The Chessman

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  Hartzell heard footsteps and squinted across the living room, ever wary of the blade against his neck. A lone figure juggled an appropriated green apple as he stepped out from the kitchen and paced slowly along the window wall, his features hidden in the evening shadows. He took a bite, stared out across the Hudson for several seconds, then turned around and looked at the trapped Hartzells.

  “Made it, Ma!” The figure stood silhouetted against the city lights. “Top of the world!”

  “Cagney in White Heat,” the bald ape man replied.

  “A classic from the Golden Age,” the figure said in a now laid-back, almost sedate voice. “I knew you’d tag it, Nick.”

  “Take whatever you want,” Hartzell said against the knife at his throat, attempting to sound calm, in control. He thought fast, and foremost amongst Hartzell’s fast thoughts had something to do with chickens coming home to roost. “There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt.”

  The silhouette took another bite of the apple, chewed, and swallowed. “Actually, Mr. Hartzell, there are a hundred million reasons for someone to get hurt.”

  “You really stuck your dick in it, Hartzell,” the ape man announced.

  “No need for such language, St. Nick.” Approaching Hartzell, the silhouette eased into the light—jet-black hair in a gray suit, medium height and wiry. Hartzell tagged him at mid-thirties. “There’s a pretty lady present.”

  “Crenna?” Hartzell said. He’d received a hundred million dollar transfusion from Crenna Senior’s AlPenny Group, which he’d been using to Ponzi out payments while converting his straight assets to currency and diverting those funds to numbered bank accounts in Switzerland, the Grand Caymans, and various other ports of call across the Caribbean. The Quarterly Reports had gone out early last week. He and Lucy were scheduled to jump aboard the Heathrow flight this Friday.

  “Let’s just say we received your materials and kicked it to some accountants that do certain work for us.” The man doing all the talking began shaking his head. “I get this late-night phone call pulling me out of bed. It’s pretty frantic, so I double-time it into the city…and they hand me a copy of this fiction of yours and—this’ll absolutely slay you—guess what one of the number-crunchers hand wrote across the cover page?”

  Hartzell remained silent.

  “They wrote ‘WTF’ right across the top.” The talker tilted his head toward Lucy. “I apologize for using such lowbrow language, pretty lady, but I think we all know what ‘WTF’ stands for. You see these bean counters are serious gents. They go over the prospectuses with magnifying glasses, they read the fine print of every mutual fund invested in, they do some kind of quantitative analysis that I couldn’t even begin to explain. And this report of yours, Mr. Hartzell, gave these serious gents a serious bug up their asses. And the next thing I know, St. Nick and I and…well,” he gestured at the ghost anchoring Hartzell in place, “best for all involved if you’re never formally introduced to our All-Star employee, but damned if the three of us aren’t on the next flight to the Big Apple—and they didn’t spring for first class, so forgive me if I don’t appear to be in the best of moods. Anyway, Mr. Hartzell, I’m standing here before you now to ask in person—WTF—what the fuck?!”

  Hartzell talked slowly, intently aware that a sharp piece of steel was at his throat. This had to be handled delicately. “I apologize if your accountants noted an error. I’m more than willing to sit down with your people and go over the investments line by line. But, quite frankly,” Hartzell glanced at Lucy pinned to the floor, tears sliding down her colorless face, and continued, “I think we’re beyond that. Please allow me to return your original investment funds in their entirety.”

  “Who is this dildo?” the ape man questioned. “Some fuckin’ maitre d’ trying to placate me after the waitress spilled chili sauce down my shirt?”

  “Of course we’re going to get our original investment funds back in their entirety. That’s a no-brainer. But, quite frankly, Mr. Hartzell, I don’t think you fully appreciate the gravity of your situation.” The talker backed toward the kitchen, out of the way, and then spoke to the steroid called St. Nick. “Toss the pretty lady through the window.”

  “Grrflll,” Hartzell said as the razor took another bite of his Adam’s apple, the iron clamp across his chest pulling him backwards, up and off balance.

