Three Times a Lady

Chapter 29

Two days after he’d provided Special Agent Dana Whitestone of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with her very rude and extremely long-overdue wake-up call in order to snap the dumb bitch back to the reality of the lowly station she actually occupied in life, Nicholas checked into his room at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City and laid out his clothes for the night on the king-sized Tempurpedic bed featuring six matching pillows.

First there was his red dress – Armani, of course – a perfect replica of the one that his mother had worn the day she’d dragged him inside the walk-in freezer at the butcher’s shop back home in Chicago way back in 1971. At his mother’s insistence, Nicholas only wore name brands. Annabeth Preston had taught him very early on that to wear anything else would be beneath the Preston name, trashy. And if there were one thing in this world Nicholas was not, it was trashy.

To go along with his pretty red dress, Nicholas had selected six-inch-high black heels, silver Tiffany jewellery and a matching silver Tiffany clip in his hair. His mink coat would keep him warm against the frigid winter air that had put the Big Apple into such a deep freeze it didn’t seem likely to thaw out until somewhere around mid-April. Nicholas’s confidence was strong, his colour was good and his spirits were high. He was ready for this.

Nicholas looked around his well-appointed room and sighed. The hotel had cost a pretty penny, no two ways about it – almost six hundred bucks a night. But he considered it money well spent. After all, money marked the main theme of his entire trip to America’s largest and most famous city. And while he was here in New York City, Nicholas figured that he might as well see how the other half lived for a little while. Enjoy the good life for a change.

Moving to the window of his twentieth-floor room and opening up the curtains, Nicholas looked out at the breathtaking New York City skyline and admired the view. Taking in a deep breath through his nostrils, he let out the air again in a satisfied rush over his teeth. This was it. He was here. He’d made it. And if he could make it here, he could make it anywhere. Wasn’t that what the song said?

Nicholas checked his Mickey Mouse watch and stretched his neck to loosen up the muscles there, steeling himself for what would come next. The impending heart of the storm wasn’t scheduled to arrive until later on in the night, but New York City had already been blanketed in a light dusting of white – a powdered-sugar topping for the Big Apple. And the weather reports were calling for the worst blizzard since – well – since only the previous February, really. Still, that didn’t mean this particular blizzard wouldn’t be just as historic as the last, which in actuality had been two storms rolled into one, with the second coming hot on the heels of the first.

The First North American Blizzard of 2010 had devastated the United States from California all the way to the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as having caused extensive flooding and landslides in Mexico. In New York, it had been followed quickly by the Second North American Blizzard of 2010, a cataclysmic weather anomaly that had rivaled the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 and the Great Blizzard of 1888 in both ferocity and duration, leading to the deaths of dozens of people.

Nicholas smiled, knowing that tonight’s blizzard would lead to the death of at least one person he knew of. An extremely famous person.

The second name on his special little list.

Nicholas hummed to himself as he continued to survey the wintry landscape, trying to get a feel for the lay of the land. Once again – just as had been the case with Dinah Leach down in Atlanta – Mother Nature would act as his accomplice tonight. She was a natural fit for the job. Once again, law-enforcement officials and emergency responders would be stretched far too thin to stop him. Once again, he and Annabeth Preston had planned this out perfectly. And once again, Nicholas would show the world exactly who was in charge here.

During the blizzards of 2010, New York City officials had cancelled school well before the first snowflakes had even fallen from the heavens, sending Gotham scurrying into emergency mode while the behemoth storm systems had barreled their way toward the rotten core of the Big Apple. Six hours later, winds of forty miles an hour had buffeted the city like an earthquake, creating whiteouts and dumping at least two feet of snow on the ground. Stores of every stripe and colour – from Sears to Wal-Mart to JC Penney – had been overrun in the hours leading up to the storms as nervous residents rushed to stock up on such staples as food, water, flashlights and batteries. Five thousand maintenance workers had suffered through backbreaking twelve-hour shifts while operating nearly four hundred salt spreaders and two thousand snowplows. Commuters had been urged to stay off the city streets and instead rely on the subway system for transportation. City buses had been equipped with thick steel chains wrapped around their shiny black tires for traction. Both the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad had experienced lengthy delays. Continental Airlines had announced the cancellation of all four hundred of its flights by ten a.m. Southwest and all the other airlines had quickly followed suit.

In other words: they’d all run around like a bunch of chickens with their goddamn heads chopped off. And among that kind of commotion, who would ever notice one dead woman – even one as famous as the woman Nicholas would be targeting tonight?

***

Penelope Hargrave had been born into a world of wealth, and tonight she’d die in a world of wealth. Nicholas grimaced as he watched the socialite daughter of the most famous real-estate developer in all of New York City exit her long black limousine across the street. Throngs of her fans rushed forward and shouted out her name while two heavily muscled bouncers escorted her past the velvet ropes lining both sides of the sidewalk and directly into the city’s hippest nightclub, shouldering back the crowd and paparazzi as they went.

