Black Cat Weekly #49

Chapter 5

byThe day it ended, attorney Kyle Foster was in his office on Dartmouth Street in Boston when his secretary, Tara Lillington came in, a file folder held up to her impressive chest. Kyle looked at her with a quick glance, knowing that in this day and age, anything more than a five-second glance could get your a*s in front of the firm’s standards committee quicker than you could spell harassment, so he tried to be a good boy, at least in that.

“Kyle?” she asked, in a heavy South Boston accent that for some reason he found adorable.

“Yes, Tara, what is it?”

“There…there’s a man and woman here to see you. From the FBI.”

“Really?” he said, glancing over the paperwork piled on his desk, looking for a deposition that he needed to review for a pre-trial hearing next Thursday. “What do they want?”

“They want to talk to you,” she said.

“Well, I figured that out. Which client?”

And the look on her face said it all.

“No client, Kyle. They…they want to talk to you.”

“Oh.”

And despite it all, he looked at his computer, there in his office.

Busted, he thought. Oh, so busted.

It had all started a year ago. One of his clients had come in, months overdue on a bill. His name was Stanley Skiffington, and he had slouched in his chair and said, “Sorry, the green ain’t there. All right?”

“No, it’s not all right,” he said. “Stanley, you’ve got to make some progress on payment, or…”

Stanley laughed. He had rings through his nose, eyebrows, and ears. Kyle had gotten him off on a fraud case involving an Internet scheme—thank God for elderly jury members who didn’t know the difference between a bit and a byte—and now he had a dark fantasy of how to solve this particular problem.

“Or what? Gonna sue me? Have your own lawyer try to squeeze my skinny a*s? C’mon, dude, you’re boring me.”

There. That had been it. He reached into a bottom desk drawer, pulled out a thick file. Passed it over. “Here. Take a look. Another client I got off two months ago. Charming gentleman that pays his bills on time. Named Ivan ‘Icepick’ Ronson. He has a means of enforcing his loan sharking business. Involves a wooden table, a client’s hand, and an icepick. Take a look at the photos in the first part of the file.”

Stanley opened the folder, glanced in, and then quickly closed it. His face seemed to change color.

“Still bored, Stanley?”

“No.” The voice had lost its cockiness.

“Good. Let’s try it again. I want a guarantee on a payment schedule.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“Then you better get something.”

Stanley scratched at the back of his neck and said, “Trade.”

“What?”

“Trade. Offer you somethin’ in trade, take care of my bill. Does that work?”

Kyle tried not to laugh. So many times this offer had come his way, offering everything from fur coats to TV satellite dishes to jewelry, and every time, of course, he had turned it down. Oh, he was under no illusions about the work he did—he had grown into being a slippery shark indeed at this Boston firm, but he was never tempted with such an offer. Too much risk for too little payout.

Until now.

“What kind of trade.”

Stanley motioned to his computer. “Networked, right?”

Kyle turned. “Sure.”

“Networked so that everything is monitored by your IT guys and gals.”

“Of course.”

“Besides the usual blocking software, there’s lots of rules and crap, am I right? No going to offshore casino sites, no shoppin’ for Christmas, and oh yeah, no p**n sites. Right?”

“Stanley, you’re showing a stunning grasp of the obvious. Look, I’ve got an appointment coming up and—”

“I can get you off the network. Let you go anywhere you want. Total privacy, no way to be tracked by your IT guys. Go to the deepest and blackest parts of the Dark Web. So, if you want to go visit hot cam babes or whatever, you can…and nobody here can see you. Whaddya think?”

Kyle stared at the bejeweled creature before him, wondered what it must have been like, back in the golden age, when defense attorneys dealt with simple stuff, like bank robberies and assaults and car thefts. When the attorneys were as smart, if not smarter, than their clients.

“I think you’re giving me a line, to avoid paying. That’s what I think. How the hell can you do something like that, get me off the network?”

