a smelling salt under Saul’s nose, bringing him to. They didn’t have a lot of time, and needed answers. Saul resumed howling and the man leaned over, whispering in his ear.
“Next pee-pee. Where bills? I take out rag, you tell, okay?”
Saul was more afraid and in more pain than he’d ever been in his life. He nodded, and the man removed the rag.
“On…the…desk…near the…envelope…”
The man stuffed the rag back in Saul’s mouth. The taller man approached the desk and picked up the four hundred-dollar bills.
“Where you get?” The smaller man asked.
Saul wasn’t going to tell them that. He wasn’t going to give them Stan. No way.
“A…customer…I don’t…his name…Robert…something…”
The shorter man looked at the taller one. This wasn’t going well. They needed the name of whoever brought the bills there. The shorter man unbuckled Saul’s pants and pulled down his zipper.
In the end Saul told them all about Stan.
Once they were satisfied they’d gotten everything, the smaller man severed Saul’s jugular. The last thing Saul saw was the bottle of wine he’d purchased to celebrate the best day of his life, chilling on the ledge.
The two men worked quickly and efficiently, quietly ransacking the apartment to verify there were no more bills secreted away. They took the comparison book of hundreds, just in case, as well as every other piece of U.S. currency.
The phone rang, spooking them and re-emphasizing the urgency of the situation. They were out of time. They silently departed, listening for any alarming sounds or indications of danger. At the front door they scanned the street and, satisfied no one was watching them, made their way to the main artery.
Chapter 19
Ron had the custodian open the door at Candy’s place, and went in with a uniformed officer as a witness. He’d gotten a warrant as soon as he heard Candy was missing.
Her bike was still in the hallway, and there was no evidence she had been in since the previous night. Two messages blinked on her answering machine, both from today. It was Pug and Tab, calling to make sure she was okay. Distinctive voices.
He started in her bathroom and found the expected odds and ends. It was always remarkable how little the victims left behind. He moved into her bedroom, and noted the pictures framed in oak: Candy, née Susan Keltridge, from Smyrna, Georgia, in her teens, standing next to an impossibly obese woman who bore a family resemblance. That would probably be Mom. Another shot of Candy as Miss Smyrna, next to the same woman and a thin, sickly-looking man sporting a large belt buckle and a baseball cap with the Caterpillar logo on it. Dad?
Next to her bed, a few more current headshots: Candy looking mysterious, Candy looking perky and fun, Candy looking like the girl next door, Candy as secretary. The whole bedroom was a shrine to her image.
He went through her drawers and jewelry box and found the expected drug paraphernalia. Candy apparently liked her weed and coke, judging by the little bit left in the
little bags. And condoms aplenty in her nightstand. Apparently being in your early twenties in the big city meant a lot of drugs and sex. Not in your mid-thirties if you were a homicide detective. Tut tut, there’d be none of that on Ron’s watch. He didn’t know whether to be saddened or amused. He opted for neither.
Ron looked around unenthusiastically for an itinerary with a name or a phone number circled in red for last night. You could always hope. In the real world, there was never such an unambiguous pointer—but he did find a note pad by the phone. He took it, figuring he might be able to get some impressions from it that could yield a clue. It was worth a shot, since right now he had a big fat nothing.
They finished and closed up the apartment. Another dead end in the career of Ron Stanford, the guy who couldn’t stop the killing. He knew that unless they had a breakthrough, in two nights another girl would be butchered.
* * *
Stan was getting ready to close up shop when his phone rang. It was his building’s superintendent.
“Stan, this is Paul. Sorry to bug you, but we’ve got a little emergency going on here. The floor above you had a pipe burst and your ceiling’s wrecked. I think you’d better get over here and move everything around to limit the damage. I’ve got the plumbers on their way and I’ve turned off the water, but it’s a mess.”
What next? Bad news seemed to come in waves; he was resigned that this was one of those times when things weren’t going to go his way.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“We won’t know for sure until the plumbers get here, but part of the floor is ruined and your ceiling will need to be re-plastered. It’s just by the grace of God the lady was home and called me, or it could have been much, much worse.” Paul reported.
What a hassle. Still, these things happened in buildings where the plumbing was fifty to a hundred years old.
“I’ll get back there as quickly as I can. Thanks for the heads up.” Stan had to do some juggling. His dinner with Saul could wait one day, and he really didn’t have anything else—although he did want to see Tess, and break the news about the money in person. In a perfect world that’s how he would handle it.
It hadn’t been a perfect world for some time.
He dialed Saul’s number and it just rang. Knowing Saul, he assumed he’d gone out to get some wine or a celebratory snack, or both. He wished Saul would get an answering machine, but that was one of his eccentricities: he believed he’d lived without one most of his life and gotten along fine, so why waste the money on one now?
Stan sighed. He’d try him again from home. It was only three-something; he had bigger fish to fry. He called Tess and was glad she picked up.
“Hey, sweetie, it’s Stan. How’re you doing today?”
“Good, Uncle Stan. Well, maybe not good…but better than yesterday,” Tess said.
He debated telling her about Saul’s discovery.
“Tess, I have some news about the hundred-dollar bills,” he started.
“Oh, right, the money. What’s up?”
“The guy I took it to, who’s one of the foremost authorities in the world, examined the bills and established them as counterfeits. They’re fake, Tess. I’m sorry,” Stan said.
“Wait—so my Dad traded a million dollars worth of watches for worthless paper? How could that happen? Wouldn’t he check to make sure it was real?” Tess couldn’t understand how her father had been tricked.
