Running of the bulls

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

9:27 p.m.

With his children involved, the only way out of this was to see it through. To do that, he needed Maggie. There was no other option. She’d lied to him before, but Marty now sensed it wasn’t with malice, but because she felt threatened by what was happening now.

She was scared and trying to protect herself. He felt she was finally being honest with him. Still, if she thought for one second that her fear would ever get in the way of him protecting his daughters, she was a fool. His family was in danger. To end this, he would do whatever it took.

He watched Roberta go back into the kitchen. “Alright,” he said. “Go on.”

“I need you to understand one thing,” she said. “If my name is connected to any of this, I’ll be dead in a week.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that.”

“Then we’ll keep your name out of it. Why were you at Wood’s?”

“How did you know I was at Wood’s?”

“It’s what I do.”

“She had a videotape I wanted. She had files on Mark. With him dead, there was no one else who could protect his memory from that tape and those files if someone didn’t intervene and destroy them. So, I called and threatened her. I got from her what she never should have had.”

“What was her condition when you got there?”

“She was high, but at least she had the box ready. I was there for about ten minutes. I left with what I came for.”

“Why does the FBI have a file on you?”

“We’ve already discussed that. They think I have Mark’s stolen money, but I don’t. That’s their only interest in me.”

Marty knew the answer-he just wanted to see if she delivered the same response. She did. “Who would want to kill you?”

“Who do you think? You’ve seen the DVDs.”

“I’ve seen one DVD.”

“Fine, you’ve seen one. That’s enough.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Did you recognize anyone on that tape, Marty?”

“Senator Diamond from Arkansas.”

“No one else?”

“Everyone else was wearing a leather mask.”

“Then you chose the wrong DVD.”

“Who else should I have seen?”

“Diamond was enough,” Maggie said. “Take off those leather masks and you would have seen more senators. More players with power. People who could buy and sell your ass a hundred times over.”

“Wolfhagen started this club?”

“He started it.”

“Was it a sex club?”

“It was whatever they wanted it to be. A sex club. A place to relax. A kink palace. A place to drink and have your drugs served a la carte. You could participate or just watch. It was whatever you wanted it to be because that’s what that crowd demanded. Anything they wanted. Admission wasn’t free. Each paid millions to join.”

“Who belonged?”

“Every bull who mattered on Wall Street, and then it grew to include others.”

“Give me names.”

“Lasker,” she said. “Schwartz. Wood. The Coles. Gerald Hayes. Everyone who testified against him in court, and many others.”

“What about Boesky? Milken? Levine?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you think?”

“Tell me about Mark’s involvement. Did he belong?”

There was a sudden air of protectiveness about her. “He did,” she said. “But not by choice. He was trying to please Wolfhagen even though he was nothing to Wolfhagen. Zero. Wolfhagen wanted to surround himself with money and power. Real money and power. Mark had neither. He was a pawn there to do what Wolfhagen wanted.”

“I’ve been to the M.E.’s office. I’ve seen the tattoo. Did Mark have one?”

“I have no idea.”

“But you were lovers.”

“That’s right.”

“So, how couldn’t you know? A ring went through its snout. At the very least, you would have felt that.”

“Sure, if we’d been making love. Mark left me about a week after he joined the club, which is where they initiated people with the tattoo and the piercing. He moved into his own place. Said he couldn’t be with me anymore. Wolfhagen was behind it. He wanted Mark for himself and he got him. He took away the one person in my life who mattered and I want him dead for it. Mark called me a week before he was murdered in Pamplona. He said he wanted to talk. He apologized for the mistakes he’d made.” She leaned back against the booth. “And then he was dead.”

“Why do you think he was murdered when he was trampled by bulls? There were witnesses who saw how he died. He could have just fallen. It happens every year there. Why murder?”

“Why not? Why would his death be any different from what happened to the Coles, Wood, Hayes and Schwartz? Someone could have pushed him and he fell. Someone could have tripped him while he was running. I’m convinced he was murdered.”

“Did you belong to that club?”

“Not on your life.”

“Mark didn’t take you?”

“Mark loved me. He got sucked in, but he made certain I was never a member.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Did he take you to the club?”

