Brian Haig - PrivateSector

“I’m sorry, I-”

“Hey, get this. My wife’s name’s Monica. Wow, she catches some shit.” Well, enough with causing confusion about my telephonic disguise. I asked Philippe, “Hey, what’s your position in the company?”

“I am the aseestant director for operations.”

“Hey, I’ve got the right guy. Thing is, I’m working on a company audit, and the name of your conglomerate came up. I mean, we do all that swapping together every year.”

“Swapping?”

“Yeah-exchanging shares and utilization on each other’s networks.”

“Ah… yes, I am familiar with theeez. ”

“This audit is critical to us getting a big Defense Department contract.”

“Okay. I see.”

“And we’ve booked a lot of revenue from you guys. Eighty million, last quarter.”

“Yes?”

“Turns out our Defense Department has no record of you.”

“And why is theez a problem?”

“It’s a simple verification issue. Bureaucrats, right?”

There was a long pause before he said, “I am afraid I cannot help you.”

“Hey, pal, nothing hard here. Just name the telecommunications companies that are swapping with Morris.”

“I, um… one moment.”

Philippe must’ve had his hand over the mouthpiece because I could hear muffled voices. The language wasn’t English, but neither was it French.

He then informed me, “We are a private company, yes? We do not divulge our holdings to outsiders.”

“You know, I’m always telling Jason he screwed up not staying private. Now we have to wear our underwear outside our pants.”

“This is your problem, Mr. Cleenton… not ours.”

“Good point.” I asked, “Would you be more comfortable discussing this if I flew out and met with you? Tell me where and I’ll be on a plane tonight.”

“No, that w-”

“Philippe, this contract’s worth two billion big ones. Jason’s gonna get a big-time case of the ass if we lose it ’cause you guys are uptight about a meaningless confidentiality issue.”

Another long pause, and I assumed Philippe was once again chatting with somebody in the background. He finally said, “What is your office in Morris Networks?”

“I’m with the audit firm. I work with Barry Bosworth. Know him?”

“Uh… no. A moment.” When he finally spoke, he said, “Direct your questions to Mr. Bosworth. Do not call and bother us again.” Abrupt tone, loud click, and an empty line.

Boy, he sure tidied up the loose ends.

I mean, in most ways, I knew nothing more than when I started. But in knowing that, I knew considerably more.

Some companies stay private and forgo public money because they’re family firms and don’t want anybody else messing with the family jewels. Others because it’s an ego thing, and still others because they’re owned by paranoid control freaks like Howard Hughes and regard public stockholders as nasty germs. But even those companies are willing to list their holdings. I mean, to some degree, the whole capitalist game is a big-pecker contest, and what’s the fun if you don’t post your inches?

So Grand Vistas was this mysterious holding company head-quartered on an island known for no taxes and laissez-faire rules regarding business. Both employees I’d spoken to were foreigners. Yet the lingua franca of the company wasn’t English, nor French, but nor did it sound Spanish or Asian. We were down to a hundred-some-odd languages, but good detective work often boils down to elimination rather than addition.

More intriguing was that way Philippe kept slapping his palm over the mouthpiece to confer with whoever guided him through our conversation. I mean, there’s three kinds of folks with that kind of squeamishness-the military, spy agencies, and crooks.

I went to the kitchen, yanked two steaks out of the refrigerator, found two potatoes in the cupboard, and started preparing lunch.

Anne Carrol hadn’t yet hit the news. Yet he was sure that within an hour her name would be the topic du jour in country stores, old ladies’ knitting groups, and police stations nationwide. Unbelievable what that monster did to her, folks would say, wagging their fingers and looking plainly horrified.

If Fiorio garnered attention because of her fame and popularity, the pain inflicted on Anne Carrol’s fiercely punished body would cause an entire nation to clench its teeth and cry for the murderous bastard to be caught.

Distasteful, but she had to be done in just that way. He sprayed another dose of Windex on the mirror and rubbed with enough vigor to purge every last trace of toothpaste or spit that might’ve splattered the surface. It was the sixth cleaning. But after all, he had spent a lot of time at the mirror, and there was no sense making a mistake at this stage. Modern techniques being what they were, DNA could be collected off a pinhead these days. The living room was done, every last surface scrubbed and rescrubbed with the best solvents money could buy. The closet-spotless. The kitchen sparkled. He had even rented a vacuum, for four hours running it back and forth and sucking up every particle and dustball. He had dumped the bags in a garbage receptacle at a mall three miles away. The clothes he’d worn over the past three weeks, the sheets he slept on, the pillows, everything had been hauled off and incinerated. The bicycle was buried in a seven-foot hole in some thick woods.

A spanking new briefcase rested on the spotless table in the living room, and the final two profiles were inside. His next kill wouldn’t be done in this city, however. He had planned all along to ratchet up the heat here, and do her elsewhere. Her death would be different and no connection to the awful killer in D. C. would be imagined or construed. This wasn’t her hometown anyway, was it? That she’d come here wasn’t in his plans and he regarded it as a terrible inconvenience. Well, he’d just have to find a way to draw her out.

He’d heard on the morning news that the corpse of a twenty-year-old GW student named John Negroponte had been discovered twelve miles outside D. C. on the canal towpath. From the damage to his bike and the catastrophic dent in his head, the police were assuming he’d been biking too fast, lost control, and slammed into a tree. A tragic accident; he probably hit a rut and somehow his helmet slipped off. A memorial service was scheduled at the GW University chapel, and the public was invited to attend.

Two of the three rental cars were parked in the lot that bordered the hotel, freshly scrubbed and detailed, doors unlocked, keys tucked under the driver’s mats. In three hours, two associates would appear to drive the cars back to Philadelphia and their rental agencies. He’d be long gone, on the far side of Baltimore, driving the last rental car north to Boston for the next kill.

The city of Washington would hold its breath for two or three days, and wonder where he’d strike next. After a week, the FBI and cops would be scratching their heads. On the corpses’ palms he had contracted for ten victims. The L. A. Killer promised five and delivered five. Their profilers had told them that he treated this as a wicked game of wits and would stake everything on winning.

They conditioned themselves with their own procedures and techniques, and were always astonished when the killer didn’t play by the very rules they’d assumed he’d set.

Janet arrived at noon. she stepped inside, dropped her coat by the door, and immediately began wandering and snooping. Why do women do that? We go to their apartments and maybe wonder what brand of beer they stock. Usually, that’s something called “Lite” beer, which is really bubbly tap water, which is why I always bring my own. They’ll claw through our underwear drawers if they think they won’t be caught. And when they get caught, they say something silly, like, “Nope, no napkins here. Where do you keep them?”