Counterplay bkamc-18

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

“Well, unless you’ve taken up polygamy, that would be the one. Anyway, yes, Marlene called and asked me to come over to your loft-”

  “I knew I couldn’t trust her,” Karp joked, but he didn’t like the way this was going.

  “Boss,” Fulton said and put a finger to his lips, “shhhhhh…this is important stuff.”

  Jaxon continued, “Yeah, well, if she’d have me, I might give into the temptations of the flesh…don’t tell my wife I said that. But like Clay said, this is important. I buzzed on over to your loft and this is what she had waiting for me.” He held up a plastic bag with two objects inside.

  Karp felt the chill in his spine that he thought might have disappeared for good back in July. “The white king and white queen. Kane?”

  Jaxon shrugged. “Yeah, might be,” he said. “I’ve never been real happy with the ‘evidence’ that he was dead. However, it could also be someone still trying to warn you that even if Kane is dead, his plans are still in motion.”

  “So who are the white king and queen?” Guma asked. “Butch and Marlene?”

  “Well, so far the chess pieces have been sent before an attempt on the life of someone involved in Kane’s downfall,” Jaxon said. “So that’s probably our best bet. Maybe as a distraction from the big plan to hit Putin.”

  “Oh, so whacking me is the ‘little’ plan?” Karp said lighter than he felt.

  “Don’t be offended,” Fulton said. “Whacked is whacked.”

  “So when do we anticipate the whacking?” Guma said.

  Jaxon shrugged. “We’re really not sure. These little warnings have always come without much time to react. So soon, I’d guess, maybe tomorrow, or maybe Saturday, when all the attention is focused on the Pope. Anyway, we’d like you, Marlene, and the kids to take a little trip to the countryside with us. We have a safe house until this is-what?”

  Karp was shaking his head. “Sorry. Not going. I have a trial to finish tomorrow. And Marlene and I are supposed to sit in the VIP section at St. Patrick’s on Saturday, and she’s looking forward to it.”

  Fulton swore. “Dammit, Butch, the trial can be postponed a few days. And if you go to the cathedral, maybe that’s where they’re planning the hit, which means you could be endangering a lot of innocent people even if you’re willing to chance getting your own ass shot off. Now, you put me in charge of your security detail, so I insist you listen to me.”

  Karp clapped his hand on the big man’s shoulder. They’d been together a long time, and he knew that Fulton was doing his job. But he still shook his head as he said, “Not going to do it, Clay. How would it look if halfway through a murder trial and during the Pope’s visit, the chief law enforcement officer for the County of New York cut and ran because some wacko or terrorist or combination of the two threatened him. Everybody in this city has known since 9/11, if not before, that Manhattan is one big bull’s-eye and that we’re all at risk. I’m not going to hide.”

  They all argued for a half hour before reaching a compromise. Karp would finish the trial, but he wouldn’t go to St. Patrick’s because of the risk to others if he was targeted. But neither would he be leaving the city for a safe house; he’d remain in the loft or at his office until the threat passed.

  Fulton wasn’t happy, but he accepted the deal. “Except going to and from the courthouse-at which times I will have my men sitting in your hip pockets-you and the rest of the family are under house arrest, and I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”

  28

  In an old brick apartment building on the north end of Manhattan Island across the street from Columbia University’s Baker Field, Andrew Kane paused for a moment to look at himself in a mirror hanging from the wall of a room converted into an office. He sometimes missed the more refined look he’d had, but he was generally pleased with his new more rugged appearance…especially as it seemed to have everybody fooled.

  God, I love you, Andrew Kane, he thought as he contemplated the fact that his plan had almost reached fruition; there were only a couple of issues he’d had to resolve and come to grips with since Aspen.

  The first was the traitor in his midst who had been sending pieces from an expensive chess set he’d purchased, apparently as some sort of fuzzy warning about his plans for revenge.