  “That’s fuckin’ tempered glass, it’s four times a car window,” the ape man protested. “You remember Grand Plaza last year? Enstead? Took six tosses. That fuckin’ banker was brain dead by the time he broke through—so he couldn’t appreciate the nosedive. Tore my goddamned rotator cuff, had to see an orthopedic.”

  “Come on, Nick. I told you to watch the language.”

  “What the hell do you care? Bitch’ll be splat in a minute.”

  “The pretty lady doesn’t need the last seconds of her life to be littered with F-bombs. And I remember Enstead, but he was bigger than me, about a buck-ninety. The pretty lady is what, about one-ten dripping wet?”

  “Papa!” Lucy’s normally rosy face had albinoed. Her eyes wide open in panic as she tried to twist and squirm, a fish on a line. “Papa—”

  The ape man called St. Nick yanked Lucy up by her hair roots, grabbed a fistful of belt buckle and skin, lifted her over his head and flung her at the wall-to-ceiling window. Lucy hurtled fifteen feet through the air, floundering ineffectively, managed to get her right arm up in front of her face but slammed hard, forehead smacking glass with a sickening thud, then a ragdoll plummet to the hardwood floor. The brutality took all of two seconds. Lucy lay in a limp pile on the floor, shoulders shuddering, one hand clutching her hairline, blood and snot pouring from her nose.

  “If you hurt Lucy again,” Hartzell spoke, no longer concerned about the probing knife tip, “you can kiss your hundred million goodbye. You lowlifes and Crenna can then go fuck yourselves.”

  “You don’t know St. Nick very well, Mr. Hartzell. He has a rather unique expertise. You see, Nick pulls at things—pulls away at them with his bare hands—until they come off. In fact, before he gets started, you’ll have to recommend a late-night diner because I’m a bit squeamish and can’t watch. Last time I saw Nick in action, I couldn’t sleep for a week. After your pinky finger comes off, Mr. Hartzell, I doubt you’ll even remember you had a daughter.” The talker motioned to St. Nick. “Give the pretty lady another toss. Let’s break some glass this time.”

  The ape man walked over, grabbed another fistful of Lucy’s hair, and dragged the dazed girl back across the floor.

  “You bastards don’t know me very well,” Hartzell responded. “I’ll chew my tongue off before you get the time of day out of me. You’ll have a hundred years of shaking down pimps to recoup your losses.”

  “Shaking down pimps?” The talker laughed. “You’ve seen too much TV. But you’ve got me intrigued, Mr. Hartzell. I might stick around when old St. Nick applies his trade to see how that age-old paradox plays itself out. See what occurs when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.”

  St. Nick lifted Lucy over his head.

  “We never had the intent,” Hartzell said quickly. “We didn’t know who you were, so the intent—the mental desire to specifically screw you over—wasn’t there. You understand that, right?”

  The talker held up a hand, stopping the ape man from pitching Lucy Hartzell a second time. “Go on.”

  “Unlike what you’re forced to deal with in your business—the Ensteads who knowingly screw you over—we had no idea. The intent was not there. That’s an essential pillar in criminal law. Intent. We didn’t know about Crenna, and from everything I could tell, The AlPenny Group was squeaky clean.”

  “It had better be. The funds came out of the washer and were looking for a safe haven in these trying times. Paul made a tremendous case for going with your firm. After all, you had to be somebody or know somebody to be allowed to invest with the great Drake Hartzell. Nice work, by the way, if you can get it…but what we got instead
was a Bernie Madoff with a better tan.”

  “There was no intent. Clearly, I don’t run around in your circles. I had no clue who I was dealing with. Jesus, is Crenna even an Italian name?”

  “It’s Italian—that actor Richard Crenna was Italian.”

  “But I didn’t know about Paul’s father—what should I call him—Don Crenna?”

  “Don Crenna.” The talker laughed again. “No, Mr. Hartzell. You’ve pissed off the man behind Crenna.”

  “I hate to interrupt you two nattering hens, but the bitch is getting heavy. What do you want me to do?”

  The talker looked at Hartzell. “Do you fully appreciate the gravity of your situation?”

  Hartzell nodded his head.

