Killerfest (9 page)

Vendela
smiled. Georgia it was.

“Fascinating,”
she said. “Why don’t we grab a table and chat?”

Next to
assassinations, Vendela Noss loved to cook.

CHAPTER 14 - TWO VIEWS

Scarne went
home to his apartment at 2 Fifth Avenue to pack for his three days at the
Bascombe. When he finished, he opened his liquor cabinet and took out his
bottle of Bunnahabhain, a single-malt scotch, and poured some in a brandy
snifter. He took his drink out to his terrace overlooking Fifth Avenue, kicked
back in a plastic chair and put his feet on the railing. He cradled the glass
in his palms to warm the scotch, which he liked to drink neat. Beyond the great
arch in Washington Square just up the street he could see people strolling
through the 10-acre park. His gaze traveled to the other apartments in his
building across from his. All were lit up, and some had people, like him, on
their terraces enjoying the night. Only one apartment was dark. It had belonged
to Ed Koch, the much-beloved three-term New York City mayor whose recent death
had saddened everyone in the building and most of the people in the city.

Koch had been
just an elevator acquaintance until one day he unexpectedly asked Scarne to
stop by his apartment for a drink. He’d poured them both three fingers of
Bunnahabhain, and added a drop of water “to release its essence, or some such
bullshit.” The old man explained that the scotch had been given to him by an
advertiser in one of the magazines to which he occasionally contributed
political commentary.

“They say it’s
been aged 25 years. What’s the big deal? I have moles older than that. Listen
to this.” Koch had picked up some promotional material that had come along with
the gift. “A premier single malt whose nose is reminiscent of fudge brownies,
florals, notes of wood and light smoke. Its palate is light, complex, nutty, malty,
with a touch of pepper, orange, apricot duck sauce, licorice, toffee and
coffee. The finish is long, smooth and smoky.”

“Apricot duck
sauce?”

“Who cares,”
Koch said. “I figure if it has a name you can’t pronounce, it must be pretty
damn good.”

They sipped.
It was pretty damn good.

“Dick Condon
says you are a pain in the ass but he’d trust you with his life. A friend of
mine is in a jam.”

At
six-foot-two but only slightly diminished by age, the ex-mayor still cut an
imposing figure. Even though he had been out of office for years, his
high-pitched and somewhat nasally voice still commanded attention. Like many
New Yorkers, Scarne had not agreed with all of the man’s policies or decisions,
but he had always liked his style. Without even hearing the story, he decided
to help with whatever the problem was.

“What do you
need, Mr. Mayor.”

Koch smiled.

The friend, in
a tight primary race for the City Council, was being blackmailed.

 “He’s a good
man. Married, couple of little kids. Got drunk and made a pass at one of his
aides, who also happens to be male. The aide defected to his opponent and is
threatening to go on the six o’clock news unless my friend drops out of the
race.”

“How old are
we talking about?”

Mayor or no
mayor, Scarne had no use for pedophiles.

“We’re not
talking Congressional pages,” Koch said. “The aide is in his 30’s. My friend
insists that the guy came on to him. He’s going through hell with his wife, but
thinks he can patch it up. Time will tell, but meanwhile I can’t see him ruined
politically over this.”

It didn’t take
Scarne long to find out that the man in question had indeed been set up. The
aide and the political rival had long been in bed together, although in this
instance only figuratively. Scarne had called Dudley Mack and asked to “borrow”
Bobo Sambuca.

A week later,
the aide was discovered, apparently on drugs and wearing only a raincoat,
wandering the grounds of an exclusive all-boy’s school in Yonkers. His
protestations that he had been abducted by a huge bald man driving a hearse
were laughable. The tabloids ran wild and the discredited man fled to Colorado.
The Mayor’s friend won his primary easily. Koch never asked what had
transpired. But through the grapevine Scarne found out that the still politically
connected icon had gone to bat for him when various prosecutors wanted to
question him about a couple of his recent cases that had resulted in a spate of
dead bodies. The inquiries were squashed. And the old gentleman also sent him a
bottle of Bunnahabhain for Christmas.

