The Chessman

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  Elaine snuck out early and on the drive home gave it serious thought. Telecommuting for Mr. Schmooze in New York City was exactly what the doctor ordered, a no-brainer; she’d get her sanity back. Elaine couldn’t wait to tell Steve. He’d be ecstatic for her, even if he would miss out on the comic relief that Albert Banning’s very existence provided. She’d already phrased a terse two-weeks’ notice in her mind, which she would likely tamper down—no need to burn bridges—although it’d be nearly orgasmic to scrape the numbnuts off her shoe. Elaine began tapping the monthly code into the wall security unit when she realized the unit wasn’t operating correctly.

  “It might not be working anymore,” a voice behind her whispered.

  Elaine almost jumped out of her skin, but turned, landing in a classic karate defensive stance. The tall man in a black suit, a yard away, stared down at her. Elaine knew she’d never make the door. Her black belt training kicked in and she threw up a head kick.

  The tall man drew back and patted her foot aside with the fingers of his left hand. The momentum threw Elaine off balance, but she adjusted and returned to the fighting stance. It was hard to tell, but the tall man appeared to be smiling. Elaine threw a throat strike, a quick towel snap to disable him while she cut for the door. But something went wrong and Elaine found herself pushed back against the wall. She hadn’t felt the man’s blow, but she couldn’t seem to get her breath. Her face was pressed against the defective security unit.

  The tall man looked into her eyes as the stiletto slid under her solar plexus and up into her heart. He rotated the knife handle, giving Elaine a final jolt right before she died. A final jolt to help the woman appreciate the irony of how worthless her years of strip mall karate had been. Using the stiletto as a handle, the tall man eased Elaine slowly to the floor of the entryway. He knelt down next to her and retracted the blade. He took out a glass pawn and pressed the tip of the chess piece into the knife wound. Then he stripped the surgical gloves off from the inside out, capturing the stiletto within the right-hand glove.

  The tall man had gotten there early and fine-tooth combed the Kellervick residence, checking all the obvious and not-so-obvious places. It was clean. He searched the home PC for any files or e-mails created in the past week. Nothing of any consequence to anyone.

  The tall man headed toward the back door but paused in front of the double-door refrigerator. He picked up a napkin and used it to open the appliance. He grabbed The Cheesecake Factory container.

  The tall man loved tiramisu.

  Chapter 14

  Six Months Ago

  Lucy would be home any minute.

  He had to tell her. Drake Hartzell had put off telling Lucy the truth for as long as possible because of the heartache, pain, and cutting betrayal that would become her new reality. But he was running out of time. It would shatter her world—their world. Hartzell had to tell her tonight. There was no other way.

  He stared out over the Hudson River through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse suite seventy-two flights above Manhattan. He wished with all his heart, or whatever chunk of spent charcoal passed for his heart, that he and Lucy were safe and sound back in England in their St. Leonards-on-Sea estate. The former NASDAQ chairman took another deep sip from his snifter and did mental gymnastics, attempting to figure out how much longer he could keep the balls in the air. They say that you can’t cheat an honest man, but Hartzell knew firsthand that that was all bullshit. He had made an exceedingly lucrative living cheating honest men…and quite a few women, too.

  Hartzell stumbled back to the living room, kicked over an empty cognac bottle, and sank deep into the leather sofa. Good Christ, he thought. Good Christ.

  He’d come unimaginably far since his youth, that hellish hardscrabble in Walton, and Hartzell didn’t know what he missed less about that urban shit-hole in Liverpool: the way his family eked out a living on potatoes and gruel or the sting of his father’s belt whenever the old bastard drank his unemployment check or—throughout Pop’s briefer and briefer stints with industry—needed to let off steam after a particularly irritating shift at the dockyard. Hartzell never returned after holding a final palaver with the cruel son of a bitch, a meeting in which a fifteen-year-old Hartzell smashed his old man’s teeth in, repeatedly, with a pipe wrench. He never once looked back; when the money began to pour in, he never sent any funds back to Walton, not even to help support his mother and three sisters. Never even crossed his mind. They were a part of Hartzell’s life best relegated to the past. And after a stretch in the Royal Navy, he came to America in the late 1970s in order to reinvent himself in this the land of opportunity. And reinvent himself Hartzell did.

