Running of the bulls wst-2 Read online

  Running of the bulls

  ( Wall street thriller - 2 )

  Christopher Smith

  Running of the bulls

  Christopher Smith

  BOOK ONE

  PREFACE

  New York City

  Bebe Cole was an apparition that moved forward without sound, an enigma in the center of the dim foyer, where she turned on unsteady feet, unbuttoned her full-length cashmere coat, and let it fall to the gleaming marble floor.

  She was naked, bloody, bruised.

  “They’ve killed us,” she said.

  Still stunned from the beating, Edward Cole stared at his wife from the doorway of their Fifth Avenue apartment, unable to answer her, unable to speak.

  The bandage they’d wrapped around his chest was too tight for him to breathe with any comfort; the drugs they’d pumped him full of were too much of a chemical blow for his body to handle. He brought a hand to his ruined face and felt its altered shapes and swollen cheeks. He smoothed his fingertips along the uneven curve of his broken nose and wondered how he’d ever explain this to a public who would want to know.

  “You said they’d show restraint.”

  Her voice sounded as though it came from the far end of a winding tunnel, and Cole had to concentrate to hear it. He tried to focus on the petite figure that was his wife, but she was disappearing, vanishing, becoming one with the darkness rapidly unraveling along the edges of his vision.

  “You promised we would be safe.”

  He shook his head at her in frustration, took a step toward her and was not aware that he’d fallen until he lifted his head from the cool marble floor and tasted the fresh surge of blood rushing into his mouth.

  Again, he tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. And so he lay there, listening to the shallowness of his own breath, watching with fading eyesight as Bebe’s shoes turned toward the dark library, stopped, and then backed up quickly as shoes that weren’t hers raced forward. Too weak to comprehend or to even care, Cole slipped into unconsciousness.

  When he woke, he saw his wife first.

  Strapped to a Queen Anne chair in the center of the foyer, her carefully dyed blonde hair tousled and hanging in her face, Bebe was surrounded by four tripods, each holding a digital video camera trained on her. She was naked, shivering, gagged. There was a scrape on her forehead, cuts and bruises on her breasts. She locked eyes with him and moaned.

  Cole forced himself to focus, pushed himself into a sitting position.

  Bebe shook her head at him, tried to spit out the gag, but couldn’t. She struggled to release herself from the rope that bound her hands and legs to the antique chair, but it was impossible. She turned her head to the left.

  Cole followed her look.

  There, sitting in the shadows beneath van Gogh’s White Roses was a man Cole had never seen before. He was handsome, athletic, wore black pants and a fitted black turtleneck. In his hand was a gun.

  The man rose from his seat, nodded at Edward and stepped beside Bebe, who followed his every move with her terror-filled eyes. “It’s about time you woke up,” he said to Cole in a relaxed voice. “We’ve been waiting hours for you.” He kissed the top of Bebe’s head. “Haven’t we, dear?”

  She jerked away from him and looked to Cole for help.

  But Cole couldn’t move-fear had rooted him to the floor. Powerless, he watched the man remove the gag from Bebe’s lipstick-smeared mouth, press the gun against her temple and cock the trigger.

  Bebe started. Her shoulders drew in and she looked imploringly at her husband, whose own lips had parted in shock. The gun, Edward saw, had a silencer. The four video cameras surrounding Bebe hummed.

  “Your wife needs you and yet you sit there,” the man said with disappointment. “After everything she’s done for you, after the way you’ve used and humiliated her in this marriage, couldn’t you at the very least do something to help her?”

  Edward rocked to his knees, pushed himself to his feet. He stumbled and leaned against a wall. His entire body ached. He was aware of his coat falling open, exposing his fat nakedness, the bandages at his chest, but he didn’t care. The man was running the barrel of a gun along the bloated curves of his wife’s bruised face.

  “I want you to think of all your sins,” the man said evenly, turning one of the cameras on Cole. “I want you to think about every one of them. Right now. Think.”

  “Who are you?” Cole asked.

  “I want you to think about betraying your friends,” the man said with anger. “I want you to think about selling out to the SEC, taking that witness stand and sending one of your best friends to prison when you yourself should have been rotting there in his place.” The man cocked an eyebrow at him. “Mr. Cole, I want you to think about all of it.”

  Bebe moved her head slowly, carefully away from the gun. In a quiet, barely restrained voice, she said to her husband: “It’s Wolfhagen.”

  The man kissed her on the cheek. “The canary sings.”

  “He’s hired this man to kill us.”

  “So he has,” the man said, and fired a bullet into her brain.

