Wild Card (Stone Barrington #49)(68)

“Yes, but the women were strangers to me. Was the man Harod?”

“No, he was our colleague, Rasheed. He had just shot the women, thinking they were the subjects of the contract.”

“But I e-mailed and texted Harod about the cancellation. He did not answer his phone.”

“Perhaps because he was already dead at your rendezvous point.”

“If that is the case, I’m very sorry to hear it.”

“Why? You canceled the contracts.”

“Yes, but not permanently. Also, I have other work to be done.”

“Before any work can be done,” Tigner said, “there is the matter of the two hundred thousand dollars.”

“I am certainly willing to pay that, as our agreement requires.”

“Then you will have to pay it before we can discuss other work.”

“How can I contact you?”

“Send an e-mail to the following address,” he said, and then dictated the address. “Then I will call you on this number.”

“No, not this number. I will give you another.” Damien did so.

“Then we will be in touch as soon as the headlines change,” Tigner said, then hung up.

Damien hung up, too, feeling both weak with relief that he had a solution to the Box problem and afraid of this man Tigner.





53


Tim Tigner, as he had begun to think of himself, began to feel very comfortable in his world. He had the amassed funds earned from assassinations by himself and his cohorts, amounting to nearly five hundred thousand dollars, and another two hundred thousand dollars on the way, when he requested it. He let his hair grow and began to shave his face every day; he bought some new, rather fashionable clothes; and to sharpen his English pronunciation, used as models television newspeople, all of whom seemed to be from the same place in the United States.

He attended lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and went to the movies a lot. He was courteous and charming to his neighbors, who gathered at the cocktail hour in a lounge for tenants on the ground floor in his building, and in particular, a dark-haired, curvaceous young woman who seemed anxious to have someone to talk to.

“My name is Karen Landis,” she said when asked.

“I’m Tim Tigner,” he replied.

“Do I detect a slight accent?” she asked.

“I was born in Paris, to an American father and an Algerian mother, so my accent is a bit scrambled.”

She switched to French, and he joined the conversation smoothly, French being one of his native languages.

“You have a beautiful accent,” she said. “What do you do?”

“I am an investor,” he said. “Or perhaps just unemployed.”

She laughed. “I’m a registered nurse, at Lenox Hill Hospital,” she said.

“Then you must care about others,” he said.

“Yes, I do.”

They talked on and agreed to have dinner, and by the end of that date, Tim felt that he had found his first girlfriend.



* * *



? ? ?

Damien was at his desk when a secretary knocked and entered. “Yes?”

“We have a request from our medical insurers for information about Elise Grant,” she said, handing him a form. “They just want to know if she was employed here and if she had any medical problems at that time.”

“Let me see that,” Damien said, holding out his hand. She gave him the form, and he scanned it. Elise was now employed by the Barrington Practice, at a Turtle Bay address. “Ah, yes,” he said, handing the form back to her, “give them the information they want.”

“Bingo!” he said aloud to himself, when she had gone.



* * *



? ? ?

Bob Cantor sat on a bench in Central Park, with Sherry by his side. “It’s so nice to be out of the house,” Sherry said, “even if the house is awfully nice.”

“Stone has been good to us,” Bob said, “but now it’s about time we move out. I’d like it to be together.”

“I’d like that, too,” Sherry replied, squeezing his hand. “I’ve grown accustomed to having you around, day and night, and I like it. Do you think we’re safe now?”

“I think we’re as safe as we can be until the Thomases are either out of the country or in prison, but I suppose that will take a while.”

“The company has been acquired by that hedge fund,” she said, “according to the Times business page. So I suppose there’s nothing keeping them here.”

“Not cell bars, anyway,” Bob replied. “They haven’t even been arrested.”



* * *



? ? ?

Damien was feeling safer, too. The acquisition had gone smoothly, and he and the Thomases had been asked to stay on until the end of the year. He had begun to believe that Harman Wills liked him and might offer him something good soon.

The sound of a distant cell phone ringing could be heard and he opened his desk drawer and answered the throwaway inside.

“Good morning, this is Tim Tigner,” that voice said.

“I hope you’re well,” Damien replied.

“I think it’s time for us to meet,” Tigner said.