Scarne looked
across at the darkened apartment. He raised his glass in a toast.

“You did fine,
Ed,” he said.

Scarne’s cell
phone beeped. It was Emma Shields.

“What are you
doing?”

“I’m drinking
some of Ed Koch’s fine malt liquor,” he replied. “Unfortunately, without Ed.”

“I thought it
wasn’t good for someone to drink alone.”

“An old wives’
tale. And why do you assume I’m alone. The Mayor wasn’t my only friend. For all
you know I’m bouncing a naked chorus girl on my knee.”

“You wouldn’t
take the chance on spilling your drink.”

“Good point.
But you called. So now I’m not alone.”

“You’re
sweet.”

“Can’t you
sleep? What time is it in Paris? Four in the morning?”

“I’m in
Moscow. It’s almost six. I just got up.”

“Tell me about
it.”

Which she did.
She also gave Scarne the address of the apartment she was renting in Paris in
case he was “in the neighborhood” and wanted to drop by.

“Just give me
a little notice,” Emma added, “so I can get the naked chorus boy off my knee.”

“I’ll take my
chances with naked chorus boys,” Scarne replied. 

***

Chandra Khan,
looking down at the nighttime traffic from a window adjacent to the fifth-
floor terrace of his six-and-a-half story brownstone on West 74th Street just
off Central Park West, was also sipping a fine liquor. In his case it was India’s
prized Old Monk, the dark rum produced in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, noted for
its subtle vanilla overtones. Although most people traditionally mixed the
potent rum with water or a soda, Khan preferred his neat, in a brandy snifter.

There was a
knock on the door.

“Enter.”

He heard the
slider open. In the reflection from the glass he saw the brutish form approach.

“What do you
want, Boga?”

Khan turned
around. If it were any other member of his staff, he might have continued
looking out the window. But no one voluntarily offered their back to Boga
Gulle.

“Do you need
me any more tonight?”

The voice had
a familiar edge to it.

“No.”

“I would like
the night off. I will be back before dawn.”

Gulle rarely
left any residence while it was occupied by Khan. The Park Avenue apartment had
separate staff quarters just for his use. The other people who cleaned the
apartment and did the cooking came by day. Gulle took his meals in the kitchen
after they left, or in his room. The day staff feared and avoided him.

There was only
one reason he would leave Khan alone.

“You want a
woman,” Khan said.

Gulle was
silent.

“I told you
that you can bring one back to your room anytime. When the staff is not here.”

“They stopped
me the last time.”

Gulle was
referring to an embarrassing incident the previous month when the building
concierge refused entry to the prostitute that he brought home.

“She was
disgusting, Boga, a street whore. I told you that you can use an escort
service. I will pay.”

“Never mind,”
Gulle said, turning to leave.

“Wait.”

Khan knew Boga
Gulle was loyal to him, but he knew the violence and pathology that simmered
just below the surface of his bodyguard. It would not do to deny the man his
outlets. He went to a nearby desk, opened the middle drawer and took out a
large roll of bills.

“This is a
thousand dollars. If you must use whores, get a call girl at one of the hotel
bars. Any of them but the Bascombe.”

Gulle ignored
the proffered cash.

“I have
money,” he said.

“Remember, this
is not London. I do not yet have the same influence. I may not be able to help
you if there is another ‘accident’.”

“Before dawn,”
Gulle said, and walked away.

Khan watched
him, knowing he would soon be cruising the streets near the Lincoln Tunnel where
the junkie hookers and their pimps had decamped after Times Square was cleaned
up. Gulle liked his sex quick and rough. Sometimes too rough. It had cost Khan
£15,000 to cover up the death of that London tart. An expensive piece of ass to
be sure. Gulle hadn’t been in his employ very long when it happened, but Khan
had already recognized what a unique and valuable asset he was. Khan turned
back to the window. It was a clear night. In the distance he could see the
winking lights of airliners descending into their landing patterns for the
three major airports that served New York City. He wondered if anyone on one of
those planes had arrived in the metropolis with the singularity of purpose he
had. Or with a flesh-and-blood weapon like Boga Gulle.  

