37
Tommy Chang stirred from his sleep, wondering what had awakened him. The doorbell rang a second time. Tommy struggled out of bed and padded to the front door of his small house in his boxer shorts and bare feet.
A uniformed messenger of some sort stood there, holding a box. Tommy opened the door. “You need a signature?”
“Yes, please,” the man replied, holding out an electronic device with a pen attached.
Tommy signed, took the package, and went back inside. He considered diving back into bed for another couple of hours, but a glance at the clock on the wall told him that he had already used up that time. He went into the kitchen, began the coffee by switching on the drip pot, then put an English muffin into the toaster oven and pressed the start button.
He looked at the box and could not find a return address. He figured it must be from Dirty Joe, because who else would be sending him things by overnight delivery? He hefted the package, and it felt as if there might be a book inside. He wondered for a moment if he had made anybody mad enough at him to send him a bomb, decided he had not, then found a box cutter and opened the box. Inside was a shipping envelope, sealed and pre-addressed, plus a business envelope. He opened the business envelope and read the letter inside, which appeared to have been printed from a computer file. It did not begin with a salutation or end with a signature.
I don’t know if you read newspapers or watch television news, so I may be the first to tell you that Joe and Jane were killed by the Maine State Police in a gunfight yesterday.
Tommy was shaken by that news. They were his friends, and he and Joe were business partners. Yesterday, as mentioned in the letter, would have been the day before yesterday. He took a deep breath and began to read again.
Joe told me a while back that his will is in the safe at your office, and that you and Jane are his heirs. If she is deceased, then everything goes to you.
Tommy thought about that. He and Joe were partners in a flying school and air charter service at the Marathon Airport, and they also owned a small marina and boatyard nearby. His next thought was that they were cash poor, and that Joe had told him he was going to New York to remedy that, which meant to Tommy that Joe had taken a contract on somebody, and that he had probably been killed in an attempt to execute it. He read on.
There is $100,000 in hundred-dollar bills in the envelope contained in this package. There is also some information regarding the individual who was the subject of Joe’s attention at the time of his demise. If you wish to replace Joe in the effort in which he was involved, you may secure the money and get on with it. If you do not wish to accept, you need only return the cash in the envelope provided, and you will hear no more from me. Should you accept the offer, you must complete it within ten days of receiving this package, or return the money.
Details of the subject and of Joe’s death are in the package. The subject is in New York City as I write this, and the last known address is a private town house on East 49th Street, owned by a person known as Stone Barrington, a lawyer, whose office is on the ground floor. There is a thumb drive in with the cash. Download it to your computer, and it will automatically populate your iPhone. The app keeps constant surveillance at all times and will display the location on a map.
I do not wish to hear from you again and you will not hear from me. I wish you good luck on your assignment and a prosperous year.
The letter was not signed, but Tommy knew the sender to be Gino Bellini, with whom he and Joe had shared a cell for a few months in their extreme youth.
Tommy had no intention of returning the money.
He opened the shipping envelope, which was addressed to a building on Park Avenue, apartment 30, and found, as promised, ten packets of one hundred hundred-dollar bills, and two news stories, one from a newspaper, the other from a business magazine. The first, from a Maine newspaper, apparently downloaded from the Internet, described the circumstances of Joe’s and Jane’s deaths on a boat at an island in Penobscot Bay called Islesboro. The second was an article from a business publication, with two photographs, about a businesswoman named Meg Harmon, who had recently sold a large share of her company and netted something more than a billion dollars. He knew that Bellini had made a large sum, himself, on the transaction.
Tommy called his office, and his chief pilot, Rena Cobb, answered. “Bad news,” he said, “Joe and Jane are dead.”
There was a brief silence at the other end, then she said, “Holy shit.”
“Yeah, I know. Day before yesterday, in Maine. I just heard a few minutes ago.”
“Are we going to be okay?” Rena asked. She was aware of their cash-flow problem.
“Yeah, we are. I’m going to want you to make a deposit today—tomorrow at the latest. I’ll be there in a few minutes. I have to fly to New York for a few days, so have the Baron refueled, and you take the Cessna 210.”
“Okay, see you soon.”
Tommy hung up, then downloaded the app to his computer and checked his iPhone to be sure it was working properly. A blue dot appeared at New York City. He showered and shaved, packed a bag, dressed, locked up, and headed for the airport.
HE PARKED in his usual spot and went into the office. Sheila, his secretary, was at her desk. “Tomorrow you can start paying bills,” he said. “Rena will confirm when the money’s in the bank.” He went into Rena’s office, opened the shipping envelope and took $10,000 for expenses, then gave the rest to Rena.
“I can fly this afternoon and be at the bank by noon tomorrow,” she said. The procedure was to fly to Nassau, then depart there on a flight plan to Jamaica, then, an hour out, change the destination to Georgetown, in the Cayman Islands.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a week or so.” He took his bag into the hangar and stowed it in the baggage compartment of the Beech Baron, then he went to a steel locker in the hangar and removed an aluminum case on wheels containing two handguns, a folding sniper rifle, and ammunition for all. He stowed that in the Baron, then hooked up the tow to the airplane and pulled it out onto the ramp. He used his cell phone to check the weather, which was good, and file a flight plan for Brandywine Airport in West Chester, Pennsylvania. At the appropriate moment, he would cancel his flight plan and land, instead, at Essex County Airport, in Caldwell, New Jersey, and from there, take a car service into New York.
Tommy did a thorough preflight inspection of the airplane, then started the engines. He entered his flight plan into the Garmin 1000 flight computer, got his IFR clearance from the tower, then taxied to the runway, where he was immediately cleared for takeoff. He lifted off, retracted the landing gear and flaps, switched on the autopilot, and let the Garmin 1000 begin flying the programmed route. Soon he was at cruising altitude, and he set the fuel mixture for best economy. He had a four-hour flight ahead of him. Plenty of time to make a plan.