The Chessman (25 page)

The senator’s head swiveled sideways, noticed Cady sitting in the back of the room for the first time, shot him a near-lethal glare, and then turned his attention back to Jund.

“I thought the
motherfucker
who got my boy killed had his incompetent ass tossed out of the FBI, Jund.” Farris flung an arm in Cady’s direction. “Is this the prick ripping off scabs, wasting time tying Patrick to those Zalentine wackjobs instead of figuring out who killed Ken Gottlieb?”

“If you had been straight with me from the get-go,” Cady responded, “your son might still be alive.”

Cady stood up as Farris marched toward him.

“How’ve you been, Master Fuck Up?” Farris said, poking Cady in the chest with his index finger. Hard. Repeatedly. “If I can’t get you shit-canned, I’ll have you in Alaska working out of a goddamned igloo this time next week.”

“Don’t touch me again,” Cady replied, taking a step into the senator’s proximity. “And if you’d come clean about Snow Goose—instead of burying it—none of this would ever have happened.”

Farris’s face burned deep red. Cady saw a heartbeat in the senator’s temples.

“Patrick wasn’t there, you one-trick-pony asshole.” The finger poking began anew. “And I don’t give two shits about what happened to that Goose Lake whore—”

Cady caught the senator’s finger in mid-jab and twisted it upwards, forcing Farris to his knees.

“I told you not to touch me again,” Cady said and spun his wrist, popping the senator’s forefinger out of joint, leaving it pointing sideways and back toward the assistant director.

Farris, his face now white, cupped his shaking right hand with his left and slowly rose to his feet.

“You just fucked the pooch, Cady. You’re done,” Farris said in a notch above a whisper. He looked to Jund. “You’re both through.”

“Why ever would you attack
Citizen
Cady, Senator?” Agent Preston asked, tremor-voiced, while a visibly stunned Agent Schommer sat motionless next to her.

“Yes, Senator,” Jund said, looking pink about the gills. “Why would you force Citizen Cady to defend himself in front of my staff?”

The assistant director and the senior senator from Delaware held each other’s gaze. Cady wasn’t certain if it was a trick of the light, but the look on the AD’s face was indeed reminiscent of Stan Laurel.

“This isn’t over,” Farris said. “Not by a long shot.”

“I suspect not.”

Still cradling his disjointed finger, the senator strode out of the assistant director’s office.

“I know I’m new to this office,” Agent Schommer said after what seemed an eternity, “but does this happen often?”

Chapter 32

Two Weeks Ago

“E
very time the door buzzes, I expect the Manhattan Prosecutor,” Hartzell said. “What the bloody hell good am I to you in an orange jumpsuit?”

“You’re not going to wind up in any orange jumpsuit, Drake.” The man with the jet-black hair, who had yet to offer Hartzell his given name, sat at Hartzell’s dining room table drinking Hartzell’s Kopi Luwak blend.

Hartzell was red-faced. “The president’s handpicked arse kicker is about to be the next Chairman of the SEC—the new marshal sent to clean up Dodge City—and some dime store market analyst in Boston is chomping at my ankles, but, hey…
no worries, dude
.”

“Look, Drake, you’ve made your fears abundantly clear these past weeks. Let me assure you that everything is under control. We’ve got eyes and ears in high places, my friend. High places. At the first hint that anything’s coming down the pike, you and Lucy will get your
various
passports back and can hit the highway. I can even get the two of you into Canada with no record of it—if you’d like.”

On the night that Hartzell’s world had been flipped upside down, the men from Chicago had ransacked his condominium as though panning for gold. In short order they’d found the wall safe—hidden under the wet bar sink, behind a shelf of his hundred-year-old cognac. Hartzell had opened the safe immediately so as not to invoke the ape man’s further mistreatment of his daughter. The two thugs—as the phantom that had held the razor against Hartzell’s carotid artery instantly disappeared—cackled in delight at the hundred thousand dollars in stacks of hundred dollar bills and looked like they’d won the lottery when they opened the brown envelopes containing both Hartzell’s and Lucy’s authentic passports, as well as the forgeries from his man in Manila.

“Eyes and ears in high places? What’s that mean?”

“Believe me, Drake, that’s nothing you want to know.” The man took another sip of the Kopi Luwak and shrugged his shoulders. “This is the best coffee I’ve ever had. Bar none. Even the knowledge that the beans pass through that critter’s asshole doesn’t diminish the taste.”