CHAPTER 15 - BENGAL TIGER

Chandra Khan
knew he was a grave disappointment to his kin. Not that he gave a damn.

For 20 years
he had eschewed a guaranteed, if modest, future in the family’s insurance
business, ignoring entreaties from his distraught mother and angry father to
return home to India. He was not going to waste an Oxford education competing
with his dull and condescending older brothers in teeming, steaming Mumbai,
where his mother and various aunts were already arranging his marriage to the
plump daughter of the man who ran one of the largest call centers in Noida,
just outside Delhi.

With platoons
of beautiful British women easily charmed by his exotic good looks, the
strapping six-foot-four Khan saw no need to marry. Blessed with a nuclear
metabolism, he rarely slept more than four hours a day. The rest of the time he
spent either working or satisfying his insatiable sexual appetite.  

Using
relationships forged at Oxford, where he was a star rower, and later in The
City of London working for Burns Capital, a small but aptly named
bottom-feeding private equity firm, Khan had decided to seek his fortune in
publishing. Burns Capital gutted companies and sold off their healthy divisions
at obscene profits. Junior to the firm, for almost a decade Khan labored in a
backwater unit of the firm that specialized in media properties. He was
well-paid but ignored, and somewhat pitied, by the other investment bankers.
They were friendly enough, in a politically correct sort of way, but they knew
a loser when they saw one. They were going places; he wasn’t. It was a mystery
to some of them. A man with those Bollywood looks – Khan’s success with women
was well known and envied – shouldn’t waste himself in the firm’s
least-promising unit. But he was less competition for them, so they didn’t
dwell on it.

That suited
Khan. He was exactly where he wanted to be. Early on, he realized that the
Internet was a game-changer in publishing and that while some of his cohorts
were making a fortune destroying brick-and-mortar companies, his time would
come. And it did. Distressed media companies began falling into his lap. He
paid particular attention to publishers, snapping them up, large and small.

Khan used the
same slash-and-burn tactics on the publishers he did on any acquisition. He
raided existing pension plans and fired people who didn’t make money for their
company. In publishing, that meant editors whose books didn’t sell. In
fairness, many of the editors were hidebound anachronisms who ignored changing
literary tastes and needed their grandchildren to help with a computer. But
there were also many cultured, intelligent editors who had nurtured respected
authors for decades. To them, a superior novel that sold a few thousand copies
a year and lost a bit of money was a small price to pay for the honor and
respect it brought to the industry, indeed, to civilization. To Chandra Khan,
they were idiots.

He kept
younger, aggressive editors who specialized in fiction that catered to the
masses. Although not much of a reader himself, he realized that most of the
books his “revitalized” publishers were putting out were trash. But the public
seemingly couldn’t get enough of the gratuitous gore and soft-core pornography
that made up much of his publishing list. His book covers dripped with blood,
most of which usually ended up on some vixen’s protuberant bosom.

Soon, Khan’s
peers at Burns Capital began to show him a little respect. They even gave him a
nickname, “the Bengal Tiger,” for the sharp fiscal claws he applied to the balance
sheets of victim companies. But Khan’s superiors at Burns Capital, while not
averse to cutting workers and slashing pension plans, didn’t relish the
publicity, including an occasional obscenity trial, that his division spurred.
So, when Khan told them he wanted to spin off his unit into a stand-alone
publishing house, they didn’t object. They even provided some start-up capital,
in return for a small piece of the business – as silent partners, of course.
The new entity had potential, after all.

Thus, Bengal
Publishing Ltd., was born, and quickly provided Khan with a lush lifestyle that
included frequent trips back to India (to lord his success over his brothers
with Bollywood actresses on his arm and in his bed) and to the haunts of the
rich and famous in Europe and Asia. But Khan had accumulated some powerful
enemies, notably in the unions and guilds whose members he fired. Or cheated
out of their pensions. Strikes he didn’t worry about. The public was on his
side. But some of the union leaders were tough men, with connections in the
London underground. Racially, they didn’t like the Indian upstart. There were
threats and acts of sabotage. Khan saw things begin to unravel.