  “Put the pretty lady down, St. Nick. Very gently.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “For your daughter’s sake, we want our money back with an appropriate amount of interest. I’m thinking twenty-five percent interest. That’s non-negotiable.”

  Hartzell nodded. “What else?”

  “You’ve got a great racket going on here. Once the bean counters figured out what you were doing, and talked it over with the boss, he became exceptionally curious. It’s an avenue we’ve not explored. We’d like to know all about you, Mr. Hartzell. That’s all. For the time being, consider your firm a wholly-owned subsidiary of The AlPenny Group.”

  Chapter 31

  “But Minnesota?” Assistant Director Jund squinted from Cady to Agents Preston and Schommer, both of whom had been sitting quietly at the room’s circular office table as the AD and the consulting agent lobbed volleys back and forth. “Help me out here, Liz.”

  “You broke the case, Drew, and the momentum is now on our side,” Agent Preston said. “Don’t you would want to see this through to the end?”

  “Again, there’s not much I can offer you at this point. Plaster his name and photo all over the media. He won’t look like that anymore, obviously, but it’ll put him in motion—smoke him out—and maybe you’ll get lucky.” Cady sat alone on the black office couch in the back of Jund’s office. “I imagine Westlow’s been living on the East Coast this entire time, although he’s probably not into home ownership. An apartment or a shack somewhere that he can pick up and leave at a moment’s notice. Probably a desolate part of whatever city he’s nesting in, perhaps a warehouse district or someplace where the neighbors know better than to get nosy.”

  “Thanks,” Jund said and leaned back in his chair. “I’ll get right on the roadblocks.”

  Suddenly a commotion in the AD’s outer office, a truncated verbalization by Penny Decker, Jund’s executive admin, and then the door burst open.

  Senator Arlen Farris towered in the doorframe like a mother grizzly whose cub had just been kicked in the ass by a suicidal boy scout. A harried Decker peeked in around the side.

  “Senator Farris,” Jund said.

  “My boy was a victim of the Chessman,” the senator from Delaware said slowly, a gravelly focus on each and every syllable. “I’ll not have you drag his name through the shit and the piss, Jund.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then you’re a goddamned liar!” Farris lumbered past the female agents at the side table, ignoring them completely, leaned over the assistant director’s desk and got in Jund’s face. “You were in a tree house circle-jerking to Playboy when I came to this city. Thirty-five fucking years I’ve been here! So if someone farts twice, I damn sure hear about it.”

  “Now there’s an ad for term limits if I ever heard one,” Cady said, surprised by his own insolence. This was the second time he’d seen the senator without his Aw-Shucks mask on, the persona Farris used for public consumption, to get out the vote. The first glimpse had been that night in the hospital. At the time Cady had attributed it to a twisted sense grief over the death of his only son. Now he knew better.

  The senator’s head swiveled sideways, noticed Cady sitting in the back of the room for the first time, shot him a near-lethal glare, and then turned his attention back to Jund.

  “I thought the motherfucker who got my boy killed had his incompetent ass tossed out of the FBI, Jund.” Farris flung an arm in Cady’s direction. “Is this the prick ripping off scabs, wasting time tying Patrick to those Zalentine wackjobs instead of figuring out who killed Ken Gottlieb?”

  “If you had been straight with me from the get-go,” Cady responded, “your son might still be alive.”

  Cady stood up as Farris marched toward him.

  “How’ve you been, Master Fuck Up?” Farris said, poking Cady in the chest with his index finger. Hard. Repeatedly. “If I can’t get you shit-canned, I’ll have you in Alaska working out of a goddamned igloo this time next week.”

  “Don’t touch me again,” Cady replied, taking a step into the senator’s proximity. “And if you’d come clean about Snow Goose—instead of burying it—none of this would ever have happened.”

  Farris’s face burned deep red. Cady saw a heartbeat in the senator’s temples.

  “Patrick wasn’t there, you one-trick-pony asshole.” The finger poking began anew. “And I don’t give two shits about what happened to that Goose Lake whore—”

  Cady caught the senator’s finger in mid-jab and twisted it upwards, forcing Farris to his knees.

