Blood Money (20 page)
Authors: James Grippando
A
t one fifteen
A.M.
Jack was in bed but still awake. He got up and made himself a cup of tea in the microwave, cleared away a place to sit on the couch, and watched about twenty minutes of a
Friends
rerun that he’d seen at least a half-dozen times before. Chamomile always worked for Andie when she had trouble sleeping. It just made Jack need to pee. When he came out of the bathroom, Max was waiting for him at the door.
“Sorry, boy. It’s not time to run.”
Max almost seemed relieved. He climbed up on the settee and went right back to doggy sleep. Jack looked at him with envy and crawled into bed. Then he reminded himself that he needed to follow up with the Kayal family about sending Max away for a while. One more thing to do.
Andie stirred on the other side of the mattress.
“What’s wrong, Jack?”
Wow. What a question.
Jack answered it the best he could. “Nothing.”
She rolled toward him, draped her arm across his chest and her leg atop his thigh. “It’s going to get better,” she said.
“I know.”
“You have to believe that.”
“Optimism is my middle name. Jack Optimism Sly-teck.”
“You’re better than Faith Corso. Don’t let her keep you up at night.”
“It’s not her,” said Jack. “I’m just having trouble understanding how the hell I got here.”
Andie propped herself up on her elbow, looking him in the eye. “How do you think you got here?”
“Two years ago Neil Goderich called me, said he was sick, and asked me to do him and the Freedom Institute a favor. So I cover a hearing. Neil dies eight weeks before trial, and the judge says I’m the only living attorney of record, the case is going to trial, so I’m Sydney Bennett’s lawyer. Now everybody wants to hang Sydney and her lawyer for buying off a juror, my old girlfriend is dead, and I have until Tuesday to figure out how to keep hope alive for two devastated parents whose daughter is in a coma.”
Andie just looked at him, one of her patented expressions that said everything without saying a word.
“What?” said Jack.
“That’s how you think you got here? Really?”
“Obviously that’s the
Reader’s Digest
version.”
“No, that’s the Jack Swyteck version.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The left eyebrow arched, the telltale sign that she was about to unload exactly what was on her mind. Then she said it. “You got here because you love it.”
“I
what
?”
“Take Rene out of this. That’s a horrible tragedy, and we’ll catch the guy who did it. But the Sydney Bennett trial, where all this began. You got in it because you love this stuff.”
“That’s so not true.”
“It makes you feel better about yourself to say you didn’t want this case, that you did Neil a favor and got strong-armed by the judge into defending Sydney Bennett.”
“And how would that make me feel good about myself?”
“Because this is exactly the kind of case you would want. But you didn’t want to take it.”
“This is starting to sound like analysis.”
“In your mind, being ordered by the judge to defend Sydney Bennett makes it more acceptable to your fiancée. There, I pointed it out: the elephant in the room.”
“No, I think it’s Max. Those mangos are murder.”
“Don’t make jokes, damn it.” She came closer “Look. Jack. I love you so much, but there’s a reason we’re engaged and still haven’t set a wedding date. And it’s not because we’re too busy. It’s because we’re still . . . negotiating.”
“Negotiating?”
“Yes. There’s no other word for it. I’m being very honest. I don’t want you to turn me into something I’m not, any more than I should turn you into something you’re not.”
Jack was silent, but he knew where the conversation was headed.
“I’m taking this undercover assignment,” she said. “I could be away for five months. For me, that’s not negotiable.”
“That’s fine. I want you to take it,” he said.
“And I love you for that. That’s not the problem. The problem is, I
don’t
want you to represent people like Sydney Bennett.”
“So for you, undercover work is nonnegotiable, but you want my selection of cases to be negotiable?”
“No, I want you to stop making yourself miserable, stop trying to be a pleaser. Stand up and say, This is me, this who I am, this is not negotiable. And I’m just going to have to find a way to get over that . . . if we’re ever going to set a wedding date.”
He brought her closer.
“Weird,” said Jack.
“What is?”
“That actually made me feel better.”
She kissed him gently.
“And confused,” said Jack.
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Could it be because what you just said is completely unlike anything you’ve ever said to me before?”
“I’ve evolved.”
“More like transformed.”
“Let’s just say a little birdie sang in my ear.”
“A birdie, huh?”