  Highly regarded and highly sought after, Drake Hartzell made a most pleasant living as a money manager and investment guru. In addition, Hartzell, a renowned philanthropist, fundraised relentlessly for a lengthy buffet of charitable causes—trendy causes, causes that allowed him great access to the rich and the famous and the movie stars and the widows with buckets of money to burn. And they in turn were enthralled by Hartzell’s cheery demeanor, his English accent and, now that he was nearing fifty, his distinguished mane of gray hair. Hartzell was the crowned prince at charming the glitterati and glamour crowds on both the east and west coasts of the colonies. They loved the stories of his luncheons with Tony Blair, his real estate dealings with Prince Charles, and his heartbreak over the death of Lady Di. Fascinating stories told with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye, and all met with looks of awe and hearty nods of instant friendship. Yes, Hartzell had reinvented himself all right, as a world-class schmoozer to the grotesquely and obscenely wealthy. So what if absolutely none of his stories from jolly ole England happened to be true?

  Hell, most investors didn’t even knowingly invest directly through him, but went through one of twenty hedge funds that, in turn, provided Hartzell with their assets to manage. Life was grand, exceptionally so. Hartzell’s winning investment algorithm was a closely held secret; it had to be, in this era of corporate espionage and shady dealings. Truth be told, Hartzell himself had stolen his winning investment algorithm off an Italian immigrant from nearly a century ago…a chap by the name of Charlie Ponzi.

  Hartzell’s investment fraud flew quietly under the radar so as to not arouse suspicion. He promised clients modest gains and steady returns, when, actually, any funds redeemed by investors were taken out of the proceeds of more recent investors. Hartzell had even been able to survive the scrutiny that that blundering fuck Bernard Madoff had shined on the industry, thanks in no small part to greasing the palms of a variety of SEC officials, as well as the sheer byzantine nature of his various feeder funds. Hartzell was also a bright enough operator who dealt hefty political contributions to both sides of the aisle over the years, like a blackjack dealer flipping cards.

  Hartzell’s investment advisory firm, with him as broker-dealer, executed orders for his clients, on paper at least. Hartzell’s exhaustive knowledge of electronic trading aided him immeasurably in removing a concrete paper trail and providing the appearance of transactions. In other words, the statements his investors received were falsified with deceptive history-related performance data, as well as related finance data inserted in place of the funds’ true achievement. In still other words, a highly sophisticated cut-and-paste fraud. In reality, Hartzell’s firm placed next to no trades. In order to obfuscate, to muddy the waters of any potential investigation, Hartzell commingled his personal funds with the assets from his advisory business, along with his market-making finances—all quite contrary to regulation, and all increasingly siphoned off into numbered accounts set up in various ports around the world.

  His idol, a Connecticutian named Phineas Taylor Barnum or, simpler yet, P.T. Barnum, was off by a mile. There’s not a sucker born every minute—try every second, and even that’s a low-ball estimate. Hartzell had a laundry list of rationales that allowed him to sleep like a baby each and every night. Witness the endless business executiv
es riding their golden parachutes gently down to terra firma while their companies were left to crash and crater in the turbulence. Witness ambulance-chasing deep-pocket-picking shysters of every hue slobbering out of their cubby holes to win the legal lottery. Witness union knot-heads strangling the golden goose, destroying whole industries by squeezing compensation benefits completely out of whack with their members’ education levels or skill sets. Witness skyrocketing tuition hikes, a thousand times the rate of inflation, with graduating seniors slowly coming to realize that they are both jobless and bankrupt. Witness the lobbyist parasites engulfing the body politic like a second skin. Witness Chicago trying to sell off a senate seat to the highest bidder. Witness an ex-Vice President, a Nobel Prize and Oscar winner—one whose home phone number Hartzell had listed in his personal Rolodex—doing the Chicken Little dance in order to rake in untold millions from carbon offsets, whatever the hell those damn things were. Witness 401(k)s wiped out on a colossal Chernobyl-style meltdown due to the fuckwits in D.C. raccooning into markets of which they knew naught. Witness a much larger Ponzi scheme referred to as the United States Social Security system. Witness the federal budget deficit, witness the burgeoning federal debt, witness endless bailouts to the incompetent and corrupt…and all arrears passed on to the unsuspecting newborns in each and every maternity ward across the land, sea to shining sea.

