A banker invited Lundin to his desk and offered her coffee and donuts. She declined both and chose to get down to business. She slid the banker a copy of her business plan, which was to obtain funding for Zuzzio Model Management Experts to expand into a New York office.
The banker scrutinized the plan hastily. He was trained to catch the key information in a prospective business plan to determine the profitability of the plan. He smiled and folded his hands together on his desk. He told her that the plan was sound and was pre-approved online; however, he needed her to cover 30% of the requested amount.
Lundin was prepared for that. She went into her briefcase and retrieved a company check worth $400,000. She passed it to the banker and he asked her where she had gotten the check. She had not anticipated the question. Amir had, though, and he spoke the answer to the man’s query in Lundin’s ear. She repeated Amir’s words.
“The check is from Harlow Pharmaceuticals Incorporated. They’re the maker of an expensive make-up line and are backing the proposed expansion considering we have a collection of models who would wear their make-up,” she replied eloquently. Her smile was warm and inviting.
In her ear, Amir told her that she had done a good job and encouraged her to relax. She had no intention of blowing her cover, but she sweated beneath her blouse and her hands were clammy.
“That sounds like you already have a client in New York?” the banker asked.
“Our firm is rich with New York clients who fly in our models from LA for a host of jobs,” she replied without Amir’s urging. He then spoke into her ear, and she said, “A New York office would not have to incur the additional $1,000 fee that we charge clients for airfare and lodging.”
“Sounds promising to me,” the banker suggested. “Prior to me approving a loan for $1.3 million let me make a few calls.”
Lundin became uneasy. She was confident that this could be pulled off. She was glad that she had left the authentic ZME prospective business plan in her e-mail. Considering she had inside information about the financial status of her job, she was able to manipulate the financial balance sheets so that the company appeared to be worth more. Just when she thought the plan was running smoothly, the banker had called national information. He ignored the looping number printed on the check that would have directed the bank to Amir.
She wanted to bolt from the bank. Amir encouraged her not to panic. He told her he would get her out of the bank. She needed to let him exhaust all remedies.
The banker hung up the phone and told Lundin that the accounting department had not confirmed they had written a check to her company. More importantly, they did not make cosmetics. “Care to explain?” he asked her. Lundin did not reply quickly enough, so he picked up his phone and dialed a two digit number. Definitely he told Lundin, “I’m calling security!”
Amir screamed into her ear to abort her mission, drive three blocks, ditch the vehicle and change into her Islamic female garb to disguise herself until he scooped her. She ignored his command and swiftly pressed the button and ended the bankers call. She would handle the situation her way.
She looked at him saddened, and said, “Please, I am no thief, or crook. Take a look.” She passed her phone to her banker.
He panicked and thought he had heard of robbers passing notes, but never photos of tortured men to threaten the well-being of an uncooperative banker. He told her, “I’d do anything not to end up like that.”
“That’s better.” She had not expected that to be his response, nor did she expect her rogue reply. She had no intentions of threatening the man with violence. She simply wanted sympathy for her cause. “Me and my crew,” she said, throwing a tinge of slang in her behavior, “have targeted you specifically. We know where you live and if you want to go there safely do as you’re told. Do you understand that?” He nodded, fearful of her lies. “I need you to deposit this check into the ZME account. Now that the cat’s out the bag, I can tell you that I have all of the phony information and ID that you’ll need to process this transaction normally. I need $100,000 in cash and that will be in all fifties and hundreds, non-sequential. Also wire 300K to this bank account,” she said, and passed him a slip of paper with an off-shore account number on it.
“Miss, this check would not be cashable until it has cleared.”
“Then you better make it transparent.” He huffed and she went on, in a way feeling bad for her harshness. “Listen, that was a photo of my kidnapped husband. I do work for ZME, and when this theft comes to light, I will not be punished for today’s acts. My employer would not press charges under the circumstances. I was ordered not to call the police or my husband would die after more grotesque torture. I am willing to give you $20,000 that I will not tell the police about if you help me get my husband. We can walk your cash out to the car right now.”
The banker had never been in that position, but he would take the cash, and do what the robber asked. And that was exactly what he would tell the police.
SIXTY-NINE
Jared eased up to Silverstein’s Bel-Air digs and greeted red and blue flashing lights and wailing sirens. An ambulance was on the scene, and several dark cars lined the driveway with enough antennae to chat with Pluto denizen. Yellow crime scene tape had decorated the front entrance. CSI had worked the set. Detective Bowman approached the crime scene patrolman guarding the premises and nodded to him to allow Jared and Delia in. The sentry glanced at the agents’ badges and allowed them to lift the tape and proceed in the house.
In the house, the agents watched the team of young crime scene investigators snap photos of the deceased and dust the glass on the floor for the perpetrators prints, if any existed. The Bel-Air policemen mulled around the living room and looked at the agents as if they were as vile as any other contaminate on the crime scene. They were sure Silverstein was no celebrity figure and could not imagine what the government wanted on their turf. But, hey, no one handed them imaginations with their Ivy-League degrees.
