The Rule Of Nine Part 22

"Who got the original top copies?" I ask him.

"The seller. A bank in Texas," he says. "I mailed them out late last week."

I am flipping pages when Joselyn stops me. "Wait a minute. Go back."

I flip back one page.

"What's this?" She points to a handwritten note in the margin on one of the pink forms.

"Numbers. Looks like somebody made a note," I say.

"That's not the purchase price," she says.

"Is this your handwriting?" I ask the guy behind the desk.

He comes over to take a look, shakes his head. "It's not mine. Lemme see." He turns several pages. On each one of them the same numbers are there in the same location in the margin, ten digits, s.p.a.ced out three, three, and four.

"It's gotta be his writing 'cause n.o.body else was involved," says the man. "He did receive a phone call when we were doing the signing. As I recall, he took out a slip of paper, wrote something on it, and put it back in his pocket. Conversation didn't last long."

"And he got a copy of these?"

"Yeah. Original and five copies in all. Original goes to the buyer, bottom copy to the selling t.i.tle holder. We keep everything in between," he says.

"Thanks," I tell him.

Joselyn looks at me. "If he put the slip of paper on top of the original form before the copies were separated, he wouldn't notice that his note bled through onto the NCR copies underneath."

She's right.

"Could be a phone number," I say.

"Took the words right outta my mouth." Herman's looking over my shoulder.

"If so, it's a 787 area code. Where's that?" I say.

"I don't know," says Herman.

"Gimme a sec," says Joselyn. She fishes her cell phone from her purse and starts to press b.u.t.tons.

"You're not going to call the number," I tell her.

"No. I'm just going to Cha Cha the area code."

"What the h.e.l.l is that?" I say.

"Watch and learn, or talk to your daughter. Every kid in America knows Cha Cha," she says. Joselyn sends a text message to the number 242 242, better known as Cha Cha. She types the question "Where is area code 787?"

A few seconds later the answer comes back: "The 787 area code belongs to Puerto Rico (PR)..."

THIRTY.

By the time he arrived home in Chicago, it was after midnight. Bart Snyder was exhausted. He had spent five days in Was.h.i.+ngton in a fruitless effort to light a fire under the cops and get them to move on Jimmie's murder investigation. The fact was that after almost two months, he was still unable to get the police to say officially that it was murder. The specter of a drug overdose still hung over Jimmie's head.

On top of everything else, Snyder held a spa.r.s.ely attended news conference that made him look like a fool.

Only one of the two daily metro newspapers showed up, along with a single camera from one of the cable news affiliates. When Snyder saw the poor turnout, he started out lecturing the media for their lack of interest in an "important case." At one point he lost his temper. It was that single ten-second snippet that they ran under the label "Emotional Father" that was recycled on the cable network for two days. They never even mentioned Thorn's name on TV, only in the newspaper.

Going public with the news conference had backfired. Now the police were not only refusing to share information, they were laughing at him.

Snyder was forced to double down. He hired a public relations firm in D.C. so that his next foray in front of the cameras would go more smoothly, and hopefully garner more coverage.

By the time he dragged himself and his luggage from the car in the garage and into his kitchen, he was angry, tired, and depressed. He dropped his bags and briefcase in the middle of the kitchen floor, stepped back into the garage, and pushed the b.u.t.ton to close the garage door.

All he wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. Instead he hauled his weary body toward the study to check his home voice mail and see if there were any last-minute messages on the computer.

Snyder had been dodging phone calls from Joselyn Cole for four days. She was on the road somewhere with Madriani and was looking for more information. Snyder was beginning to think that he'd made a mistake by trusting her with the lead on the boneyards.

It was starting to look as if Cole and Madriani had known each other for some time, and that he, Snyder, was the odd man out. She was probably already aware of the Liquida-Madriani connection to the attack on the North Island Naval Base. Snyder didn't trust Madriani. The lawyer from Coronado had too many secrets. He suspected that Madriani knew more about Jimmie's murder than he was saying, and he wasn't about to share more information with someone he couldn't trust. It was easier to simply ignore Cole's calls than to get into an argument with her over the phone.

Within a few days Snyder would know whether the stuff on the boneyards was a dead end or not. His investigator, Dimmick, should have somebody burning up shoe leather now, checking them out.

