Midnight Club (28 page)
Authors: James Patterson
The Midnight Club; Beverly Hills, California
DISCREETLY HIDDEN AMONG
the hills and canyons north of Sunset Boulevard, the suburb of Bel Air is almost exclusively residential, accessible for the most part through steel gates occasionally guarded by private police.
Nestled among the lush, low hills is the Hotel Bel Air: classic, palatial, secluded; unique for its understated and tasteful landscaping, its petal-strewn walkways, its swans.
Almost everything about the California hotel is beautiful, and best of all, respectable.
During the first week in November of that year—gloriously sunny days, consistently in the high seventies—there were no rooms or suites available to any of the business travelers, the movie studio executives, the movie stars, who frequent the Hotel Bel Air.
Instead, the eleven-acre, ninety-room retreat was reserved for an unusual meeting. Twenty-seven business executives, government leaders, and high-ranking military men were in attendance. They met each morning, over breakfast served in the Pavilion and Garden Room, more typically used for expensive weddings and lavish bar mitzvahs. Every night, the participants dined as a group in the hotel restaurant, which had also been booked for the five days.
The talk of the Bel Air was the usual sort from the twenty-seven members of the Club, although it could hardly be considered shop talk…
—There was the important subject of narcotics, now a $23-billion-a-year business, with a profit margin over 65 percent.
—There was borrowing and lending, once known as loan-sharking. This banking function now accounted for $14 billion, $10 billion of that profit.
—There was prostitution, computed at less than $1.5 billion. Still, 40 percent in the black.
—And gambling—about $12 billion net, half of it positive earnings.
One evening at dinner, there was a disinterested discussion about how the Cubans were getting into the numbers racket in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
The Nigerians and the Pakistanis were involved in heroin dealing lately, and also the seemingly unrelated false credit card business. Why did ethnic groups always seem to have their specialties? None of the members really cared.
This was big business, with profits in the area of $59 billion to $60 billion a year.
During the week in Southern California, refinements were made in distribution channels; changes were agreed on in the pyramid-style management system that would affect business in every major country around the world—elemental changes in the way things had run for perhaps a thousand years. At the top of the new infrastructure was a chief executive; then came a chief operating officer; a general counsel; and finally the other major executives.
What the twenty-seven members had finally done was to control crime.
They had succeeded in making organized crime one of the most powerful and wealthiest business entities in the world. They were now eleven times more profitable than IBM, with no competition in the mid-range of their product line.
Only one important Club member was missing for the high-level meeting in California.
Alexandre St.-Germain was not among the group sequestered in the hills of Bel Air. He purposely had not been invited. However, he was the subject of important conversations at the hotel.
The discussion was one of business practices, of the new way versus the old, of
respectability
and
anonymity.
The Grave Dancer had fallen back into his violent ways. There was the style in which he had attempted to enforce his will recently in New York. Shootings. An unfortunate kidnapping, in which the Club had finally intervened. There was the matter of a missing young woman named Susan Paladino.
Alexandre St.-Germain had been necessary in the original plan to eliminate the Old Guard of crime. He had a shrewd understanding for business and politics, the instincts of a Machiavelli; he had personally charmed several of the twenty-seven current members. He had originally brought them into the venture, in fact. But now: what to do with the Grave Dancer?
In the early morning of November 16, David Wilkes led FBI agents and members of the L.A.P.D. onto the private grounds of the Hotel Bel Air. Three dozen officers and agents in business suits and duty uniforms trotted briskly across the strikingly beautiful landscape.
Riot shotguns and a variety of handguns caught the glint of the morning sun. Bolt actions slid into readiness, waking the swans, causing the hired Vietnamese and Mexican help to duck into laundry closets and a few unoccupied rooms.
One of the Club members was arrested during his morning swim. Another member was stopped while jogging down nearby Bellagio Road. The majority of the members were roused from sleep.
The raid was led by Wilkes of the FBI, but the team also included Stuart Fischer, from the New York district attorney’s office. Sarah McGinniss was there in spirit. So was Stefanovitch.
The raid was the culmination of four months of strategic planning and unusual cooperation, not only among U.S. agencies but also governments around the world. Known Club members had been under surveillance for weeks before the California meeting. The documentation necessary for prosecution filled several large rooms in Wilkes’s offices in Washington. Duplicate material was stored in warehouses in New Jersey and, for safety, at Interpol headquarters in Europe.
The RICO Act was cited over and over again to the twenty-seven businesspeople, then to their expensive teams of attorneys.
So much for respectability; for the Club’s being civilized and blending in; for euphemism of any kind. The police were finally learning the rules of the game. There were no rules at all. Except to shoot to kill.