Stanley shrugged. “It’s tricky but it can be done. Your machine’s got a wireless modem. You just switch around to use the wireless instead of your firm’s network. Then…well, I manage to do a bit of encryption, so whatever wireless network you’ve hijacked in the neighborhood doesn’t know you’ve been there…and I can put a frequency enabler, so you don’t spend too much time on only one wireless network, get people suspicious and all that.”

“Nice mumbo-jumbo, Stanley. Bottom line?”

“Bottom line, give me an hour or so, and you’re off the network. Total freedom to go anywhere you want, without being traced or monitored. And in exchange…well, you give me a few more months to pay your bill.”

He thought for a bit. Looked at Stanley, looked to his computer.

An odd little tickle at the base of his skill.

“Deal,” he had said. “But if you screw me…remember my buddy Icepick.”

“I won’t forget,” had come the eager reply.

Now the door to his office opened, and a man and woman stepped in. Both seemed to be in their early thirties, the man in a dark gray suit, the woman in a dark gray pantsuit. He had short black hair, fair face, and his companion had dark blond hair, pulled back in a simple ponytail. Each carried a thin leather briefcase. Something was churning about in his belly. FBI agents came to the offices of Healy, Tapply & Fitzgerald all the time, but only in reference to a client. Not a member of the firm.

“Mister Foster?”

“Yes,” he said, standing up behind his desk.

The man reached into his inside coat pocket, pulled out a leather wallet, which he opened and displayed. Kyle glanced at the identification, having seen similar identification so many times before. The man said, “I’m Special Agent Thomas Benson. This is Special Agent Melanie Reisinger. Thanks for seeing us without an appointment.”

He pointed to two empty chairs before his desk, and they sat down, putting their leather cases down on the carpeted floor. He sat down and leaned back in the chair, glad the two FBI agents couldn’t see his legs, for they were trembling.

Still…always a chance.

“Always glad to help the Bureau,” he said. “Within reason, of course.”

Agent Reisinger smiled. “Of course.”

“So,” he said, looking over to the male agent. “How can I help you? Something involving one of my clients?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Agent Benson said.

“Oh?”

Benson looked to Reisinger, who looked down at her lap. Like she was embarrassed or something.

Oh, Lord, he thought.

Benson cleared his throat. “No. We’re here to talk to you, Mister Foster.”

“About what?”

He reached down, grabbed the briefcase, opened it up. “About your on-line activities, Mister Foster. That’s what.”

He kept silent, knowing that if he were to open his mouth, he might just get violently ill.

So, after Stanley the hacker had set him up, he had done a bit of experimenting, going to those places that were verboten in the rarified world of Healy, Tapply & Fitzgerald, and sure enough, he had done so without any snarky memos or phone calls from the IT wizards. Buying books at Amazon.com, visiting a couple of offshore casinos, and yes, going to some naughty n***d sites that would have gained its owner a three-to-five-year sentence in the so-called good old days of Boston’s blue laws. It had been a bit of fun, to go someplace f*******n and a bit dangerous, and to know that he was getting away with it.

And it might have ended there…except for Carol.

His wife.

Well, sure, he had thought to himself at two a.m., lying awake in bed, it was so easy to blame his better half. He had met Carol when she was a reporter for the Boston Herald, trying to squeeze info from him about a case involving his client, an eccentric yachter from Marblehead whose nineteen-year-old au pair had been found in his squash court with her head cut off, and that initial meeting had let to the usual and customary romance, marriage, and honeymoon.

Boston HeraldAnd when had the honeymoon exactly ended?

Maybe when she had quit her job at the Herald to become a romance novelist, and a somewhat successful one.

HeraldAnd maybe when she spent a lot of her time at romance writers’ conferences, or foreign locales doing research, or in New York with her editor, agent and other writers.

Maybe.

And maybe it was that drunken time a couple of years back, when—frustrated by all her traveling and weekends away, the stilted conversations at home, and, let’s face it, her lack of enthusiasm for bedroom acrobats—he had threatened her with divorce.

