Shattered Legacy (17 page)

She was looking at the ‘Red Skeeve’ website. It wasn’t very well-designed, but the site gave her the information she needed about its location and opening times. She paused to take a quick sip of mineral water as she checked a few other online sources referencing the club.

Five minutes later, Merrick shut down her computer, stood, and stretched. Her body was lean and taut. She was wearing black shorts and a green tank top that rode crookedly across her chest. She walked over to the large window, pulled open the curtains and gazed out over Central Park, wondering why she didn’t spend more time here at the Park Avenue residence. This was, after all, her largest Manhattan safe house, and the one that carried the highest rent. She paid for the sublet in cash under a false name and had never actually met the owner. Over the last few years she had decorated the apartment opulently with mostly Asian furnishings, painstakingly choosing everything from the step tansu to the hand-painted silk screens.

Her sneakers left indents across the plush white carpet as she entered the spacious living room, where the only furnishings were the wall-mounted plasma screen television, a leather upholstered couch with coffee table, and a motorized treadmill.

 She started the treadmill and eased the slider control to a speed of a fast walk. Then she picked up the remote from the cup holder and turned on the television. On the screen, a reporter was standing on the sandy grounds at the perimeter of the Thomas Dorian Space Center. Large buildings stood behind him, shimmering in the desert heat. As the news report began, Merrick increased her speed to a slow jog.

“As one of the largest private space corporations today, Templar has influenced several critical pieces of legislation in Washington, laws that have included some very favorable tax breaks for the industry. It is those tax breaks, virtually tailored for a specific company, that have drawn significant criticism from opponents.”

The reporter turned sideways to show the compound behind him. “Another issue facing the company is safety. No one knows the potential risks of Templar’s new orbiter class. NASA shuttle flights once carried an estimated one-in-one hundred risk of disaster. Templar claims its orbiter is as safe as a conventional aircraft.”

Merrick smiled to herself. Tax breaks and disaster risks. That was nothing. Templar Enterprises had problems that went right to the company core.

For nearly two years now, the company had been the conduit for a small but extremely lucrative smuggling operation. With a handful of inside conspirators within both the company and the Department of Defense, Merrick had organized a very secret and very lucrative operation.

Templar Enterprises bought large amounts of surplus material from the government, and Merrick had arranged for some of the purchased material to be intentionally mislabeled on the government side. During transit, she would divert those goods for her own resale to Lanton and other middlemen. She had no shortage of customers; Asian buyers bought the bulk of the technology, and several of her South American contacts were always in the market for scrapped weapon components.

As with any government service, the purchasing process created a massive amount of duplicative paperwork. Originally, this complexity actually made the smuggling easier, but now that Merrick was trying to eliminate evidence of her actions, she realized that covering up her entire operation on both ends would be a difficult, if not impossible task.

Seventeen million dollars in a little less than two years could be considered success by any measure. It was not as much as she had hoped to make, but now that her operation was on the verge of exposure, she decided that Templar Enterprises had been used for all it was worth. She had spent the last month methodically going over all the database records she could access. Electronic supply lists, price requests, inventory accounts, and even bills of lading had been deleted or carefully altered. The only records that Merrick could not change were hard copy records, but they did not worry her much. Others could fight over the lingering discrepancies, if they were ever discovered at all.

After this week, she was out of the business for good.

She couldn’t wait.

Her cell phone chimed. Merrick stopped the treadmill and walked over to the driftwood and glass-topped coffee table to pick up one the dozen cellular phones arranged in two rows. There was a small static crackle as the encryption system kicked in.

“Yes?” she said.

A slightly garbled voice replied, “He’s not easing up on this, and we’re running out of time.”

“You just do what you’re supposed to do. I told you, he’s contained.”

“What if he isn’t contained?”

“Then we implicate him.”

“Will that work at this point? I mean, maybe we should -”

She cut him off. “This is all part of our plan. Something we both agreed to. Are you saying now that we miscalculated?”

There was a long pause.

“What should I do, then?” she pressed.