In the doorway of a shuttered convenience store thirty yards away, Nicholas trained his powerful Nikon binoculars on Penelope Hargrave’s beautiful face and brought the image into sharp focus, feeling a stab of irritation slice hard through his chest. What in the hell was wrong with this country? he wondered. Didn’t anyone have anything better to obsess over? And with the economy stuck in the toilet the way it had been for the past five years now, didn’t it annoy people that this whore actually got paid to get her groove on, actually received money for partying?

Apparently not.

Still, the club’s owners knew Penelope Hargrave’s mere presence boosted the profile of the establishment, so they were willing to part with some serious coin in order to get her to show up. Fifty grand for each appearance, according to a report that Nicholas had read recently on TMZ.com. Penelope Hargrave didn’t even have to dance if she didn’t want to. All she needed to do was sit there with that stupid, doe-eyed look on her face and drink the thousand-bottles that were sent to her table gratis. Maybe giggle every once in a while with her vacuous hangers-on while she basked in the warm light of a fame she hadn’t done a goddamn thing to deserve.

Nicholas shook his head in irritation, remembering the troubling scene to which he’d been subjected just a few hours earlier. Despite his very best efforts, he hadn’t been able to gain access to the exclusive club himself, had instead been turned away cold.

The embarrassing brush-off had wounded Nicholas’s pride, of course – had wounded it a lot, as a matter of fact – but he’d managed to suppress his rage long enough to resist pulling out his trusty knife and slitting open the doorman’s stupid throat right then and there on the snow-covered sidewalk. His mother would have been very upset had Nicholas deviated from the plan at this late stage of the game, and it was never a good idea to upset his mother, now was it?

Of course it wasn’t. Never had been and never would be. That much he’d known since he’d been nine years old.

Plan B wasn’t half bad, either, though. Not too shabby for a backup plan of attack, if Nicholas did say so himself. And that’s exactly what he had prepared for Penelope Hargrave tonight, wasn’t it?

A plan of attack.

***

After having been denied regular entrance to the club, Nicholas had been forced to wait most of the night to make his move. At around midnight or so, the opportunity finally presented itself, just as the weather conditions really started getting bad, with snow-blind conditions taking the city by the throat and strangling hard.

Just as Nicholas had known they would all along.

His big moment finally came when Penelope Hargrave’s limo driver ducked out of his vehicle half a block away from the nightclub to suck down a quick cigarette in the frigid winter air. Carefully navigating his way across the frozen sidewalk in his six-inch heels, Nicholas wrapped his beautiful mink coat even tighter around his shivering body and approached the limousine with a wide smile etched onto his beautiful face.

‘Hey there!’ he said to the driver. ‘How’s it goin’ tonight?’

The limo driver looked up from his cigarette and cocked his head to one side in an effort to block out the howling, gale-force winds whipping through the city. Lifting up his free hand, he cupped his had to his left ear. ‘What’s that?’

Nicholas widened the smile on his face and raised his voice several decibels in order to be heard clearly above Mother Nature’s deafening cacophony. ‘I said, how’s it goin’? F*ckin’ freezin’ out here tonight, ain’t it?’

The driver nodded and looked Nicholas over from head to toe, taking in the full measure of his splendid charms. ‘Yep, sure is. Colder than a witch’s tit.’

Nicholas let his mink fall open to show off his inviting cleavage. Every bit as inviting as Dinah Leach’s had been. Every bit as inviting as his mother’s, too.

‘Interested in warming up this witch’s tit?’ Nicholas asked.

***

In the back seat of the limousine ten minutes later, Nicholas took the horny driver into his mouth and sucked gently. Hard enough to provide the necessary friction but not hard enough to actually hurt the man. Hadn’t that always been the secret to giving a great blowjob?

Moaning softly, the driver leaned his head back against the leather seat and closed his eyes, enjoying the intense sensations that Nicholas was providing with his swirling tongue. A moment later – just as the man really started getting into it – Nicholas took in a deep breath through his nostrils. In the very next instant, he chomped down hard with his sharp white teeth, straining his jaw muscles with the effort.

A bloodcurdling scream exploded from the limo driver’s throat. It was deafening inside the vehicle, leaving Nicholas’s ears ringing. Still, not quite loud enough to be heard by any passers-by above the howling winter winds outside.

Nicholas turned his head to one side and spat out the sinful piece of flesh onto the floorboards of the back seat. Then he wiped away blood from his mouth with the back of his left hand and smiled mischievously. ‘Well, whaddya know?’ he said. ‘I guess now you’re just like me.’

The limo driver’s face went ghost-white. His hands trembled. Cupping his shaking hands over his destroyed crotch, he tried desperately to staunch the sickening flow of blood. His bloodshot eyes bulged wildly from their sockets, watering profusely from the agonising pain.

