Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

Wouldn’t have mattered in the long run, Kane thought as he took out his cell phone. I would have killed them someday in some other manner. And as it turned out, they were going to attend despite the threat, or warning, or whatever it was.

Kane was honest enough with himself to recognize that he feared Karp and Ciampi, as well as their odd assortment of friends. It was like some book from his childhood where a group of unlikely heroes comes together to battle the forces of darkness.

From the first moment he’d seen Karp, he’d recognized the man as the proverbial nemesis. He was the leader, the moral center around which the others gathered and found strength.

Marlene Ciampi was dangerous because she was so unpredictable, and as fully capable of using violence as he was without worrying about the niceties when doing what needed to be done. She was like the repentent gunslinger in Western movies who had given up the life until forced into one last showdown to save the townspeople from the bad men.

Superstitious and aware that there were forces at play he didn’t understand, Kane wondered how such a fellowship of Goody Two-shoeses had ever come together. Take the Indian. He’d never met the man but recognized that he drew strength through his spirituality and was as fully cognizant of the play between light and dark as he was. The Indian’s death had been a great relief.

And what about the cowboy? A seemingly insignificant hick from the sticks, and yet weren’t cowboys the American equivalent of the knights-errant? It troubled him that the boy had survived the attack and saved Lucy from falling into his clutches sooner, causing him to slightly revamp his plan for the evening. Doesn’t matter, the cowboy’s ride is over tonight as well, he thought.

After this, though, I want to get the hell out of Dodge. Some unknown presence stalked him in Manhattan. His spies quavered when they talked about a shadow, or shadows, that watched and sometimes did more than watch, slitting throats and carting bodies off into the dark places. The two men assigned to follow the Karp brats had disappeared. Others left the apartment complex across from Baker Field to purchase a pack of cigarettes or scout the neighborhood to watch for the presence of federal agents or the NYPD and never returned. Even Samira, who didn’t seem to fear anyone, was uneasy. But the scouts who did return had shrugged and said they’d seen nothing on the streets and in the park near the apartment except university students, harmless residents, and the usual assortment of homeless bums, including an obnoxious drunk Indian who had been hanging around, rummaging in the building’s Dumpster, and begging for handouts.

There was one person who frightened him more than Karp, or Ciampi, their friends, or even nameless shadows. The most unlikely source of fear: Lucy Karp. He was both fascinated by her and afraid of her because she seemed to sense that he was something other than what he portrayed. He imagined that she could see beneath his skin and knew what squirmed there in the dark recesses of his mind. He was sure she’d seen through him in Aspen and almost waited for the feds to pull their guns and arrest him, laughing at how he’d been done in by a twenty-one-year-old girl. That was why she now figured so prominently in his plans.

He’d seen her when she and her cowboy entered the cathedral. In fact, he’d turned around and found her looking directly at him from thirty feet away. His first inclination had been to turn and run. But he’d managed to smile and nod. Instead of returning the greeting, she’d leaned toward her boyfriend and whispered something, then they’d headed for their seats in the sixth row of pews.

The sooner this is over and I’m back to living the life to which I am accustomed, the better, Kane thought as he punched in the number for another cell phone and stepped into a corner of the cathedral where he could talk privately.

“Emil,” he said when it was answered. “Is everything ready?”

Five blocks away at his bank on Fifth Avenue, Emil Stavros sat in the international wire room on the twenty-fifth floor with Dante Coletta. The bank was, of course, closed on Saturday, but the guard at the desk downstairs had hardly bothered to make Stavros and his chauffeur sign in.

Stavros was sweating bullets. The monitoring device set up in his home would have already sent a signal to the cops when the electronic bracelet he wore moved out of the prescribed range. However, that wasn’t what had his stomach all tied up in knots.

After all, there was a plan in place to clear him. After he’d done what he was supposed to do, Coletta would tie him up with phone cords and duct tape his mouth shut before going back to the lobby, shooting the guard, and leaving.

Stavros’s story would be that he’d been forced to cooperate with Kane or face death for himself and Amarie, who was already home and tied up on the bed. The whole murder case would be portrayed as a setup to blackmail him with a taped confession of Dante Coletta admitting to the murder. Poor Coletta, who thought he would be escaping the country with Kane, didn’t know that the plan was for Kane’s terrorist friends to shoot him and make it look like a suicide with the tape on the bed next to him.

Better him than me, Stavros thought as he’d waited for Kane’s call.

He hadn’t meant to kill Teresa that night. But when she refused to help him with his gambing debts, something clicked and the next thing he knew, his hands were around her throat and he’d choked her into unconsciousness. His first thought had been to call an ambulance. But then Coletta had appeared out of nowhere.

If you call an ambulance, the chauffeur said, they’ll call the cops. It will at least be attempted murder, and if she dies, you’ll go away for life…if they don’t give you the death penalty.

What do I do? he’d pleaded.

Let me make a call, Coletta said. Then when he returned he said, You’re going to have to finish this. Shoot her and then we’ll bury her and make it look like she got tired of you fucking around on her and left.

I couldn’t, he’d stammered.

It’s that or the electric chair. The chauffeur had shrugged.

Then the gun was in his hand, and he was leaning over with the muzzle a foot from his wife’s head. Closer, Emil, the chauffeur had whispered. Put it right on her fucking skull and pull the trigger. You don’t want to miss.

Stavros had looked at his wife and was struck by how beautiful she was; there was a moment’s regret, a thought of returning to the first option of calling for an ambulance. But then there was Coletta whispering again, Shoot her, Emil. Or your life is over.

He didn’t remember pulling the trigger, or whether he shot once or a dozen times. The next thing he knew, he was on his knees throwing up with Coletta patting him sympathetically on the back. “You did what you had to do, Emil,” he said.

They’d pulled up the rosebushes and buried her. After replacing the plants, Coletta had told him to sit tight for a couple of days and then report his wife as missing. Everything will be taken care of, the chauffeur said. Just remember, you are indebted to Mr. Andrew Kane from this day on.

Fourteen years later, Stavros had been angry when he learned that Kane had set him up in order to force him to cooperate with his plan. But there was nothing he could do-Kane had the gun with his fingerprints locked away in a safe deposit box.

The plan to absolve him of the murder should work, Stavros thought. Plus, Karp will be dead, and there will be a mistrial. If I’m worried about it, I’ll leave the country. I’ll have plenty of money from my share of this.