Snyder plunked himself down into the webbed Aeron chair in front of his computer and opened his e-mail. There were several messages but nothing new. There was one from Joselyn Cole. According to the note at the bottom, it was sent from her iPhone, and implored him to call her on her cell as soon as possible.

There were four flas.h.i.+ng voice-mail messages on his home-office line. Snyder reached over and pushed the Repeat b.u.t.ton to play them.

The first was nothing, just a hang-up. Snyder erased it. The second was from the maid who cleaned his house, saying she couldn't make it next week but would be by early the next morning. Snyder wasn't happy but he had no choice. She would be waking him up in the morning. He erased the message. Someone at Dimmick's office called and wanted to know which address to use for billing statements, Snyder's home or his law office. Snyder remembered that he'd given Dimmick one of his firm's business cards when they'd first met. He made a note to call him back in the morning. The last message was from Joselyn Cole asking that he call her. They needed some more information. Snyder erased it.

If he was going to cut her off, it was better to do it in writing, and to keep it brief. He turned to the e-mail from her cell phone and hit the Reply b.u.t.ton at the bottom just as the loop of hemp went over his head and flashed in front of his eyes.

Before Snyder knew what was happening, it dropped around his throat and tightened like a steel band. He reached up with both hands and tried to pry his fingers between the rope and the skin on his neck. But he couldn't. The three-eighths-inch hemp line was cutting a deep groove in the flesh around his throat, and was being pulled up high at the back of his neck.

Snyder felt something solid, a knee in his back, as he was jerked up straight in the chair, his back arched like a bow. The abrasive fibers of the hemp cut into his flesh like wire. He fought to get a breath, reached up with his hands, and tried to grab whoever was behind him. He felt a tight cotton slipover s.h.i.+rt but couldn't get a grasp on the fabric.

He struggled to get out of the chair. If he could stand, he could turn and perhaps twist free. Feet planted on the floor, he pushed on the arms of the chair with all of his strength. He started to rise, then suddenly the knee was again driven into his back. The sharp bone could be felt through the thin web that formed the back of the chair. Snyder was jerked down hard into the chair as it tilted backward, and his feet came off the floor.

Reflex drove his hands back to the futility of the rope around his throat. Snyder could feel the veins in his face bulge as panic flooded his brain. In one violent heave he threw his head back against his a.s.sailant's chest, cast his gaze toward the ceiling, and saw the pockmarked cheek and the dark malevolent eyes.

Snyder's sight began to dim as his heart pounded in his chest, pumping for air. He reached forward with his hands, grasped the board on the stand in front of him and felt for the positioning of the keys, and touched four quick letters.

His right hand left the keyboard and grasped the mouse. The a.s.sailant saw the gesture. He jerked the rolling chair away from the computer, but not before Snyder had clicked the b.u.t.ton.

Liquida jerked the wooden handles he'd fas.h.i.+oned for the garrote with all of his strength. His gaze fixed on the flas.h.i.+ng yellow sign on the computer's screen-MESSAGE SENT.

In a fury, Liquida pulled the chair over backward, slammed it to the floor, placed his right knee on the side of Snyder's head, and jerked the ends of the rope with all his might. He heard a snap, looked down, and saw the tongue protruding from Snyder's mouth, his lifeless eyes bulged open.

Liquida held tight for another few seconds until he was sure there was not a hint of respiration coming from the man's chest. He released his grip on the wooden handles of the garrote, stood up, and tried to catch his own breath.

With his foot he moved the lolling head back and forth one time, making sure that Snyder's neck was broken. Then he reached down and removed the garrote, slipped it into his pocket, and lifted the body, hoisting it onto his shoulder.

Still panting from the battle with his victim, Liquida carried the dead form out into the garage. He turned on the light and maneuvered around behind the back of Snyder's car toward the empty bay at the far end of the three-car garage.

Liquida had already set up a five-foot ladder and tied off a short section of the same hemp rope he'd used to fas.h.i.+on the garrote, looping it over one of the rafters in the garage.

Snyder, who had driven in, never saw the ladder or the rope with the noose all the way down at the other end because the overhead door light didn't illuminate that part of the garage. Liquida had made a note of this. He had been waiting for Snyder for more than three hours, napping on the bed upstairs, waiting for the noise of the garage-door opener to wake him the moment Snyder arrived home.