And that’s when she had smiled, kissed him on the nose and said, “No, I don’t think so. This arrangement suits me fine.”

And he had said, “Well, I don’t care.”

And another kiss to the nose. “Honey Chile, the day you take me to court, is the same day I drop a dime to my gossip columnist friends at the Herald and the Globe, and all of your rough and tough criminal clients—the ones that pay for the house in Maine, the BMW and your nice Italian suits—and they print in their papers, for all of New England to read, how you get all teary-eyed while watching old Disney movies. Somehow, I don’t think that’ll help your career any. Capisce?”

HeraldGlobeCapisceOh, yeah, very much capisce, and one long day—when a judge had razored him mercilessly during a lengthy cross-examination, when Carol had called, bitterly complaining about a leak in the condo ceiling and why he hadn’t done anything about it, being the man of the house and all, and when one of the senior partners at Healy, Tapply & Fitzgerald had buttonholed him in the kitchen and had asked him why in God’s name he had to defend that schoolteacher charged with molestation—he had been in his office late at night, and went to a chatroom.

capisceJust to see what happened.

And what happened after lots of naughty talk, was…well, a college student with a cam had said,

And pausing just for a moment, knowing he was crossing a line, some sort of line, but there was a pounding at the base of his skull, a pounding that went on and on, and he had typed back.

And that’s how it had begun.

Agent Benson pulled out a thick printout and held it in his lap. “Mister Foster…Agent Reisinger and I have been working on a computer crime task force this past year. And I need to ask you two questions. And of course, you don’t have to answer either question. That’s your right. But how you answer these questions…well, may go a long way to how this case is resolved. Am I making myself clear?”

“Quite.”

The FBI agent cleared his throat. “First question. I need to ask you…are you familiar with the term handle? As it is applied to computer chat systems?”

His mouth was dry. “Yes. A handle…an on-line pseudonym.”

“Very true,” Agent Benson said. He turned to his companion, and she said, “Mister Foster?”

He could not look at her. Could not look at her face.

“Yes,” he said, looking at Agent Benson. “Go ahead. Ask your second question.”

“Are you familiar with a handle called…called The Baron?”

He couldn’t answer. His hands were squeezed together.

All he could do was nod.

So, it had developed in a kind of habit, that’s all, though in those calm times offline he knew what it was: an obsession, that’s all. But an obsession that served a need. After days of dueling in the courtroom, handling the knife-edge politics among the partners in the firm, and dealing with a cool roommate who pretended to be his loving wife, he found that a couple of hours traipsing through the darker side of the internet calmed him down, made him feel better. And Lord knows, he was under no illusion: he had an addiction of sorts, a computerized monkey riding his back, and he had a host of “buts” to make it all seem all right.

But at least it wasn’t booze.

But at least it wasn’t coke, or crystal meth, or prescription painkillers.

But at least it wasn’t hookers from the Combat Zone.

All the nice “buts” to make everything seem oh so fine.

Agent Benson said, “Thank you.”

“For what?” he managed to croak out.

“For not playing games. Because if you had played games, we would have wasted both of our time, with me detailing the technical means in which we determined that the on-line handle of The Baron came from your office, and from your computer.”

His hands were clenched under his desk. No doubt his secretary Tara Lillington was gossiping about what was going on with the others in her pay grade, and for God’s sake, he hoped that the gossip wouldn’t percolate up to the elite regions of Healy, Tapply & Fitzgerald, for if one of the senior partners were to come in right now, hear about ten seconds of this on-going conversation, he’d be out the door in about ten minutes.

So, move it along, he thought, move it along.

“Fine. Games aren’t being played. What’s the problem? Since when is s*x chat against the law?”

Agent Reisinger’s turn, her face showing a trace of distaste, as if she was smelling something foul coming from his office desk. “You’re quite correct, Mister Foster. s*x chat isn’t against the law, especially when two consenting adults are involved. There’s other chat…that we’re concerned about.”