  When Ellis told him about the traitor at the Hotel Jerome, he’d acted like it was no big deal. However, upon his arrival in Manhattan at the apartment building, he’d immediately located the Torres chess sets he’d shipped. The first had been intact, and for a moment, he wondered if Ellis had got it wrong. But then he’d opened the second set. Missing from the black side were the bishop and the knight; gone from the white side were the pawns, the two knights, a bishop, and the king and queen.

  In a rage, he’d flung the set across the room, frightening his al Qaeda bodyguards, who, while more than willing to blow themselves up for Allah, were scared to death of Kane. He knew that they referred to him as Iblis-the chief of the shayateen, the evil jinn, aka Satan. Their superstitious fear had both amused and flattered him; the part of himself that at times seemed to have a mind and purpose of its own laughed with delight every time he heard the whisperings.

  No part of him was laughing when he discovered the betrayal. But who? he wondered. There weren’t many who had access to the chess sets, which he’d kept in the guesthouse until the warning from Ellis and the decision for “the new, improved Agent Hodges” to have his coming-out party. Even fewer of them knew about his plans for vengeance.

  Samira? No, as much as she hated him, she was devoted to seeing that the plan-along with her glorious martyrdom-came off.

  Ajmaani/Nadya? Unlikely. The Russians wanted this as much as he did. They also could not chance her role in the plan being exposed.

  Ellis knew about the plan, including the revenge murders. In fact, he’d been the one to turn FBI agent Michael Grover into a traitor. But he hadn’t been in the house.

  Prince Bandar? The man had never been privy to the plan. However, if he’d found a way to listen in on some of Kane’s conversations-despite efforts to sweep the premises for eavesdropping devices and cameras-he might have heard enough. But why the oblique warnings instead of just contacting law enforcement and spelling it out? Unless he, too, was playing a little game, Kane thought. Perhaps, the little toad had more of a mean streak in him than I thought. Maybe sending the chess pieces-which hadn’t really arrived in time to do much good-wasn’t to warn, but to tease and torment.

  It was an act of maliciousness that Kane could identify with, and he’d decided that Bandar was the traitor. If so, there was certainly nothing more to worry about from the man whom he’d personally turned into a million bits and pieces with the remote control detonator button he’d carried in his pocket. However, he was also keeping an open mind that the traitor might still be alive.

  Kane’s thoughts were interrupted by the whining voice of Bryce Anderson. “I’m worried we might lose this case,” Anderson said. “They’ve got something up their sleeve with these impeachment witnesses.”

  “Whatever are you talking about, Bryce?” Kane asked coldly. If there was one thing he hated more than all the many other things he hated, it was people who whined about or questioned his plans.

  Anderson caught the edge in Kane’s voice and stopped himself. “Uh, well, I was just cautioning you that we could very well lose this case.”

  “Bryce, are you an idiot?”

  Anderson felt the knot in his stomach tightening into a solid mass. “No, I don’t believe that I’m an idiot,” he said meekly.

  “Well, then stop acting like one,” Kane snarled. “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose this case. It’s all just a distraction, remember? All you have to remember is that whatever it takes, this better not go to the jury tomorrow. None of us can afford to have the jury come back early with a guilty verdict. Emil Stavros cannot be in prison this weekend. If he is…unavailable because he is in prison, I would not be a very happy man. Do you understand what that would
mean to you?”

  Anderson glanced quickly at the young woman in the corner. She was very beautiful but looking at him in such a predatory way that he thought he might faint. He nodded quickly. “Yes, I understand completely.”

  Kane smiled, but his eyes were as cold as any serpent’s. “Good, because I don’t care if you have to shoot yourself to delay the trial…. Besides, come Monday, you won’t have to worry about Butch Karp or Emil Stavros.”

  After the lawyer was gone, Samira nearly spit when she said, “This game you play is stupid. You put our plan in danger of failing.”

  “And you forget your place, Samira, darling.”

  “My place is to see that this mission is completed. But this personal vendetta against Karp jeopardizes that.”

  “That’s none of your concern. Without my help this ‘mission’ cannot succeed anyway.”