It was a moment before she spoke, and when she did, the fear she was trying to hold back came right to the forefront. It was obvious she’d never spoken to anyone about this. “Yes,” she said. “He took me. Once.”

“When was this?”

“Years ago.”

“Let me guess. Three?”

“How do you know that?”

“There was a date painted above Wood’s bed. Did you do it?”

“What date? What are you talking about?”

It was the correct answer. They’d never talked about it and it still hadn’t reached the press. If she’d said yes or no, she would have revealed that she knew about it. She was telling the truth.

“Somebody wrote a date above Wood’s bed in her blood. Somebody also had sex with her after they decapitated her. Any idea who?”

“What was the date?”

“November 5, 2007.”

She closed her eyes. “It could be any number of people. There were dozens who witnessed what Wolfhagen did that night. Even the sick ones-the real pervs-thought he went too far. They also want him back in prison.”

“What happened that night?”

She looked over at Roberta as she swung through the kitchen door.

“I need to know.”

She waited for Roberta to move to a table of customers before she spoke.

“Murder,” she said.

“Start from the beginning.”

She pulled her hair away from her face and looked up at the ceiling. It was almost imperceptible, but in this light, he could see that her eyes were welling with tears. The more he learned from her, the more he felt connected to her. When they first met, he thought she was rigid. Now, all he saw was a woman being stripped of her secrets because she had no choice but to share them with him. That took a level of trust he felt she’d likely only shared once in her life, likely with Mark Andrews.

“I wish I could have a cigarette.”

“Do you want a drink?”

She shook her head. “I think we’re in for it tonight. My head needs to be clear.” She quickly wiped a finger under one of her eyes. “Do you want a drink?”

“Actually, I’d kill for one, but I’m with you. Tell me about the murder.”

She took a breath. “Mark and I had been apart two months and I knew Wolfhagen was behind it. When I called to ask if he’d see me, he agreed, but only at his convenience, which was at midnight that evening.”

“Midnight was his earliest convenience?”

“It had nothing to do with convenience. It had to do with power. I wanted to see him, he wasn’t going to make it easy. It was midnight in his office or he wouldn’t meet with me. Period. But when I arrived, Wolfhagen was putting on his jacket. He said a friend needed to see him. I could either talk to him in the limousine or I could forget about ever talking to him about Mark again. I knew he wouldn’t give me another chance. I was desperate and so I went.” She looked at him directly. “Have you ever loved somebody so much you’d do anything to get them back? Absolutely anything?”

Six months after his first divorce from Gloria, he’d started seeing shrinks, psychologists, counselors. He’d told them every rotten thing that had happened in his life in an effort to find out how he could handle the past so he could maintain a healthy relationship in the present. It didn’t work, but he tried.

He lifted his eyebrows at Maggie and smiled.

“Then you know,” Maggie said. “I loved Mark so much, I was willing to do anything to get him back. Even risk talking to Wolfhagen alone. And it was a risk,” she said. “I knew whatever I said to him might get back to Mark, probably twisted around. But I didn’t care. I had something on that son of a bitch. I planned on bribing him into letting Mark go.”

“How?”

“Before I set up the meeting, I hired a private investigator who tailed Wolfhagen for two weeks. I had photographs of him cruising the meat packing district back when it was much more than just the meat packing district. I had photos of him at three in the morning screwing young girls in the back of his Mercedes, photos of him leaving The Eagle with men old enough to be his father. I had it all and I planned on going public with it if he didn’t let Mark go.”

But when she showed Wolfhagen the photographs, his reaction wasn’t the rage or the fear she’d been anticipating, but delight as he casually flipped through them.

“He asked me which one I liked best,” she said. “He actually looked me in the eye and asked which one would work best for the front page of the Post-the photo of him going down on the old man in leather, or the one with him pushing the naked prostitute out of his car.”

She sipped her tea. “I thought I could intimidate him. I thought the photographs would be enough, but I was wrong. He set me up. He wanted me in that limousine for a reason, said if I was going to judge him, I’d better be prepared to judge Mark as well, because they were one in the same.”

“What did he do to you, Maggie?”

“Oh, not to me, Marty-at least not yet.”

