Bleeders

by Anthony Bruno

  “Oh, Mr. Lassiter,” the woman said, flipping through a sheaf of pink message slips. “Frank Harvey from Daewoo called. Maryanne Ruskin from GE called. Sam Banerjee from Basto called twice. David Mackie from General Foods called—he says he needs to talk to you today. And a Mr. Freitag called, but he wouldn’t leave a company name or a number. He said you knew how to contact him.”

  “Okay. If Mackie calls back, tell him I’ll get back to him this afternoon.”

  “Sharon came by looking for you. She wants your input on gold. “

  “Tell her to buy. Tell her I think it’ll keep rising for at least another couple of days so buy today. As much as she can. We’ll unload it next week. Tell her I’ll check in with her later.”

  The woman jotted down his instructions. “And also, the power of attorney forms for the Tobias account arrived.” She opened a drawer, pulled out a chrome notary’s stamp, and started to stand up.

  “Sit, Diane, sit.” Lassiter motioned for her to stay where she was. “It’s just as legal if I sign the papers here.”

  “I’m not crippled, just pregnant,” she said. “I can make it to your office. But thank you anyway.”

  He pulled legal papers out of a white Fed-Ex envelope. “Don’t thank me. I just don’t want you getting all worked up, breaking your water, and dropping the kid right here on my nice carpeting.” He threw her a sly grin, and she threw one right back. They seemed to have a good working relationship, Trisha thought.

  “Diane, this is Trisha McCleery. Trisha, Diane Logan.”

  “Hi,” the secretary said.

  “Nice to meet you.” If Diane suspected that Trisha was related to the famous Michael McCleery, she was discreet enough not to show it.

  Lassiter scanned the documents quickly, found a pen on the desk, and scribbled his signature on two of the pages. Diane clamped her notary stamp onto the pages and signed as witness.

  He tossed the pen back onto her desk. “Overnight them back to the lawyer. But don’t walk them there yourself. Please.”

  She gave him a barely tolerant look. “To Stamford, Connecticut? I don’t think so.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m going back out for a while, but I’ll be back by three.”

  “Have fun.”

  “I always try to.” He turned to Trisha. “Shall we go? There’s a good place up the street.”

  “Fine.”

  They walked back through the trading room. Trisha was curious about those papers he had just signed.

  “Those documents are for two of my clients,” he said with her asking. “An elderly couple.”

  She grinned to herself. He must have read my mind.

  “They’re getting up in age, and they don’t have any children so they’ve named me executor of their estate.”

  “Is that a service you normally provide?”

  “No, not normally, but I have a few clients who for various reasons have made me executor.”

  “Why?”

  “Convenience. They have all their money with me, so when the time comes, I’ll have access to it for distribution. And in some cases,” he switched to a whisper, “they don’t trust their kids to play nice after they die.”

  She laughed. “Like me and my sister?”

  “I doubt that.” They walked out to the elevators, and he pressed a down button. “Unless there’s something about the McCleerys I don’t know.”

  “Depends. What do you know?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Everything, he thought.

  The elevator arrived, and he held it open as she got in. He stole a sidelong glance at her profile and thought of Natalie.

  Soon, he thought.

  Chapter 5

  Lassiter wrapped his fingers around a midnight blue coffee mug. Long and slender, Trisha thought. Piano player fingers.

  They sat on stools at a high table in a cozy little coffee place on Hudson Street called Grind Zero, a dubious pun given that they were just a few blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center. So far they’d confined themselves to small talk—how she liked living in New York (fine but it was only a temporary assignment); did she follow the Yankees or the Mets (neither, she was a football fan—Baltimore Ravens); where they’d each gone to college (he’d attended Georgetown and the Wharton School of Business; she’d graduated from John Jay College with a major in criminal justice); what they each thought of the dismal economy, social networking, and the pros and cons of having pets (she’d love to have a dog but traveled too much; he told her about Thorn, his French bulldog, and his volunteer work at an animal shelter). It was all harmless chitchat, them feeling each other out. She found him easy to talk to—no awkward moments.

  She took a sip from a lime green mug and made unexpected eye contact with him over the rim. But instead of looking away, she held his gaze. It was a trait she’d developed interviewing killers and cops for the FBI. Always stay engaged. But she wondered why he didn’t look away. That’s what most people did. Maybe he’d picked up the same trait catering to his super-rich clients, like her father who wasn’t the easiest man in the world to deal with. Michael McCleery had use for people who wouldn’t look him in the eye and give him an honest opinion.

  “So,” she said, “how’d you get hooked into the Orchid Club?”

  “Contacts. One of the members heard about me from a friend of hers, and I took her on as a client. I did well by her, and she recommended me to other women in the club, and then all of a sudden I was a must-have. Sort of like a good pair of Manolo Blahniks. You just have to have them.”

  His laugh was self-deprecating and she liked that. He may be a rich guy, but at least he had some perspective. She’d grown up well off but wasn’t rich now, and the thought of a pair of high heels costing nine hundred dollars was obscene to her. She’d never dream of spending more than a hundred bucks on a pair of shoes.

