Lights Out!--A heist thriller involving the Mafia (20 page)

Before leaving the apartment, he'd checked his watch against the time on his alarm clock. It was running two minutes slow, and he adjusted it to coincide with the bedside digital clock.

By nine o'clock the party at the Smythe house was in full gear. Liquor flowed freely, and conversations were spirited, and loud.

‘You still have that client in Argentina?' Smythe was asked by a partygoer.

‘Yes, I do. Keeps me hopping, that's for sure.'

The questioner's wife said, ‘It must be exhausting traveling there so often. I know that Cynthia misses you when you're away.'

‘And I miss her, but business is business.'

A sudden clap of thunder caused everyone to stop talking and to look through windows.

‘The weather forecasters got it right for a change,' someone said.

‘Looks like it's about to pour any minute,' said another. ‘I hope we don't lose power.'

‘Lose power?' Smythe said, startled. ‘Oh, yes, let's hope that doesn't happen. Will you excuse me?'

He moved slowly in the direction of the kitchen and its back door leading to the yard. He didn't want to go to the pool house in a downpour and have to explain why he was wet. Mrs Kalich saw him enter the kitchen but said nothing as she continued helping the catering staff prepare platters to be passed. He reached the door, waited until he was certain that no one was paying attention, opened it and slipped outside. A brilliant flash of white sky-to-ground lightning preceded another explosion of thunder as he stepped off the patio and made for the pool house. He stopped after only a few steps. A couple embraced behind a tall bush.

‘Oops,' Smythe said as he skirted the bush and continued to the small structure at the far end of the pool. He removed the key from his pocket, unlocked the door, stepped inside, used his foot to push Saison's box of money closer to the door, exited, and ran back to the house just as the rain came down in torrents.

‘You're wet,' Mrs Wiggins said when he rejoined the guests.

‘What? Oh, yes, I am. I ah … I wanted to check on the outdoor furniture in case the wind gets strong. You know how these storms can cause high winds.'

He looked at his watch.

Nine fifteen.

Other wristwatches were checked up and down the east coast.

In New York City, members of Vinnie Tourino's crime family had been dispatched to a half dozen sites – three jewelry stores, a check-cashing establishment, and two small branches of larger banks.

The Baltimore crime syndicate had selected four targets once the electricity went off: two casinos and two high-end jewelry stores known to have millions in uncut diamonds on hand.

The Philadelphia mob had pinpointed two illegal gambling operations run by its rival gang, two fancy restaurants, a high-end jewelry store, and two suburban bank branches.

The major crime families in these cities, and others, had ‘sub-licensed' knowledge of the time the blackout would occur to various lesser gangs in order to recoup their investments.

In Manhattan, the man called Tengku also kept an eye on the time. Four of his followers had positioned themselves along the route that Senator Quinlin would take on his way from the ballroom to his waiting car outside the hotel. As a leading candidate, he would be flanked by Secret Service agents assigned to keep him safe, but Tengku was convinced that the sudden blackout would cause enough confusion to allow his men to overpower the agents and kill Quinlin. If they died in the attempt, so be it. They would be giving their lives for a greater good. All those virgins.

Back in Toronto, Dominick Martone played a video game with one of his grandchildren in the den of his house while his wife, Maria, put the finishing touches on her grandson's favorite dessert,
biscotti dei fantasmi
– ‘ghost cookies' – shaped into ghost faces with a cookie cutter and decorated with a sugary icing, chocolate chips the final touch for eyes. She'd already whipped up biscotti with almonds, butterscotch chips, and bourbon for her husband. An orchestral version of
La Boheme
played softly in the background.

Martone, too, checked his watch, but not because he had members of his crime family dispatched in Toronto ready to cash in on the blackout. The Toronto crime boss had already made a large profit on his investment by selling franchises to others, and had no intention of committing criminal acts that night. He left that to the lesser species of crime bosses, the
imbeciles
for whom he had little or no respect.

It was nine thirty up and down the east coast of the United States and Canada.