She let out a little laugh, but it was cut short by Shorty Shitstain. Theo’s ringtone. Jack still had his friend’s cell phone, and it was vibrating on the nightstand. He reached over and grabbed it. This time there was no
SQUEEZEPLAY
or
COOCHIE MONSTER
in the caller ID. It was just a random number—at two o’clock in the morning.
“I’m going to take this,” he said, and he answered it: “This is Jack.”
“Oh, thank God! Jack, you have to help me!”
She was in a panic, but he immediately recognized the voice. “Sydney, calm down.”
“Calm down? I’m out here on my own, I can’t even close my eyes to go to sleep, and now I saw on TV that Judge Matthews expects me to show up in court on Monday.”
“He wants to know about the guy who met you at the airport.”
“He’s crazy, okay? Sick and crazy. He tried to choke me.”
“What?”
“He came to me like he was my friend, gonna sell my movie rights, gonna make me a million dollars. Then the first night we were alone together he turns into this crazy man.”
“You didn’t tell me this before.”
“I told you he was a creep, that I was going through hell. What is it about lawyers that they need to have everything spelled out from A to Z? Is that so you can give your client the big ‘I told you so’? I didn’t
fire
him, okay? I escaped! The guy is
sick
. I’m lucky to be alive!”
Jack sat up on the edge of the mattress. “Sydney, you have to listen to me. You’re in a lot of danger.”
“No shit!”
“What I’m trying to say is that you need more help than your lawyer can give you. Where are you now?”
“I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone!”
“We need to get you protection.”
“Yeah, like the whole world wants to bend over backward to help me, Jack.”
“Listen to me. My fiancée is an FBI agent. She’s here with me. I can put her on the phone right now to talk if—”
“No! If you give her that phone, I’m hanging up.”
“All right, don’t hang up. But I want you to memorize her number,” he said, and then he gave it to her.
“I’m not calling the FBI. You’re my lawyer. You have to protect my not-guilty verdict. Please, please. I’m begging you. I can’t come back for another trial.”
“Maybe you can come back, if you call the FBI.” He blurted out Andie’s number again.
“I can’t! You have to do whatever it takes to stop that judge from throwing out the verdict. No way can I put myself in a courtroom or any other box where he can find me.”
“Who is this guy?”
“His name is Merselus.”
“Merciless?”
“Might as well be.” She spelled it.
“What’s his last name?”
“That is his last name. Or maybe not. I don’t know. He just goes by Merselus. He found me when I was in jail, said he was a Hollywood agent. When he actually followed through and got the money for the private airplane to my father, we figured he was legit. Or at least I thought my fucking dad would have checked him out to make sure he wasn’t just another crazy son of a bitch with a hard-on for Shot Mom.”
“Your father—”
“I gotta go. I gotta go
right now
!”
“Sydney, wait!”
“Just help me, okay? He tried to strangle me, Jack! Don’t you get it?”
Jack started to reply, but she was gone. He put the phone on the nightstand and glanced at Andie. She’d heard only one side of the conversation, and Jack wasn’t ready to share the other half. He was thinking of Celeste. And Rene. Then he touched his own neck, recalling his personal encounter with this Merselus.
Yeah, Sydney. I do get it.
M
erselus entered his apartment and locked the door—two deadbolts and a chain. It was dark inside, save for the faint glow from the closet, and the room smelled of mildew from the afternoon rain. A forty-year-old roof was no match for Miami’s summer cloudbursts. Merselus could have afforded a much nicer place, but he preferred the anonymity that came with a cheap apartment, no questions asked. He didn’t need a team of Ritz-Carlton servants trying to memorize how he liked his eggs in the morning, what newspaper he preferred, or what time he wanted his bed turned down. The longer-lease apartments in his complex faced the river, but his week-to-week rental was on the street side, directly across from a nightclub. Even on the third floor, his boarded window was no barrier to the urban-jungle noise rising up from the sidewalk outside the club. Men growled like lions with an aching sack, the modern-day version of chest beating. Women laughed like hyenas in heat—some way too loud, giving away their eagerness. The pulsating music from a passing set of gangsta wheels was familiar to him, and Merselus fudged a lyric here and there until the song came clear in his head: “Not Afraid” by Eminem.
Definitely not afraid.
Merselus placed his phone on the nightstand and plugged in the charger. The glowing crystals said 2:32
A.M.
He was tired, but he couldn’t lie down and close his eyes. There was something he needed more than sleep. Much more.