Alexandre St.-Germain; The World Trade Center
SEVEN-FIFTY
A.M.
, AND
he was alone. He was more alone than he had ever been in his life. Am I suicidal? he wondered. He had no definite answer for himself.
He hurried across the sterile expanse of marble and stone inside the World Trade Center lobby. He took one last deep breath at the elevator banks, to steady himself, to get himself ready.
He pulled out an Ingram machine-gun pistol. The compact weapon came from underneath a loose-fitting black sports jacket.
It happened so quickly that no one could have reacted any differently. A man pushing an Au Bon Pain bakery cart distracted the bodyguards at the last moment.
“No one moves. That means you and you especially. No point trying to be heroes here. No need to die for this piece of shit.”
Alexandre St.-Germain recognized Parker an instant before he saw the submachine gun. Parker had reached the elevator doors simultaneously with St.-Germain and his entourage.
The plan was skillful in its execution, almost effortless. To work, it had to be.
Parker immediately pushed St.-Germain inside the elevator. He pressed the black muzzle of the Ingram hard up against the man’s throat.
“Don’t sweat it,” he said to the Grave Dancer. “Everything is cool. We’ve already thought of everything. No body doubles this time.”
Both of Alexandre St.-Germain’s hands were thrust out, palms forward. He was holding back his own people. “I will take care of this,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”
The doors slid shut without a sound. Parker and St.-Germain were alone inside the elevator, facing one another across the empty passenger car.
“I’m sure we can work something out. Come to an agreement.” St.-Germain spoke very softly.
“Just shut up, Pusherman.”
PARKER JABBED THE
button marked “108,” the tower’s top floor. Up there was the famed observation deck, where ordinary folks could pay to peer out over New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, the whole metropolitan area.
The passing floor numbers registered on the indicator lights. The elevator-car cables whined like ropes of steel scraping together.
As the numbers reached thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, Isiah Parker watched closely; then he jammed the emergency button. The elevator bucked slightly, then slowly scraped to a stop. The alarm bell inside went off, a loud wailing that was painful to the ears.
“You thought you had it all figured out,” Parker said. He held the machine-gun pistol so it touched Alexandre St.-Germain’s chest. He wasn’t feeling much of anything yet, as if he were drifting away, finally cut loose from the world.
“Apparently not.” The Grave Dancer’s tone was supercilious.
“You killed off the competition. That was like firing the old executive team. What was supposed to come next?”
Alexandre St.-Germain’s face remained difficult to read. He had the cold, distant eyes of a wolf. He was completely self-absorbed. “I’ve met policemen like you before. Many times before,” he finally said. “You understand very little about life, but you think you know it all. Self-delusion can be extremely dangerous.”
Isiah Parker smiled at St.-Germain. “Something else I was told. You fed my brother junk for ten days. Got him addicted. You played with my brother, poisoned him slowly…You hurt him, to teach another of your lessons.”
St.-Germain shook his head back and forth.
“A few missing details in your story…Your brother was an addict before we ever got to him. Whenever he needed it, we were there, of course. He was crazy, depressed, and very dangerous at the end. You should have seen that. Except that you were using cocaine yourself. A great deal of cocaine, as I understand it.”
Isiah Parker leaned back hard against the elevator wall. He smiled, a little sadly this time. So. He had shown the first weakness. Alexandre St.-Germain was still winning.
The emergency phone inside the elevator began to ring. The familiar jangling sound came with its own echo.
Parker reached back behind his head. He plucked the phone away from its rack. “Yeah? Elevator man.”
“Who is this? Who’s up there?” he heard over the line. “Who the hell’s in that elevator?”
“It’s Alexandre St.-Germain. And a friend of his. We’re in conference right now.”
Isiah Parker hung up the telephone. He realized that he was feeling strangely giddy. He wouldn’t allow himself to lose concentration, though. He took the phone receiver off the hook again.
“No more calls,” he said to St.-Germain. “We’ll hold all your important calls for a while.”
Parker waved his gun to the left of where St.-Germain stood. “Have a seat. Slide down nice and easy against the wall. Where do you get your suits, man? Barney’s Boystown? You’re the best-dressed killer in town.”
Parker could hear the steady wail of police cruisers arriving outside. It made him understand how spectacular and bizarre the moment was.
“Who knows, maybe they can rescue you,” he said in a quiet voice. “Maybe they can figure out something. So sit back and relax. Let’s try to imagine how it’s going to turn out. Make a guess. You’re supposed to be smart.”
TIME IN THE
elevator passed slowly. A half hour. An hour. Almost two hours. All according to plan. Parker had been on the other side of police emergency situations before. He knew how they were reacting out there. He’d planned on that, too.