Oh yeah, he thought. Oh yeah.

So, like all addictions and obsessions—and sometimes, staring in the mirror, shaving in the mirror, he’d say, today, be a good guy today, and at least stay offline—there always came a time when he needed the extra kick, the extra jolt, and he’d well…he’d go places. He recalled a time when he was eleven or twelve, finding an adult magazine in his older brother’s bedroom. Seeking a n***d woman for the first time led to hours of obsession, of going through the pages again and again, memorizing each pose, each facial expression, each square inch of photographed flesh…and of course, eventually, seeing a n***d woman like that didn’t give the jolt. Which led to more, um, explicit things, which led to more explicit things, and so forth and so on.

Just like his time on the Internet.

So random s*x chat led to…well, elaborate fantasies and games and roleplays, and even then, after some months, it wasn’t working anymore. The little buzz that undid the knot at the base of his head, made him relaxed, it just wasn’t there anymore, and he couldn’t have that. Not after days in the courtroom and in his office, not after nights and weekends with his ice authoress.

Nope. He needed that—oh God, let’s say it—he needed that fix.

Right up to the point one night, alone in the wood-paneled and honored offices of Healy, Tapply & Fitzgerald, he was chatting with a woman who said she was from Australia—could have been Mars, for all he knew or cared—and things went, well, they went into a dark place, and it was almost like the woman—whose handle was Bitesized—kept egging him on, egging him on, and then…

It came right up on his screen, the little phosphor letters seemingly burning holes in his forehead.

Bitesized:

Oh my, there was a place.

There was a place he had never been before.

An on-line correspondent, tempting him, begging him, to murder her…

The letters were so bright they almost hurt.

His hands couldn’t move. A tiny part of him wanted to shut down, step away, and forget it all. Just take a deep breath and step back, old boy, because you’ve crossed some lines before, some very strange ones indeed, and this line was about the size of the Southeast Expressway, and there’s no way to be caught, no way anyone would find out, but still…

What a line to cross.

He looked to the letters.

Took a breath. The thumping at the base of his skull felt like another heart was at work back there, pouring blood into his brain, making him light-headed, excited, furious…

His hands went to the keyboard, almost on autopilot.

The Baron:

Now Agent Reisinger said, “We have transcripts of many hours of chat involving…well, the most vicious and b****y fantasies concerning women. All coming from your computer.”

He kept quiet. Looked to her and then Agent Benson. The male agent said, “Well?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you have anything to say?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t. I didn’t hear a question.”

Oh, that got a bit of attention, and maybe he was being a bit snarky, but he was starting to gain his footing again. He knew the laws, always made sure that whenever he started a chat that the woman on the other end was over eighteen, and the few times that people or handles claimed to be teenage girls, he dumped that chat without hesitation.

Lots of things were allowed out in the wild and wooly world of the Internet, but chat involving minors was still f*******n. And he had stayed away from that.

So, what was the crime? Why were they here? If he could get them out without any of the senior partners finding out, well, maybe he could salvage this day.

Agent Benson crisply nodded. “All right. Here’s a question for you. Do you know a handle called HotSquirt. Do you?”

His mouth was still dry. There was a name, and oh my, what nasty things they had done online together.

“Yeah. HotSquirt. So what?”

Agent Benson went to his leather case, and his legs started trembling again.

And what a surprise, when Carol was leaving one morning for another conference, and she had smiled at him, all dressed up and pulling her wheeled suitcase to the door, ready for a cab to take her to Logan, and she had kissed him and said, “Hey. What’s up?”

“What do you mean, what’s up?”

She smiled. “You seem…oh, I don’t know. Happier. Less grumpier. Why’s that?”

And the naughty thought had come to him, oh, my sweet one, don’t you want to know? All the frustrations of the days and nights I have, either at work or in this condo, I work them out online, using a g*n or garrote or—more often—a sharp knife—and that accounts for my happy mood, that’s why.