That got his attention. “Then to Mark.”

“The limousine had a television and a DVD player. Wolfhagen hit the remote, told me to watch the screen.” She looked at him with a sadness and a rage that was so deeply entrenched, it hardened her face. “And there was Mark,” she said. “Naked. In the middle of all these people. Wolfhagen turned up the volume, tried to make me listen to what they were doing to him, but all I could do was sit there wondering how in hell he’d superimposed Mark’s face on another man’s body.”

The vulnerability he sensed she rarely showed anyone was back and alive. “How did you get that scar?”

“Wolfhagen.”

“Did he cut you?”

“Actually, he shoved my head through the limousine’s side window.”

Though he was startled by the violence of it, he pushed forward without pausing, not wanting to lose momentum. “Why?”

“That video was playing. Everything I’d hoped for was gone. I’d brought a gun with me for protection, but when I went for it, Wolfhagen was quicker and he shoved my head through the window.” She stopped at the memory of it. “I must have blacked out, because when I woke, I wasn’t in the car. I was in his club and Wolfhagen had just murdered a man.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you see his face?”

She shook her head. “He was tied down. His forehead was strapped to the table. I could barely see his profile. There was too much confusion.”

“What did Wolfhagen do to him?”

“He slit this throat.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he was Wolfhagen. Because at that point, he was so high, he was delusional. He literally thought he was a god.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Shouting. Things getting out of hand. People screaming. But I’d lost a lot of blood at that point and my memory isn’t as clear as it should be. I think I was coming in an out of consciousness.”

“Who was there?”

“A lot of people. When I got home, I wrote down the names of those I could remember. I think there are some who think I saw the murder, and those who don’t. But I did. Wolfhagen would have killed me too if Peter Schwartz hadn’t gotten him out of there. He would have killed me. And do you know what I keep thinking after all these years? You know what I go to bed with every night? A part of me wishes he had.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Because I was scared. I thought they’d come after me. I’ve always thought that. It’s why I took a self-defense course. It’s why I took classes on how to shoot a gun. There are too many people who know I know what happened. I thought I’d be dead years ago. It’s why I told you I can’t be connected in any way to this because they’ll come for me. I’m surprised I’m sitting here now.”

“Wolfhagen filmed everything that happened at that club, didn’t he?”

“He did, but only a few people knew about it. That whole club was designed for blackmail. That’s the reason it was created. It’s one of the ways Wolfhagen got his inside information. When he wanted a favor from a senator or from the president of a corporation, a bit of information that could make him a fortune on the street, all he had to do was invite them to the club. He’d slip something into their drink, they’d do something stupid, it was all caught on tape. Then, when it was time to collect, he’d pick up a phone, invite that person to lunch at his office, and if they refused his favor, he’d show them how well they performed at their audition. Maybe they’d be fucking a prostitute. Maybe it was a hell of a lot worse.”

“How did you find out about the tapes?”

“Mark. When I was on that table, he threw a towel over my face. When I took it off, he put it back on and leaned down to my ear. He told me there were cameras. He told me not to remove the towel.”

“But it was too late at that point. You already were on camera.”

“That’s right,” she said. “And that’s why I took the disc marked November 2007 from Schwartz’s hidden room tonight.”

“Where is it?”

“I destroyed it. There are more out there-there have to be-but at least I got one of them. At least I got that.”

His cell phone rang, which startled each of them. Maggie ran a hand through her hair while Marty answered. There was static on the line. Movement on the other end. “Hello?” he said.

A man’s voice: “Put Maggie Cain on the phone.”

Marty’s heart skipped a beat. Did somebody know they were here? Nobody had entered the cafe since they’d sat down, but that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t be waiting for them outside.

He looked at Maggie, who was now watching him intently, her slender body so taut, he could almost feel the tension as if it was a wire stretching between them. “There’s no one here by that name,” he said irritably. “Who is this?”

“Put her on the phone, Spellman.”

“Who are you?”

“Put her on the phone.”

“Not until you tell me who you are.”

“It’s Mark Andrews,” the man said. “And I know she’s with you. If either of you wants any chance of ending this, you’ll do as I say and hand her the phone now.”