  Kane admired himself again in the mirror. Stupid bitch, he thought. On a mission to kill herself, as if it will matter one little bit in the grand scheme of things.

  The whole reason that Emil Stavros was being tried for his wife’s murder was part of his glorious plan. He’d come up with the idea while in the Tombs and knew then that he was going to need a banker with access to international financial transfer wires.

  That’s when he thought of Emil Stavros.

  Kane had known Stavros for nearly twenty years, having met him at various high-society functions. Always on the alert for weaknesses in others that he could exploit, he’d learned that Stavros not only cheated on his wife, and cheated on his various mistresses, he also had a bad gambling habit and was heavily indebted to some very bad people.

  Kane had purchased the bad debt and then told Stavros who his new master was going to be. Originally, it was so that he could use Stavros’s bank to launder money from his criminal enterprises. But he didn’t trust the man, so he’d insisted that Stavros hire a good friend of mine, who is getting out of prison as his chauffeur, Dante Coletta.

  Then came the night when Coletta called Kane and said that Stavros had choked his wife into unconsciousness during a fit of rage when she announced that despite her Catholic faith, she was going to divorce him, taking their son and her bank accounts with her. Kane had thought about it for a moment, then instructed Coletta to give Stavros the.22 Teresa Stavros was known to carry.

  Make him shoot her, and make sure his fingerprints are on the gun, Kane had said. Then bury her in the backyard. Don’t touch the gun yourself; just carefully put it in a plastic bag and bring it to me.

  Kane had taken the gun to a bank and placed it in a safe deposit box. It was insurance against the day he might want to blackmail Stavros into something a bit more dramatic than questionable banking transactions. He’d then come up with the elaborate plan of making it appear that Teresa Stavros was alive and running about the world, using up her credit and bank accounts.

  It had been easy enough to hire a woman who resembled Mrs. Stavros. Then when that nosy detective Bassaline started getting too close and especially after he’d talked to the gardener, Kane had decided to put a stop to it. First, he’d gone to Bassaline’s boss, a man who’d been on his payroll for years, and insisted that the case be turned over to Detective Michael Flanagan.

  Flanagan, who at the time thought Kane was giving him orders on behalf of the archdiocese, was told that certain anti-Catholic interests in the city were trying to frame Stavros, a big supporter of the church. Those interests had corrupted Bassaline and paid off the gardener in an attempt to destroy “a good man’s, a good Catholic’s” reputation. It was Flanagan who’d shelved the case after removing anything that some later detective might “misconstrue,” such as the gardener’s story.

  Meanwhile, Coletta made sure Kaplan’s story went no further. He’d called the gardener on the pretext of wanting to talk to him about some shit I’ve learned about what happened to Mrs. Stavros. Feigning that he was afraid he was being followed and might be overheard, Coletta had insisted that they make it appear as if they were going fishing. Out on the boat, when no one was close enough to see, Coletta had hit Kaplan with a fire extinguisher, knocking him unconscious; then the fire extinguisher and the gardener were dumped overboard. Coletta then used the boat’s radio to call his ride back to shore.

  For fourteen years, Mrs. Stavros had remained buried in the backyard, and the gun used to kill her stashed in a bank deposit box. But at last the day that Kane had anticipated had come.

  However, given the magnitude of what Kane wanted to do, and the chance that Stavros would panic and run to the authorities to spoil it all, he’d decided a more subtle route than just straight-up blackmail.

  While still a politician running for mayor, Kane had often been in the company of Stavros, whose rise in the political machine he’d funded. Over drinks, Stavros, who thought he had a confidant of sorts in Kane, confided that his son was driving him crazy with all of his psychological problems. He wouldn’t have minded if the kid disappeared, but barring that, did Kane know anyone who might straighten the little shit out.

  Kane remembered the conversation while in the Tombs and called Stavros, pretending that as a friend, he’d been giving Zachary’s situation some thought and that, as a matter of fact, he did have someone in mind. He’d suggested sending Zachary to Dr. Craig.