“That
critter
is an Asian Palm Civet, about the size of a house cat. It eats the coffee berries, but the beans pass through its digestive track undigested,” Hartzell responded. “The enzymes in the civet’s stomach are what give the coffee its bitterness.”

“Whether it’s gaming the stock market or rodents shitting coffee beans, I learn something from you every day.” The man set down his coffee mug. “Look, Drake, you’ve got to trust me on this and continue to do your job. We’re not about to let anything happen to you. Hell—you’re our cash cow. We love you.”

Hartzell’s job of the past two plus weeks was to train a couple of money-laundering accountants from Chicago on the ins and outs of every aspect of his operation, walk them specifically through the inside dope on the financial investment scheme he’d been running these many years. Show the bean counters the dos and don’ts, the tips and tricks, his best practices. In return, Hartzell and Lucy were promised, first and foremost, survival, and, after a bit more squeezing and bleeding of Hartzell’s considerable nest egg, the father and daughter duo would eventually be allowed to fade into the woodwork, debt to Chicago paid in full.

The two green eyeshades had been introduced to Hartzell, with a few chuckles from the no-named guest who was now running his life, as Smith and Jones. Smith and Jones stayed in his guest room, shared meals with him, came to work with him and, in other words, were on Hartzell like a fourth layer of skin. The three made the best of a bad situation and the two bean counters were plainly in awe of what Hartzell had accomplished.

“Just think of me as the Coordinator,” the talking man with no name had told Hartzell that night of their arrival. Now, he stopped by every day or two, like today, and had a private chat with Hartzell, made sure all the gears were properly lubricated and that everything was running friction free. The Hartzells had been informed at the end of that first night that St. Nick’s project would be Lucy. That sometimes the pretty lady would see St. Nick, perhaps on a street corner or by the escalator at, say, Macy’s, or in the hallway at Juilliard. And although he’d always be around, most of the time she wouldn’t spot him. And as long as Lucy’s father played ball, St. Nick would never lay a hand on her. As for the phantom with the razor, Hartzell would never see him again unless Hartzell did something to
displease
the Coordinator, and then it’d be the last time Hartzell would ever see the phantom…or anything else, for that matter.

As for Lucy on that night of utter bleakness, St. Nick’s demeanor had turned on a dime from arch tormentor to that of a clinging nursemaid. He’d gotten an ice pack for her forehead and mouth, made a quick call from his cell phone, and ten minutes later a short man with raccoon eyes and a doctor’s bag right out of a late 1950s
Naked City
episode was buzzed up to their high-rise unit. Raccoon Eyes shined a light in Lucy’s eyes for a minute, checked and cleaned her other wounds and bruises, gave her enough Vicodin for five days, told her to get a lot of rest and that even though there’d be pain for several days, as if she’d been bumped about in a car accident, there was nothing life-threatening or permanent. She’d be fine in a week.

Hartzell bent heaven and earth to return The AlPenny Group’s original investment in its entirety, along with the strongly advised twenty-five mil in interest—a
shenanigans
’ fee, per the unnamed Coordinator sitting at Hartzell’s dining room table and reading the
New York Times
as if he owned the place. And, quite literally, The AlPenny Group did indeed now own Hartzell’s Manhattan condo. That sale had closed at the beginning of week two; they got it at a steal. The deed for Andrew Pierson’s Tuscany villa and vineyard had been transferred earlier this week. The Coordinator had been the perfect gentleman since the incident between Lucy and the tempered glass, but certain
requests
for additional nourishment with which to feed the insatiable beast were periodically delivered with a sly smile indicating that there’d be no negotiations. All closing transactions had gone smoothly—that is, except for the seller’s remorse on Hartzell’s part—largely due to the fact that no actual funds had changed hands.

So Hartzell fought a rear-guard strategy, relinquishing the Tuscany assets as that property had already been tainted by the Chicagoans’ knowledge of his forged Pierson passport. Uncle Sam would have eventually seized Hartzell’s Manhattan throne in any case, so losing it wasn’t that bitter a pill for him to swallow. In fact, his unnamed companion, currently perusing the Sports section, had informed him that Hartzell morally and psychologically owed the penthouse apartment to Young Master Crenna, as it would help the kid get past his deep
heartache
over Lucy’s betrayal.
The kid must have had one hell of a broken heart
, Hartzell thought as he signed off on the paperwork in triplicate.