Then he found
Boga Gulle. Or, rather, his brothers found him when he went to them with his
problem. His family may have considered Khan a black sheep, but he was their
black sheep. They made inquiries in New Delhi among the Haji Dolas, one of the
most violent of the “Indian mafias,” based in Mumbai but with tentacles
throughout the country. They had been forced to deal with the hoodlums in order
to survive in their own business. Khan acquired a newfound, if grudging,
respect for his brothers, who apparently weren’t as dull as they seemed. He
also acquired the fearsome Boga Gulle, who was soon on a plane to London.

“Even the Haji
will be glad to see him leave India,” one of Khan’s brothers said. “They are
afraid of Gulle. No one has been able to control him. He is an animal. Treat
him with care.”

Within a month
after Gulle’s arrival, Khan’s union problems had subsided, amid a spate of
unreported assaults and one unsolved disappearance. And Gulle had turned out to
be more loyal than expected, especially after the incident with the dead
hooker. He never voiced his appreciation for Khan’s support in what was, after
all, a personal matter. But their relationship changed subtly. Khan had no
illusions that he could control the man, but he also knew that Gulle would
never betray him and that, more importantly, his enemies were now also
Gulle’s.            

With labor
problems solved, the money again started flowing into Khan’s company. He
resumed his sybaritic lifestyle but soon tired of it. His success with Gulle as
the tip of his corporate spear whet his appetite. It wasn’t enough to own fine
houses, eat at the best restaurants, drink the finest wines and liquors and,
almost literally, have a mistress in every port. Chandra Khan chafed with the
knowledge that he wasn’t listed in Forbes as one of the 400 richest people in
the world. That would have to change. He knew what he had to do. First, he had
to buy out his silent partners. That was easier said than done. His success
worked against him. They liked their investment. Again, his family came
through. As part of an insurance settlement, the Khans came to own an abandoned
ramshackle factory in Darjeeling.

Following
time-honored Indian tradition, Chandra Khan established a dummy printing
operation in the rat-and-squatter-infested building and had his brothers insure
it for 50 times what it was worth. Khan programmed his Bengal Publishing
accounting system to submit false invoices and purchase orders to India’s
Directorate General of Central Excise Taxes. The phantom factory allowed him to
dodge almost £20 million in taxes by pretending to print books in a
money-losing factory that didn't exist. The £20 million then went to compensate
his family for the insurance money they paid when he burned the building down.
His brothers then sued Khan and his partners, claiming gross negligence. Not
wanting to get involved in a messy family squabble, the partners were relieved
when Khan inexplicably offered to buy them out, especially when he told them
that the death of five squatters in the torched building would probably
bankrupt them if they still were listed as owners. As soon as he was clear of
his partners, he called his brothers who, as planned, dropped their suit. They
even made a tidy profit of £2 million on the scam, from which they paid the
squatters’ survivors a total of 350,000 Rupees, a little less than £5,000.

Khan then set
his sights on the United States, where, if anything, the publishing industry
was in even greater disarray than in England. He knew he was shooting for the
moon. Which was his destiny, he believed. In Hindi “Chandra” meant moon.

It wasn’t easy
at first. The contraction in the American publishing world had been brutal.
Major bookstore chains and iconic publishing houses were contracting,
consolidating or going out of business under the assaults from the Internet,
e-book self publishers and Amazon, especially the latter, a marketing behemoth
that started out as a bookseller and still knew the business better than
anyone. The financial debacle that began in 2007 exacerbated the situation.
Financing dried up.

Fortunately
for Khan, the demand for schlock, Bengal Publishing’s stock in trade, did not
dry up. He rapidly added American authors to his stable of British titles,
promoting their books with titillating covers and risque ads. His most
successful author was Lisa Lovepuddle, whose steamy series of novels about
vampire call girls had sold an astounding 12 million copies. Two movies based
on her books were already in production and Khan had a piece of those. There
was even talk of a video game and a line of dolls, although even Khan had his
doubts about that.