He carried the lifeless body, climbed up two steps, and centered Snyder's chest over the top of the ladder. Careful to make sure the body was balanced, Liquida reached up, grabbed the noose, and slipped it over Snyder's head. He positioned the knot behind the left ear, tightened it, and checked to make sure that the noose was aligned with the rope burns and abrasions left by the garrote.

When he was finally satisfied, Liquida stepped down, stood there for a moment looking, then reached out and pulled the ladder sideways. Snyder's body lurched free, swinging in the air as Liquida laid the ladder carefully on its side on the concrete so as not to make too much noise. He stood there watching until the body hung motionless, twisting only slightly on the rope as it searched for its point of ultimate rest.

Liquida checked the garage one last time to make sure he hadn't left anything behind, then went back inside. He left the light on in the garage. Not even the most despondent soul would hang himself in the dark.

He went back into the study, picked up the toppled desk chair, and with a gloved hand grabbed the computer mouse off the floor where it had fallen.

Liquida then used the mouse to maneuver the cursor on the screen to the folder that read SENT MESSAGES. He clicked and opened it and looked at the top message on the list. It was sent to someone named Joselyn Cole.

Liquida opened it. It was a reply to an earlier e-mail and it was there that Liquida saw a name he recognized. This woman, Joselyn Cole, was traveling, where she didn't say, but she was on the road with Madriani. Liquida had been headed to Ohio to kill Madriani's daughter when he was called away by his employer to clean up a loose end. It was now becoming a generational thing. The fellow who overdosed in D.C. had a meddling father. To Liquida it all came down to the same thing, money. Business before pleasure. The lawyer's daughter would have to wait. He would have to do that one on his own time.

It would have been a nice touch to send Madriani another message, leaving the mystic thumbprint on Snyder's computer. But that wouldn't do. It would cause complications. And besides, the digit was beginning to smell. The print Liquida had left on the lawyer's business card, the same one he had left at the scene of Afundi's body dump, was not his own. Liquida wasn't that stupid. The cops didn't have his picture and they sure as h.e.l.l weren't going to get his prints. The print belonged to the thumb of one of Liquida's earlier victims. Liquida had cut it off to use like the sealing stamp on a signet ring, storing it in formaldehyde when it wasn't needed. Like the Mexicutioner, the victim was not an American citizen and had no prior criminal record. So Liquida knew his prints would not show up in the FBI database.

He turned his attention to Snyder's farewell message, his abrupt reply to Joselyn Cole. It was very brief. Whatever Snyder was trying to communicate, you might say, was cut short. But then only Liquida knew this. Still, it wasn't bad. The cops might even see it as a suicide note. After all, the four-letter word "evil" is not such a strange farewell for the fevered mind of a man about to hang himself.

THIRTY-ONE.

They were now in the home stretch, and like a buzz of electricity running through his veins, Thorn could feel it. He was finally back at the airfield in Puerto Rico. The clock was running. He had only days to go and a mountain of work to complete before the plane could be airborne again.

Thorn had received word that morning that the Mexican had done his job. Snyder was dead. There would be no more news conferences. Whether he knew anything or not, the old man's lips were now sealed, and Thorn was free to concentrate on the task at hand.

To help him he had two of his regular crew, along with the two others, Western-educated Saudis, both of whom were trained as pilots and who would fly the plane. They were Muslims from the Mahdi Army, recruited through contacts that Thorn had developed during his years in Somalia.

But it seemed there was always one more problem. This one was driving Thorn crazy. Ahmed, the senior pilot, came fully equipped with his own caste system. He indicated a strong resentment toward anything that even remotely resembled manual labor. And, of course, the moment this affliction was made evident, his copilot, Masud, developed the same disease.

Between prayers they would sit on their a.s.ses all day under the trees, watching Thorn and his crew busting their behinds to get the plane ready. When Thorn tried to explain to them that there was painting to be done and a ramp to finish, they turned up their noses.

The one job they agreed to work on was the pylons under the two wings, and only because these were weapons-related. This seemed to appeal to their native warlike instincts in the same way possessing a rifle and shooting it into the air had appealed to their ancestors.

Thorn had no choice but to put them to work on the pylons while he and his crew hauled cans of paint, masked the exterior of the plane, and went to work firing up the compressor that was stashed inside the plane.