  It was all malarkey—pure twaddle—a crock of the highest order.

  So why on earth shouldn’t Hartzell get his?

  It would be criminal for him not to. If anything, Hartzell was performing a much-needed public service. He had spent over two decades shearing the frivolous rich, the malignant narcissists, the snobby twits and self-aggrandizing scatterbrains that were both loaded and pampered beyond any sense of reality, beyond any grounding on Planet Earth. Infantile temper tantrums at the drop of a hat, diva hysterics over lukewarm appetizers, any imagined slights or, God forbid, five minutes without a sycophant declaring their undying devotion—a pissier bunch you’d never meet. It was all he could do these days to remain in high spirits, witty and smiling, whilst mingling in the same room with these hoity-toity balls of curdled milk. And Hartzell only wished he could be around, a mere fly on the wall, when the news broke and it very slowly dawned on them that many of their investments weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. If only he could catch a passing glimpse of their expressions as it sank in, or hear the collective sound, a sound of such magnitude as to register on the Richter scale, as tens of thousands of sphincters puckered up as the investors came to the realization that their golden years might not be as pleasant as heretofore anticipated.

  All that said, Hartzell supposed himself a sociopath to no small degree, his sense of right and wrong beaten out of him as a child, but he had one slight chink in his suit of armor—an abiding love for a very special young woman, his daughter, which he imagined made him almost human. It was a paternal love that would very likely be his downfall, a deep caring that kept him from exiting, stage left, to a spanking new life in the West Indies or some other most hospitable place where he could live out the remainder of his life under a different name with a bottomless bank account to help ease all pain.

  Hartzell’s Achilles’ heel was named Lucy, and she was a delightful brunette with aristocratic features, eternally searching brown eyes, and a quick tongue. Lucy was the byproduct of a short tryst he’d had with a minor English actress who’d had a minor part in a forgettable Broadway production of two decades past. Lucy’s mother, Alison, had been an unbearable bore, but it had been pleasing to spend a little time with a beautiful woman from his side of the pond. After the show’s short run, Alison had skirted back to Piccadilly to spoonfeed more nonsense to the unwashed masses. Hartzell was elated at her departure from New York City, even shuttled her to JFK International himself, but was absolutely infuriated ten days later when she called to inform him of their pregnancy.

  Hartzell did his finest to dance Alison into having an abortion, but for once his charm fell flat. Alison was adamant—she was keeping the baby. Evidently, Hartzell assumed, she’d realized her income from him would be considerably more reliable than that from the London stage. Under the more-than-veiled threat of dragging Hartzell through the magistrates’ court for child maintenance, completely unacceptable for a man of his position, he had agreed through his solicitor to set Alison up with overly generous monthly support allotments, as well as cutting the shrew a preliminary check for a quarter-million pounds sterling. It was a move that immediately turned the pouting wench into toothy smiles and, more importantly, would not imperil his reputation.

  For Lucy’s first five years of life, and more to polish his image, Hartzell had one of his secretaries mail the little one a weekly postcard from the Big Apple with a happy sentence or two from Daddy—all thoroughly forged on his behalf. Once a month the same secretary was instructed to pick out a children’s gift and have it parceled off to his daughter. Hartzell didn’t understand what all the talk was about—being a parent was a breeze. Once Lucy was able to talk, and after a glass or two of Dom Perignon, he began making the obligatory weekly phone call.

  Yes, Lucy was the chink in his armor. Quite frankly, if Hartzell had to pinpoint the exact moment when this chink first materialized, it would be the first time that Lucy called him “Papa” over the telephone. He was up half the night thinking about his little girl and two weeks later, when he could finally pull away from work, he found himself in London, calling on Lucy in person.

