Catch Me If You Can (The Mancini Way) (10 page)

"So when are you seeing him again?"

Durant's over excited tone brought me out of my reverie.

"Tomorrow night we're having drinks in the evening; how about his detail anything there?"

"Yeah there's some movement but it's the usual nothing we can really use, we think he might have secret exits in and out of his places because we never really see him with anyone but we know he's meeting with these people and since the asshole judge has prohibited us from trespassing on Mancini's properties in an official capacity we can't really get eyes and ears in them so you're it kid. If you could keep your eyes and ears open when you gain his trust that might be just what we need because so far this guy is kicking our asses and the higher ups are making noises about scrapping the entire operation, which would be a real shame considering all the time and money we've already spent."

"Yeah I was wondering about that." I wasn't so sure that Mancini was as gullible as Durant seemed to think where I was concerned, wherever they’d gotten the notion that a man who had evaded law enforcement for so long would be putty in my hands for the mere fact that I was a woman was ludicrous. I didn't see him just revealing his secrets; whatever this guy had going on he was very efficient at keeping it under wraps, it was going to take a lot of hard work on my part to break through that and I wasn’t so sure after finally meeting him that that was going to be as easy as I’d first thought. I remembered Gracie’s warning to not be too cocky going in, how that attitude had caused many others before me to fail. Looks like this one was going to take longer than expected. It was going to take all my considerable skills to bring down the great Mancini, if that were even possible.

The question is did I want to? Yes I had a job to do but was I really doing that job if I let others dictate what I should believe? Something inside of me was very against the idea of his being guilty of the things we'd put on him; if he wasn't guilty of the list of criminal activities we suspected him of then what? Because when all was said and done Hank Mancini has been up to something for the past decade or more; problem is no one seems to know exactly what that was.

I spent the next few minutes on the phone going over strategy with my boss while feeling slightly sick to my stomach. I had a weird feeling that I was about to embark on a very twisted journey full of pitfalls and stumbling blocks. Things were not as cut and dry as they appeared to be and as much as Hank Mancini grated on me the wrong way there was no denying he made me feel. Boy did he make me feel.

I spent yet another day going over everything I knew about him while wishing I could just join the crew on surveillance detail. I know what his life looks like on paper I was very well acquainted with his every supposed crime home and abroad but there was no real insight into the real man. His files were surprisingly lacking in that area for someone who'd been under the scope of most of the law-enforcement agencies of the world for so many years. This only helped to add to the suspicion; more was known about the Presidents' daily doings than this guy who was under constant surveillance twenty four seven and from many different factions at that. It’s almost like he really was smoke able to enter into any place undetected and exit the same. We’d searched for disguises the one time we were able to get close enough to plant devices in his place but there had been no evidence to suggest he went that route. Durant’s speculation that there might be secret doors had some merit but it would be a while before this guy let me anywhere remotely close to finding that out if ever. Somehow I didn’t see him opening up that side of his life to a complete stranger no matter how much he professed to want to take me to his bed.

Mancini

I have to be smart here I couldn’t afford any screw –ups, there was no real danger of her learning anything useful to take back to her people but still there's always room for error. Always before I've been very careful to keep my private life separate from my business, with her I’m straddling both sides of the fence. To her I am business, for now; I’ll exact retribution for that as well when the time comes. The fact that I wanted her and indeed planned to have her barring death did not in anyway erase the truth of our beginning. She’d come to me to deceive I’m not the type to let that slide.

She'd no doubt made her report by now I wonder what she'd had to tell Durant about our first meeting? No doubt the other man thought it was a great coup for them that she’d got to me. They've never been this close before and my brothers were right, if they hadn't given me the heads up and she'd come into my place as she had I would've been naturally drawn to her, but what might've become of that is anybody's guess.

I'm not an inexperienced youth on his first walk around the block I wouldn't have been giving up any secrets even then, but it still could’ve made for a dangerous situation. No one but my brothers knew the ins and outs of my operation not even Jace knew all of it and neither did Wilson, there were things that I kept close to my chest being the untrusting soul that I am. The women I’d dealt with in the past never breached my outer shell enough to reach that part of me that would cause me to open up that side of my life so there'd never been any danger of that happening before. With Cierra, knowing who she was and what she was after, feeling the things that I'm feeling for her; it could pose a bit of a problem but nothing I can't handle. I just wish she hadn't come into my life at this particular time when I have this very delicate case on my hands. Instead of devoting all of my time to her acquisition I now have to divide it between her and making sure my ass is covered with these guys. I was cutting it kind of close too pulling off the raid tonight and meeting with her tomorrow night knowing that her people were even now watching my every move or trying to but that's the way I usually do things I like to live on the edge.

Once again I got my mind ready, releasing all the unnecessary data from my memory bank so I could focus all my energies on the task at hand. There were ten no doubt very scared young women depending on me to rescue them from a fate almost certainly worst than death though they did not know I existed.

I had to set things up with my guys before going in because once I boarded the ship I had to be in constant motion and we couldn’t afford to miss a step once we got the ball rolling. There was most definitely going to be firepower exchanged; my job was to see that none of the innocents were caught in the crossfire. I hated losing any of the unfortunates on my watch and so far I've been lucky where others haven't. This cargo was made up of young girls who were bound to be terrified; one of my operatives is a female who specializes in these matters, we've done enough of these runs that we're almost expert by now but there was always an unknown element that could pop up out of nowhere. In the old days we would've just rushed the shit and taken the hostages by force, there would most likely be lives lost, among them some of the victims. These days we handled things with just a bit more sophistication; I have accrued a reputation as a dealer so to speak, I'm known all over the world in some less than exemplary circles as the man to go to if you want to get things done. I deal in weapons, drugs, humans you name it I do it. The reason my operations are so smooth is because I pay very close attention to detail, I set things up so that no one outside of the parties involved ever know that I've been there. I do not leave a calling card no imprint of my existence or involvement is ever left behind. By the time my so-called new friends feel the pinch they have no idea who it was that put the squeeze on them. It’s kept me alive all this time and the fact that law enforcement was always on my ass added credibility to my cred as a dangerous criminal who was able to outsmart them at every turn. My criminal element was very impressed with my track record, if only the feds knew how their constant hounding kept me in business. Criminals liked nothing better than seeing one of their own getting over on the ‘man’.