So, he had kissed her. “Things going my way, I guess.”

She had kissed him back. “Good. Glad to hear that.”

And then she was off, and for the usual reason, he went to work and stayed late that night, in his office, off in cyberspace, enjoying every b****y minute.

Agent Benson took a folder from his briefcase, held it in his lap. “Do you know who HotSquirt is, Mister Foster?”

“No, I do not.”

He opened the folder, looked down and said, “HotSquirt is Annie Nicholas. She’s thirty-one years old, a single mother of two, and lives in Berwick, Maine.”

Silence. It just seemed…odd, to put a real name to a handle. HotSquirt had been something else, that’s for sure, and it’d been a while since he had chatted with her, and oh—

Oh, no.

Oh, my God.

The folder was now on his desktop, and Agent Benson opened it up, picked up a sheaf of black and white photographs, which he spread out in a type of grisly card game

For before him was the same thing, taken from different angles.

A woman.

Murdered.

Blood everywhere.

Agent Benson retrieved the photographs. “Mister Foster…she was murdered two weeks ago. In her home. With a knife. In a manner matching some of your more…descriptive chats.”

All he could do was nod.

It was time for the female agent to speak up. “Mister Foster…”

He coughed. “Yeah?”

“Mister Foster…where were you, two weeks ago on this day, between eight p.m. and midnight?”

His hands were clenched together so tight they hurt.

And the strange thing was, it took a client to point out to him the source of all that dark chat.

The client’s name had been Sam Grayson, and Kyle had gotten him off just before Christmas on a murder charge that stemmed from a knifing in a Charlestown bar. The forensics evidence had been reasonable against Sam, but what worked in his client’s favor was the famed Charlestown code of silence. Funny bar, that. During the knifing, it seemed that its two restrooms managed to service every single drinker and bartender, meaning nobody saw a single thing. Which meant reasonable doubt. Which meant that three days before Christmas, Sam was in one of the quiet conference rooms of Healy, Tapply & Fitzgerald, a contented smile on his beefy face, scarred hands folded across the chest of his dark blue Armani winter coat. On one lapel, marking the holiday, was a cheery Santa Claus button. Knowing Sam and what he did for a living, it was an odd mix, like seeing one of those yellow smiley buttons on a Nazi stormtrooper’s uniform.

Kyle went through a few formalities and said, “I guess it’s too much to ask that you keep your nose clean for a while, Sam. Right?”

“Don’t worry about me, counselor.”

“Worry? I never worry about you, Sam. You’re my bread and butter. You help pay for a lot of things.”

Sam grinned. “Glad I can provide a service.”

“Sure…everything else all set?”

“Yep,” Sam said, and then c****d his head, still smiling. “Glad I also provided you something else.”

Kyle looked up from his paperwork. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, counselor.”

“No, I really don’t.”

Sam gently shrugged his wide shoulders. “You should listen more. Then you’d know what I’m talking about.”

He lowered his pen to the polished surface of the conference room table. “Then enlighten me. What are you talking about?”

His client said, “Times I spend waiting for you to get off the phone, I spend a lot of time in the reception area. I’m big but you know what? I blend in. I stay quiet. People forget I’m there. Pretty helpful in my line of work…and helpful in other ways. So, I hear things. I hear things about cases, about other clients. And I hear things about you.”

It was like cool air was playing across the back of his hands. “What things are they, Sam?”

Another gentle shrug. “You know what your nickname is here? Do you?”

Kyle said, “I never knew I had a nickname. What is it?”

“Bob,” Sam said.

“Bob? That’s a nickname? Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure, it does. ’Cause it ain’t short for Robert, I can tell you that. It stands for something else. Bob. The Baron of Blood.”

His hands were even cooler. “The…Baron of Blood.”

Sam said, “Sure. You tell me, Mister Foster. Why do you handle all the nasty criminal cases for your firm? Hunh? Ones involving murder and knifings and shootings and assaults and r***s. This is a pretty high-class Boston law firm. You’d think they’d want to spend their time doing real estate deals, wills, crap like that. Keep their hands nice and clean. But you seem to like having your hands nice and dirty and b****y. Why’s that?”