  Edward’s whole body went tense with disbelief. Bebe’s unseeing left eye was blinking, her upper lip quivering, mouth working, foot twitching, yet she was dead, had to be dead. Part of her head was on the floor.

  A hand gripped his arm.

  Cole turned and saw the woman just as she jammed the gun into the small of his back and urged him forward, toward his bleeding wife, the man in black, the humming cameras. “Fight me,” she said, “and I swear to God you won’t die as quickly as your wife.”

  She came around and pulled him across the foyer with a hand far steadier than his own. The man had dragged Bebe off to one side and now was placing a matching chair where she had sat. Cole was led to the middle of Bebe’s spilled blood. Now, the cameras surrounded him.

  “Are you thinking about those sins, Mr. Cole?”

  They’d murdered his wife. They’d do the same to him. If he broke now, it would be over for him. He forced himself to think, to somehow remain calm.

  “Are you thinking about taking that witness stand? Do you remember the look on Wolfhagen’s face when you burned him?”

  He ignored the man, looked at the woman. Tall and attractive, thick brown hair framing an oval face of cool intelligence, her eyes the color of chestnuts and just as hard. She wore black leggings and a black shirt, no jewelry.

  The man moved behind her, his face partly concealed behind the video camera now poised in front of him. “Get rid of his coat,” he said to the woman.

  She got rid of it.

  “Now the bandages.”

  She ripped them from Cole, who stared into the camera’s opaque lens and saw his own ruined face floating up at him from the dark, rounded glass. And he knew-Wolfhagen would be viewing these tapes.

  The woman took a step back, looked with revulsion at Cole’s bloody chest, then turned that look on him. “So, it’s starting again?” she said. “You were there last night? You let them do this to you?” She shook her head at him in disgust. “How could you let them do this to you?”

  “Because he asked for it to get off on it,” the man said. “Isn’t that how it works, Mr. Cole? You and your wife asked for it, but this time, it got a little out of hand.”

  Cole held their gaze and said nothing. He willed himself to believe that he could get through this. It wasn’t too late for him. Everyone had a price, everyone could be bought. Hadn’t Wolfhagen taught him that much?

  “I have money,” he said to them. “Millions. I’ll triple whatever Wolfhagen’s paying you. Both of you can walk out of here right now and never have to do this again. You’ll be set for life.
Just let me live.”

  The woman’s lips, rouged red, broke into a half-smile. “Did you really think he’d let you get away with it forever?”

  Cole shook his head as if he didn’t understand, but he understood. He knew this day would come. Still, his belief in the power and the influence of money galvanized him. They would not kill him if he offered enough. “Millions,” he said.

  She lifted the gun.

  Pamplona, Spain

  Six Months Later

  Ever since he was a child, Mark Andrews had longed to run with the bulls.

  As a boy in Boston, he would sit on his grandfather’s lap and listen to the old man’s stories of his days in Spain, when he was still young and single, and traveling the world on the trust fund his father gave him upon graduating from Yale.

  Mark would marvel at the man’s retelling of La Fiesta de San Fermin, the week-long orgy of bull worship that honored Pamplona’s patron saint San Fermin, who was martyred when bulls dragged his body through the city’s narrow, dusty streets.

  Mark’s grandfather had run with the bulls. He had stood among the thousands of men in white shirts and red sashes impatiently waiting for the first rocket to signal their release.

  Even then, some thirty years ago in his parents’ home, Mark could hear the thunderous clacking of hooves as the twelve beasts came crashing down Calle Santo Domingo, through Plaza Consistorial and Calle Mercaderes, their horns sharp and deadly, their murderous rage focused on those foolish young men running blindly before them.

  Now, at thirty-nine, Mark Andrews himself stood among fools in white shirts and red sashes, the early morning sun beating down on his face, the delicious anticipation of the impending event flooding his senses.

  Pamplona was a city gone mad.

  All week long, fifty thousand people from around the world had participated in La Fiesta de San Fermin, known to the locals as Los Sanfermines. They paraded drunkenly through the streets with towering, colorful gigantes, went to the afternoon bullfights, drank gallons of wine, made love in alleyways, and rose each morning from brief catnaps to watch the spectacular running of the bulls.

  Earlier in the week, the mayor had kicked off the festivities at noon by lighting one of many rockets from the Ayuntamiento’s balcony. And now, as Mark waited along with nearly a thousand other men for the rocket that would signal the beginning of el encierro, he watched and listened to the cheering crowd that looked down at him from open windows, wrought-iron balconies, the Santo Domingo stairs, as well as the Plaza de Toros itself.

  Never had he felt more alive. He would run as his grandfather had.

  He felt a hand on his arm. Mark turned and faced a stranger.