  “I’ll bet those Orchid Club women are pretty hard to deal with,” Trisha said.

  “Are you pumping me for information, Agent McCleery?” Lassiter flashed a sly smile, but inside he was thrumming. There she was, an arm’s length away.

  “Just casual curiosity,” she said. “If I wanted hard information, I’d have to put you under the hot lights.”

  “Really.” She was going to be the one on the spot, not him. She just didn’t know it yet.

  “Actually if I needed to know more about the Orchid Club, all I’d have to do is call up Adele Cardinalli. She is a flowing fount of information.”

  “And all of it accurate, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Trisha said. “There’s a big difference between fact and opinion, and I’d say Adele has plenty of opinions.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But I have to say she is a good-hearted soul. Compared to some of the others in the club, she’s a sweetheart. If she could only shut up once in a while.”

  “I can see how she’d want to bend your ear. You’re a good listener.”

  “So I’ve been told. But what good would I be if I didn’t listen to my clients’ concerns? That’s my job.”

  “Because money is happiness?”

  He pressed his lips together and considered the question. Direct, just like her mother. He liked that. “Money doesn’t automatically bring happiness. Obviously. But at their level of wealth, money can mean different things.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s not about the things their money can buy. It’s the status and power those things give them. Or that they think it gives them. See, a person with just a million dollars wants a diamond ring for the intrinsic value of the diamond ring. But a person with a hundred million wants the kind of diamond ring that tells the world she’s in a very exclusive group.”

/>   “And what kind of diamond does a billionaire want?”

  “Surprisingly at that level in many cases they don’t really care about possessions. They have nothing to prove.”

  “How about my father? What does his money do for him?”

  He grinned. More grit than her mother. “Now you are pumping me for information.”

  “You don’t have to answer,” she said. “But it’s not like I don’t know how much he’s worth.”

  $940 million, she thought. Last time she paid attention.

  “Your father is in an entirely different category from the Orchid Club ladies,” Lassiter said. “He’s a major philanthropist. He doesn’t just write big checks at the end of the year for the tax write-off. He has a cause, a mission, and it’s an admirable one—eliminating childhood poverty throughout the world. Sounds pie in the sky, and a lot of politicians like to talk about it when the cameras are rolling, but your dad has the money and the clout to make it happen. And he gets other super-rich people to donate to his cause. He’s a truly remarkable man.”

  To the world he is, she thought. You should be his daughter.

  “But enough about your father,” he said. “What about you?”

  She frowned at the question. “What about me?”

  “I know your father and your sister pretty well, but I don’t know anything about you. Except that you’re an FBI agent.”

  The expectant look in his eyes pleased her. No one ever asked her about her. To just about everyone she met, she was the daughter of the famous Michael McCleery, and that was all they cared to know.

  “Well, I’m a special agent,” she said, “but you already know that. I’m with the Investigative Support Unit, which is part of Behavioral Science Services out of Quantico, currently on special assignment here. But you basically know that, too.”

  He nodded and looked at her intently. “You’re a profiler, right? You work with serial killers. That’s what Adele Cardinalli told me.”

  “Not with serial killers.”

  I’m scared stiff by serial killers.

  “I work on serial killer cases,” she said. “And serial rapists, serial arsonists, serial bombers. You get the picture.”

  “You actually hunt them down and arrest them?”

  She shook her head. “Murder is generally a crime under state criminal codes not federal so the FBI doesn’t make the arrests. Local law enforcement does that. We just assist with the investigations.”

  “Interesting.” He started to take another sip but noticed that his cup was empty. He glanced at his watch. “Oh, jeez, I have to run.” He got off his stool. “But I would really like to hear more about what you do. Can I take you to dinner sometime?”

  “Well, I—”

  Say yes, stupid, she thought. All you do is work all day and watch TV at night.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to.”

  He is good-looking, she thought. And he listens.

  “Can I get your number?” He pulled out his Blackberry, ready to enter it.

  She gave him her personal number, not her FBI number.

  “Okay, I’ll call you,” he said. “Let’s do it soon. I’m dying to hear more about what you do and how you got into it.”

  Because I had to, she thought. For my mother.

  She watched him rush out of the shop. He passed by the plate-glass window, smiled to her, and waved. She smiled back.

  I hope he does call.

  Her smile shot through him like a lightning bolt of pure joy. He strode down the sidewalk, feeling like Gene Kelly dancing in the downpour in Singing in the Rain. He jaywalked across Hudson Street and headed back to his office, blazing like a 100-watt bulb.

  Chapter 6

  The first floor of Bergdorf’s had an air of calm refinement, but Lassiter was feeling anything but calm. He stood over the necktie counter, pretending to browse the wide assortment of incremental shades of blue, like paint chips in a hardware store, but from here he had a panoramic view of the main floor, the front doors, and the numerous cosmetics counters. He was hunting.

