I KILL RICH PEOPLE 2 (38 page)

“Twenty-three miles from here.” Nussbaum plugged his laptop into the media hub and projected a huge map onto the white wall. A few keyboard taps later, he added in both the car and where Spencer’s average speed would have taken him in sixteen minutes.

“Traffic density rises 40 percent coming into the city,” Dale volunteered. Using his cursor as a pointer, he corrected for traffic and pinpointed Spencer’s probable location. “He could be right here in a half-hour. That would make things easy.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Miller muttered.

*****

The whole West Virginia episode had left Bishop’s stomach queasy. Seven men dead, the two women, and no trace of Jonathan Spencer. The airplane ticket was a welcome relief. He appreciated that Jeffers had thought ahead. Jeffers was right, too. The flight from D.C. to West Virginia was booked in his name; the car rental was in his name. He had used an alias with the mother and with the private detective, but that one degree of separation wasn’t nearly as good as the nine-thousand-mile flight he was on board.

He had never been to Thailand, but he had heard plenty. Everyone knew about middle-aged men traveling there.

He didn’t have a wife to cheat on anymore; nothing at all was stopping him from enjoying whatever the country had to offer. The Marriot had a pool and a spa, but first thing on his agenda was sleep. He felt exhausted, wiped out straight to his core. Sleep for days maybe.

Delta. Thirteen hours and forty-five minutes to Narita, then another six-and-a-half hours to Bangkok. His hips barely fit between the armrests. The seat in front of him was reclined so now his tray table pressed into his gut unless he reclined, too. He read the in-flight magazine cover to cover, followed by the Sky Mall Catalogue, followed by five movies. He didn’t follow a single plot.

He stood up and retrieved his bag out of the overhead compartment then made his way sideways to the toilets. Once inside, he slid the lock and the fluorescent lighting came on. Bishop took out his electric shaver and ran it across his face, shaving on autopilot while he followed in the mirror blankly through drooping, bloodshot eyes.

He undid his belt and unbuttoned his pants, tucked his shirt down deep, then sucked in his sour belly and buttoned again. He smelled his armpits, stopped, and pulled his shirttails out before opening up his shirtfront to apply deodorant.

The plane had bumped onto the tarmac and stopped before he realized that passengers were unbuckling their seatbelts and standing up. He shuffled after them as they herded out the ramp toward immigration. Immigration to baggage claim. Baggage claim to customs. Beyond customs, he saw his name written out in large capital letters: BISHOP. An Asian man wearing a black suit caught sight of him and reached out to take hold of his luggage.

Bishop didn’t remember making arrangements for a driver, but followed the man out to the curb where a black Toyota Alphard luxury minivan with darkly tinted windows was waiting. The driver opened the sliding side door and put out a step stool. Bishop got inside and shut his eyes for a moment while the driver put his luggage into the trunk. The trunk hatch shut and then the driver got inside, seating himself behind the right-side steering wheel.

Bishop told him to drive to: “Radisson Hotel Sukhumvit.”

Before he could react, another man jumped in beside him and slammed the sliding door and a third man got into the front passenger seat.

The man in the front passenger seat turned around as the van pulled into traffic. He pointed a revolver a foot in front of Bishop’s red eyes.

“What is this?”

“You shut you mouth!” The man beside him screamed. “Hands in front of you!” He twisted a thick wire around Bishop’s wrists and then stuffed a sock into Bishop’s mouth. Bishop’s eyes opened wide when he saw the black hood. He snapped his head side-to-side to keep the hood away. His futile effort brought an elbow cracking at the base of his skull. 

*****

Spencer flipped license plates outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and then again with New York plates he took from the lot behind a body repair in Suffern before getting on the Thruway. After driving the bridge across the Hudson, he pulled into the drive-through line at Jack-in-the-Box. He tugged the hood tight around his head and slouched below the dashboard, watching for anything out of place, any anomaly that might be trouble.

They killed Mercy and Mouse,
he thought.
They had thrown me into hell. Right in Washington, D.C. No rights, no lawyer.

Power. Raw, morbid, rotten power. He had recognized all along that he couldn’t get them all; his random attacks impacted their entire category; it was the logical strategy, making for more target range, fewer ways for them to protect themselves, and more ways for him to hit them and get out alive. But he was a just a moth circling a flame, never attacking where the real power was centered.

That approach was all over. He was done with nipping at their flanks. Now, he wanted to see that one bullet, clean and true, hitting straight at the biggest snake of all of them: Vision Partners’ founding member was so rich that he built bogus institutes to legitimize his own greed; he bombarded legislatures across the country, tying them up with hatred-breeding bills; he manipulated news and politics and even science.
One bullet!

