62
Christian
“I got it,” Vicky tells me when she gets upstairs into my condo.
She hands me the bag with the Grim Reaper costume.
“You paid cash for it?” I ask. “Avoided cameras?”
“Yes.”
I remove the costume from the bag and pull it over my head with Vicky’s help.
“How do I look?”
“I’ll tell you how you look,” she says. “You look like something out of a Stephen King movie. But more importantly? You look totally anonymous.”
We head into the bathroom so I can look in the mirror.
“It’s formless,” says Vicky. “And your face is too far inside that long hood to see.”
“Yeah, it works.”
“You’re totally anonymous. Anyone who saw you in that, they wouldn’t know if it was you or some scrawny teenager. They wouldn’t know if it was you or some dumpy, middle-aged parent.”
“They wouldn’t know if it was me or your husband, Simon?”
“Exactly,” she says.
“I like it. Perfect. Good job. You have the boots, too?”
“Yes,” she says. “Simon has the same pair.”
“What size are they? Size thirteen, I hope?”
“Size thirteen,” she says. “And yes, I also bought these in cash, and I wore glasses and a hat and dressed differently than when I bought the costume.”
Good, this is good. We head back into the main room.
“We have to cut off all contact with each other,” I tell Vicky. “There can’t be any trace of our connection.”
“Absolutely.”
“What evidence do you have of a connection to me?” I ask. “Did Simon know you met with me?”
“Simon doesn’t know you exist,” she says. “I didn’t tell him I was interviewing financial advisers. I’d never want him to know that.”
“You have some materials, brochures, that kind of thing, from my office?”
“I think I still do.”
“Find them and shred them or burn them.”
“Okay,” she says.
“You ever write my name down? Look me up on your computer?”
She thinks about that. “I looked you up on my computer when I was researching financial advisers.”
“Then dump the computer.”
“I can wipe the computer—”
“No, no, wiping the computer isn’t enough. Cops can recover all that stuff. Break it into pieces and dump it in a river. I’m not kidding, Vicky. This is important.”
“Okay, I will.”
“That’s what I did to my laptop,” I tell her. “I smashed it, broke it in half, dismantled all the parts. I’ve scrubbed all evidence of you from this apartment.”
“Do you have a copy of Simon’s trust?” she asks.
I did, past tense. I shredded it this morning, then I burned the shreds in my fireplace.
“The cops could search this entire place,” I tell her. “They would find no evidence of you, Vicky. No computer. No documents. Nothing.”
“What about evidence of . . . y’know . . . me?”
“You mean DNA?” I say. “No. I got rid of my bedsheets. I washed them just to be sure, then threw them in the dumpster in the alley. They’ll be long gone by the time this happens.”
I sit down next to her.
“Now about your phone,” I say. “You’ve called me and texted me.”
She blushes. “It’s a burner,” she says.
“Your—your phone is a burner?”
“The one I use to call you is, yes. A prepaid phone. Are you surprised? You think I want Simon looking at the phone bill and wondering what number I keep calling?”
Ah, yes, that makes sense. Phew. That makes things easier. I’ve been using a burner with her all along, for a different reason, for when I made my escape with her money, but I’ve never told her that.
“So we’re covered,” I say. “You’ll destroy your computer. You’ll dump your burner. Okay.” I rub my hands together.
“You have a gun yet?” she asks.
Not yet. I’m getting one from Gavin. With a silencer. But she doesn’t know about Gavin. “Soon,” I say.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
Twenty-one million dollars, I tell myself. Twenty-one million dollars.
“What’s up?” Emily says, peeking her head into my office on Thursday afternoon. “You need me?”
“Yeah, come in a second, Em. Sit down.”
She’s probably wondering what I could possibly want. I’ve asked so little of her. She answers a phone that hardly ever rings. She’s been here for a grand total of five meetings I’ve had with potential investors, two of which were Vicky. I told the others, who came after Vicky, that my current fund was closed, but I’d be happy to talk with them when I open my next round of financing.
She hasn’t taken dictation—if that’s even still a thing. She hasn’t written a letter or even made a pot of coffee. Most days, I’ve been paying this nineteen-year-old twenty dollars an hour, four hours a day, to do her homework.
She sits down, wondering if she should have a pad of paper with her, her dirty-blond ponytail bobbing as she searches for a pen.
“This won’t take long,” I say. “Listen, Em, I’ve decided to relocate. I think I’m going to go to Paris for a while. I’m going to fly out there today.”
“Oh, okay.” She takes it pretty well, though I’m sure she likes this job.
“So I’d say you can pack up now and go.” I hand her cash, two thousand dollars. “Think of this as severance.”
“I’m just a temp, Mr. Newsome. You don’t have to pay me severance.”
“Well, then a bonus,” I say. “A contribution to Emily’s college fund.”
She counts it out, her mouth opening in a wow. This is more than a month’s pay all in one shot. “Yeah?” she says.
“Yeah. Good luck to you, Emily. I hope to be reading great things about you someday.”
When Emily’s gone, I remove the sleek desktop computer from the reception desk and smash it into pieces. I take a hammer to the mainframe as well. The busted computers are too heavy for garbage bags, so I put them in duffel bags.
I go through Emily’s drawers, including an appointment pad with carbon pages. Vicky’s name is on them. I rip every page to shreds and throw them in a garbage bag.
The office looks ransacked, stripped naked. But appearances don’t matter anymore. Newsome Capital Growth is looking at its final days in business.
And there is not a single trace of Vicky Lanier to be found.
63
Vicky
Friday morning, a quarter past seven. Conrad Betancourt walks out of the condo building on Michigan Avenue. He is wearing an expensive, long wool coat and carrying nothing, but the bellman behind him is lugging a suitcase and a long piece of luggage that looks like golf clubs.
That confirms it—Conrad’s been staying at the downtown condo, not his house in Grace Village.
Conrad gets into the back of the black town car while the bellman loads the luggage into the trunk.
When the car drives off, but just before the bellman has returned into the building, I hurry forward and call out, “Excuse me! Did I just miss Mr. Betancourt?”
The man, tall and gray with a kind face, smiles. “Afraid so, miss. Just left for O’Hare.”
“Shoot. I’m with the Tribune, I had a couple questions for him. You said the airport?”
“Yes, ma’am. You can leave a message at the lobby desk for him.”
“Oh, that’s okay, I have his cell phone. I just wanted a photo to go with the article.”
“Well, he’ll be gone ’til Tuesday night, miss. Golf trip.”