Bleached

Bones A Novel By Carl J. Luna All Rights Reserved April, 2013

Make haste to reassure me, I beg you, and tell me that our fellow citizens understand us, support us and protect us as we protect the glory of the Empire. If it should be otherwise, if we should leave our bleached bones on these desert sands in vain, then BEWARE THE ANGER OF THE LEGIONS!! Marcus Flavinius, centurion. 2nd Cohort, Augusta Legion: To his cousin, Tertullus, in Rome. 2d century A. D. It had been a great day. It was going to be an even better night. Joel Kaden strode through the luxurious lobby of the five star Hotel Maximilian confident that fortune had smiled on him, was smiling on him and would continue to smile on him as sure as the sun would come up in the east and hed make another early killing on the Hong Kong exchange in the west. Yes, fortune shone bright upon the forty-year old Duke of Derivatives, as Forbes had labeled him last year, marking his ascent as yet another of the Streets new generation of crown princes. Of course, given the size of the fortune he had already amassed he practically owned fortune itself. Thanks to that song from that musical his wife had made him go to for a charity event oncehed had to endure two and a half hours of freaks railing about Aids, for chrissakes ,before he could cut them a check and get out--hed been able to calculated his pay per minute per year.. And dont jump on my case for saying freaks, hed rail at anyone, who had the temerity to get in his face for saying things like freaks, or any of the other dozens of slurs and invectives he routinely used as part of his standard repertoire when not around anyone with a recording device. Morals and platitudes are for the masses, not those of us doing Gods work. And I give a helluva a lot of money to all the charities for the weirdos and freaks. What do the French call it? Noblesse Oblige for chrissakes. And, as a member of the new nobility, he understood and exercised his Noblesse Oblige accordingly. Taking the appropriate write-off, of course. Hed given to gays and AIDS, hed given, to Jews and their precious Israel, to Muslims and their local mosque of the month, to hippie environmentalists, pinko social activists, gun nuts, sick-kid of the week crybabies and even the love-an-ugly-mutt crowd. If there was a charity dinnerwith press coverage, of course-- he gave. It was what the PROLOGUE

royalty of finance did to let the common folk know they hadnt been completely forgotten by their betters. And besides, nine charity events out of ten he ended up getting laid. Some times twice in an evening. Sometimes even before the speeches. So how did he measure a year? Simple. In cash. Lots of it. Hed divided last years pay with bonus by those lyrical five hundred twenty-eight thousand six hundred minutes and discovered he was making almost a buck a second. That was sixty bucks each and every minute: working, sleeping, eating, screwing, crapping. That was thirty-six hundred an hour. Eighty-six thousand and change a day. Over six hundred thousand a week. Over three point one million, in a typical month. A cool thirty-two million or so a year. And that wasnt even for a big year, say like 2006, before the wheels fell off. And he wasnt even the highest paid person on the Street. Not even close. Best of all, he didnt even have to work as hard as stealing it would require. Wall Street wizards made money by simply creating it out of whole cloth. Inverse derivatives, credit default instruments, short-selling and all the other proprietary trading mumbo jumboin any other time, in any other place such monetary hocus pocus would have been equated as alchemy or witchcraft. Hell, theyd created a quadrillion dollar derivative universe out of a seventy trillion dollar global economy. Try that, Gandalf. What it really was, of course, was the long con. The Ponziest of Ponzis. Do it on your own and youre that schmuck Bernie Madhoff, getting caught and spending life in prison. Do it as an industry and youre titans of finance, kings of a financial world where politicians did your bidding, the media fawned over you and where accountability simply didnt exist. Business booms? You got bonuses. Business bust like back in 2007? And probably within another couple of years, given how much he and his ilk had been cashing out? Well then, the rest of the economy might go into the crapper but he and his industry got bailouts. And bonuses. It really was a good life. The lobby was empty. Even the city that never slept tended to close down after midnight on a Tuesday. He waived off the buxom blonde conciergea double major in art history and finance from Wesley, no lesswho was already sprinting around her desk to see if one of their best clients needed the slightest thing to make his stay, brief as it would be, as pleasant as it could be. That included any conceivable amenity at all--herself included as hed pleasantly discovered a few times when it truly was business that had brought him to this particular plush palace and when a fifteen minute diversion between billion-dollar bond deals was called for. It was remarkable and delightful to him what women would do in exchange for a no-holds barred trip to Cartier. But tonight he had the presidential suite booked (six hours of income) for an evening of truly unbelievable pleasure thanks to a woman with a truly unbelievably pleasurable imagination. Nan (two hours income and a steal at triple the price), complete with her bag of tricks, baggies of snow, a thoroughly dirty mind and incredible stamina would, even now be opening the chilled Dom White Gold Jeroboam (fifteen hours income). Time now to celebrate because tomorrow it was back to the grindhe had a breakfast meeting with that pimple-faced accountant