Delia tried to control her breathing against the nauseous scent. She stepped closer to the body. The noxious stench resembled the intestinal remains of a hog in a manufacturing plant or a pool of puke. She edged closer, surprised at her self-control. That was off the deep end compared to tracking the producer of phony checks.
Jared was brazenly calm and summed the scene up as cool. And that was despite perspiring noticeably. His eyes moved down the spectrum from pearly white to rose and became teary from the assault on his nostrils; not the sight of the dead thief.
Blood soaked the plush carpet. Amazingly, the blood had snaked from the body, which lay flat on its back, forming a blood outline of a cranium, neck, and shoulders. Mr. Silverstein’s greasy hair was matted to his forehead, and exposed the bald spot on the top of his skull. The ME pushed the hair from the forehead and exposed a small bruised hole just about the bridge of the nose--dead centered on the forehead. “Sharpshooter!”
The ME stood and removed his glasses and showcased a lazy right pupil. He calmly informed the crowd what he knew. “Small caliber, no more than two days ago. Unless he liked to lie on glass as some form of yoga technique--which he died from performing--he was then shot for the hell of it. Your cause of death is gunshot wound to the head. You should start looking for your killer. You’re already two days behind.”
Delia’s cell phone rang interrupting him. “Agent Williams,” she barked into it.
“Delia there seems to be a problem,” SAC Lemieux said.
“It appears that way, sir. We are investigating, though.”
“Well your investigation just added another ingredient to thicken the broth,” he said, sternly.
Oh, no. What the fuck has happened, now? “I’m all ears,” she said and signaled for Jared to listen as she placed Lemieux on speakerphone.
“There’s been a murder in the capital. Your agent that’s been wanted, Nyoka LaCroix, is dead. She was found with an execution-style hole the size of Russia in the back of her head.”
SEVENTY
With the cash in her briefcase, Lundin drove from the bank feeling like a bank robber. She had sent a text message to the kidnapper for instructions on the drop location. He responded that she was to report to an appointment with her usual massage therapist. She was to take the briefcase in with her and forget it there and he would report there and pick it up from the staff.
An hour later, Lundin lay under William on a dark green, perfectly manicured lawn. Their steamy bodies were being cooled by the tall palm tree that protected them from the sunlight. William had fed her grapes, chocolate-dipped strawberries and biscotti as he whispered sweet, loving quips in her ear. She had been giggling for a whole twenty minutes. She wanted badly for him to skip the charm and fuck her brains out--a thank-you fuck! Suddenly, rain droplets fell. Not the steady, light LA rain she had begun to be accustomed to, but rain which pelted the doctor’s office hard enough to bolt her back to reality.
That pissed her off. She told the doctor that she had to cut the facial short. He left the room and she began to get dressed. She looked up at the sunless sky. Evil, high-yellow bitch, she mumbled at the sun. As she finished buttoning her bra and then her blouse, she heard a light knock on the room door. The doctor, she thought.
She walked to the room door and opened it. It was not the doctor.
SEVENTY-ONE
Less than a mile away, Jared and Delia et al. emerged into the lobby of the building where William Fortune had an office. Delia approached the security desk and informed the officer that they had a warrant to search the fifth-floor corner office. The officer explained that Mr. Fortune was on vacation. Delia ignored the rest of the man’s sentence and pressed into the building. She neglected the elevator and raced up the stairs to the office with her squad and the guard behind her. They reached the office door and the guard told them, “I have a key. There is no need to kick the door in!”
“Open it!” Delia hissed, demandingly, with a nasty hand perched on her hip.
The guard slipped the key in the door and said, “There’s nothing much to see here.”
He was rudely interrupted by Jared pushing past him. Every agent that entered the office was immediately flabbergasted. Delia’s lower lip and chin were on the carpet.
“Had you listened, I could have saved you the shock. When the cover art is decided on for his new book he re-models the office to match the color scheme of the design. The decorator came by yesterday and emptied the office. And as you can see, they really defined empty,” he said smiling, knowing the smile would irritate the rude-assed agents.
GRAND PRIZE, William Fortune/Justice Lorenzo!
SEVENTY-TWO
Amir stared through the curtain-less paned window at the man that had about an hour left to live. The man was clothed in a navy blue suit and sat in a ridiculously over-priced executive chair behind a mahogany table. A soft glow was cast around the gaudy home office by the desk lamp as the man puffed a fancy cigar and blew out smoke along with the exhaustion, caused by the man’s seventy-hour work week he had just put in. The man leaned back in the chair and relaxed, which would cause Amir’s home invasion to be more devastating.
Amir pulled the sleeve of his sport jacket back and glanced at his watch. It was just under five p.m. His patience ran low and aggravation sat in. He looked up at the large five-bedroom home and desired to just use a scoped rifle to scatter the man’s brain matter negligently around the home office. He would get to that. For sure. First, he needed the man to voluntarily spill his guts, or Amir would violently expose the man’s intestines. The thought made Amir’s skin crawl, but such was life.
The lovely Victorian home on the very romantic Mulholland Drive had a spectacular view of the famed HOLLYWOOD sign. If the man or his wife looked out their bedroom window toward the north, LA was well lit and was a vision of beauty at night. The view was offered to the very famous, very rich, and very elite businessmen who had the assets to live there.