  “I told you not to touch me again,” Cady said and spun his wrist, popping the senator’s forefinger out of joint, leaving it pointing sideways and back toward the assistant director.

  Farris, his face now white, cupped his shaking right hand with his left and slowly rose to his feet.

  “You just fucked the pooch, Cady. You’re done,” Farris said in a notch above a whisper. He looked to Jund. “You’re both through.”

  “Why ever would you attack Citizen Cady, Senator?” Agent Preston asked, tremor-voiced, while a visibly stunned Agent Schommer sat motionless next to her.

  “Yes, Senator,” Jund said, looking pink about the gills. “Why would you force Citizen Cady to defend himself in front of my staff?”

  The assistant director and the senior senator from Delaware held each other’s gaze. Cady wasn’t certain if it was a trick of the light, but the look on the AD’s face was indeed reminiscent of Stan Laurel.

  “This isn’t over,” Farris said. “Not by a long shot.”

  “I suspect not.”

  Still cradling his disjointed finger, the senator strode out of the assistant director’s office.

  “I know I’m new to this office,” Agent Schommer said after what seemed an eternity, “but does this happen often?”

  Chapter 32

  Two Weeks Ago

  “Every time the door buzzes, I expect the Manhattan Prosecutor,” Hartzell said. “What the bloody hell good am I to you in an orange jumpsuit?”

  “You’re not going to wind up in any orange jumpsuit, Drake.” The man with the jet-black hair, who had yet to offer Hartzell his given name, sat at Hartzell’s dining room table drinking Hartzell’s Kopi Luwak blend.

  Hartzell was red-faced. “The president’s handpicked arse kicker is about to be the next Chairman of the SEC—the new marshal sent to clean up Dodge City—and some dime store market analyst in Boston is chomping at my ankles, but, hey…no worries, dude.”

  “Look, Drake, you’ve made your fears abundantly clear these past weeks. Let me assure you that everything is under control. We’ve got eyes and ears in high places, my friend. High places. At the first hint that anything’s coming down the pike, you and Lucy will get your various passports back and can hit the highway. I can even get the two of you into Canada with no record of it—if you’d like.”

  On the night that Hartzell’s world had been flipped upside down, the men from Chicago had ransacked his condominium as though panning for gold. In short order they’d found the wall safe—hidden under the wet bar sink, behind a shelf of his hundred-year-old cognac. Hartzell had opened the safe immediately so as not to invoke the ape man’s further mistreatme
nt of his daughter. The two thugs—as the phantom that had held the razor against Hartzell’s carotid artery instantly disappeared—cackled in delight at the hundred thousand dollars in stacks of hundred dollar bills and looked like they’d won the lottery when they opened the brown envelopes containing both Hartzell’s and Lucy’s authentic passports, as well as the forgeries from his man in Manila.

  “Eyes and ears in high places? What’s that mean?”

  “Believe me, Drake, that’s nothing you want to know.” The man took another sip of the Kopi Luwak and shrugged his shoulders. “This is the best coffee I’ve ever had. Bar none. Even the knowledge that the beans pass through that critter’s asshole doesn’t diminish the taste.”

  “That critter is an Asian Palm Civet, about the size of a house cat. It eats the coffee berries, but the beans pass through its digestive track undigested,” Hartzell responded. “The enzymes in the civet’s stomach are what give the coffee its bitterness.”

  “Whether it’s gaming the stock market or rodents shitting coffee beans, I learn something from you every day.” The man set down his coffee mug. “Look, Drake, you’ve got to trust me on this and continue to do your job. We’re not about to let anything happen to you. Hell—you’re our cash cow. We love you.”

  Hartzell’s job of the past two plus weeks was to train a couple of money-laundering accountants from Chicago on the ins and outs of every aspect of his operation, walk them specifically through the inside dope on the financial investment scheme he’d been running these many years. Show the bean counters the dos and don’ts, the tips and tricks, his best practices. In return, Hartzell and Lucy were promised, first and foremost, survival, and, after a bit more squeezing and bleeding of Hartzell’s considerable nest egg, the father and daughter duo would eventually be allowed to fade into the woodwork, debt to Chicago paid in full.