“A system that moves toward imbalance always needs to correct or it crashes out of control,” Spencer recalled the captain saying, word for word. “We lose fairness, we lose faith in the system and, like the poet said ‘things fall apart, the center cannot hold.’ Johnny, somebody needs to stop them before we turn back to the Dark Ages. That’s the main truth of our time.”

“I’ll do my part, Captain,” Spencer promised.

“Excuse me?” the voice crackled through the speaker. “Can I take your order please?”

“Um…a steak and egg burrito,” Spencer told the plastic clown. “And a fat-free mango smoothie.”

He woofed down the burrito while he drove past Sleepy Hollow out toward the trailer park. You’d never know it was there, tucked behind a mini-storage in front, a warehouse store behind, and forty-year-old arbor vitae hedges running down both sides that kept it entirely hidden away from the view of wealthier neighbors in every direction.

Outside the chain link fence surrounding the trailer park he pulled the 4Runner off the road and lifted the HK onto his lap. He had a fresh mag loaded inside; the trigger was set to 3, fully automatic.

Spencer studied the trailer park for a full hour, and then he slowly drove the three lanes between trailers. The cars were right: older rigs with faded paint, lots of cracked windows; dusty, dirty Detroit relics with big back seats for when that was the only option for a night’s sleep. No anomalies, nothing to indicate a trap.

He finally drove alongside his trailer, the one he had rented before they captured him at Citi-Field. Yellow curtains in the windows; a red charcoal barbecue was tucked underneath his awning. Different, but not different like law enforcement had gone through it. They would have torn it apart.

Spencer parked and got out of the 4Runner, fast-jogging around the Winnebago sitting on blocks. The on-site manager lived out there with the storage containers at his back. Spencer’s lock was there, along with an even bigger padlock, painted yellow, hanging on a second hasp. Spencer lifted the yellow lock, reading “MGMT” written in black felt tip on the side. He grabbed the lock and pulled hard, then slammed it back against the steel container.

“Hey!” A gruff voice shouted angrily from out of the old box-shaped motorhome as the brown curtains parted above a faded army green W on the front side.

“Oh, it’s you,” the manager called, recognizing Spencer after throwing open his door. He grabbed the side, turned sideways, and let himself down to the packed dirt, wearing only blue jeans held up by a single suspender. A sleeveless undershirt failed to cover a prodigious belly. He waddled, favoring his bad hip, and extended his thick, tattooed arm toward Spencer.

“Thought you might show up,” Ollie said as he took Spencer’s hand in his thick mitt and squeezed. “Been six months.

“I had to give up your trailer,” he explained. “The park is totally full. But nobody touched your locker. I put the second lock on it. I expect you saw that. Come on over and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. I still got your clothes and stuff. Meant to give it to the Goodwill, but if it’s not one thing it’s the next. Glad that worked out your way. Let’s figure the numbers, and once you get squared up, I’ll pull that padlock.”

“I don’t have the key to my lock,” Spencer explained. “Lost it.”

“Got a toggle-joint bolt cutter. Take it off no problem. I’ll fix you up.”

“How about a flashlight I could borrow for maybe an hour?”

Ollie had that, too.

“You got it, Sergeant. Just as soon as we have that coffee and get what you owe squared away.”

*****

Miller moved through the building fast, looking important for dramatic effect, and leaving behind Owen and the techs, who were watching the digital footage showing Spencer clean-shaven and clearly moving more fluidly, his body flowing with an efficiency that defied the record for his injuries.

Owen looked on, captivated; he had seen Spencer only as a distant flash on a metal roof and two still photos on Facebook. Seeing Spencer pumping gas, buying a burrito, getting himself a coffee and stirring in powdered creamer, viewing him functioning like a free man, had Owen straining like a skinny red-headed Hulk ready to attack the life-sized projection.

“Bastard!” Owen kicked at a plastic chair, sending it flying.

“Dude!” Kip called out to him. “That is from yesterday. You know he can’t hear you, right?”

Owen pointed at the image while in it Spencer took a bite from the burrito, blew the heat out of his mouth, and then licked at cheese dripping over his lip. He wanted to reach his hands through the monitor and strangle the life out of the sonofabitch. Callie was fed up with North Corona, the house, and the boys’ schools before the attacks ever started. But they would have worked it out. He knew they would have worked it out. Losing Tremaine was what broke their backs. The shooter whose image projected across the whole wall broke their backs.
You did that. You motherfucking bastard!

“Arrg!” Owen growled. “I can’t stand it! Seeing him looking all normal, like a regular guy.” His closest friend was dead, his marriage was fucked up, and he had fucked up on the job, too. Now the new captain was about to replace him.

So long as Jonathan Spencer walked the face of the planet, he was never going to be able to make things right.

