CON TEST: Double Life (26 page)

William drove thinking how their agendas were a traffic boost to help him thwart capture from the LAPD. Had they known the information they handed over freely would be a permanent set of furniture in William’s head? The irrational LAPD had better call in the FBI, or the cunning, charming, and creative William Fortune would devastate them. Capture was imminent in order for the LAPD to arrest William’s plans.

Four years ago, he had left Philadelphia prepared to do what was needed to begin his legacy. Just when he had gotten started someone wanted to blow his high. That was okay for William, too. He would blow their damn head off.

Human nature--the emotional bitch that she was--had William afraid, but confident. People hated to leave their comfort zone. It was worse when the zone was interrupted by an unknown force.

William continued to drive away from Silverstein’s in an emergency situation. Dire. In that post-9/11 society everyone had a practiced method to handle all emergencies. He responded to his alarm going off as quickly as inmates in a California pen hitting the ground when a tower guard yelled, “Yard Down!”

If that was true, why was William dragged out of his car at gun point by a masked man. A man that he did not know. A man that Paul Silverstein knew as Sam.

FORTY-EIGHT

S
ecret Service Agent Delia Williams lived in a rich downtown Philadelphia high rise. She happened to be up late reading a fashion rag. That was what her vacation had become. A two week journey through the Land of Boredom. She was startled to hear the sound of her telephone ringing at one a.m. The caller would not be from her job. It would be a sad thing if it was a deadly family emergency.

She sipped her cocoa and cleared her throat before she picked up the receiver.

“
Don’t we sound awake for one in the morning?” the caller asked. He added, “Good morning.”

“
I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number,” Delia said and figured she had intercepted the call of a gentleman with his eye set on a late night booty call.

“
Oh, I have the right number. Your number,” the caller replied.

Delia slammed the telephone down.

The caller was pissed.

He re-dialed the agent.

“
Delia Williams. Secret Service six years. I know who the hell you are!” The caller said angrily and then chuckled.

That grabbed her attention. She did not have her phone tapped, but could record the call. She raced to the living room and pressed record on her answering machine.

“
What do you want, sir?” she asked.

“
For you to do your job,” the man said. He spoke English. His accent was Italian.

“
And, what might that be?” She asked sardonically. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed her house phone. Her phone beeped and she told the man to hold and clicked over before he could protest. She hung up her cell phone and when she clicked over, she dialed in her partner, Jared William. She told him to mute his phone and then clicked back over to the anonymous caller. “Sir, are you there?” She asked coolly.

“
I am,” he said. “I bet there’s a third party on this call, too. Hi Jared. I won’t keep you two. One of your cases has been reopened. I mean broken wide open like a virgin. It would behoove you to get a handle on the case before the suspect spirals further out of control. Again!”

“
And who might that be?” Jared asked, acknowledging his presence. His voice leaked contempt.

“
Save the sarcasm, Jared, my boy. Your man Justice Lorenzo is currently on the loose in LA and very wanted by the LAPD. Only they know him as William Fortune.”

Both agents were jolted to life. Stunned by the comment. The caller would be laughing hysterically had he saw the dropped jaw of Jared and the furrowed brow of Delia. Delia shrank into her sofa, and her mind raced wildly trying to pull together the possible theories that could make the caller’s revelation gospel.

The caller asked, “Hello, are you there?”

Jared replied, “Sure we are. Who’s our source of information? How do we know that this is not a hoax?”

“
I have Delia’s home number. Would a man go through that much to play a hoax? Hell no! I’m a confident informant. You guys love those, right?” The caller asked through laughter. “Contact a Detective Rocky Bowman of the LAPD. He can fill you in. I am sure he has the facts by now.”

FORTY-NINE

I
t promised to be a windy, unruly day. Thermostats were reading about 60-degrees. Sam was moist with sweat. The salt-laced perspiration left dried salt blotches scattered on his face.

That would not prevent him from skipping along the sidewalk to a gangster tune blaring in his head. Not Tupac. Real gangster, like the Godfather score. In the mid-dawn silence, only the rhythm of his heart could be heard thumping.

From the opposite side of the street, he watched the three-story home that housed his target. A believer of the adage “the early bird gets the worm,” he had known that now would be the perfect time to handle his business.

Sam traipsed across the street and lifted the latch on the gate surrounding the home. He made his way up the walk, stepped up five steps and was on the porch. He approached the lovely front door. He turned the door knob. Locked. No problem. He had a trusting locksmith set to gain access to any house. Even 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After all, that was a house, just painted white.

The door crept ajar relatively easy. Sam slipped in. He wore a jumpsuit that hid the Glock holstered on his waist. He stood stealthily in the vestibule. Running water could be heard from the kitchen.
Coffee
, he thought. She was helping herself to a wake-up.
Boy, was she about to be awakened.

He watched her shadow march across the dining room wall toward the living room. Her long hair was swept across her face. Her vibrant bronze complexion glowed. A pink robe enveloped her svelte body. Good thing. Sam could not stand to be aroused. The rollers curled around her locks had bounced wildly as she skated to the staircase and proceeded up the steps holding on to the railing. Too bad she had no idea Sam was kneeled in her vestibule scanning her every move through the small opening in the door.

She landed on the second floor hallway, and he swung open the vestibule door and casually strolled to the kitchen. There was not one creak from the hardwood floor. He had been assured that since this was not his first time in the home. In the kitchen, he moved one of the six table chairs and scooted under the table. His presence was masked by the floor length table skirt. How long she waited to greet her visitor was her prerogative, but the two of them would talk. The conversation would be brief, though. The look on her face after he exposed himself would be priceless. The skully that he slipped on his head contained a miniature camera that would capture the dumb look on her face. He planned to watch it repeatedly.

