played the lost tourist routine for all it was worth. A beach hat, sunglasses, a crazy Hawaiian shirt, and an unfolded map hid the scars, the tattoos, the camera, and the knives. He drove past Chang Industries twice in an unsuccessful attempt to circle the property and realized the map that came with the rental car was worthless. The single road leading to Chang Industries, and the guard booth at the gate, meant Vincent DiMarco was going to need an alternate entrance.
Still in tourist disguise, he pulled into the gravel parking lot of Saipan’s official visitor’s center and studied their wall of pamphlets and tourist attraction discounts. Whale watching and deep-sea fishing excursions. Go-cart racing. Scuba schools. He grabbed a newly published map of the island and smuggled out as many brochures as he could hold, the one-man staff too busy discussing local news and gossip on the phone to offer assistance. DiMarco pushed the door open with his butt and walked out of the wood-shingled building with enough material to teach a college course on the island. He spent the afternoon on the bed in his dingy hotel room, sucking down Marlboros and checking out the maps and brochures through the smoke until his head hurt from reading.
He couldn’t help but think he should have charged more money for the job. The senator had failed to mention that the targets were locked away behind a fence with razor wire, with at least one guard covering the only entrance. He needed a back way into Chang Industries. The two hundred fifty thousand dollars that was sitting in a safe in an old car garage in Southie bolstered his patience, a virtue he had learned to appreciate. It was as critical to survival as never sitting with your back to the door, not even when you’re having lunch with your own mother.
Chapter 26
The cleaning crew bantered back and forth in Spanish with a thick El Salvadorian accent. It was after eleven and on the top floor of the building that housed Winthrop Enterprises, Jake was the only native English speaker. A handful of lawyers burned the midnight oil on the floors below—writing their briefs, imposing their legal opinions on paper. It was good work if you could get it—forming legal policy, protecting the rights of the wrongly accused, or the wrongs of the rightly protected, and charging five hundred dollars an hour.
With far less focus on the legal ramifications of what he was doing, Jake stuck the pointy end of the letter opener in the keyhole of Marilyn’s old desk. With one quick turn of the wrist, the drawer popped open, and Jake joined the ranks of petty thieves. With a vacuum humming in the background, Jake fumbled through Marilyn’s old desk, pushing the new receptionist’s personal minefield of cosmetics out of the way until he found the janitor-size key ring. He grabbed the keys and sent the bell attached to the silver ring singing its familiar ding, ding, ding. Two members of the cleaning crew looked up. The younger female in cleaning overalls continued to stare at Jake while wiping the glass wall between the work area and the breakroom.
Jake grabbed the wad of metal, a mix of stainless steel and brass that opened everything from the bathroom to Peter’s personal liquor cabinet. He weaved his way through the office, over yellow extension cords and past cleaning carts, and stopped near the emergency staircase. He fumbled through his newly found source of power and jammed a key with a small label reading “files” into the lock. He entered the room, flicked the lights, and shut the door behind him.
The room was a massive cave of information, the walls lined with rows of shelves and stacks of boxes. With real estate leasing for a thousand dollars a square foot, the on-site filing room was costing a mint. Sparkling filing cabinets stood near the closest wall, and Jake started shoving keys into the locks as fast as he could. Each key was marked with a word or initials, clues to an indecipherable code that Marilyn took with her to her grave. He tried the key labeled “f.c.” guessing it was “filing cabinets,” but got nowhere. He tried his trusty letter opener again, but the drawers didn’t budge. He dug through boxes and came up for air forty minutes later with a handful of legitimate looking invoices. “Shit,” he said to himself.
He emerged from the filing cabinets ten before midnight and went to his office to see if Kate had broken down, forgiven him, and called. As he flipped through the key ring, checking his voicemail with the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder, the newly printed key label with the initials “J.O.” caught his attention.
Jake sat down, put his right leg on the desk, and donned his decryption hat. He shifted through the set of keys reading labels aloud.
“F.D…” “Front door,” Jake muttered, taking a shot in the dark.
“L.B…” “Ladies bathroom,” Jake whispered.
“W.O.T…” “Waste of time”, he chuckled.
“P.O…” “Peter’s office,” Jake said, catching himself.
“Peter’s office,” he said again, his feet already in motion.
At the entrance to his father’s office he glanced at the remnants of the cleaning crew, turned his attention to the knob, and unlocked the door with as much I-have-every-right-to-do-this demeanor as he could.
He turned the small banker’s light on his father’s desk, and the green-stained-glass shade cast a pleasant hue into the room, the reflection from the bulb shining off the brass stem of the lamp. Jake opened the main drawer of his father’s desk without a key. He yanked the other drawers in order, none of which were locked. Jake didn’t take his father to be paranoid, and the open drawers were evidence that he was right. Paranoia and over-the-top confidence didn’t go well together.
Jake didn’t know what he was looking for, but knew he would recognize it when he saw it. He walked around his father’s office like a thief casing a job—eyeing the walls, the photos, the shelves. Jake opened the towering custom-made cabinet on the far wall, beyond the leather sofa and table, near the private restroom. A stash of top- shelf alcohol used to replenish the bar on the far side of the room filled the upper cabinet. At the bottom of the bookcase was a smaller cabinet door. Jake took one look at the keyhole in the door, an octagonal shaped ring lock, and started sifting through the key ring in his hand. With another set of dings, Jake tried the only key on the ring that could possibly open the lock, and gave it a twist.
The key opened the door to intrigue and heartbreak. The front half of the drawer was business, the back half lined with folders of information labeled as personal. He flipped through both sets of files, three dozen in all, and stopped at the file named Chang Industries. There was information on Lee Chang, his father, his brothers. Schools attended. Positions held. Birthdays, favorite foods, vices of choice. Golf handicaps. Names of wives, kids, lovers.
Jake ran his finger along the top of the folders and his head spun when he read the tag labeled “Jake Patrick.”
“What the hell?” he said to himself, as he opened the file and read his dossier. ***
The security guard’s fluttering eyelids touched intermittently, flirting with sleep. The sound of the floor buffers were just loud enough to ward off a full onslaught of REM. Reina, the Spanish queen, wiped the last window on the revolving door with a final sweep of her hand. She stepped back to admire her handiwork and jumped at the face staring back at her through the window. She quickly moved aside and Peter Winthrop walked in the front door.
“Good evening Mr. Winthrop,” the security guard said, trying to snap out of his daze. “Late evening tonight, sir?”
“Yes, I just flew in from Rio. Been back and forth three times in two weeks.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Rio. Big celebrations in the street with beautiful girls in little bikinis.”
“You know, some of them even wear clothes,” Peter said, busting the security guard’s chops.
“I believe your son is working late, too. I didn’t see him leave yet. Nice kid, likes to talk.”
“He’s still here, you say?”
“Haven’t seen him leave.”
“Not sure that means too much,” Peter responded, stabbing at the guard’s propensity to nap. The security guard looked nervous.
“Thanks,” Peter said, ending his goodwill break at the security guard’s counter.
“Goodnight, Mr. Winthrop.” ***
Reina hightailed it to the bank of elevators as soon as she realized Peter Winthrop was the face on the other side of her just-cleaned window. She stopped at the passenger elevators and pushed the buttons to send them to
