Roses Are Red (Alex Cross 6)

He nodded confidently, smugly. “This is the best you can buy, baby. Top of the line. Y’see, I met with the man behind those nasty jobs in Maryland and Virginia. Want to know what he’s like? Well, he’s one cold motherfucker. And remember who’s telling you that.”

Brophy stared hard at Betsey and me. He definitely had our interest.

“He called himself Mastermind,” Brophy said in a slow Florida drawl. “He was dead serious about it. Mastermind! You believe it?

“The two of us met at the Sheraton Airport Hotel. He contacted me through a guy I know from New York,” Brophy went on. “The so-called Mastermind knew things about me. He ticked off my strengths, then weaknesses. He had me down to a T. He even knew about the lovely Nora and her habit.”

“Think he was a cop? All the information he had about you?” I asked Brophy.

Brophy grinned broadly. “No. Too smart. He might have talked to some cops, though, considering he knew everything. That’s why I stayed and listened to the dude. That, plus he told me this was a high-six-figure opportunity for me. That caught my interest.”

All Agent Cavalierre and I had to do now was listen. Once Brophy got started there was no stopping him.

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“You want to know what he looked like? That’s the million-dollar question, Regis Philbin. Let me set the scene for you. When I walked into the room at his hotel, there were bright lights shining at me. Like Hollywood premiere movie lights. I couldn’t see shit.”

“Not even shapes?” I asked Brophy. “You must have seen something.”

“His silhouette. He had long hair. Or maybe he was wearing a wig. Big nose, big ears. Like a car with both doors open. We talked and he said he’d be in touch — but I never heard from him again. Guess he didn’t want me for his crew.”

“Why not?” I asked Brophy. It was a serious question. “Why wouldn’t he want someone like you?”

Brophy made a pistol with his hand and shot me. “He wants killers, dude. I’m not a killer. I’m a lover. Right, Betsey?”

Chapter 40

WHAT BROPHY HAD TOLD US was scary and it couldn’t get out to the press. Someone who called himself the Mastermind was out there interviewing and hiring professional killers. Only killers. What was he planning next? More bank-hostage jobs? What the hell was he thinking?

After I finished work that night, I went to St. Anthony’s. Jannie was doing fine, but I stayed another night with her, anyway. My home away from home. She had begun calling me her “roomie.”

The next morning I waded through files on disgruntled former employees of Citibank, First Union, and First Virginia; and also records of anyone who had made any kind of serious threat against the banks. The mood in the FBI field office was one of quiet desperation. There was none of the buzz and excitement that went along with leads, clues, progress of any kind. We still didn’t have a single good suspect.

Threats and crank communications to banks are usually handled by an in-house investigative department. General hate mail is most often from people who are denied loans or have had their homes foreclosed. Hate mail is as likely to come from a woman as from a man. According to the psychological profiles I read that morning, it was usually someone having work, financial, or domestic problems. Occasionally, there were seriou

s threats because of a bank’s labor practices or its affiliations with foreign countries such as South Africa, Iraq, and Northern Ireland. Mail at the major banks was X-rayed in the mail room, and there were frequent false alarms. Musical Christmas cards sometimes set off the system.

The process was exhausting but necessary. It was part of the job. I glanced over at Betsey Cavalierre around one. She was right there with the rest of us, seated at a plain metal desk. She was nearly hidden behind stacks of paper.

“I’m going to run out again for a while,” I told her. “There’s a guy I want to check out. He’s made some threats against Citibank. He lives nearby.”

She put down her pen. “I’ll go with you. If you don’t mind. Kyle says he trusts your hunches.”

“Look where it got Kyle,” I said, and smiled.

“Exactly,” Betsey said, and winked. “Let’s go.”

I had read and reread Joseph Petrillo’s file. It stood out from the others. Every week for the past two years, the chairman of Citibank in New York had received an angry, even vicious letter from Petrillo. He had worked in security for the bank from January of 1990 until recently. He’d been fired because of budget cuts that affected every department in the bank, not just his. Petrillo didn’t accept the explanation, or anything else the bank tried to make him go away.

There was something about the tone of the letters that alarmed me. They were well-written and intelligent, but the letters showed signs of paranoia, possibly even schizophrenia. Petrillo had been a captain in Vietnam before he worked for the bank. He’d seen combat. The police had been to see him about the crank mail, but no charges had been filed.

“This must be one of those famous feelings of yours,” Betsey said as we rode to the suspect’s house on Fifth Avenue.

“It’s one of those famous bad feelings,” I said. “The detective who interviewed him a few months ago had a bad feeling, too. The bank refused to go any further with the complaint.”

Unlike its namesake in New York, Fifth Avenue in D.C. was a low-rent area on the edge of gentrifying Capitol Hill. It had originally been mostly Italian American but was now racially mixed. Rusted, dated cars lined the street. A BMW sedan, fully loaded, stood out from the other vehicles. Probably a drug dealer.

“Same old, same old,” Betsey said.