Even when he spoke, he knew his voice was faint. “Because I’m good at it.”

“Hah,” Sam said. “It’s because you love it. You get to play in my world and see what lies beneath, the anger, the blood, the death, the violence…but at the end of the day, you can shower and have a nice drink with your nice wife in your nice condo. Pretend you’re above it all. But secretly, you love it, don’t you? Tell me the truth, counselor.”

He hadn’t replied.

And he hadn’t replied to Agent Reisinger, either. She repeated the question, “Mister Foster, two weeks ago. Between the hours of eight p.m. and midnight. Where were you?”

Kyle reached out, his hand feeling like the blood had been replaced by liquid lead, and he picked up his appointment book, flipped through a couple of pages. “It’s…it’s clear for that night. Which means…well, either I was working late here, or was home.”

“Are you sure of that.”

“Yes.” Which is true.

“Was your wife home at the time?”

Another glance at the book. “No…it seems she was at a writer’s conference that week.”

“Do you think you have any witnesses that can verify you were home or in your office?” Agent Reisinger asked.

And although he knew the answer, he had to ask the question. “Why is that?”

Agent Benson’s turn. The both of them, part of him coolly observed, were quite, quite good. “Because, Mister Foster, there’s a witness in Maine who says he saw a man fitting your description, in the area of Annie Nicholas’ home. HotSquirt, if you prefer. This man was driving a dark blue BMW, with Massachusetts plates. You own a dark blue BMW, with Massachusetts plates. Do you not?”

He just nodded.

Another magic piece of paper from Agent Benson, slid across the desk. “Your BMW maintains an electronic toll paying system, commonly known as the EZPass. The toll authority for the state of New Hampshire recorded your BMW passing through the main tolls in Hampton at 9:04 p.m., two weeks ago. That’s the main thoroughfare one takes to get to Maine. And there’s a return record, at 11:53 p.m. Yet you say you were either home or at work. And your wife was away. I take it you’re not in the habit of loaning out your BMW, am I correct?”

He stared at the paper, which started out nice and clear, and which was now fuzzy before him. He swallowed, swallowed again, and finally found his voice, which he should have done, long minutes ago.

“I’m through here,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Agent Benson asked.

His voice a bit stronger, he said, “This interview is finished. Please leave. Now.”

The FBI agents glanced at each other, and there were the faintest of nods exchanged between them. He looked and thought, get a grip, he thought, get a goddamn grip, and then, a bit of a surprise.

They gathered their belongings, and both stood up. Kyle remained seated.

Agent Benson said, “You’re a fine lawyer, an intelligent man. We’ll be returning here tomorrow for a follow-up interview, Mister Foster. In the meantime, I’d like to suggest a few things. Don’t leave Boston. And don’t think that by destroying your computer over there, that you’ll be destroying any evidence. We have the evidence that you were conducting those chats, hundreds and hundreds of pages. And…one more suggestion.”

“Yeah?”

Agent Benson headed for the door, followed by Agent Reisinger. “When we do return tomorrow, you may think of having counsel with you. That’s your right. But that’s only delaying the inevitable. Prepare yourself for some serious charges, some serious changes.”

And then they were gone, through the door.

He sat there, alone, staring at the closed door, his messy desk, and then, to his computer, happily murmuring to itself, sitting there.

A tool. That’s all. Just a goddam tool.

A goddam tool for destruction.

And back then, Sam Grayson had pressed him one more time, and had said, “Go ahead. Ask away. You know what you want to ask me.”

And despite the urge not to, with a voice inside screaming at him to leave the conference room already and retreat to his office, but he did say, “Ask you what, Sam?”