*****

From inside Starbucks on Tonnelle Avenue, Miller absently sipped at a double tall mocha while constantly eyeing the mobile app on one of his cell phones, waiting for the confirmation. When it pinged, he tapped and snatched thin air inside his fist. A two, a five, and five more zeroes.

“Yes!” he called out loud. After recounting the zeroes, he walked outside and dropped the phone and the drink together into the trash. No phone contacts, no papers, no wire trails, no trace whatsoever. An army of forensic accountants couldn’t track the funds.

“No more penny-ante skimming,” Miller smirked. “This is how real business is done.”

Continuing up Tonnelle, his next stop was Chase Bank. “How much would it take to buy into a hedge fund?” he considered.

Miller’s posture and gait, his entire persona shifted; he stepped up and took charge. He was a different person when he returned to Owen, Stephen, and Dilip. First thing, he slapped a banded stack of fresh one hundred dollar bills on the table.

“Any one of you can take that for yourself today, ten grand cash money. Be great at what you do. Simple,” he said.

He waived his arms wide, his forefingers pointing in every direction. “Listen up. The client, through me, is going to be very generous, gentlemen. Think big. Think about tropical islands. With success, you might well be there. We are engaged in a private-public partnership.

“Gentlemen, start your computers. Enter the sanctum sanctorum. The Gods have given us the Ark of the Covenant, the keys to every technology you’ve only ever talked about in whispers. But the tools and the data come at a price. There is always a quid pro quo. You get the tools, you get highly remunerated, and we handle this on the deep DL. We are about to do remarkable things, gentlemen, and you can never breathe a word about them.”

Miller’s eyes locked on Owen’s face. The challenge floated like bloated ghosts hanging heavy in the dead air. Dilip eyed Stephen, but said nothing. Fifteen seconds passed. It felt like days. Owen blinked first. When the moment passed, he was still there.

“Good,” Miller announced crisply. “We all can be certain that our client knows everything.” He scanned the walls and ceiling tiles, certain they were under observation at that moment. “I mean
everything
. You do not want to be on the wrong side of this, not now, not ever. You will never speak about this, you will never write about this, and you will never bear witness to any of this. There will never be a circumstance when you are better off talking about this, not ever, not ten years from now. I don’t care what you get caught up in doing, you’ll be better off in prison than ever trying to trade on what we are now going to do here.”

Dilip glanced again toward Stephen, who was riveted, totally engaged in being the composer within a real-world conception of the perfect gaming thesis. Miller’s description brought Spencer to life; up until that moment, Stephen and the techs had never connected the images to flesh and bone.

Owen followed intently while Miller detailed Spencer’s arrogance, describing the sociopathic void that the military had programmed, the perfect Triple Threat.

“We are tracking an escaped prisoner. Jonathan Spencer. A year ago Spencer was an elite soldier. He went bad. Spencer was captured, unconscious, with two shattered legs. The same day his casts came off, he took out two guards and the doctor and walked out of high-security segregated detention.”

Owen questioned in disbelief. “Spencer was caught?”

“Caught and broke out,” Miller reiterated.

“How did he break both legs?” Owen demanded confirmation as the pieces fell together.
A long fall onto concrete.

Nussbaum turned, looking sideways as Owen talked to himself.

“Dimitri Vosilych!” Owen explained, answering his own question. “It
was
all bullshit! Everything! Motherfucker!”

“Are you done, Lieutenant?” Miller asked sarcastically. “Gentlemen, I kill people.”

Nussbaum’s jaw dropped. Stephen, Dilip, Dale and Kip exchanged glances. “That is one hell of a line,” Stephen whispered tensely. Layer upon layer, the reality was sinking in.

Miller’s stark statement pulled Owen’s focus back to the immediate while a tidal wave massed offshore inside his head, roiling and tumbling.

“More precisely,” Miller continued, “my regular work, my
oeuvre
if you will, is tracking and elimination.” He scanned their faces as he spoke. “I know Master Sergeant Jonathan Spencer. I know him well. In fact, he worked directly for me. I also saved his life. Not to my credit, I see. So let’s fix that, shall we?” He matched his eyes into each of theirs, holding his stare until one by one he held their riveted attention.

“With his hands and with all hand-held weaponry,” Miller continued, “Spencer is a nearly perfect killing machine.

“Call it like it is: hell, he was my star. But after six straight months soloing for me, he was just as cold as Day One. He has no friends, no relationships, and he trusts no one.

“Let’s be clear. We aren’t going to drag it out; bonus money will more than offset your consulting fees. We have one goal here. Our roles terminate with Jonathan Spencer dead.

“We are going to keep this simple. We are not here to capture; not that he will let himself be caught again. We are all here, unequivocally, to kill the burrito-munching sonofabitch up on that screen. You find him, I send a hot team, and they kill him.