  He drummed his fingers on the glass as he tracked sophisticated, smartly dressed women strolling through the aisles. The store was known for quality clothing and accessories—contemporary but never trendy. It didn’t have the frantic hubbub of Bloomingdale’s, or Saks Fifth Avenue’s odor of striving executives pretending to be more important than they were, or the proletarian crush of Macy’s, and that’s why Lassiter had thought this would be a good place to find a new bleeder to tide him over. His one-on-one meeting with Trisha had put him in a foul mood. His euphoria crashed as soon as he had gotten home last night and was alone with his desires. His need to kill enveloped him in a cloud of desperation that made him question his own judgment. How would he pick the right one? How would he keep from making a mistake and getting caught? He hated this feeling of impatience.

  Oh, for crying out loud, he thought. I’ll do it right here in a dressing room. In the ladies room. Anywhere!

  The urge had come on faster than usual this time. In the past the yearning would build up over a period of months, in some cases more than a year. But with Trisha so close, the desire was powerful. He feared that it would soon take control of him, and control was what he was all about. He needed a bleeder to clear his head so he could think straight.

  Maybe he was fishing in the wrong pond, he thought. Maybe a bar or a coffee shop would be a better bet. Or Central Park. It was just a block away. But that made him uneasy. He hadn’t hunted so publicly since he’d lived in San Francisco. Doing it that way was risky. A woman he had tried to lure in Golden Gate Park had started screaming for help before he even did anything. She was skittish, and he should never have picked her, but he was desperate at the time. Like now. A cop in a patrol car heard her screams and drove across the lawn to investigate. Scared shitless, he ran for his life to a outcropping of rocks where the car couldn’t pursue. The cop yelled for him to stop and continued the chase on foot, but Lassiter kept going, running till his lungs ached. He made it back to his apartment and left town that very day, fearing that a police sketch of him would be posted all over the Bay Area. He hadn’t been back since.

  “May I help you, sir?” A white-haired gentleman in a dark blue suit and silver tie stepped behind the counter and smiled pleasantly. “Is there anything I can show you, sir?”

  “No. Not right now,” Lassiter said.

  Go away, he thought.

  “If you need me, I’ll be right over there at the next counter.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  I need you to show me a woman ripe for the picking, he thought. A woman I can take with minimal complications.

  He frowned at his reflection in the glass counter. He hated himself when he felt this way. Like a horny teenage boy with a perpetual hard-on. A walking, talking jittery bag of libido. Feeling this way was bad, he thought. Planning, risk assessment, control—these were the hallmarks of his existence. But when he felt the way he did now, all that went out the window, and that wasn’t good. “Drac” (or whatever the press chose to call him: “Dr. Death” in Philadelphia in the ‘90s, the “Bleeder Murderer” during his brief stint in San Francisco) had had a good run in New York, and he wasn’t about to mess that up being stupid. He’d killed twenty-nine in all since Natalie. He’d counted them in his head this morning over breakfast, lining up individual bran flakes on the kitchen table for each one. Half of them had been spaced out geographically around the country; the rest were on the east coast and one in Toronto. In most cases he hadn’t worked an area long enough to get a nickname.

  But in each case the feeling was always the same. Supreme ecstasy while he was doing it, then extreme relief when it was done, like free-falling through soft, fluffy clouds. So relaxed he often fell asleep for twelve, fourteen hours at a stretch. But then c
ame the dissatisfaction, the inevitable feelings of failure and disappointment when he realized that the experience hadn’t been as good as the one with Natalie. Natalie, Natalie, Natalie. That’s all he could ever think about. Having Natalie again.

  A tall, statuesque woman with long straight black hair cut in a V to the center of her back appeared at a perfume counter and immediately caught his eye. A Cher type. She wore high-heeled sandals and showed a lot of leg in a short blousy white shift cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt. She was probably somewhere between 5’10” and 6’. Mid-forties, he guessed. Maybe a former model. The Toronto bleeder had been a big girl, and so was the one in Shaker Heights, and both times he’d been a little concerned that they would put up a good fight, but to his surprise they hadn’t. If anything, the big ones were more docile and weepy. Go figure.

  But here was the problem. He didn’t know this woman, didn’t know a thing about her. What was her living situation? Would she take him back to her place? What if there were other people around? She was young enough to have children at home. Older women were better in that regard. Many of them lived alone. He decided to pass on this one. Too many unknowns.

  He drummed harder on the glass. See what you’ve done to me, Trisha. You and your mother—you’re in my head, taking up all the space. I can’t think straight.

  This was the wrong way to do it, he told himself. It’s not like picking fruit in the produce section at the supermarket. That’s how you get caught. That’s why the Orchid Club is so perfect. Originally his goal was solely to meet Cindy so he could get to Trisha. He’d landed his first Orchid Club client eleven years ago and bided his time, finding his bleeders elsewhere. But the club was a treasure trove he couldn’t resist. As more members became clients, he got to know them—where they lived, who they lived with, what they liked and disliked—and he started to think of them as his private stock, there for the picking.

  “Would you like me to take something out of the case for you, sir?” The white-haired clerk slipped behind the counter, gushing helpfulness.