Sam grinned again. “We’re still lawyer-client privilege, but I’ll spell it out, nice, educated man like you. You want to know what it’s really like. You don’t want to ask me questions about witnesses, possible alibis, explanations of how my fingerprints ended up on a murder weapon. You want to ask me what it’s like. What’s it like to shoot someone, see blood and brains spray out against a car windshield. What’s it like to hold someone tight, to slit his throat, to hear the gurgles and the sighs and the burps. What’s it like to push a woman down, put your hands to her throat, strangle her and feel her struggle against you, getting weaker and weaker. That’s what you want to ask me. Isn’t it?”

My God, the pounding in his head…he should leave, step right up and tell this creature before him that he was through with him as a client, that it was time for him to find other legal representation.

But instead…

A thought.

One chance. A chance to ask. When would he ever have this chance, ever again, to get an answer like that.

Just like that.

Now he was home, in their stainless steel and stained oak kitchen that was used for re-heating takeout dinners. Kyle sat at a butcher block table, a bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey before him, getting drunk.

Let’s face facts, he thought. No wonder how this was going to play out, he was ruined. Being charged with homicide was one thing—in fact, for his particular client base, it might be considered a badge of honor. But everything else? All those chat transcripts, for the entire world to see? Fired from the firm at minimum, disbarred most likely, set up for humiliation and embarrassment from everyone he had ever known, from classmates to people at the firm to his family and to Carol, of course, always Carol, and no doubt the ice queen would quickly divorce his sorry a*s, with her patented smirk to light the way.

He poured himself another drink. He hoped those FBI bastards were having a hell of night.

In the dining room of the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, Benson sat across from Reisinger, both having a cognac after Chateaubriand for two, feeling full, feeling well. Reisinger raised her glass, swirled the amber liquid about, and said, “Well?”

“I think we did okay. What do you think?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But…well, I don’t know. He seemed to take it pretty hard.”

“Yes, yes he did,” he said. “Which is to be expected.”

She took a small sip, smiled sweetly at him. “And tomorrow?”

Benson took his own sip. “Tomorrow? Tomorrow we go in. We talk to him some more. We say we believe he’s involved in some illegal activities, but it’s unsure whether we can prosecute or not. And if he were to make a hundred-thousand-dollar payment to a certain numbered account in the Cayman Islands, then we go away and nothing else happens.”

Her smile wavered. “Suppose he takes it to the next level. Makes some phone calls and finds out we’re not FBI, that there wasn’t a murder in Maine, that this was all a set-up…”

He shrugged. “Then there’s still Plan B. Leak the chat transcripts to his friends, family and the news media, unless we get paid.”

She shook her head. “I still think this whole FBI thing was too complicated. Too many holes. We should have gone straight in with Plan B. Much more simple.”

Benson smiled at his dear heart and said, “Already been talked about and settled. We go in as a couple of blackmailers, always a good chance we get tossed out on our butts before we can say more than a sentence or two. We go in as FBI, it rattles his cage something fierce. Softens him up. He was one scary, sleepless night…he’s happy to pay us off the next day. C’mon, it’s going to work. Damn fool couldn’t tell that it was you in those photographs, even with a wig. Old HotSquirt, you.”

She briefly stuck her tongue out at him. “Smarty pants.”

“Truer words,” he said, and that wasn’t a lie. He and his sweetness had worked long hours in a variety of start-up companies here and in Silicon Valley, always just missing those goodies at the end of the eighty-hour-a-week rainbow, and both deciding to try something else. Which was trolling and trolling the internet, finding a nice juicy mark with a deep, dark secret, and then taking it to the next level. This Boston lawyer was their third mark, and he promised to be just as successful as the other two.

“Don’t be cocky,” she said, “though I have to say, breaking into his BMW and stealing the EZpass transponder for the night…driving north and then back. That was genius. Pure genius.”

He smiled at her. “Darling, you’re killing me. Please stop.”

“All right,” she said. “But one quick question.”

“Sure,” Benson said. “Go right ahead.”