Doing what I do is not easy, it takes time and patience and a strong sense of justice and though I might not wear a suit of armor or have supernatural skills, I have honed what I do have to almost perfection because I can’t afford to fail, ever. I never expected that my life would turn out this way; I’d always thought I’d follow in my father’s footsteps and go into business, but when I was old enough to know better I realized I had no real interest in business, it was too structured if you will. No I needed more of a challenge that didn’t always come down to dollars and cents. I was extremely wealthy at the end of my eighteenth birthday, while my peers were being given the hottest new car I was being handed the key to the safety deposit box that held all the pertinent information about my inheritance from my paternal grandfather, a man whom I had loved and who had showered me always with kindness which extended even from the grave.

My parents weren’t too worried that I would run wild and do all the things that usually got guys like me in trouble, they’d taught me well. No instead I set up a trust for my two brothers who had bitched and moaned about it but it had fallen on deaf ears. We were in it together my brothers and I and there was no way I could see myself having and they not. We went to different schools because believe it or not they’d always wanted law enforcement, maybe because of their shitty upbringings they thought this was a good way to help kids who were in the same predicament as they’d been in before my parents took over, they knew the signs they claimed which made them perfect for their professions.

I on the other hand still under the assumption that I was going to take over the running of my family’s vast corporation had headed off to business school. Who knew then how far removed from that world I would become in such a short space of time? Or how effortlessly I would slide into it. My way was nowhere near what my brothers were doing, they went the route of the textbook while I came at it from the dark side so to speak. I had no idea when I embarked on my little venture that things would turn out the way they have, that my life would be forever changed and that the once care free youth with not a worry in the world would become the man I am today. I single handedly built my own world of crime from nothing, drawing in some of the world’s most elusive criminals and I did it all from behind a computer screen.

It's quite simple really I concocted a scheme and carried it out in minute detail, a scheme in which I was both buyer and seller of arms an arms dealer if you will. It's almost like a Ponzi scheme but here's how I worked it. First I kept my ears peeled for anything to do with my newfound interest and when I’d gotten a whiff of something interesting I went to work. I set myself up as someone who wanted to buy arms and made sure that information got to the right circles. Then I faked a different ID to set up myself as a seller of arms and that was it, nothing had exchanged hands obviously but after a few of those transactions the right people had taken notice and pretty soon I was being approached by both buyers and sellers. This opened communications between me and the underground criminal community which eventually got me an entrée into the world of high crime and from there it spread from one criminal faction to the next. I did this at the ripe old age of nineteen one day when I'd been bored out of my fucking mind studying economics at Wharton. I knew by then that I had no real interest in going into the family business that my dad and his dad before him were so proud of but neither did I know what the hell I wanted to do with my life.

At first I was amazed at how easy it had been to get my foot in the door, I just basically set myself up as a player, invented a whole new identity for myself and that was it. It’s amazingly easy to reinvent yourself as long as you have the money and the resources and no place has more resources than the quads of an Ivy league school where the nation’s best and brightest were being cultivated to run the world; after all it’s not the little deadbeat drug dealer on the corner selling to school kids that’s running the show, it’s the one providing him with the goods. That’s where I focused my scheme, not on the middleman but straight to the top. It was better to cut off the head than the tail.

I had no real direction in mind when I first started out, it was just a test for myself to see if I could do it, there were always stories of how easily people had gained access to certain things in our society, things that they should never have had access to or even in some cases have known about, but every other day there was another story of espionage or some kid in his mother’s basement cracking codes or damn near bringing down nations. I took my time and nurtured relationships with the men and women I’d drawn into my web still not knowing where I was going with all this but just simply blown away by how easy it all was, not to mention how high up corruption went in our little universe.

Pretty soon I was sitting around the table with dignitaries and men in high places brokering deals between nations, all hidden from the watchful eye of the public of course. It was then I learned my distrust of government agencies, I saw the way they did things, how they were willing to cut deals with unsavory characters in order to bring down what they considered to be the top dog. I believe in making them all pay.

When I'd first been approached by Wilson I'd been very suspicious of him as well; it had taken him almost a year to wear me down and it was only after the realization that the thing I'd created had become bigger than I that I'd given in and called Wilson. When I'd met Jace, Jace was more into the physical aspect back then than I, I was the brain to his brawn. I'd learned more then about the secret society that worked behind the scenes, an organization that had been in existence for centuries, governed by men of certain families of which Wilson's was the leading faction. They spent their lives from generation to generation fighting injustice here and abroad. Like me they trusted no government or the handpicked henchmen that made up their agencies. I guess you could say we were the police police. We play by a different set of rules that were all made with the welfare of the less fortunate in mind. Our motto is ‘By any means necessary’. Most of our enemies never saw the inside of a jail and that's why we're able to survive so long without anyone on the outside ever having the slightest inclination that we existed. We annihilate the guilty and on the rare occasion that we let them live because of their ignorance of the facts or something of the like, they never knew what the hell had hit them in the first place.