Hartzell grumbled loudly, mostly for the benefit of Smith and Jones, over every shiny bauble he was forced to relinquish to the hungry Chicago swine, doing his damndest to make the trio believe the shakedown had done infinitely more than scratch the surface of the Drake Hartzell Empire. However, inroads with the Coordinator were all dead ends, as the more Hartzell groused about his losses the more the Coordinator would grin sheepishly and shake his head. The Coordinator wasn’t buying it.

It became apparent to Hartzell early on that Smith and Jones—Vince and David, as they eventually shared their possibly authentic first names with him over breakfast bagels, what with living with him and all—weren’t merely mining his great knowledge of the financial markets, but also attempting to gauge how big a stack of gold old King Drake was perched upon. Hartzell felt like Penelope staving off the suitors in Homer’s
Odyssey
. Only in his case he didn’t undo the weave of a burial shroud each night, but rather used every sleight of hand in his arsenal to convince his particular
suitors
that more—much more—had been paid out to investors over the years and that he truly was a softy when it came to charity, with a great deal of currency being distributed to a wide-ranging list of worthwhile causes.

And it was in filtering through his past charity work that Hartzell came across the name of that endlessly ravenous beast in Chicago, the man behind the curtain. He remembered Boy Crenna mentioning something about his dear cancer-surviving auntie, whom Hartzell may or may not have met at that now regrettable event he’d attended in the Windy City a few years back. Boy Crenna had referenced her as “Aunt Nora.” Amazing what a person could find on Google, right at your fingertips, truly an information superhighway. Hartzell was quickly able to find a most pleasant puff piece on the cancer event that night at the Belden Stratford. There was only one woman on the planning board for that fundraiser named Nora: Nora Fiorella.

Hartzell next Googled Nora Fiorella’s name crossed with breast cancer awareness. His Internet search resulted in numerous hits of both her and her husband as sponsors-slash-donors for a variety of cancer research and fundraising to-dos. Her last name sounded slightly familiar and, peering at her online picture in one of the articles, he had a vague recollection of not only meeting Mrs. Nora Fiorella that night but also pressing flesh with her stocky barrel-chest of a husband. Hartzell didn’t recall the conversation from that evening and knew that on his end he would have mumbled the established template, perfected for such events, with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips and a heavy dose of ersatz empathy for the cause-du-jour.

In fact, something about the Fiorella name had sounded hazily familiar at the time of the event, even though he’d not done any work directly with Boy Crenna’s dear auntie. Hartzell recalled pausing during the introductions, sifting through his memory as though trying to summon up the name of a forgotten stage actor or long-retired senator. The moment had been fleeting and then Hartzell moved on to meet and greet the next set of deep pockets with his prefab template.

With mounting trepidation Hartzell cut and pasted the husband’s name into the search engine and smacked the Enter key. Crenna Sr. was a front, the Coordinator had admitted as much. Within five minutes of reading articles from his search results Hartzell discovered the true depth of what he was up against, and he now had a face as well as the identity of the starving creature he’d been feeding his assets to these past few weeks.

Duilio “Leo” Fiorella.

There wasn’t much meat in any of the Googled newspaper articles, but there were enough “alleged” this and “flimsy indictment” that and a federal witness’s testimony “recanted” over there and another “missing” witness here for Hartzell to read between the lines. What Hartzell found there sent a chill through to his bone marrow. One
Sun-Times
article provided great insight into a
civil rights
PR group that Duilio Fiorella had created to specifically apply pressure via political coercion, slap lawsuits, or in some cases even transporting a parade of union goons to picket and intimidate the offending party whenever anything besmirching regarding the Fiorella family appeared in the local media. All under the politically correct guise of these minor slights being
discriminatory
or
anti-Italian
in nature.

Brilliant, Hartzell thought; Duilio “Leo” Fiorella was one cagey son of a bitch, likely a job necessity if one was seeking to direct organized crime in the most corrupt city in the nation. No wonder Boy Crenna was so cocksure of himself. It worked wonders for your selfesteem if your uncle happened to oversee the Midwest branch of La Cosa Nostra. Evidently, the Mack truck known as St. Nick had been dead right—Hartzell had really stuck his dick in it.