Silent Assassin (9 page)

“I say we go ask them,” said Morgan. “Looks like we’ve got some house calls to make.”

C
HAPTER
16

 

“I
ncoming,” said Lincoln Shepard, and the phone rang. Morgan checked his watch: 6:40
PM
, right on time. The people around the room tensed up just slightly: in a chair across from Morgan was Bishop, who dropped the pen that he was using to doodle on the hotel room notepad in order to listen. Leaning against the wall was young Risa Rispoli, with her deceptively innocent face, her arm crossed in front of her. She was a spy for hire, a sort of independent contractor whom Bloch had vouched for. Morgan only had to set eyes on her to know what her specialty was: seduction. She stood up straight when Shepard announced the call. Diana Bloch, who had been in position in front of the phone, took a measured breath, her hand hovering over the phone, and picked up.

“Club Royale,” she said, managing to capture both the solicitousness and the haughty superiority of people who worked in VIP services.

“Five-thirty-three,” came the deadpan voice over the earpiece that Morgan had inserted in his right ear to listen in on the call. The others, watching Bloch intently, were listening in too.

“And your code, sir?” said Bloch.

“Champagne dreams,” he said with a derisive voice.

“That is correct,” she replied. “What can I help you with today, sir?”

“I want to set up an appointment. House call.”

“Will that be for tonight as usual, sir?” asked Bloch. The escort agency’s records showed that he always scheduled his rendezvous on the same day.

“I want a new girl this time. A nine-ruby.”

Morgan had to smirk at this one. The ruby system ranked the women in the brothel by quality, nine being the highest and, of course, most expensive. Except the whole system was a scam, and a brilliant one at that. All the women who worked there were equally gorgeous, all of them top model material. But the ruby system let the johns believe that there was a difference, and pay accordingly. This way, they could charge more from those who could pay more—the highest price was something like five times greater than the lowest—while still being affordable to those whose budgets were on a lower level. More than that, the ruby system kept everyone who paid for below nine rubies always thinking there was something better, something to aspire to. He had to admire the simple genius of this charade.

“Big spender,” she said. “Celebrating tonight?”

“I thought your job required discretion,” he said in a prickly tone.

“Sorry, sir,” said Bloch. She was, of course, quite aware of what she was doing; even that bit of mild break from protocol was calculated, a way to deflect thoughts of suspicion. “We have a new nine-ruby girl that you might be interested in. Young, tall, slender redhead. Green eyes and the face of an angel.” Morgan looked at Risa, whose lips curved ever so slightly to form a sly smile. “Might that pique your interest?”

There was a pause. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Shall I make an appointment at the usual place, at ten tonight?” That’s when he always had them come in, according to Club Royale’s records.

“Do it,” came the voice, and then hung up.

Their assets inside escort services were some of the most useful that Zeta Division had, both for finding out secrets and for blackmail. Few powerful men could resist engaging such services, and the threat of scandal usually proved to be just the right amount of leverage to get some small political favors and just about any piece of information out of them. And while they did not own Club Royale, they had enough pull with the management that organizing this whole ruse had been trivial. They had come out not only with the client’s contact information, but also with everything that Royale had on him in their files.

The mark, one of the people Shepard had identified, was a mediocre investment banker in his mid-thirties named Len Stuart. Getting his information had been easy enough. Shepard just had to remotely lift his daily schedule off his smartphone, and Len himself had proven most helpful in that regard.

“This guy has literally every minute of his day planned,” Shepard had told Morgan, looking over Stuart’s schedule. “Morning exercise, brushing his teeth . . . Look at this: ‘6:37 – bowel movement.’ The guy is like some kind of machine. Anyway, there’s this not so subtly named ‘recreation’—it corresponds to every past appointment he had with the escort agency. And the next one is set for just a couple of days from now.”

“I wonder if he’s made the appointment yet?” said Morgan.

And there they were, with an operation set to gain access to Stuart’s apartment and interrogate him. Morgan and Bishop went ahead, dressed in casual polos and khakis—just a couple of high-class guys, coming over for some wine and cheese or whatever, and Morgan with a duffel bag, containing everything they’d need that night for the interrogation. They sat at a bar in front of Stuart’s apartment building, right in front of a storefront window that gave them a plain view of the street, drinking iced tea out of whiskey glasses, and waiting for the plan to unfold.

They didn’t have to wait long before they saw Risa’s driver bring her around in a town car and drop her off at the doorstep of Stuart’s building. She rang the bell, was buzzed in, and disappeared inside. Morgan nodded to Bishop, and they each popped in their earpieces.

“Cobra and Bishop online,” Bishop said quietly so that no one around them could hear.

“All right,” came Shepard’s voice over the radio. “Testing, one, two. Bishop, if you can hear me, pick up your glass and move it three inches to the right.” He did, while Morgan looked nonchalantly for the camera Shepard was using. No matter how many times he did it, Morgan was still impressed by the hacker’s ability to crack any system. “I’ll take that look-see to mean you
can
hear me, Cobra, but just to make sure, why don’t you touch your left ear with your index and middle fingers?” Morgan did. “Okay, good. So without further ado, heeeere’s Risa!”

The sound cut to footsteps—heels along a corridor. They stopped, and then there was the ringing of a doorbell. Silence, then a door opening, and then voices, coming in as clear as day.

“Len?” came Risa’s voice. “Hi, I’m Stacey.”

Stuart looked at the woman standing at his door. She really
was
a nine-ruby. Face of an angel, the woman had said on the phone. And that it was.