“He did check. The bills are so good, they fooled the bank at the airport, and would have tricked any bank in the country. At least according to Saul.”
“So why not just spend them, if no one will be able to tell?” Tess asked, then thought about it.
The obvious ethical conundrum was that she had a million dollars of fakes and no one could tell they were fakes—but she knew they were. But a million dollars was a lot of money, and they were still out the watches. So what to do?
Stan took his time with the question. “Tess, this is where it gets hard. I suppose you could do that and claim you had no idea, if and when anyone ever caught on. I’d never tell; you would have plausible deniability. As far as the Treasury Department goes, Saul is turning the bills over to them—but all he knows is that he got them from me, and I got them from your dad. Which is technically true.” He thought about it. “I can’t tell you what to do. You’re a smart girl. This one’s up to you.”
“Can it get any worse, Uncle Stan? It seems like everything is just collapsing on me.” Tess sounded distressed. Stan should have told her in person.
“It’s not the end of the world, honey. Trust me on this. Take a few days to think things through, there’s no rush. Me, I have a burst pipe at home flooding my living room—speaking of can it get any worse—so I gotta go. Let’s get together tomorrow for breakfast—over at the little deli on West 32nd? Your dad and I used to meet there, I remember him bringing you a few times,” Stan recalled.
“I remember the place, Uncle Stan. Tomorrow at nine work for you?” she asked.
“That’s perfect, Tess. Take care, I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t worry, everything will work out.”
“Okay, if you say so.” She sounded unconvinced.
Stan closed his shop, locked the door, pulled down the metal protective awning and padlocked it in place. He considered the graffiti on it that he’d never bothered to remove. The little pricks would just come back and spray it again, so what was the point? He groaned from the effort and the heat, and made his way to the subway and his apartment.
* * *
Tess was torn. The right thing to do was to turn the bills over to the Treasury Department or whoever. But a million dollars was a lot of money, and she could spend those dollars right now: buy a car, some diamonds, take a trip…And no one would be the wiser. She could fly to Vegas and launder the whole amount, by buying a hundred grand worth of chips at different casinos, playing for an hour, and then cashing them in. She could think of thirty ways to wash the cash, so it wasn’t a logistical issue, it was a moral one. But as Stan had pointed out, she didn’t have to decide this evening. She’d sleep on it.
Tess decided to get the unpleasant return call out of the way. Her sister picked up on the fourth ring.
“Chrissy, it’s Tess. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m okay, I suppose. God, this is so horrible. Do they have any idea who killed Dad?” she asked.
“No, but I talked to the detectives and they seem really smart, on top of things.”
“It’s just so strange. Did you know I haven’t talked to him for almost six months? And now he’s gone forever…” Chrissy was choking up, partially out of self-pity, of course.
“I know, it’s weird. The world just seems so empty.” Tess couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I…did you get my message?” Chrissy inquired.
“Yeah, although I didn’t really listen to it; I was running through the house while it played.” Tess wasn’t going to let her dickweed husband off the hook so fast.
“I’m…well, you know Steve’s just as upset as you or me…” Chrissy tried again.
“You could have fooled me. He sounded way more interested in attacking me than in offering condolences,” Tess said.
“I’m not going to defend the way he handled that. I just wanted you to know, we’re both sorry it happened that way.”
“Let’s just let it go, okay, Chrissy? We have a lot of things to work through. There’s a funeral to plan, I have to fill out insurance papers, we have to find out if there’s a will. A lot of stuff, and Steve’s not even on my radar right now.” Tess had a mental list of the problems at hand; she declined mentioning the counterfeit bills. Why complicate things further?
“I don’t know if I can get over to the East Coast on short notice for a funeral. Let me know when it will be so I can see about flights and baby-sitters. Steve’s in a big trial and can’t leave town this month at all, and can’t really take care of the kids, and they’ve got summer school…”
>
Chrissy, in typical fashion, was thinking about what would be easiest for Chrissy. Tess would bet she’d be on the next flight out if travel was a requirement for her to see money out of the will—presuming there was one. Tess always felt dirty and disgusted when she dealt with her sister, and was being reminded why she never called her.
“Yeah, everyone sounds really busy. Don’t worry, Chrissy, I was planning to handle everything from this end. You can send flowers or something. No need to disrupt your or Steve’s schedule.” Tess tried to sound neutral, but she knew it sounded snippy.
“You have no idea how hard it is managing a family and taking care of a husband, Tess. Your life is different than mine…”
“Spare me. You have the life you chose. And mine is more complicated than you know.” Tess didn’t have any patience for her sister’s pity act.
“I don’t want to get into this with you. Let’s just agree to talk once you have details on the funeral.” A pause. “And the will.”
Aha. There it was. How much am I getting? She knew it—pure self-interest driving Chrissy, as always.
“Okay, fair enough.” Tess felt like getting in a dig at her sister. “I might need to ask you for some cash to help pay for Dad’s funeral, Chrissy. I’m a bike messenger, so money’s tight.” Now she could watch the squirming start.
“I’ll have to talk to Steve. I know that with the remodel and the kid’s braces, we’re pretty strapped too. I’ll have to see what we can scrape up…” Chrissy hadn’t expected to have to give—the purpose of her call was to get. “I’ve got to go, Tess, the kids are up to no good. I’m sure you’ll manage. Call me when you hear something.” She couldn’t disconnect fast enough.
So Chrissy, who hadn’t worked a day in the last decade, and whose husband made six figures, was going to pawn off the entire expense of a funeral on her bike messenger sister. Did it get any lower? Not that Tess was surprised. It was completely in character.
Fatal Exchange Page 15