And then it was nine thirty-one.

‘H
ey, Paul, you look like hell,' a younger, long-haired co-worker seated next to Saison said as the large French-Canadian stared blankly at the bank of computer screens on which vital data was displayed.

‘You don't look so good yourself,' Saison said.

His colleague laughed. ‘You been winning at the track lately?'

‘
Crétin à crinière
,' Saison muttered, calling him a long-haired twit.

‘What's that mean, Paul?'

‘You don't want to know. Just shut up, huh. I'm thinking.'

Saison's ‘thinking' involved going over and over in his mind what he had to do to initiate the blackout. ‘First I do this, then I do that. This must be done before that is done. Seven steps. Do this, then …'

He got up and walked from the room in the direction of the master control room where the switches he was to manipulate were housed. ‘First this, then that, then …'

He checked his watch: nine twenty-five.

The control room was vacant. Would he continue to be the only person in the room when the time came to act? He hoped so. He hadn't thought of that until then. His bargain with Smythe didn't call for him to have to become physically violent in order to accomplish his mission. He made a decision: he would not attack anyone. If others came in and thwarted his plan, he would leave, go to Smythe's home anyway, and collect his money.

He looked at his watch: nine thirty-one. He pulled the scrap of paper Smythe had given him with the time and date: Friday, August twenty-second, 2014. Fourteen minutes to go.

His supervisor walked in. Saison shoved the paper back in his pocket.

‘Everything OK, Paul?' he asked.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, everything is A-OK.'

‘You pick up any problems on the computers?'

‘Nah, no problems. Everything hunky-dory.'

‘Well, I saw you in here and—'

‘Nothing wrong,' Saison said, realizing he'd begun to sweat. ‘Going back now.'

His boss watched him lumber from the control room and thought what he always thought when talking to Paul Saison:
Maybe he'll quit. God, please tell him to quit
.

Saison settled back in his chair in front of the monitors and looked at the paper again. He checked his watch: nine thirty-one.

Five minutes later, he looked at his watch again: nine thirty-one.

His eyes returned to the computer screens in front of him.

Smythe left the crowd in his living room and found a secluded corner away from the party. He looked at his watch: nine forty-four.

Dominick Martone checked the time: nine forty-four.

Tengku's band of assassins' watches read nine forty-four.

Everyone's watches along the north-eastern coast of North America said nine forty-four.

At Power-Can, Paul Saison's watch still read: nine thirty-one.

A
pianist accompanied singers at the Smythe's Steinway grand, including Cynthia, who performed her favorite aria,
Celeste Aida
. It was nine forty-five, and her husband tensed as he waited for the lights to go out and their expensive gasoline generator to kick in.

It didn't happen. He watched the seconds hand slowly sweep across the face of his watch until it read nine forty-six. And nine forty-seven. Nine fifty. Nine fifty-five. Panic set in. Cynthia reached an especially challenging portion of the aria and nailed the high notes, eliciting applause and a few whoops. Smythe felt faint. Why hadn't the lights gone out? What had happened? Why had Saison failed to trip the appropriate switches that would have sent the blackout cascading down the entire north-eastern grid?

‘You OK, Carlton?' someone asked, noticing his ashen face. He'd had to lean against a doorjamb to stay on his feet.

‘I'm ah … I ah … sure, I'm fine.'

He went to the staircase and managed to get to his bedroom where he closed the door and sat on the bed. Who could he call? He pictured Dominick Martone and his goons. Martone would be furious, angry enough to kill. Millions of dollars was resting on the money he'd laid out for the blackout information, millions from other organized crime figures. They, too, would be angry enough to want to kill Martone – and Carlton Smythe.

He took deep breaths to calm himself and decided there was nothing he could do at that moment except return downstairs and act as though nothing was wrong. Whether he could pull that off was pure conjecture.

In Manhattan, presidential frontrunner Senator Miles Quinlin had given a rousing speech to a ballroom filled with well-heeled supporters who'd happily written large checks in return for access to him once he was in the White House. He'd come down from the podium and pressed the flesh, going table to table, flashing his winning smile, saying precisely the right thing in ten words or less to each contributor.

