Lust, Money & Murder (36 page)

When she saw Gypsy’s face, she was flabbergasted.

The deep-set eyes, the heavy black eyebrows, the aquiline nose, the full, sensual lips...

A truly stunning creature.

What flabbergasted Elaine most was Gypsy’s thick, neatly-trimmed black mustache and beard.

Gypsy was a man.

CHAPTER 3.10

Gene Lassiter had met Gypsy at a gay leather bar in Berlin.

The Ministry of Muscle was in the overtly-gay Schöneberg district, and appealed to the leather and rubber crowd. The bar’s main room was an obstacle course—you had to duck to make your way through a maze of leather boots that hung down from the ceiling. The cruising area was around to the back, cordoned off by empty oil drums and heavy black anchor chain.

That was where Lassiter had first laid eyes on Gypsy. The moment he saw the young man, he stopped in his tracks. Gypsy was sitting in between two hardcore fetishists, one wearing a pair of black leather chaps, accentuated with a rudely jutting electric orange codpiece. The other was a “gummiboy,” dressed head to toe in skintight rubber.

“
Entschuldigung
,” Gypsy said to his two companions, in his soft, seductive voice. He rose, and noting Lassiter’s relatively conservative appearance—ordinary slacks and a leather jacket—switched to English, “I simply
must
meet this handsome silver fox...”

“Silver fox” was code for an older man like Lassiter who went for young guys, and didn’t mind paying for it.

An hour later they were both at Lassiter’s hotel. Not the official hotel, where he was registered under his real name, but a seedy and exclusively gay establishment in Schöneberg not far from the Ministry of Muscle, where no passport or other ID was required.

That first night, Lassiter and Gypsy did things he had only fantasized about—Gypsy seemed to perfectly understand, and anticipate, all of Lassiter’s most twisted sexual desires, and readily fulfilled them.

Now, Lassiter sat on the bed in the messy hotel room in Milan, staring at the email message that had come from Gypsy’s account.

WE HAVE GYPSY. WILL EXCHANGE HIM FOR THE MONEY. G.C.

It was from Giorgio Cattoretti...

The old man was seized by panic. What might the Italian brute do to his beloved Gypsy!

Lassiter rose from the bed, shaking, and dragged the canvas bag over to the door.

He had to save Gypsy.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, Cattoretti’s sedan turned down a road in a run-down area on the outskirts of Milan. It ran alongside a narrow body of water, a small river or canal. The water looked as black as the night.

“These waterways are called
navigli
,” Cattoretti commented. “They were designed by Leonardo da Vinci, in the 15
^th
Century. They run all the way to Lake Como.”

Everyone in the car was quiet—nobody was interested in a travelogue. They were about to meet Gene Lassiter to exchange Gypsy for the stolen money.

The car rolled to a stop. To the left was a huge, warehouse, the walls crumbling. It must have been hundreds of years old. To the right, the canal.

Elaine fidgeted while they waited. She didn’t know what Cattoretti planned. She didn’t quite trust him. But she was fairly sure he was not armed, and she didn’t think Luigi was, either. If they had a trick up their sleeves, she didn’t know what it might be.

After a few long minutes, a car turned onto the road from the far side of the warehouse. It slowly approached them, head-on. The road was only wide enough for one vehicle. The automobile came to a stop about fifty feet in front of them. The headlights flashed on and off.

“That’s him,” Cattoretti said. He lowered the back window. “Throw the money out the passenger side!” he yelled.

“I want to see Gypsy!” Lassiter called back.

“You’re trading me for money?” Gypsy gasped. “Like a piece of
meat
?”

“Quiet!” Cattoretti said. To Luigi, he said, “
Accenda la luce all interno
.”

The dome light came on.

“Let him see you,” Cattoretti said to Gypsy.

The young man leaned forward, the light shining down on his hairy face.

“Now throw the money out on the ground!” Cattoretti yelled.

Lassiter shoved a bag out the passenger window. It tumbled down to the pavement.

“Back up!” Cattoretti shouted.

Lassiter’s car slowly backed away.

“Ok, let’s grab it,” Cattoretti said to Luigi.

As the sedan slowly rolled forward, Cattoretti kept his eye on Lassiter’s car and cracked his door. When they reached the bag, he cautiously pushed the door wide open and quickly pulled it into the back seat. He unzipped it and gave a smile of relief. It was packed with bundles of 500 Euro notes.

“There’s a bomb in the bag!” Lassiter shouted.

Everyone froze.

Lassiter was holding something out the window of his car—it looked like a cellphone or a remote control device.

“Oh my god,” Elaine gasped.

“
Merda
,’ Cattoretti said. “That stupid old fool. He’s bluffing.”

Elaine turned and looked at the bag in Cattoretti’s lap, expecting it to blow them all to bits any second.

“Let Gypsy go or I’ll kill you all!” Lassiter shouted.

Cattoretti stuck his arm out the window and made some kind of signal.

A shot rang out. Whatever Lassiter had been holding in his hand shattered to pieces, bits of it landing in the canal. He screamed. A second bullet struck him in the neck, his head snapping grotesquely to one side.

Elaine’s Secret Service training kicked in. She assessed the situation in two seconds.
Sniper in the building
.

She threw her door open and sprinted towards Lassiter. “Hold your fire!” she screamed.

“Stop!” Cattoretti yelled, but she was already veering towards the car’s passenger door.

She yanked it open. Lassiter was slumped over the steering wheel, blood trickling across the seat and the floorboard. His neck and chest were open. Two fingers on his left hand were missing. Elaine had been trained in Trauma Assessment. One cursory look told her he wouldn’t live more than another minute or two.