“I don't know.”

“Of course you don't know,” she told him, with a sarcastic edge. “If our man gets out of control, then I’ll deal with him. Right now, everything is going according to plan. By the way, this is the second time you’ve called me with that same cell phone. I told you to dispose of them after each use.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Next time, call me on number thirty-three. And only call if it’s important. These phones aren’t cheap, you know.”

She hung up and tossed the phone back on the table.

It beeped again.

Frowning, Merrick hesitated and snatched up the phone. Scowling, she snapped it open. “Yes?”

“Hi, Jennifer?”

“Uh, yes,” Merrick said, subtly softening her voice. “Who is this?”

“It’s April from the Woodcrest Real Estate Office.”

“Oh! Hi, April. What’s the good word?”

“Uh, I tried the other number you gave me, but it had been disconnected.”

“Yes, that phone was … stolen. This is my old number.”

“I see. I’m sorry for calling you so late in the evening, but I just heard from the owners of the property. They’ve accepted your offer.”

“That’s great,” Merrick said, walking across the room and falling into her recliner.

“The other bidder pulled out. Financing problems, I heard. Anyway, the property is yours. Congratulations!”

Merrick smiled. “I have to tell you, April, you just made my night.”

“When do you want to set up the closing?”

“I have a few things to wrap up here in New York. I’ll give you a call next week to make arrangements.”

“Sounds great. Talk to you then.”

Merrick leaned back, spread out her arms and kicked out her legs.

“Yes!” she shouted.

Humming to herself, she went into her bedroom and entered her walk-in closet. Racks of clothes and costumes hung from the three walls. Arranged neatly on the floor were dozens of pairs of shoes. After a few minutes of searching, she pulled out three dresses. She walked over to the long makeup desk in the corner. It was covered with Styrofoam heads, each wearing a wig of different colors and lengths. Cluttering the desktop was modeling wax and tools, bottles of Spirit Gum Adhesive, liquid latex, brushes and sponges, and, of course, cases of makeup. She flicked on the lights around the large oval mirror and held the dresses up before her, one at a time.

“No,” she muttered, tossing the tight red dress onto the bed. A moment later, the light green off-the-shoulder number was also rejected. That left her with the black silk dress. She held it up and nodded.

She hung the dress on a hook behind the door and sat down at the desk. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She squinted, ran her fingers through her cropped hair, and then looked over at the assorted Styrofoam heads.

Since Teresa Keller had dark hair, Merrick figured that might be Samson Tyler’s preference. Merrick was very skilled with prosthetic makeup. If she had kept a few photographs of Teresa, she was sure that she could have made herself look nearly identical to the woman. However, for this evening, Merrick did not need to impersonate. She simply needed a look that would capture attention.

She picked up the foam head with a wig of long, straight black hair. She held it up before her.

“Tonight,” she told herself with a crooked grin, “I think I’ll go Goth.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“You know this isn’t my kind of place.”

“Oh, don't be such a pain.”

“At least you’re within the dress code.”

“Relax, Samson. You look fine.”

Dressed in a blue skirt cut nearly as high across her thighs as her blouse cut low over her chest, Teresa shivered in the cool night breeze. She huddled beside Samson, who could not have looked more mismatched with her, dressed in a conservative charcoal suit and red silk tie. Though he knew Teresa frequented these trendy places, it was a side of her that he had never seen in person. It would take some getting used to.

“This wasn’t what I expected.” He glanced around at the sprawling crowd ahead and behind them. The line extended from one corner of the old brownstone all the way down to the end of the block. And it was still early. Teresa had said that people would actually wait - sometimes for hours - just to get inside the Red Skeeve. The club was one of those places that had sprung up out of nowhere. It would probably be closed and forgotten next month, but tonight it was the hottest place off Bleeker Street. From inside they could hear the deep, pumping bass.

Tyler never cared for the party scene. He hated the loud music and the closeness of strangers. He grimly recalled that the last time he had gone to a club was because the girl he was dating wanted to go to this ‘hot’ new nightclub that opened. He had avoided taking her there for a month.