Nicholas widened his smile and slid out the preloaded hypodermic needle from the waistband of his nylons. He clucked his tongue. ‘Oh, come on. Quit being such a big baby. Look at it this way: now we can share clothes. If nothing else, it’ll save us both a whole hell of a lot of money.’

The man didn’t even try answering. He was much too preoccupied with attending to his mutilated crotch. Slipping the syringe deep into his throbbing jugular vein, Nicholas depressed the plunger. ‘Just go to sleep now,’ he whispered, brushing the back of his hand against the man’s stubbled cheek. ‘It’ll be so much easier for you this way.’

Ten seconds later, the man’s eyelids drooped and he slumped over.

Feeling for the keys in the driver’s pocket, Nicholas extracted them and climbed up into the front seat before cranking the engine into life and wheeling the limo into a nearby alleyway before popping the trunk and moving the driver’s motionless body there. If anybody happened to be watching them, they’d most likely think that Nicholas was taking care of a drunken pal. A real angel of mercy – that was Nicholas, all right.

Just like his mother.

***

At precisely one a.m., Nicholas pulled the limousine up to the nightclub’s main entrance. Thankfully, he’d managed to find the pickup time in the travel log tucked away inside the limousine’s glove compartment. Thank God for the little things.

Ten long minutes passed before a path in the crowd finally cleared and Penelope Hargrave sashayed her way through the mass of humanity on both sides of the velvet ropes, still looking like the fifty million bucks she was worth despite the inclement weather. Clearly accustomed to the popping flashbulbs of the paparazzi, the dumb whore smiled the same stupid smile she always smiled, luxuriating in the thoroughly undeserved adoration showered upon her by her adoring public.

A large Puerto Rican man dressed in a black tuxedo opened up the back door of the limousine for her and held it for the socialite as she stepped inside. Looking up into the rearview mirror, Nicholas watched Penelope Hargrave immediately pour herself a drink from the fresh bottle of Black Label sitting in an ice bucket in the climate-controlled centre console.

He stared up into the mirror at the socialite’s reflection, studying it closely. Penelope Hargrave’s platinum blonde hair had obviously been dyed recently, probably at one of the finest salons in the entire city. The heavy scent of her perfume permeated the entirety of the vehicle – perfume that had no doubt cost at least five hundred dollars an ounce. The glittering diamond jewellery sparkling at her wrists and throat looked to be equal to the gross domestic product of most third-world countries.

All in all, an embarrassment of riches.

‘All alone tonight, miss?’ Nicholas asked.

Penelope Hargrave looked up into the mirror and locked stares with him. She wrinkled up her face in disgust. ‘Ugh,’ she said, leaning forward to activate the tinted window between them. ‘Don’t talk to me, OK? Just drive me home. Isn’t that what you get paid to do?

Nicholas nodded as the window slid up with a faint electric whine. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I get paid to do.’

***

Forty minutes later, Penelope Hargrave’s naked body had been tied securely to the back seat of the limousine – spread-eagle, of course. Each one of her bloodcurdling screams pierced Nicholas’s eardrums, threatening to make his brain explode inside his skull.

Nicholas shook his head in disgust. Only one way to shut the screeching bitch up. Only one language she understood.

Removing a huge wad of one-dollar bills from the pocket of his coat, Nicholas began stuffing them one-by-one down the socialite’s throat with the long, thin piece of metal he’d brought along for the ride.

Penelope Hargrave’s beautiful face turned purple after just ten greenbacks. Five more George Washingtons stopped her breathing altogether.

Pursing his painted lips in irritation, Nicholas cursed his rotten luck. He’d brought along a hundred dollar bills with him tonight, had wanted to enjoy this a bit more. And he had zero idea how he’d spend all the leftover loot. A new purse, maybe. Perhaps a manicure with Annabeth Preston. Maybe they could make a mother-daughter day out of it.

Half an hour later, Nicholas dumped Penelope Hargrave’s dead body into the alleyway two hundred yards away from her multi-million-dollar brownstone in the heart of Manhattan. Just to make an artistic statement, he positioned her corpse next to the long row of dented silver trashcans. After all, unlike Nicholas Preston, that’s exactly what Penelope Hargrave represented in this world, wasn’t it? Trash?

Goddamn right, it was. She’d been trash the day she’d been born – given nearly every imaginable advantage in life – and she remained trash to the day that she’d died in the back seat of a beautiful stretch limousine during one of the worst blizzards in the history of New York City.

Trash. Nothing more and nothing less.

Just like the next name on Nicholas’s very special little list.

Nicholas’s heart thumped wildly in his chest as he slid back behind the limousine’s steering wheel and cranked the engine into life before putting the long, sleek vehicle into gear and driving away into the storm-ravaged night. Time for him to get back to work.

And once Nicholas had dumped the limo into the icy waters of the Hudson River in order to properly dispose of the driver’s unconscious body in the trunk, he’d attend to the pop singer out in Arkansas, Amber Knightly.

That was when things really ought to start getting interesting for him.