She heard Cattoretti shout, “Stop! Come back!”

Elaine looked out the windshield. Gypsy had jumped out of the sedan and was running in the opposite direction, along the canal. Cattoretti dashed off after him.

“H-help me,” Lassiter moaned, gurgling blood.

Elaine turned her attention back to the old man. She could see the life draining away from him. She gently put her arm around him, tears in her eyes. Even after all he had done to her, she felt compassion for the dying man.

“Why, Gene?” Elaine said. “Why?”

He looked up at her, his face ghostly pale. “The Russians...they blackmailed me.” He coughed up more blood. “They…said they would...expose...Gypsy. Don’t let them hurt...Gypsy.”

He gave a violent spasm and became perfectly still, his mouth and eyes still open, staring at Elaine.

She slipped out of the car, her blouse and D&G blazer splashed with blood. She was trembling so much she could barely walk—she was in shock from seeing Lassiter’s body ripped apart by bullets, the man bleeding to death in her arms. No amount of trauma assessment training had prepared her for that.

Cattoretti’s sedan was just sitting there. The headlights were still on, the engine idling, all the doors open except the driver’s. The interior light was on and she could see Luigi’s face—he was looking around anxiously, like he didn’t know what to do.

Cattoretti was nowhere in sight.

Elaine looked up and scanned the crumbling building, but did not see a sniper, or any movement at all. It was oddly quiet.

She had to get away from here. She climbed through the rubble of the decaying structure, stepping through the weeds and loose bricks. Passport or no passport, she had to get away from Giorgio Cattoretti. She had seen a different side of the man tonight—he was a cold-blooded killer.

She stumbled up the crumbling concrete steps to the first floor of the abandoned warehouse, panic-stricken, terrified that she would be next. When he found out she had betrayed him by not revealing all the errors in the counterfeits, he would surely get rid of her, and with vengeance.

Inside the dark building, there were loose planks and gaps everywhere she stepped, along with beer bottles and rubbish left behind by kids. The place stank of urine. She gasped when a shadowy blur waddled past her and disappeared behind a pile of bricks— it looked like a big, fat rat.

She stepped through a decrepit doorway and into a large room. She carefully picked her way across the floor in the near-darkness, being careful not to step into a hole. If she could make her way to the other end of the long building, maybe she could sneak away, run alongside of the canal until she was out of sight. But it was so dark inside she could barely see where she was going. And the farther in she went, the darker it got. She decided this wasn’t a good idea.

At that moment, she heard the faint sound of a gunshot. She had been trained to identify weapons by the sounds of their discharges. This was not a sniper rifle, but a low-caliber pistol.

Gypsy has been shot,
she thought.

Just as she turned around, she lost her footing. The next thing she knew one leg had plunged into space. She clawed at the floor, barely stopping herself from falling through the ragged opening.

Gasping, she pulled herself out, the edges scratching her shins and knees, and found her footing again. She continued on much more cautiously, testing each step forward with her toe before she put her weight down.

She stopped again—there was breathing behind her.

“Elaine?” a voice said.

It was Giorgio Cattoretti.

Maybe if she stayed still, he couldn’t see her.

A second later, a hand took hold of her wrist. “You mustn’t be afraid—it’s all over now.”

CHAPTER 3.11

A few minutes later, Elaine and Cattoretti were sitting in the back seat of the sedan, heading towards the castle. They had not spoken since they had gotten back in the car.

“I do not see why you are upset,
cara
,” Cattoretti finally said. “The man destroyed your life. You said so yourself.”

“You didn’t have to kill him,” Elaine said.

“He might have blown all of us to kingdom come.”

“He was bluffing.”

“I
thought
he was bluffing, but I could not be certain. How could I know? Would you rather that I risked all of our lives to find out?”

Elaine didn’t respond. They drove for a moment in silence, then crossed one of the canals.

“What happened to Gypsy?” she said.

Cattoretti glanced at her, then shrugged. “He ran away.”

“I thought I heard a pistol shot when I was in the warehouse.”

Luigi glanced at his father through the rearview, then looked back at the road.

“I am not armed,” Cattoretti said. “And neither is Luigi. You must have imagined it.”

* * *

When they turned down the driveway that led to the castle, Elaine gazed out into the woods. Lassiter’s last words were still reverberating in her ears.

The Russians...they blackmailed me. They…said they would...expose...Gypsy.

Now she was sure that Lassiter had lied to her about Nick. The old man had made the whole thing up just to lure her to Washington so she would complete his project.

Gazing into the woods, she wondered where Nick was now, and if he was happy.

CHAPTER 3.12

At that moment, Nick LaGrange was making his way down the ravine on the east side of Castello Fontanella, only a quarter mile from the driveway. He was wearing gray and black camouflaged fatigues and had a heavy knapsack on his back. His face was blackened with camouflage paint.

He had been investigating an Italian criminal named Giorgio Cattoretti for the past three weeks. It appeared that the genuine KBA Giori printing press that was behind the ever-improving-quality counterfeit banknotes might be located at this castle. Two days ago, he had gotten permission to go to Italy and check it out.

Getting close enough to the castle to see what was going on would not be an easy operation. In addition to the deep ravines that surrounded the structure on all four sides, there was also a moat and a 20-foot-high fortification wall. From satellite photos, it also appeared that the grounds around the castle, on the inside of the moat, were patrolled by guards with dogs.

It would not be easy, and he might end up dead. But if this was where the Giori machine was located, it was worth the risk.

When he stopped and rested for a moment, he glimpsed the headlights through the trees. A car was passing along the driveway that led to the castle, but it was too far away to see.