“Of course you are,” he said, with a predatory tinge in his voice. He was wearing his best suit, a graphite Zegna with a metallic blue tie—an outfit intended to project dominance and power. He knew what these women were all about. He knew how to get under their skin. “Well? Are you coming in?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said, with impeccably faked girlish excitement. He knew they were faking, and it didn’t fool him. But he liked it when they performed for him. When they thought they were getting away with something. He closed and locked the door behind her, and then he told her, “So this is what I get for two grand an hour.”

She slinked toward him like a cat, holding her body against his and bringing her mouth to his ear. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” she said, and he felt her hot breath on him.

“I’m sure I haven’t,” he said in a husky voice, smiling, running his hand along the side of her body and squeezing her supple flesh. “How about a drink? I have some merlot in the decanter.”

“I can’t,” she said taking a step back and pouting as if she were sorely disappointed. “House rules.”

“This is
my
house,” he said, stepping toward her, so close that he looked down on her. He grabbed her wrist roughly. “Don’t you think I get to decide what the rules are?”

“Powerful man,” she said. “I like that.”

They usually flinched when he grabbed their wrists, but this one didn’t. Stuart was a bit put off by that. Just a bit. After all, he liked a challenge. He let go of her hand, and she walked a few steps away from him, pretending to be interested in the decor all of a sudden.

“Nice place,” she said. “Swanky.”

“The best of everything that money can buy,” he said. “You fit right in here, don’t you? An expensive doll for an expensive apartment.”

“I guess,” she said, with a nervous smile. “How about I get you that drink now?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll get the drinks.” He turned on some smooth jazz with the stereo remote control. “You dance.”

He poured two glasses of wine as he watched her sway to the music, eyes closed, hands running along her body. He was standing in front of her when she opened her eyes again, and she gave a little start.

“Your glass,” he said, extending it in his left hand to her. “Take it.”

“I can’t,” she said nervously.

“I said
take it
,” he growled. She took the glass sheepishly from his hand and took a nervous sip. He grinned triumphantly. He was going to have fun slowly breaking this one. He took a mouthful of the wine. It was good and got his blood flowing.

“So tell me,” he said, in almost a whisper. “What other rules are we going to be breaking tonight?”

He downed the rest of his wine, then grabbed her by the wrist again. “Do I make you nervous?” he said, in a way calculated to make her nervous. Judging by her expression, it worked.

“How about I pour you another?” she said, taking his glass in her free hand and backing away. He had to smile. He had succeeded in rattling her, at last, and she wanted a moment away. He’d give it to her.

“Yeah. Why don’t you do that?”

She picked up the glasses and turned her back to him. He smirked, looking at her back, then looked at his reflection on the full-length mirror of the far wall.
Sharp
. Something in the mirror caught his attention: her hands, hovering over the wineglass for just a second, and then a tiny, empty vial between her fingers. Anger welled up inside him as he realized its significance.

He didn’t react and put on a blank face when she turned around with a wide smile and handed him the wineglass. He took it, and raised it.

“To your beauty,” he said. She smiled and clinked her glass against his. He raised the glass to his lips. Then, instead of drinking, he tossed it aside violently so that it shattered in a thousand pieces on the hardwood floor. He caught her by the hair. “So, you were trying to drug me?”

“What?” she said, trying to wrestle free. “No! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were!” he hissed.

“No, I swear!” said Risa. “Look, okay, I did put something in your drink. But it’s just something to make this night more fun!”

“I’ll give you fun,” he snarled, and backhanded her across the face.

 

 

Morgan met Bishop’s eye, and they didn’t have to say a word. Both men were already getting up. Shepard’s voice came over the comm: “You guys getting this? You’d better get in there!” Morgan dropped two bills on the table, and they ran out of the bar and across the street to the door of the apartment building.

“Lying bitch!” Morgan heard Stuart yell through his earpiece. “You were trying to drug me! You were going to rob me, weren’t you? Is that your deal? Huh? Is that what they tell you to do at that whorehouse?”

“No! I swear!” She sounded more and more distressed. “I don’t want anything from you. Please, just let me go!”

Morgan swiped the key card at the front door and they dashed inside, past the lobby. Stewart’s place was seven floors up, and the elevators were both higher than that. This couldn’t wait. They made for the stairs.

“I thought I paid top dollar to avoid your kind of thieving gutter trash.” His voice was getting increasingly menacing. Morgan’s legs burned to keep up with Bishop as they ran up three steps at a time.

“But I guess a whore’s a whore, right?” He heard the sound of glass shattering and a heavy piece of furniture being knocked over. “What else can you expect?”

“Stay away from me!” came Risa’s tearful voice.

They reached Stuart’s floor, and Bishop tried the door, but it was locked.

“Who the hell is that? One of your buddies?”

“Oh hell,” said Morgan. “Stand back, Bishop.”

He took a few steps back and then kicked the door as hard as he could right next to the knob. The frame splintered around the lock, and the door slowly swung open. On the floor, on top of an expensive-looking Persian rug, was Len Stuart, inert but still breathing, looking especially small and shriveled with his scrawny build and prematurely balding head. Standing above him with a little smile as if she were welcoming them for a dinner party, was Risa Rispoli.

“What the hell happened?” said Morgan.

“Lenny took a nap,” she said, as she walked past them.

“The point of your coming here was to subdue him without a fight!” Bishop hissed.

“You got what you wanted, ” Rispoli said airily as she walked away. “Now, have at it, boys.”