How Sydney had slipped through his fingers—literally—was beyond him. Prior to her release, they’d spoken to each other only on the jailhouse telephone, and she’d totally bought the Hollywood-agent story he’d fed her. Selling the movie rights to her trial was only the beginning. Sydney wanted to be a star, and her first performance had proved her a natural—that passionate embrace on the runway, as if she were reuniting with a long-lost lover, exactly the way he’d choreographed it.
In your face, Swyteck.
After three years in jail, Shot Mom would have jumped on the casting couch with the first guy to throw money at her. It was their second night together when her pants had come off. He remembered how she loved his hands, his huge strong hands, and how he’d worked her so hot that she was tasting herself from his long, wet fingers. And then he’d made his move. One hand still working her loins into a frenzy, as he remembered it, and the other rising up from her breasts to her neck. Gently at first, his hand slipped into position. Then his fingers closed around her throat, but not too much pressure, nothing too alarming, just enough to bring about the enhanced sensation of genital stimulation and oxygen deprivation. Months of planning were on the verge of becoming reality, working Sydney with both hands. There was a fine line to maintain, and it wasn’t between her wanting it and fearing it. Merselus knew from experience: They wanted it
because
they feared it. The line not to cross was fearing it
too much
. That line would be crossed only when he so chose, when it was no longer her moment, but his, for the taking. At least that had been the plan. Somehow, he’d pushed Sydney too far, too soon, and when she scratched him like a cat across the face, he instinctively let her have a taste of what he’d given Celeste Laramore. Not enough to send Sydney into a coma, but enough to put her out for at least an hour—at least as long as Swyteck had lain unconscious alongside Main Highway. Thirty minutes later, when he’d returned to check on her, he discovered how badly he’d miscalculated—how she’d fooled him. Sydney was gone.
It wasn’t surprising, he supposed, the way he’d undershot on the application of pressure to Sydney’s carotid sinus. Just two days before, he’d pushed it too far with Celeste Laramore, sending her into a coma. He’d overcorrected on Sydney and pulled back too much, allowing her to recover too fast. This was an art, not an exact science. It was all a matter of touch. He wondered if he was losing his.
No way.
Merselus got his laptop computer from the closet and carried it to the bed. He removed his shirt and opened his pants. With a click of the mouse, he entered the dark side of the Internet, the world of file swapping and peer-to-peer trading. Return to the virtual world was risky. If he weren’t careful, he could exhaust himself and chill his drive to conquer the real thing. That very possibility made him all the more angry with Sydney. It was her fault. She had left him this way, left him with no choice but to go back to this place. It was easy to get caught up, to stay here night after night, till the rage subsided.
This time, just a quickie.
Merselus knew the exact file he was looking for, and he found some loser in Budapest offering it for swap. It was cumbersome for Merselus to put himself in the position of having to trade to get his own videos back. But releasing his work to a peer-to-peer network, where it would be traded thousands of times on computers around the globe, put a safe distance between Merselus the creator, and Merselus the consumer. No one in law enforcement could ever unravel the chain of custody and trace the obscene file back to its creator. It was the pornographic version of laundering money.
Merselus clicked
DOWNLOAD
, and the thumbnail came into focus. At first he could see the top of a woman’s head, her chestnut hair. Then her face came into view, eyes wide with fright. Then her long, slender neck wrapped in a leather collar. She was on her knees, hands and feet bound, naked except for the collar and spiked harness that was strapped so tightly below her breasts that she was bruised and bleeding at the ribs. The image was a bit grainy, which was a good thing. It made her face a little fuzzy.
It enhanced her vague resemblance to Sydney.
Merselus scrolled to the bottom of the page, to a message that was superimposed on the image, written in bold red letters:
CHOKE ON IT
. And she would, too. Some pervs got off on the kiddie porn, turned on by underage girls having sex for the first time. Others—guys like Merselus—got off on women having sex for the very
last
time.
He moved closer to the bed, towering over the image on the screen, preparing himself for two minutes of insanity that would leave him and her—especially her—breathless. This one had shown such attitude at one time, real push back, just like Sydney. She’d even tried to talk him into reversing roles, to let her try erotic asphyxiation on him, but he was no fool. The hotel maid would have found him the next morning hanging in the closet with his dick in his hand. No one, however, would ever find little Miss Choke-on-It. These two minutes were all that remained. His self-made films didn’t come close to capturing the excitement of the conquest, but they were better than raw memory. They were his movies, his moments.
With a click on the
START
arrow, there began another dark night down memory lane.