  Of course, what Stavros didn’t know was that Dr. Craig was another of his thralls. The good psychologist had been charged with sexually assaulting his patients. But due to Kane’s magnificent defense, which included threatening the victims, he’d been acquitted.

  Although reluctant, Dr. Craig had finally agreed to Kane’s plan to “plant” a memory in Zachary Stavros while the young man was hypnotized. It was meant to be a simple memory-of his father choking his mother into unconsciousness and then hearing the sound of digging in the backyard.

  When Kane asked Dr. Craig where the stuff about the blue dress and hearing gunshots came from, the doctor shrugged. He has probably associated the blue dress with his mother since childhood, the doctor said. And who knows about the gunshots; maybe he really did hear them, or once the planted memory took hold, his imagination added to it. He is a pretty troubled young man.

  Kane had also made the anonymous call to Guma, who he’d learned was working cold cases, and suggested that he contact Zachary Stavros. And, as planned, the whole thing had snowballed from there.

  In fact, it had worked better than he hoped. While the main purpose was to put Stavros over a barrel-a barrel his good friend Kane had promised to help him get over as long as he cooperated with a few small requests-he’d also hoped the political implications would prove to be a big distraction for Karp. It was a dream come true when Karp actually joined the case.

  When Stavros learned what the “small requests” entailed, he’d balked. I’d have to leave the country. I’d be ruined.

  Nonsense, Kane had cajoled him when Stavros visited him in Aspen before the body was located in the backyard. We make it appear that you were blackmailed and threatened into helping me. And, my dear Emil, you become a very wealthy man. He explained how Coletta would “confess” that he’d witnessed the murder and pin it on Jeff Kaplan.

  Still, Stavros had refused to cooperate. It will never work, he’d wept.

  That’s when Kane lost all patience and decided to play hardball. Look, you little shit, he snarled as Stavros blanched. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? Pause just a fucking second and ask yourself what would happen if I give the gun you used to kill your wife to the authorities?

  The remaining color had drained from Stavros’s face. You kept the gun? he asked incredulously. You’ve been planning to blackmail me all of these years?

  If necessary, Kane said. So you don’t really have a choice, you piece of shit. Do what I say and you stand a good chance of beating this charge and getting wealthier than you’ve ever dreamed with all your gambling debts forgiven. Refuse-or worse, go to the cops-and you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison, wondering when one of my
people is going to show up and gut you like a fucking trout.

  The rest is history, Kane thought. There had been some issues to take care of and some that had arisen in the course of events that followed his escape. Killing Flanagan had been part revenge, but also a necessity to prevent any chance that the former detective, if questioned, might link him to Stavros.

  Kane had been surprised that Guma had been able to win an indictment based on the circumstantial evidence he had; in fact, he’d been prepared to have a “little bird” inform Guma of the grave’s location, but it hadn’t been necessary.

  The bigger problem had been when Stavros took off for Canada. The plan-the one involving Samira, the Russians, and Jon Ellis-required that he not be incarcerated, but the idiot had panicked when the body was discovered and had his bail revoked.

  Fortunately, you’re a genius, Kane thought. He’d simply told Coletta to “confess” a bit earlier than planned, and then informed Bryce Anderson that his life depended on his ability to get Stavros out of jail on bond again. The motivated defense attorney had done just that; just as he’d followed the plan to have the trial set for this particular week so that Stavros would remain over the proverbial barrel until the plan was a done deal.

  Kane had toyed with the idea of killing Stavros after he was no longer necessary. But there was no telling if the man would find a way to leave a trail to the financial windfall Kane expected to reap. So for the time being, the plan was to let him live; perhaps his banking services could be used again…if he beat the rap.

  All was going according to plan. However, his nemesis Karp and Karp’s sidekick Guma had breezed through their case. And Anderson wasn’t prepared to delay! Well, he better get it done, or I will have him shot.

  “Kane! Kane!”

  Hearing his name called, Kane looked away from the mirror. “What, Samira?”

  “I hope you’re not going to do that when it matters,” Azzam said furiously. “I’ve been talking to you for five minutes, and you haven’t heard a word.”