Then, as the bottle level dropped some more, the door to the condo was unlocked and Carol swept in, wearing black leather boots, a knee-length skirt and heavy sweater, carrying a computer bag and a leather purse that looked big enough to hold supplies for two for a week, and she came in and said, “Oh, there you are. You would not believe the flight I had, it was—”

She stopped. Stared at him. He stared back. She pursed her lips.

“Drunk?”

“Oh, yeah. Very drunk.”

“You…I come back from a trip to LA, make my own way back here…and I find you drunk. Are you happy? Are you?”

And then the lecturing, the hectoring, the yelling broke out, and he did his best to tune it out, as she went on and on, and he remembered, oh yeah, he remembered, that time with Sam, in the conference room.

What’s it like, he had said. That’s what you want to know. What’s it like.

Correct, counselor?

He nodded, picked up his drink.

So correct.

And Sam had said, “It’s the best. The very best. You’re god on earth, you have this tremendous power…holding this tremendous power of life and death in these two hands”—and he had held up his hands in a demonstration—“and there’s nothing like it in the world. No drink, no d**g, no erotic experience. It’s the very best.”

And he had kept quiet, and Sam laughed and leaned across the conference room table. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

The man called Benson said, “All right, one question. Go ahead.”

Reisinger said, “This lawyer fellow… I don’t know, he just seemed odd. Don’t you feel… I don’t know. Don’t you feel like we should tell somebody? About that violent chat? Maybe his boss, or the cops?”

“Words,” Benson said. “Just words. Nothing to get worried about.”

“Still… I don’t know. Even with you in the office with me, he gave me the creeps.”

Benson sipped from his cognac. “Don’t worry, dear. It’s just words. That’s all. That’s all we deal with, just words.”

“And feelings,” she said. “We’re dealing with people’s feelings.”

Benson said, “Just a moment ago, you were calling him a creep. Now you’re worried about his feelings?”

Reisinger picked up her glass, thought for a moment, and then put it down. “No…just worried. That’s all.”

He reached across the table, touched her hand. “Then just worry about where we’re going to park our next hundred-thou payout, all right?”

She squeezed his hand. “All right.”

“Good.”

Eventually Carol moved out into the living room, though the yelling continued. So much noise. So very much noise, and his head was really throbbing, and he thought about the chat being made public, about his humiliation, about his possible arrest and trial and sweet Jesus, he was innocent, no doubt about it, but if he was going to appear in a Maine courtroom, as a Massachusetts resident—and a lawyer to boot, God save us—what was the possibility that he would be found guilty?

He took a heavy swallow, the whisky cutting a fiery trail down his gullet.

Possibility was pretty high.

Damn high.

He looked out to the living room. Carol was still yelling about responsibility and drinking and being a real man, blah blah blah.

blah blah blah.Another swallow.

And Sam, in his mind, telling him…

The best.

The very best feeling in the world.

He rubbed at his face. He was going to pay for that chat, going to pay for everything, and there was a good chance he would spend the rest of his life in prison for something he hadn’t done.

Hadn’t done at all…

But had thought about it.

Had fantasized about it.

Had fantasized a lot about it…

Another big swallow of whiskey.

He got up, reached down, opened the center drawer of the table.

Nestled in there, all sharp and shiny, a collection of carving knives.

Not fair, he thought. Not fair to be humiliated and sentenced to jail for something he hadn’t done.

Not fair at all.

And just feet away, Carol continued her harangue.

But he thought of how to make it all fair, to make it all come out even, and with a smile on his face, reached in to pick up the sharpest blade of all.

Brendan DuBois is the New York Times bestselling author of 26 novels, including Blowback, co-authored with James Patterson, being released September 2022. Brendan’s nearly 200 short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century and Best American Noir Stories of the Century. His stories have thrice won him the Shamus Award from the PWA, two Barry Awards, two Derringer Awards, the Ellery Queen Readers Award, the Golden Derringer Lifetime Achievement Award and three Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations. He is also a Jeopardy! game show champion.

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