Silent Assassin(35)

“You got what you wanted, ” Rispoli said airily as she walked away. “Now, have at it, boys.”





CHAPTER 17


New York, January 7





Len Stuart woke up groggy and confused, which was in itself strange, but he was not in any shape to notice right away. He tried to jump out of bed as per his usual routine, only to find that, not only was he in fact sitting down, but his hands were tied behind his back with something tight and sharp cutting into his numb wrists.

“Hello, Len.” The voice was more like a growl, low and intimidating. He looked up, his head lolling on his neck, and saw through fuzzy eyes that there were two men in the room with him: one standing against the wall in front of him, watching him silently from behind a black ski mask; and another one, the one who had been talking, standing over him, wearing a mask too, a deep crimson one.

“What the hell’s going on?” he said, slurring the words. “Who are you?”

“I’m the angel of justice, Len,” said the man in the red mask. He was white, while the other was black, and this one was shorter than the other man, but from where he was standing, he looked frighteningly tall and powerful. “An avenging spirit here to punish you for the evil things you’ve done. And there are a lot of them, Len. You have a lot to answer for.”

“What?” he said, flabbergasted. He was trying and failing to make the words fit into some semblance of meaning. His thoughts were clouded, and it all seemed so strange. Nothing seemed to make sense. He couldn’t even bring himself to be properly afraid, even though he knew he should be. The back of his head felt raw. “Who are you? What is this?”

“So you like to beat up on women, do you?” said the one in the red mask. “Does that make you feel like more of a man? Does it make you feel powerful?”

“Women?” he said, confused. “The whore!” he remembered suddenly. She had tried to drug him, and then . . . he wracked his fuzzy brain but couldn’t remember what had happened next.

“She has a name,” the man in the red mask said. “She can also take care of herself. How many others were there that couldn’t?”

“I have cash,” he said, still slurring his words and struggling to keep his thoughts straight. “In the apartment. I can tell you where it is. I’ll give you whatever you want. My cards. I got a couple things worth some money too. I’ll tell you where to find everything. Please. Take it all. I don’t care. Just take it and go.”

“I don’t want money, Len.”

Clarity was eluding him. His fear at that moment still seemed distant and hazy. How did they know his name? “Are-are you going to kill me?” he stammered.

“It’s a distinct possibility.” He said it like it was nothing, and Len heard it from a distance. They are going to kill me. He tried to wrap his mind around the significance of this, but he couldn’t.

“In fact,” the man continued, “I’d say that it’s pretty damn certain that you’ll die today. That is, unless you tell us what we want to know.”

“What do you want to know?” asked Stuart, dread finally beginning to catch up with him.

“That’s the attitude I like! Now. You recently made a lot of money, Len. I want to know how you did that.”

He frowned, perplexed. “Financial markets. I play the financial markets. I’m a trader. It’s what I do. I get more money out than I put in. That’s all there is to it.”

“I’m sure,” the man said. “Except this time, you made a lot more than you had ever made before. It was, oh, some time around the Paris bombing. Does that ring a bell, Len?”

The mention of the bombing in connection to his score jogged him awake. They couldn’t know. Could they? The plan was supposed to be foolproof! “I made some good investments. That’s it.”

“Good investments?” The man in the red mask chuckled and looked at his partner. “In that case let me hire you to take care of my money, Len. Since it seems like you’re so good at it. But no. That was a little more than good investments. It went well beyond what’s reasonably believable, even for insider trading. Because you didn’t have an insider in any company, did you, Len? You had a different kind of insider, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said in a half-panicked stammer. Normally, he knew how to lie, but all his faculties were failing him at the moment.

“Let’s not play this game.” The man bent down so that he was inches from Stuart’s face. Stuart could see his mustache peeking through the mouth hole of the face mask, his hard brown eyes. “Someone tipped you off to the attack. They did it in a way that you were able to make money off of it with strategic investments. Are we getting warm yet?”