When he finished with her, he would bet that no clues would remain for the police to call her death anything but a cold case. The police would also know they were not investigating a sexual deviant one-nighter gon’ bonkers. The murder would scream deliberate and not random. The police would be bogged with more questions than answers. The detective looking to unravel the mystery of a lifetime would get a stab at it that morning. Tomorrow. Or maybe the next. Who knew when they would find the body? The killer would have a faultless performance and would be long gone after they found Secret Service Agent Nyoka LaCroix dead.

FIFTY

I
t was said that patience is the catalyst to lashing out perfect revenge. There had to be some truth to that. Nothing was better than the look of flabbergast on the face of someone doled the most surprising revenge upon—especially when they’ve forgotten all about one. Secret Service Agent’s Jared Williams and Delia Williams blood boiled with the idea of revenge as they flew across America to confront the thief that had blown them off four years earlier.

They were reluctantly willing to let bygones be bygones under the premise that Justice Lorenzo was dead. With a confirmation from the LAPD that he was alive along with their previous anonymous tip, they needed confirmation. They wanted unquestionable proof that he was alive and living well. But photos of Justice Lorenzo in a hotel with one of their own taken that same month could not be ignored. Prints from the nefarious thief could not be ignored either, especially considering they had been lifted from the VCR of a Mailbox Etc. crime scene.

Up all night reading William Fortune novels was quite unnerving and telling. If they had learned anything about the illusive Justice Lorenzo, then they had better have their A-game with them aboard non-stop flight to LAX.

They learned more about Justice Lorenzo by reading the Fortune novels, and their thirst to capture him heightened. Justice had had to have amassed a bankroll the size of Russia, which they could not wait to confiscate.

To the agents’ estimation, Justice was no longer an identity thief, but a murderer. How or what prompted him to kill could not be explained? None of the books used to profile suspects would have had Justice Lorenzo capable of stomping on an ant. Federal agents were genetically designed to feel that their pride had been wounded by the thug. Especially, considering they had realized that he had committed murder in New York City four years earlier. To date, neither the NYPD nor the NY FBI Office had been able to figure out whose body had been burned. They believed it was Justice’s and that was obviously incorrect. Jared had a hunch on who the body belonged to. The one person connected to Justice that was never found and believed to be Justice’s killer: Mr. Harry “Amir” Dijonette.

FIFTY-ONE

O
n the second floor, Sam heard Nyoka’s padded feet moving across the floor. Water ran and flowed through the drain pipe that ran through the kitchen. He hoped that she brushed her teeth. That would be pleasant. He hated morning breath. The water stopped and he heard slippers moving along the floor boards to the stairs. The front door opened. Thirty-seconds later it closed. Her slippered feet were in the kitchen seconds later.

He heard her slam the newspaper onto the kitchen table. She read the headline and murmured, “Why don’t they just close the borders? To hell with the immigrants!”

Damn
, Sam thought.
She does not have to be so heartless
.

She moved to the cupboard and pulled her favorite Washington Wizards coffee mug from a shelf. She ran hot water from the faucet over it and then poured herself a mug of coffee. The running water masked the sound of Sam coming from under the table. He sat at the head of the table and when she turned around to face the table, she instinctively hurled the mug at the intruder. She then began to scream bloody murder, as she ran toward the back door.

What a fine debut he had made. She had acted more boldly than expected, though. Sam lodged a bullet into her thigh. “And where the hell are you going?” That was an urgent request for her silence. All of her dirty secrets flashed across her face. Fright was also there as he slammed her face into the back door. She landed on the floor and held her leg, rocking and wincing uncontrollably. Her face became wet with tears.

Sam used his jacket sleeve to mop the hot coffee from his face. He looked into her eyes and it screamed anger. His sadistic stare had answered the initial question she had asked herself when she had first saw him: Will I be the one to die? Or murder?

“
Now that really wasn’t nice. I apologize, though, for the shot. You were screaming and I did not come here to hear you scream. That could have been more fatal,” Sam said. He added, “Much more!”

Nyoka looked at him bizarrely. She had no clue what was going on, nor who was in her home. Why was this strange man in her kitchen interrupting her morning routine? Now that she had been shot, she was petrified. She prayed that a neighbor heard her agonizing scream.
Someone had to
, she thought.

The shooter walked over to her and grabbed three of the rollers on her hair. He dragged her to the table as one of her legs dragged deadly on the tiled floor. The other one shuffled along in the direction that he pulled her. He sat her in a kitchen chair. He then tossed a kitchen towel into her face and told her to tie it around her wound to stop the pool of blood from thickening at her feet.

“
I have my purse up stairs,” she said like a volunteer. “Percocet and Xanax in the medicine cabinet.

He ignored her and took a sheet of paper from his pocket along with a pen. He pushed the items in front of her and said, “That’s a nice offer, but one that I can refuse. I’m sure there is much more money in an account in Luxembourg and now that you have changed the password I am going to need that password!”

“
I do not know what you’re talking about.”

Sam slapped her with enough force to collapse the table when her head slammed into it. “Listen, bitch, you should know all of your accomplices before you agree to squirrel the man who had been paying you off to betray the country in which you swore to uphold the protection of the US President and others,” he hissed at her. “Don’t look at me crazily. Do you think that this plan was truly hatched in the fashion that you were told? Everybody is my puppet and I am cleaning up my mess, starting with you. Now what is the fucking password?”