When she threatened to break up with him, finally he took her. He had a lousy time, and the relationship ended a week later.

That was nearly two years ago. He hoped history would not repeat itself.

Perry Newbold, the bodyguard assigned to him for the evening, stood behind the two, looking rather inconspicuous with a loose button-down shirt and jeans. Somehow, he seemed to know what to wear to this place. At the very least, Tyler thought that Perry should have warned him about what he was getting into.

And now that he thought about it, Teresa was actually dressed rather conservatively, compared to others around them. Some wore outrageous outfits, their exposed bodies accentuated with various body piercings, combined with a frightening amount of makeup and tattoos. In some cases, it was hard to differentiate between the men and the women. Tyler glanced back at a man in his early twenties who was standing behind Perry. He had shaved eyebrows and was dressed in oversized leather clothes. The man grinned back dumbly. His eyes were bloodshot, his face slack. Tyler was still staring when he felt a tug at his arm.

“Line’s moving,” Teresa told him. “Good thing we got here early. Otherwise we’d never get in.”

Tyler stole a glance at his watch. “Tell me again about the charm of this place?”

 “It’s the music,” she told him as they stepped forward. “Retro stuff.”

“How retro?”

“Eighties. You'll love it.”

Tyler said nothing else until they reached the main steps to the entrance. Two oversized bouncers on either side of the large metal door were checking IDs and running handheld metal detectors over the patrons. The larger bouncer was a bald man with numerous tattoos on his sinewy arms. He brightened when he saw Teresa bound up the steps.

 “How’s it going, Tessie?” He gave her a quick, appraising look and smiled. “What’s new with you?”

“Just out for a little fun,” she replied sweetly.

The second bouncer examined Tyler’s ID under a flashlight. He stared at the license, and then ran his hand through his mop of stringy black hair. He glanced up suspiciously at Tyler, then back at the license.

“Is there a problem?” Tyler asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Teresa in an animated discussion with the bald bouncer.

The second bouncer gave Tyler a suspicious look. “What the hell? Are you a cop or something?”

“What?”

Teresa leaned over, clapped a hand on Tyler's shoulder, and said to the bouncer, “Hey, take it easy. Undercover boy’s with me.”

The bouncer grunted and handed Tyler back his license. He held up his metal detector wand. Tyler spread his arms and turned as he was checked. Then the bouncer held up his fist and raised four fingers. “Forty bucks.”

As Tyler handed over the cash, he turned to Teresa, who was back to chatting with the bald bouncer. “Teresa,” he prodded. He glanced down at the people crowding the stairs behind them, and then pulled open the door to find himself assaulted by a blast of music. He waited for Teresa, but she wasn't following him.

Teresa was reciting some numbers for bald bouncer, who was dutifully copying them down on a small notepad. He finished writing and looked up to ask her another question.

“Hey, let’s go!” someone shouted from the bottom step.

“Move it!”

The bald bouncer suddenly stood to full height, rushed past Teresa, and lunged at the pressing crowd. “All of you, back up!” he bellowed. His eyes were ablaze with fury, searching for a target, for someone – anybody - to challenge him. He raised his arms, and the nearest people backed down a step. After a final menacing scowl, he turned back to Teresa and pulled open the door for her. “Have fun, Tess. See you in class tomorrow.”

***

The Red Skeeve was more or less what Tyler expected. Just inside the entrance, a leather-clad couple was locked together in a passionate embrace, hands groping each other in the shadows of the telephone alcove. Tyler quickly looked away to see partygoers packed on the dance floor, swaying to the blasting rhythm of 80’s house music. The center bar was lit with neon and alive with patrons. He looked up. The place was split into two floors and was connected by a large staircase along the far wall. Teresa took him by the hand and led him along the room perimeter. Per instructions, Perry followed but kept a respectful distance.

They made their way to the corner. They found a tall, round table near the brass railing surrounding the dance floor. As they sat down, he reminded himself again that going out tonight had been
his
idea.