Both he and St.-Germain were soaking in their own sweat. Somebody had shut off the elevator’s fresh air supply. The first smart move by the N.Y.P.D.
Everything had become a slow, floating dream in Parker’s mind. He’d been thinking about Marcus, remembering moments between them. They’d been neighborhood heroes. It was a hard feeling to explain. He thought back to when his brother had been champion. Being at the top of the world like that made you soar, made you feel you were somebody special. Everybody looked up to Marcus, and they knew they could get out of Harlem, too. Escape was possible. Then the dream had been destroyed—because of this man on the elevator floor.
Policemen, several of them, were stationed at the elevator bank below, and on the fortieth floor above. Every so often, they hollered up or down to the stalled car. They cajoled; they threatened. Parker never said a word back to them.
His eyes were starting to burn. Rivulets of sweat seeped out from his hairline. He felt as if his body were soaking in a warm pool.
St.-Germain’s linen suit had turned a lifeless cardboard gray. His wavy blond hair was plastered over his forehead. He wasn’t the invincible Grave Dancer anymore. He was a monster, though, and Parker could feel his skin crawl.
“I’m going to tell you how it goes from here on,” Parker said. His voice stayed low, but kept an edge. “Then we’ll be even, you and me sitting here in this hot box. You’ll know as much as I do.”
“You’re in control now, my friend.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Isiah Parker raised the black, snub-nosed submachine gun. The Frenchman’s dark eyes registered the slightest confusion. Alarms seemed to go off in his head.
St.-Germain had decided that Parker wasn’t suicidal: he was too much in control of the situation to let himself die here. The police detective obviously wasn’t going to shoot him inside the elevator. What was he going to do? What was he planning now?
“You don’t have
anything
figured out,” Parker whispered across the elevator.
“You seem certain about that.”
“Yeah, I am. You still think you’re going to get away. That’s your fucking arrogance. You think I’ve put myself in a box here. No way out. No escape for me.”
St.-Germain said nothing. A smug expression remained on his face. He always won. Somehow, he won.
“You’re wrong. I just wanted you to suffer, like my brother, Marcus. Like you did to him in the Edmonds Hotel.”
Isiah Parker raised the Ingram machine gun and smiled. With his free hand, he took out a sealed Plasticine bag filled with fine white powder.
St.-Germain’s eyes widened. Finally, he understood something.
“I wish we had more time for this,” Parker said. “Never enough time these days.”
He took out a lighter, an ordinary Bic.
He took out a small silver spoon.
A hypodermic needle and a plunger appeared next.
He raised the Ingram to the level of St.-Germain’s eyes. “Take off that coat. Get comfortable.”
“What if I won’t?”
“Then everything goes real quick. Less time for any rescue attempts. Roll up your sleeve. Either arm’s okay.”
The Grave Dancer reluctantly took off his suit jacket. After removing his gold cuff links, he rolled up his shirt sleeve.
“Now fix your own cocktail.”
“I don’t use the stuff. I never use narcotics.”
Parker gestured over with the gun. “Now you do.”
He watched in eerie silence as Alexandre St.-Germain cooked up a speedball with the shooting paraphernalia. A familiar acrid odor took over the closed space. When the hypodermic was loaded, Parker spoke again. His voice was low, but in command.
“Good stuff. Very popular up where I live. Take a taste, Grave Dancer.
Do it now.
”
St.-Germain raised the hypodermic, its plunger extended.
“Just a little taste now,” Parker said. “Then we talk some more. Nothing to be afraid of yet. Twelve-, thirteen-year-old kids do it every day in my neighborhood.”
St.-Germain slowly and carefully inserted the silver needle into his vein. The arrogant smile had finally started to fade.
Seconds later, his head lolled back, then forward again. It was a junkie’s patented nod-out routine. His eyeballs rolled up sharply into his skull. Suddenly he started to dry-heave.
He knew he’d been given an overdose. Fear was in his eyes. He was going into cardiac arrest on the elevator floor.
Isiah Parker’s eyes never left St.-Germain’s face. What he saw was his brother. The Edmonds Hotel. Maybe a touch of justice, finally.
Alexandre St.-Germain went into severe convulsions. He couldn’t get his breath, but he could hear Parker’s voice. “How do you like it, Pusherman?”
St.-Germain had a stroke sitting against the elevator wall. He had a second agonizing stroke forty-five seconds later.
Parker stared at the pathetic, slumped figure, the head now twisted at an impossible angle. Alexandre St.-Germain was dead, dead like a pitiful street junkie on the floor of the elevator.
There was no remorse inside him; no attacks of conscience for Parker. He had done what had to be done. He’d done what the police ought to be permitted to do.
Then one thought dominated Parker’s mind: to escape and survive. That would be something, wouldn’t it.