Every time the two Saudis took a break, Thorn would have to stop the compressor and look at them to get them back on the job. Sometimes even that didn't work. He would say chop-chop as if they were Chinese. Ahmed actually spoke perfect American English. He should, as he had been raised for eight years in the borough of Queens in New York.

The two pylons were mounted, one under each wing. The alignment was critical. The mounts had to be perfectly straight, otherwise you were inviting a midair catastrophe because of the aft-situated wing configuration and the long fuselage. Thorn was forced to break away several times to check on the Saudis and their work. In the end it would have been easier to do it himself.

In between painting and running herd on his two pilots, Thorn turned his attention to the small toy he had dubbed "the little brown bat." In military parlance it was known as an MAV, a micro air vehicle.

Seeing Thorn with the toy as they worked on the big jet, the two Saudis would look at him, talk to each other, and then laugh. Thorn didn't pay any attention as long as they got their work done.

The model airplane was just slightly larger than the size of Thorn's right hand, which now held it. The wingspan, just over six inches from tip to tip, was curved, somewhat like a bat, hence the name. The entire craft was clad with a thin layer of a bright, s.h.i.+ny copper compound. This had been sprayed on to save weight. The tiny plane had been specially crafted for Thorn by a master model maker who a.s.sured him that the copper-pigmented paint would react chemically in the same manner as if the model were made of the metal itself.

The plane was powered by two tiny electric motors, each capable of spinning a small propeller at more than fifteen thousand revolutions per minute. Using two nine-volt batteries, it could carry the necessary payload to an alt.i.tude of five hundred feet, and then stay aloft for a little over six minutes. This was more than enough time to do its job.

In flight, the little brown bat was virtually silent. On a dark night you would have to know precisely where it was, and even then you would have to strain your eyes to see it.

Thorn carefully placed plastic tape over the electrical components, the tiny motors, the wires, the battery housing, and the circuit board that formed the spine of the little craft between the two wings.

There was still more work to be done on the small bat before it was finished-the installation of the pinhole camera, a servomotor to swivel and maneuver the camera, and a small light-emitting diode slightly larger than the camera that would be wired into the circuit board. But that work would have to wait until Thorn had completed this part of the processing.

He finished masking the electrical parts, then carefully patted the tape in place to make sure it was sealed and that there were no openings. Then he placed the small aircraft on the ground and stepped back a foot or so. Thorn then pulled down the zipper on his jeans, fished out the man in the turtleneck sweater, and began to pee all over the model.

When the two Saudis behind him saw this, they began to laugh. "If you like, we can come over there and help you," said Ahmed, smiling.

"I think I can handle it," said Thorn. "You just get the pylons finished."

"Whatever you say, boss." They laughed some more.

Thorn didn't care. He knew that in less than two weeks they would both be dead and he would be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking mai tais while tallying up the bottom line for his numbered account in Lucerne.

Thorn looked down at the little model. In a day or two the uric acid would begin to patina the copper pigment in the paint. By the end of the week, with another bath or two, the little plane would be the color of an old, worn penny. Precisely what he needed.

Joselyn begged off and went to the ladies' room while Paul and Herman grabbed chairs at the American Airlines gate at Miami International. They had two hours to kill before their connecting flight from Tucson would carry them south to Puerto Rico. Herman was feeling naked without his pistol, particularly now that they had a lead on Thorn's whereabouts.

The phone number, the Puerto Rico area code and the seven digits that followed on the hand-scrawled note that bled through onto the contract for the plane, rang at a hotel in a town called Ponce on the west side of the island, the Hotel Belgica.

Joselyn wanted Paul to contact the FBI, but Madriani wanted confirmation that Thorn was actually at the hotel in Ponce. If he wasn't there and the FBI was called in, whatever credibility they still had with the feds would evaporate.

As she stepped out of the ladies' room Joselyn reached into her purse for her cell phone. She had forgotten to turn it back on following their flight from Tucson.

She fired it up and checked her messages. When she saw it, her eyes lit up. She'd missed a call from Snyder. He had called less than an hour before. She touched the message and hit the Callback b.u.t.ton. The phone rang twice before it was answered.

"h.e.l.lo."

It didn't sound like Snyder's voice.

"h.e.l.lo. I wonder if I have the wrong number?"

"No. No," said the voice. "Are you calling for Mr. Bart Snyder?"

"I am," said Joselyn.