Running of the bulls

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

11:21 p.m.

This was her night, but if she was going to succeed in being done with the man who had ruined her reputation and humiliated her for years, she knew she had to move quickly. Soon, Marty Spellman and Maggie Cain would arrive, presumably to come to a federal safe house, where Mark Andrews was waiting for them.

And he was waiting for them, against his will. He also was holding an empty gun on Wolfhagen, against his will. She needed to take care of Max before the focused shifted on Cain and Spellman. They were too close to the truth. Only when they were dead would she feel reasonably confident that she and Ira could walk away from all of this and be safe.

Carra watched as Max looked in disbelief at Mark Andrews.

“How?” he asked her. “Why?”

She told him. Along with Ira, over the past seven months she had devised a plan that had involved the deaths of the majority of those who had testified against him.

It had been simple-hire Spocatti and Gragera and, through Lasker, convince them that they were dealing directly with Wolfhagen. She didn’t know them. She didn’t trust them. And so if anything went wrong and they were caught, she knew they would spill his name convincingly if they were pressed to do so in the event that they were caught before this was finished. Moreover, if they were forced to take a lie detector test, they’d be telling the feds what they knew was the truth. It was Wolfhagen who hired them. There was no reason for them to believe otherwise.

In each conversation with them, Ira had mimicked Wolfhagen’s voice and demeanor. Tonight, Spocatti and Gragera were informed that they’d been misinformed. When they arrived, Ira told them everything. They’d never worked for Wolfhagen. They’d only ever worked for her and Ira.

If they were surprised, they didn’t show it. They remained the professionals they’d proved themselves to be. For their trouble, Carra gave each their $10 million bonus checks early.

Not long ago, her own guards called warning her that Wolfhagen was on his way. He bribed them, just as she knew he would. They took his money, just as she’d told them to. They warned her that he asked for a cell phone and a gun, and that it was unlikely that he’d come alone. Knowing Spocatti and Gragera were hers now, she asked them to take out Wolfhagen’s hired hit men when they arrived.

When they did, they were told that after this evening, they were free to go. There would be no more killing outside of those deaths that happened in-house tonight. Carra had everything she needed-the tapes of each person’s death, which would be sent by FedEx to the LaJolla estate tomorrow morning.

Each tape implicated Wolfhagen. She was working with his assistant, who now was on her payroll. That person had his orders. He lived in an apartment on the La Jolla estate. Part of his duties was to open the mail. When the tapes arrived, he was curious and watched them even though Wolfhagen specifically told him not to. But he did and he was horrified by what he saw. Even though he didn’t want to get involved because what he saw frightened him, he knew he couldn’t allow Wolfhagen to continue. And, so, he did the right thing. He alerted the police and the media.

Even if no one bought it, Carmen still won. The media would latch onto it. By then, Wolfhagen would be dead and with him, whatever was left of his soured reputation would be finished when the footage was aired and word got out that he had hired two assassins to kill those people who betrayed him on the stand.

People would believe it. It was human nature to believe the worst, particularly when you’re dealing with someone who has a past like Max, who once was responsible for the collapse of the stock market and thus for shattering millions of financial dreams.

The public still hated him. This would only fuel their ire.

To stay at her house, he had blackmailed her with the tapes he had from the past, but just as she told him earlier, the more she thought about it, the less concerned she was.

All those years ago, when they secretly filmed the crowds coming undone at his parties, she made every effort to steer clear of the cameras. He assumed she was on those tapes, but she knew where the cameras were hidden and kept clear them. Be he was on those tapes, along with everyone else he wanted to hang if they didn’t come through with the inside information he wanted. Carra was so certain of this, she was willing to bet on it now as she prepared to take him down.

“How are you alive?” Wolfhagen asked Andrews.

“Well, let’s see, Max. Obviously, I didn’t die. Doesn’t that suck? People got to me in time. I was taken to the hospital Gregorio Maranon in Madrid and was brought back from the dead. And now it looks as if I’m about to bite it again.”

“That’s because he made a mistake,” Carra said. “When Spocatti drove a knife into his side, he told him that he was being taken out for taking the stand against you. Three weeks ago, he reached out to me because he knows I hate you. He thought I’d want my own revenge and that we could help each other. What he didn’t know is that I already had taken out the Coles and that I already tried to kill him.”

“So, why are you waiting?” Andrews asked.

She thought of Maggie Cain. “Because you called at the right time. Because I’m using you as bait.” She snapped her fingers. “And then you’re gone, too.”

“Why did you kill Wood?” Wolfhagen asked. “She put me away. You should have been thrilled by that. Why take her out for it?”

“I didn’t kill Wood. Her death is as much a shock to me as it is to everyone else. I’ve given it some thought and the only thing I can think of is that someone you burned knew you were in town. It likely was a past member of your club, probably someone you threatened with one of your tapes. They saw an opportunity to nail you for whatever you did to them and they acted on it.”

She shrugged. “What better way to implicate you in her death than to cut off her head, put it in a Tiffany box and send it to you at the Plaza? Some would think you were in danger. But others know your reputation. They’d see another angle. They’d think you sent it yourself because it’s the last thing a murderer would do. They’d think you did it so you could hide in plain sight. They know how crafty you are, Max, and I have to admit, it is good. If you weren’t going to die tonight, somebody was betting that by sending you her head, you’d be crippled by it. Just know that I didn’t kill Wood-and that we might never know who killed her. Life always doesn’t give us answers, but I do know this-you’ve got plenty of enemies who want to watch you burn. I’m just one of them.”

While Carra ticked off all the brilliant ways she’d pulled off this operation, Spocatti ticked off all the ways he should get out of it, but not without a brilliant shot of retribution of his own.

He’d been lied to. He’d been tricked. By the expression on Carmen’s face, he knew she was as angry as he, but they refused to let it show. Their faces were blank slates.

Occasionally, they looked at each other-communication in a glance. What he saw in her face was clear-she wanted revenge. She wanted Carra Wolfhagen and Ira Lasker strung up and quartered because they’d actively put their lives at risk by not coming clean with who they really were and what their true objectives were from the start.

But what did she see in his face? Age and experience told him to hold off as long as possible while considering every option before acting. Safety was paramount. Getting out clean was key. He knew what Carra had in mind next and it was so twisted, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to see it go down. But at what cost? How far was he willing to go for his own taste of revenge when and if he was able to turn her own plan against her?

What Carra Wolfhagen and Ira Lasker didn’t understand is that right now, he and Carmen owed them nothing. Their deal was broken the moment the truth was revealed.

They’d signed a contract to work with Maximilian Wolfhagen, not Carra Wolfhagen and Ira Lasker. They’d gone into this job with the belief that they needed to murder those people on Wolfhagen’s list in a controlled environment manufactured only by them. They’d never agreed to the unnecessary, amateurish complication they were facing now. And they never would have taken this route because it could have been handled so much more professionally.

He knew others were coming. He knew there were plans for them, too. An idea occurred to him on how to turn this when Carra called over to them. “Are you ready?” she asked.

Ready for what, he wondered. Ready to scrap this deal and get out now? Or did he and Carmen have time to pursue other options? He didn’t know.

“We’ve been ready,” he said. “You’ve been wasting valuable time.”

She tilted her head at him. “Then let’s finish this.”