(ok, senior partner) from MPGK discussing the cash flows from their little side venture in monetary rebranding as he liked to call it. That the sideline only generated a few hundreds of million a year for his management fund was of minor concern to him. That it had the possibility of offering significantly more piqued his interest, of course. But it was the venture's fundamental naughtiness, as he thought of ita grownup version of the frat boy prank he and his buds used to do at Harvard; the fun factor, as it were--that made it really worthwhile. That instead of a threat of expulsion this particular naughtiness carried a potential life sentence --some people took this treason thing too literally, after allonly heightened the delight. With the caveat that, like at Harvard, it was all the fun and rush of doing wrong without any of the risks of being caught or, if caught, punished. His kind were seldom caught and never really punished, after all. The concierge, smiling through her obvious disappointmentno trip to Cartier for her this weekslinked back to her desk. Having no need to either check in or to have bags handledsuch menial tasks having already been done for him by menial peoplehe strode determinedly across the chandelier-lit, Persian rug- carpeted, Louis XVI antiqued, right-kind-of-people serving lobby. Nan was waiting and time, after all, was money. He reached the alcove with the express elevators that would whisk him without delay over the cheaper lower floors to the pricier environs of the presidential suite. While this was a grand hotel it, regrettably, did not have a private elevator leading to a penthouse. The Maximilian also lacked a human elevator operator, something even the finest establishments had long since abandoned for reasons of basic economy. Perhaps, though, with unemployment remaining so high, labor to perform such niceties might one day soon be affordable enough for proper places such as this to provide proper services to proper gentlemen like him. For now, though, he had to push the button to call the elevator on his own which, of course, would necessitate a good hand washing once in the suite. Nan could wash everything else. Thankfully he only had to wait a few seconds after pushing the button (round that up to three bucks earned) before the gilded elevator indicator sconce lit up and the beautifully polished bronze elevator doors slid open. He entered the lift and pressed the button for the top floor. The doors started to slide shut only to be interrupted by a work-gloved hand that caught them and pushed them open. The worked-gloved hand belonged to, of all things, a workman. He was dressed in khaki coveralls, downturned face obscured by the ubiquitous modern clothing accessory of the obsequious servant class, the baseball cap. The worker stepped in and, without even acknowledging Kaden, pressed the button for the first of the higher floors the express elevator could stop at, then stepped to the back of the lift to slouch against the wall. Kaden considered walking off the elevator to wait for anotherhe didnt pay for a luxury suite only to have to share his ride up with a member of the unwashed massesbut, then, Nan was waiting, so he decided to endure the inconvenience. He also made a mental note to lodge a complaint with the manager. Servants belonged in the service elevator, after all.

 The door closed. The elevator began its fast ascent. He could feel the momentary pressure of acceleration through his Gucci shoes into his knees. He was just beginning to feel a slight pressure change in his ears when he heard an odd hissing sound behind him. Before he could turn to see what was making the sound he felt somethingsomeone--grab the hair atop his head, painfully tight, and pull his head backward. Before he could fully process what was happeningthe workman, he had time to think, the word mugging forming in his brainhe felt a sharp pressure at the base of his skull followed by something like the popping of a pimple. And then he felt pain. Explosive pain. Broiling pain. Searing pain. Agonizing pain. A horrible pain such as he had never felt, never imagined. A pain that went on for minutes. Hours. Oh the money it accounted for. A pain that was simultaneously excruciatingly long and instantly over, to be replaced with a sudden, rushing nothingness. His eyes, still open but unresponsive to his disjointed attempt at command, showed him the side wall of the elevator as it slid by him, the floor rushing up until it had forced him into a sitting position. A thousand disjointed thoughts flooded through his fast-fogging brain. Dads dismissiveness. Moms indifference. The elevator dinging. That incredible carne asada burrito hed had on spring break in Cancun. The elevator dinging a second time. A blur of movement. Lost season five episode six. And that song. Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thou. The man in the baseball cap exited the elevator at its second stop on the fifty- third floor. Moments later he was safely back in his room, peeling off the duck tape hed used to keep his door from latching upon his earlier exit. The simple precaution allowed him to exit and reenter his room without using a key and, therefore, without leaving an electronic time stamp of movements. Time: zero thirty-five. Elapsed time: thirteen minutes. Mission accomplished, once again, with the precision hed been trained to. He quickly stripped off the overalls, rolled them tightly along with the baseball cap, gloves, tool belt, weapon and rubber shoes, bagged them and then sealed them in the Fed-Ex box hed brought for that purpose. Hed mail them to himself from the hotel lobby upon checkout that morning. Then he stripped off the casual attire hed worn beneath the overallscasual slacks, silk shirt and sports jacket and fine leather loafersthese constituted his backup plan wardrobe which, once again, hed not needed to avail himself of. Naked, he entered the bathroom and hopped in the shower, letting the hot water wash away any trace evidence that might have alit upon him. Letting the hot water wash away whatever guilt he still felt over actions such as hed just taken. Which, after all that had transpiredafter all they had put him through, they had taken from himwas not a tremendous amount. Standing perfectly still beneath the near-scalding stream, he conducted a mental post-mission debrief, looking for flaws in operational deployment. Hed checked into the hotel at nineteen hundred hours. It was his fourth stay at the Maximilian; his first three had been reconnaissance runs scoping out the

