pushed things further. Then she pulled back, and I advanced. We continued this push-me-pull-you dance until we had expended ourselves completely.
Then she looked into my eyes and said, “This can never happen again.”
“It won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
Thirty minutes later, we were all over each other, and this time, nothing was tentative. It was as if the floodgates had burst and all her pent-up passion could finally be released.
Chapter 36
That was six months ago. And we’ve grown closer ever since. I’m not kidding. I’m crazy about her.
A couple of months into the relationship, she told me she planned to divorce Sam. I strongly discouraged it, for two reasons. First, from day one, I’d told Rachel I have no interest in living with or marrying anyone ever again (Of course, she feels she’ll be able to change my mind). Second, I told her she couldn’t afford a divorce because virtually all of Sam’s income is off the books.
As for not wanting to live with or marry her, that has nothing to do with Rachel and everything to do with my job. I kill people for a living. If my enemies found out about Rachel, her life would be in constant danger. As for Sam’s income being off the books, I have an obvious conflict of interest: if the authorities dig into Sam’s activities, they might eventually find my money and seize it.
This topic consumed many hours of our conversation, and I began wondering if there might be another way to solve Rachel’s dilemma. If I could find a way to rob Sam’s clients, I could siphon off enough money to make Rachel financially independent. Then she could afford to leave Sam without making any demands on his income. I got with Victor, and he surprised me by insisting we hire a team of former FBI profilers to do a psychological evaluation on Sam in order to decide how best to deal with him.
Between Lou Kelly and me, we had reams of information on Sam, enough to get a definitive conclusion by the profilers.
Their conclusion was you don’t torture a left-brain genius guy like Sam. His personality is fragile, and he could go into a meltdown and become completely unresponsive.
“This kind of guy is very unique,” the head profiler told me. “He’s one in a hundred million, which is how he was able to develop this type of computer program in the first place.” “So how do we get him to reveal sensitive information?” I said. “The best way is to short-circuit his brain.” “Come again?”
“Sam Case is an extreme detail guy. You’re going to want to throw as much at him as you can. Hit him with circular references and things that make no sense. Put him on sensory overload. Confuse him. Put him in unfamiliar situations.”
“Give him a complete mind fuck?” I said.
“Precisely.”
I lined up Callie Carpenter to be his girlfriend, which took a hell of a lot longer than we intended. Sam being a workaholic, we couldn’t find a plausible way for them to “meet.” In the meantime, Callie established her identity as Karen Vogel. With our Agency connections, she managed to get a Kentucky driver’s license, Social Security card, and several credit cards. Then she got a job and a checking account and bought a condo in Karen’s name. She made the connection with Mary’s friend and co-worker, Chuck.
While all this was going on, Victor and I assembled the team and equipment we would need to put Sam’s brain into overload.
Finally, five weeks ago, we managed to get Karen and Sam in the same place at the same time in a plausible scenario that allowed Callie to manipulate him into making his move. The rest, as they say, is history.
Then we had Karen break the news about Rachel’s affair to Chuck, who told Mary. At first, Mary didn’t believe it, so she followed us to a hotel one night. Mary, protective big sister that she was, gave Rachel an ultimatum: confess the affair to Sam, or she would. Mary and Rachel argued back and forth for several days, and as the anger escalated, the fights became heated. And one day, without any input from me, my friend Salvatore Bonadello, crime boss of the Midwestern United States, got a call from a woman named Rachel Case of Louisville, Kentucky.
Rachel wanted to know how to go about hiring a hit man to kill her sister.
You could have knocked me over with a feather! My intention had been to have Mary meet Sam and tell him about the affair. Then we were going to orchestrate an entire drama around his trying to catch Rachel in the act. We had all sorts of twists and turns to confuse him.
But Rachel had taken things into her own hands.
I told Sal to let it slide. The original plan would work, and no one had to die. Sal wanted the forty grand he was going to charge Rachel for the hit. He wanted me to take the contract and split the fee. I told him if he insisted on killing Rachel’s sister, he’d have to cut the fee to twenty grand and we’d give the entire sum to Jimmy Squint, because I didn’t want Rachel to pay any more than she had to. Sal is not the sort to leave money on the table, but after I reminded him that his take of the heist would be five hundred million dollars, he reluctantly agreed to the twenty g’s.
Karen told Chuck that Rachel’s boyfriend was unstable and that he might harm Mary if she met with Sam. She thought Sam and Mary should meet in a public place, like Seneca Park, and Sam shouldn’t know what the meeting was about beforehand. Karen said she’d talk to Sam and make sure he showed.
At the last minute, Chuck talked Mary into letting him come to the meeting at the park. He had an authentic police uniform he’d bought for a costume party and felt that wearing the uniform might discourage Rachel’s unstable boyfriend from making a scene—which is why the twenty grand suddenly had to cover two killings instead of one. Jimmy Squint didn’t mind. He was in the middle of a financial drought and thankful to get whatever I could give him.
We planned for Sam’s meeting with Mary to coincide with Sam’s first sexual encounter with Karen. This was simple to arrange, since Karen controlled both the meeting with Mary and the hotel room with Sam.
Rachel and I explored all realms of her sexuality, and I found a use for the photograph I had taken of her rape fantasy several months ago, where she pretended to be tied down in her bra and panties. I drew the “K” and “V” on her cups with a marker to identify her as my property, and later on, when making the decision to rob Sam’s clients, I gave Callie the name Karen Vogel in order to match the initials.
As we got close to the big event, Sal Bonadello learned his part, and we hired some grifters to play the parts