Amir knew that it was time for him to strike. He had watched the man’s wife’s svelte body emerge into the office, she had olive skin, dark hair and honey eyes. A true brunette. With her in the office, Amir had the edge he needed to slip unnoticed into the kitchen door. He quickly assessed the state-of-the-art appliances and concluded that the modern kitchen did not compliment the Victorian-styled home, but who was he to complain. The blood that he would leave behind wouldn’t either.
As he began to exit the kitchen, he was met by the wife. She was too startled with shock to give an initial scream. It was Amir’s job to assure that she didn’t alert the neighbors or her husband of his crime in progress.
“Hello Doris,” Amir said, sinisterly. “Do not scream, or else...” he said showing his Glock. “Turn around, hands behind your back and keep moving into the office, or, you will be shot and I forewarn you that I will not kill you. I will paralyze you!” he said smiling, and then added, “For Life!”
Without a word, Doris strode through the family room, living room, dining room and into her husband’s office with the intruder closely behind her with a Glock trained on her. She was an intelligent woman, and the intruder knew that considering he knew her name. Her intuition told her that this could not be random. This crazed man who was extremely over-dressed scared her. She prayed he did not murder her in cold blood. She had money, jewelry and whatever he wanted to get high to spare her and her husband’s life. She would fork it all over. Hell, she was a pharmacist; she’d steal whatever narcotics the black man wanted.
They reached the office and Amir saw the man looking out of the office window oblivious to the intruder’s presence. The man heard his wife’s familiar footsteps and without turning around the man asked, “Let me guess, Doris, you forgot your....?” he tried to think of something.
Amir helped him. “She forgot to lock the back door,” he said wickedly. “Join your wife on the sofa,” he continued.
The man turned around and saw that his wife was being held at gunpoint and was sitting on the azure-blue leather sofa in the office. Amir had a second gun trained on the man. The man followed instructions and strode over to his wife. He sat next to her and held her tightly.
Amir looked deep into the man’s eyes, which told the wife that this was all about her husband’s job and not hers. She was aware that this sort of thing was the catalyst to her and her husband’s talks about their professional aspirations. How, despite their innocence, they could be extremely dangerous. Suppose her three babies were home. The twins were not due in for a week from Florida State, where they were on the football team. Her daughter was a twenty-five-year-old paralegal at a Washington D.C. firm while she attended Georgetown Law. Doris thanked God none of them were in the residence.
“Now, Mr. Jacobson,” Amir said, matter-of-factly. “The fact is that a buddy of mine is unaccounted for, and I’d like you to gauge your knowledge on the subject. Do you care to volunteer any insight into the disappearance of my pal, buddy?”
Donald Jacobson, glared into the reddening eyes of his interrogator and despite the fury that he saw, he managed to say,
“I have no idea what you’re speaking of.”
“Mr. Jacobson, please do not placate me or believe that I am unintelligent because I’m African American. I swear to you, this lovely office will become a torture chamber, and not a subtle one like you’d receive from FBI where they’d interrogate you relentlessly for hours under a 1,000-watt bulb and extremely freezing or hot conditions in a rancid room before a fancy lawyer saved you. There’s a group of my gang-banging friends outside prepared to do damage to your rectum as an appetizer,” Amir lied, and then continued, “then, as a first course, they’d hook battery charging clamps to your wife’s clitoris and send jolts of violent electricity through Doris’ body harsh enough to kill her inchoate cancer,” Amir said, then asked, “Now do I make myself clear?”
“For crying out loud Don,” Doris shrieked. “Tell the man what he wants!” She wondered how the man knew about her cancer. Amir pulled out a
5x7 photo from one of the large cargo pockets and tossed it on Jacobson’s lap. “Does his face ring a bell?”
The entertainment reporter scrutinized the photo. He knew precisely who the man was but decided to give and evasive answer considering he had no idea what the goon before him wanted. Slowly his head swayed back and forth, and then he exclaimed, “I see a lot of people through the course of a business day...I can’t be sure.”
Amir figured he would get that sort of nonchalant politically correct response. Regardless, he was pissed. He brought his right hand around with a tropical storm force, and slapped the fright off Doris’ face as she went crashing to the floor.
“I do not play games, Mr. Jacobson,” Amir spat venomously, grabbing a handful of Doris’ luxurious hair, pulling her up and tossing her on the sofa like a Cabbage Patch Kid doll.
Jacobson was stunned as he grabbed Doris in his arms. A red hand print was forming on her face. She began to slap her husband fiercely as she screamed, “Tell him what it is he wants to know, Don.” Her voice was marked with urgency, but did not disguise that she was scared and fearful for her life and being paralyzed.
“Okay! Okay! He’s William Fortune, the writer,” Jacobson said, suddenly his memory lapse was gone in sixty seconds. “Now that we have passed that,” Amir said, and then peppered on top of that, “Where’s the money you have stolen from him?”
“Excuse me,” Jacobson croaked nervously. Amir noticed the hint of sarcasm on his face, along with the confusion. Apparently, Doris did as well.
“Stolen!?” she asked, staring at her husband sobbing. “What does he mean stolen?”