was smart enough to track down Kylie Faulkner, then he was probably smart enough to find the link between her and Fogliani’s death. It would only be a matter of time.
She came to the conclusion that she had only one option. It was time to tie up loose ends and sever the connection once and for all between her, the murder and the murderer. It was time to enact her insurance policy. It wasn’t something she wanted to do, it was something she had hoped to avoid, but now she knew she had no choice.
She made herself a strong cup of coffee and started to think her way through her actions for the next morning.
She slept fitfully that night and in the mid-morning, as light rain fell from low hanging grey clouds, she made her way into the city. She had done her homework on the Fogliani family. It wasn’t hard. Their wealth and past notoriety ensured that their name was well known in Sydney and although they kept a reasonably low profile, she had found several interesting and insightful newspaper articles on them while searching on the Internet and had come to an understanding of where the power lay. She snapped on a pair of latex gloves and placed a call from a phone booth.
“Fogliani Investment, can I help you?” The voice that answered was female, young, yet self-assured.
“Hello, I need to speak to Michael Fogliani,” responded Kylie, hoping that she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt, as a swarm of butterflies fluttered inside her breast. She savoured the feeling and tried to hold on to it but it soon passed and calm again prevailed.
“I’m sorry, Mr Fogliani is not receiving calls at the moment. Can I help you?”
“Oh he’ll want to speak to me I think. Tell him I know who killed his uncle and that it’s not the person the cops arrested. Tell him that if he talks to me for a moment I will give him some information that will prove invaluable to him. Go and tell him that. I’ll hold.”
After a moment of indecision the young woman put Kylie on hold to the strains of Neil Diamond singing Shiloh. Kylie tunelessly hummed along as she waited. She didn’t mind Neil Diamond, even though he was ancient. After less than a minute a man’s voice came on the line.
“Hello, this is Michael Fogliani. Who is this?” He sounded anxious but still in control.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is who killed your uncle. I know who it was and I know that it wasn’t the guy they arrested. They’ve got the wrong man.”
“Look, if this is some sort of joke it’s not very funny.”
“Mr Fogliani, this is no joke. I know who killed your uncle and I’ve got incontrovertible proof. Now are you interested or shall I walk away?” Kylie’s confidence was building now as she knew she was already on top of Michael Fogliani. She listened to the silence on the other end of the line with a smile and could almost read Fogliani’s thoughts as they came to him, just as she had planned.
“I’m interested. But, why haven’t you taken this information to the police?”
“Well let’s just say I don’t like the cops ok? And I don’t think they’d pay as well as you.”
“What sort of evidence do you have and how did you get it?” Fogliani responded, trying to stay calm.
“I’ll be honest with you. I guess I was in the right place at the wrong time and I witnessed your uncle being murdered. I took a video of the whole thing.”
“You have a video of my uncle being murdered?” Fogliani said, his voice involuntarily rising in pitch. Kylie noted it.
“Yes. You can see all that you need to see to be absolutely certain about who killed your uncle. It’s not pretty though so I hope you have a strong stomach.”
Anger flared inside Fogliani. He wanted to reach through the phone and grab the person on the other end.
“Where are you? What do you want?” He fired his questions at her. Kylie smiled at his eagerness and sensed his desire. She had judged him well enough. She judged all men well enough.
“What do I want? What does everyone want? Money of course, something that you no doubt have plenty of.”
“Of course. Come down to my office in the city and we’ll talk.”
“No,” she responded flatly. “This is the deal so listen carefully. I’ll give you a couple of photographs free of charge, as a sign of good faith. They should be more than enough to whet your appetite and convince you I’m not full of shit. If you want the full video of the murder then it will cost you a hundred grand.”
Michael Fogliani’s mind raced with a heady mixture of thoughts and emotions. He shook his head in an effort to clear it and focus on the one thing that mattered – playing this out and getting his hands on the photographs. That was the first and most obvious step. “Ok. I’m with you so far but this better not be bullshit.”
“It’s not. Trust me.”
“That’s not going to happen, but for the time being I’ll assume you’re on the level. So how do we do this?”
“I’m going to tape an envelope to the underside of the shelf in the public phone booth outside your building. Inside that envelope is a memory stick with a few photos on it that are just a small part of the video. I’ll call you in a week and we can talk business. Have the money in cash ready if you’re prepared to deal.”
Kylie hung up the phone, attached the envelope underneath the shelf of the phone box and rapidly moved away to the north up Pitt Street. She was dressed in a dark blue business suit that clung to her lithe body and quickly disappeared into the lunchtime crowd, merging seamlessly with the office workers who filled the street. When she was satisfied that she was far enough away she stopped and waited. She had a clear view of the phone box from where she stood. Within two minutes a young woman emerged from the office and made a beeline for the phone box. Kylie wondered if she was the one who had answered the phone. Just as quickly the young woman returned to the building with yellow envelope in hand.
Kylie smiled and disappeared up the street. She was pleased with the way things had gone and that Fogliani had at least taken the initial bait. She sighed aloud and mentally patted herself on her back for having the foresight to take a video of the murder. At the time it hadn’t seemed necessary, but now it was about to pay a handsome dividend by extricating her from a deep hole that Detective Nelson was trying to put her in.
She had no intention of phoning Michael Fogliani back in a week and trying to collect on the hundred thousand. As tempting as it was, she considered it to be too risky a play. The mention of the money had just been a ruse to allay his suspicions about being given something for nothing. She reasoned that Fogliani would try and save himself the hundred grand by identifying and locating Manuel Torres on his own. Rich guys don’t get rich from being generous benefactors to the needy, they get rich by being tightfisted pricks and screwing over whoever they can to make a dollar, she had thought to herself as she made her plans.
From the carefully chosen stills from the murder video, Kylie reasoned it shouldn’t be too difficult for a man with Fogliani’s money, power and connections to find Manuel Torres. One of the stills on the memory stick was a very clear picture of him moving away from Emilio Fogliani’s car moments after the shooting. His face and the tattoo that snaked up his neck from underneath his jacket were clearly visible.
She reasoned that in the unlikely event that she had misjudged Fogliani and he ended up taking the evidence to the police, the stills – without the accompanying video - would not be sufficient evidence to get Craig Thoms off the hook. Not when compared to the plethora of evidence that had been stacked against him. It was a calculated risk, but one that she felt she now needed to take to protect herself.
As she walked down the busy street she thought of Manuel Torres. She felt a flicker of remorse at her betrayal of him but it quickly passed. He had served his purpose and had been a willing participant every step of the way. She searched inside herself for any remaining feelings she had for him and found none.
Chapter 40
Michael Fogliani waited nervously for his niece to return from her errand to the phone box. He hoped that he hadn’t put her in any danger, although he knew she was a capable young woman and running strange errands was nothing new to her. She returned within three minutes, but to Michael it felt like an hour had passed. She knew better than to ask questions and wordlessly handed the unopened envelope to him. It was better that she didn’t know what was in the package anyway.
He returned to his office and quietly closed the door. He cautiously opened the envelope as if it were laced with a liberal dose of Anthrax powder, gently removed the memory stick and inserted it into one of the USB drives