environs and tracking his targets actions. Coupled with six weeks of discrete surveillance, internet research and a drop-in at the targets office, hed compiled a rigorous record of the targets movement and behavior. Which, hed discovered, included a standing weekly visit to the Maximilian for a rendezvous nocturnal. Hence his own stays to plan a perfect public takeout. A strike that sent a message to his other targets that he was out there. That, even here, in a grand five star hotel in the bastion of their power and security, they were vulnerable. Hed left his room at nineteen hundred, spent forty-five minutes in the hotel gym and then returned to his room to shower, calling for room service at twenty- one hundred. Room service arrived at twenty-one thirty. He dined on an organic egg white herb frittata and a bottle of mineral water -- way fancier and more health conscious than his usual fare but in keeping with the image of the anal-retentive urban lawyer hed cultivated amongst the staff. He pushed the cart out into the hallway at twenty-two thirty, pausing to place the duck tape before closing the room door, taking care the tape was not visible from the hallway. No Watergate-style faux paus for him. Then he ordered pay per view an action movie hed already seen but would provide depth to his alibi in the extremely unlikely event he was questioned about the evening later. His target always arrived at the hotel at zero thirty, Wednesday morning, give or take five minutes, maximum, taking the express elevator to the top floor where his mistress awaited. At precisely zero zero he put on the work overalls and rubber work boots hed brought, donned the blue baseball cap and cinched on the tool belt carrying, amongst other things, the fast-drying spray paint hed use to block out security cameras and his weapon of choice for the mission: a seven-inch shiv imbedded into a stock screwdriver handle. At zero twenty hed exited the room, making certain no one was in the hallway to see his movements. Entering the stairwell five rooms to his left, hed ascended three flights. While the Maximilian provided strong security for its guests, he had found it also provided for their privacy. Camera surveillance was confined to the public spaces below guest floors and on the elevators leading to them. Stairwells had cameras on the bottom and top floors but not in between. Where guests went once they ascended to the guest floorsand whom they went with, or who visited them--was not the concern of management. Privacy ranked with security as a concern of their clientele. Once he had breached the security cordon of the lobby by becoming a guest, he had the run of the upper floors. Zero twenty two: exited stairwell, crossed length of wing to central express elevator bank and summoned a car. Zero twenty-four: rode elevator down to lobby, exited the express elevator into alcove off to side of main lobby foyer and out of sight of front desk. Zero twenty-eight: entered service hallway off alcove, blacking out security camera above door with spray paint. Waited, watching elevator alcove through service door propped slightly ajar with a rubber wedge brought for that purpose. Zero thirty-one: observed target entering alcove. Ascertained target was alone. Removed wedge, emerged from service hallway and crossed alcove to enter car with target. Zero thirty-two: ascended with target to upper guest floors. Zero

thirty-three: removed spray paint from tool belt with left hand while extracting weapon with right. Quick three second burst of opaque black paint applied to overhead camera dome. Dropped can and, in one smooth, well practiced motion, reached over and grabbed target by hair with same hand while pressing stiletto against nape of targets neck just to left of spinal cord, beneath the first vertebrae. Sharp upwards thrust. Quick rotation, like stirring a cocktail. Wiped blade on targets shoulder and reinserted in belt while releasing head. Reached over slumping body to press every floor button up to top floor. Picked up spray paint. Zero thirty-four: exited elevator at second stop, his floor. Crossed hallway to room most exposed and dangerous part of mission. Had anyone entered the hallway he would have engaged his backup plan: enter stairwell, descend to ground floor, exit building through side staff access door, ignoring alarms, cross to backup rally point in alley three blocks away, stow overalls and gear in dumpster hed scoped out, cross over two blocks to Bar Americain, have a couple of drinks, return to hotel, cross through now on scene police security presence answering obvious questions-- who are you, where are you goingwith obvious answersIm a guest. Coming back from having a few drinks-- return to room and resume final extraction plan. As it was, the hallway was empty. Zero thirty-five: back in room, tape removed from door. He turned off the shower, dried himself, had two glasses of tap water, He didnt have the urge to urinate, he noticed. Hed have to do a better job of staying hydrated on his next mission. He turned off the lights and slipped into bed. His cell phone alarm was set to awaken him at zero six-thirty. Hed pack, leave the room, check out, post his Fed-Ex package in the lobby drop off and be on the subway back to his sisters apartment by zero seven hundred. And then hed continue planning the next missions. DC. San Diego. Palm Beach. The list went on, the target environment rich. His earlier kills had been tactical in naturerequirements to set the field of battle for his final assault. Now his mission was moving into its strategic endgame. Now he was aiming directly at their command and control structure. As the casualties mounted, they would be forced to capitulate on his terms. Or die, one by one. The Bard had written the first thing to do was kill all the lawyers. The Bard was wrong. The first thing to do was kill all the bankers.