‘Time to go, Senator,' an aide whispered in his ear.

‘Right. Let's stay on schedule,' Quinlin said, delivering his final words of appreciation to a donor. He followed his aides, and the two Secret Service agents assigned to protect him, from the room.

Although the senator had entered the Hilton through the front door, it had been arranged for him to make his exit through a back corridor used by hotel staff. His car, and two others, waited outside the door to that corridor, engines running, poised to whisk the candidate to his next event.

One of the agents opened the door and stepped out onto the street, immediately followed by Quinlin, two aides, and the second agent. Waiting for them in a knot of a halfdozen onlookers, who'd seen the cars and reasoned that the senator would come through that door, were two armed members of Tengku's small cabal. They'd closely monitored their watches. It was precisely nine forty-five when Quinlin emerged from the hotel. Assuming that the streetlights and twin bulbs above the door would instantly go black, the men, standing close to each other, pulled their handguns from the waistbands of their trousers. But in the illumination from the streetlamps, the agent who'd been first through the door spotted the weapons and threw himself at the would-be assassins, knocking both to the ground. The second agent pushed Quinlin to the pavement where an aide fell on top of him.

One of the assassins' weapons had fallen from his hand and skittered into the gutter. The other managed to raise his handgun and point it at the second agent who'd also drawn his weapon. The agent squeezed off a shot that hit the armed Tengku cohort between the eyes. As the other would-be terrorist scrambled to his feet, a shot caught him in the stomach. He doubled over and pitched face-first onto the hard sidewalk.

Vinnie Tourino was not a happy man when the lights didn't go out. His crews had been ready to hit their targets the moment it went dark. When it didn't, they abandoned their planned robberies, although one group had been observed hanging around a Tiffany's branch and were picked up by the police.

‘That mother-fucking, double-dealing, lying prick Martone,' he snarled. ‘I'm gonna personally rip his fucking balls off.'

Alphonse from Baltimore and Tony from Philadelphia also had things to say about Dominick Martone, but weren't as genteel in their choice of words.

Martone also had a generator hooked up to the home's electrical system, and had expected what Smythe had expected, the house to go dark before the generator came online. When it didn't happen, he assumed that his watch might have been running fast and patiently continued playing the video game with his grandson. But after ten minutes he went to his study and called Smythe's home phone number. Mrs Kalich answered, found Smythe, and told him Mr Martone was on the line.

‘He called?'

‘Yes, sir. He said it was urgent.'

A failed operatic baritone had taken his place alongside the pianist and had launched into a heartfelt version of
Some Enchanted Evening,
made famous in
South Pacific
by Ezio Pinza, as Smythe took the call in his home office.

‘What the hell is going on, Smythe?' Martone barked.

‘I don't know, Dom, and believe me I'd like to know. I'm really upset and—'

‘You lying, conniving bastard,' Martone said. ‘When I get through with you you'll be more than upset. You'll be lucky you can even crawl.'

‘Please, Dom, I—'

Martone's slamming down of the phone was ear-shattering.

It took until nine fifty-eight for Paul Saison to realize that his vintage watch had stopped. When he finally did, he checked a wall clock, which displayed the correct time. He'd been nipping bourbon from a small silver flask he always carried and was drowsy, having to fight to not doze off in front of the computers he was charged with monitoring.

‘
Sacré bleu
,' he muttered as he hauled himself off his chair and headed for the control room. ‘Do this, then do this … first trip the master switch, then the backups … No, first trip the backup switches and …'

The control room was empty. Saison set about going through the drill he'd been repeating to himself over and over. He looked at the clock: ten twelve. He shook his head to clear the fuzziness from his brain. At ten fourteen, he placed his hand on the master switch and pulled. Ear-piercing sirens went off, and emergency lights came to life. As he started to leave, the shift supervisor and two members of the plant's security team burst into the room.