  By the time Lucy was six, she was spending the summers with Hartzell. Brilliant, he thought at the time, as he paraded Lucy—who could out-Shirley Shirley Temple—through an assortment of charity get-togethers and fundraisers, casting himself as the doting father. And the investments continued to roll in. By age ten, and another quarter-million sterling to a recently married Alison, Lucy came to live with Hartzell full time. Of course Lucy grew up with the finest nannies and the best tutors; she graduated from Trinity, and now was in her second year of studying dance at Juilliard.

  But since the sharp decline of the U.S. Financial Industry, he’d been ill with worry. Not about the SEC or any federal investigation when he could no longer keep the balls in the air—because he’d always known that it was only a matter of time, that his days were surely numbered. And he had planned for that day all along. No, what kept Hartzell up into the wee hours of the night, what had caused him to lose twenty pounds in the past month, was how on earth he going to tell his daughter—the singular love of his life—the truth.

  Hartzell heard the key in the lock. He heard the door swing open and shut in the foyer. He heard soft footsteps on the hardwood.

  Lucy had arrived.

  Chapter 15

  Present Day

  “Who killed my daughter, Agent Cady?”

  Dorsey Kelch was Cady’s first stop in his cold casing of the initial Chessman murders for Assistant Director Jund. He had contacted her that morning, asked if he could swing by her one-story rambler in the Wyomissing Borough of Reading, the seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, and chat with her about her daughter, Marly. Mrs. Kelch had graciously welcomed Cady into her home; however, her toy dachshund, Rex, took an instant dislike to the agent and was quickly exiled to the backyard. After a short filibuster by the kitchen door, the dog marched over and sat under the picnic table. Mrs. Kelch served Cady a cup of green tea and oatmeal raisin cookies as Cady spent an hour paging through Marly’s old high school yearbooks and photo albums, and scratching the names of old boyfriends onto his notepad.

  “I hate to be obtuse, Mrs. Kelch, but it really is a fishing expedition regarding a current investigation. Double-checking facts, like I mentioned on the phone.”

  “How did my daughter really die, Agent Cady?”

  “No hard evidence indicates that it was anything other than an accidental drowning. It would be unethical of me to feed you conjecture.” Cady hated himself for stating it in this manner, for disturbing this poor woman’s solit
ude by raking over coals of the past, but it was the truth at this point—the abridged version, anyway.

  “Remember when you came by a few years ago, to ask about Marly’s relationship, or lack of one, with Bret Ingram?”

  “Yes.”

  “I called you at the number you gave me when the news broke that Dane Schaeffer had methodically gone about killing his old Princeton chums, but you weren’t there. They said you were on medical leave.”

  Cady unconsciously squeezed the fingers of his right hand into a partial fist. “I spent several months in physical therapy.”

  Dorsey Kelch shot Cady a questioning look that went unanswered.

  “Then I contacted Sheriff Littman in Bergen County. He recited what you just told me almost verbatim. No evidence exists to indicate…nothing conclusive—blah, blah, blah.”

  “After everything you’ve been through, the last thing I want is to turn your world upside down based on speculation. Quite frankly, Mrs. Kelch, it would sound like faulty assumptions and foolish guesswork.”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Dorsey Kelch repeated. “Thirteen years ago my only child dies in a god-awful accident at a god-awful party, but I put my faith in God and live with it. Ten years drag by and suddenly you appear asking if Marly was seeing this Ingram boy, if Marly knew the Zalentines. I’d never heard of Bret Ingram until the day the police informed me that my daughter was dead—the worst day of my life—and I’d never heard of the Zalentine twins until I read in the newspaper how they drowned all of those poor young women on that death boat of theirs. Turns out these same Zalentines were at Snow Goose Lake the night my daughter accidently drowned. But nothing is ever conclusive. Now, three years later, you’re back in my living room jotting down the name of any guy Marly ever looked at. I’m asking you again, Agent Cady, who killed my daughter?”