  “Do you have the time?” the man asked. “I left my watch at the hotel. They should be firing the first rocket any minute now.”

  Mark smiled at the man, delighted to be in the company of a fellow American. He checked his watch and said: “In a few minutes, we’ll be running like hell from twelve very pissed off bulls.” He extended a hand, which the man shook. “I’m Mark Andrews,” he said. “Manhattan.”

  The man’s grip was firm, his teeth bright white when he smiled back. “Vincent Spocatti,” he said. “L.A. What brings you here?”

  “My grandfather,” Mark said. “You?”

  The man looked surprised. “Hemingway,” he said, in a tone that implied there could be no other reason why he had traveled thousands of miles to be at this event. “I even brought Lady Brett with me.” He pointed down the barricaded street, toward a building where a young woman stood at a second-story balcony, her dark hair and white dress stirring in the breeze. “That’s my wife, there,” he said. “The one with the video camera.”

  Mark looked up and caught a glimpse of the woman just as the first rocket tore into the sky to signal that the gates of the corral had been opened.

  He felt a rush. The sea of young Spaniards and tourists lurched forward. A cheer went through the crowd and rippled down the narrow streets, reverberating off the stone walls, finally blooming in the Plaza de Toros itself. Moments later, a second rocket sounded, warning the crowd that the chase-which usually lasted only two minutes-had begun.

  Mark ran. He heard the bulls galloping behind him, felt the earth trembling beneath his feet and he ran, knowing that if he stumbled, if he fell in the street, he would be trampled by the men running behind him and then by the 1,800-pound beasts themselves.

  He moved quickly and easily, suddenly euphoric as he shot past the Calle La Estafeta and the Calle de Javier. He thought fleetingly of his grandfather and wished he could have been here to see this.

  The crowd of spectators was screaming. Shouting. The terrific pounding of hooves filled the morning air with the intensity of a million small explosions. Mark shot a glance over his shoulder, saw the American, the crush of young men behind him and the first of the twelve bulls that were rapidly closing the distance between them all.

  He was delirious. He was beyond happy. He knew that not even the day he testified against Wolfhagen could compare to the rush he experienced now.

  He was nearing the Plaza de Toros when Spocatti, fan of Hemingway’s lost generation, reached out and gripped his arm.

  Startled, his pace slowed for an instant and he looked at the man. Now, he was running alongside him, his face flushed and shiny, his eyes a shade darker than he remembered. Mark was about to speak when Spocatti shouted: “Got a message for you, Andrews. Wolfhagen sends his best. Said he wants to thank you for ruining his life.”

  And before Mark could speak, before he could even react, the man plunged a knife into his left side. And then he did it again. And again, sinking the knife close to his heart.

  Mark stopped running. The pain was excruciating. He looked down at his bloody side and chest, and fell to his knees, watching in dazed silence as the man named Spocatti leaped over one of the barricades and disappeared into the jumping, thrashing crowd.

  He had fallen in the middle of the street. Hundreds of men were darting past him, jumping over him, screaming as the bulls drew near. Knowing this was it, knowing this is how he would die, Mark turned and faced the first bull as it loomed into sight and sank its lowered horns into his right thigh.

  He was thrown effortlessly into the air, a rag doll tossed into the halo of his own blood, his right leg shattered, the bone jutting from the torn flesh.

  He landed heavily on his side, so stunned that he was only dimly aware that more bulls were trampling him, their hooves digging into his face, arms and stomach.

  The men rushing past him tried to move him out of the way, tried to grasp his shirt and pull him to safety, but it was impossible. The beasts were upon them. There was nothing anyone could do but watch in horror as twelve running bulls ripped apart a former prince of Wall Street.

  When it was over and the bulls had passed, the thing that was Mark Andrews lay in the street-its body bruised and broken beyond recognition, its breathing a slow, clotted gasp. It looked up at the narrow slit of blue sky that shined between the buildings on either side of it.

  In the instant before its mind winked out, its failing eyesight focused on Lady Brett Ashley herself. She was standing just above on one of the building’s wrought-iron balconies, smiling as she filmed its death with the video camera held in her outstretched hand.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Day One

  New York City

  One Month Later

  At the Click Click Camera Shop on West 8th Street, Jo Jo Wilson cranked up the dial on the dented green oxygen tank between his legs and eyed the camera in Marty Spellman’s hands. “Beauty, ain’t it?” he said through the mask covering his mouth. “Just hit the market. Knew you’d want it. Called you first. The strings I pulled.”

  Marty looked over the camera. It was the latest digital Nikon-the best and latest in their series-and it was impressive. God only knew how Wilson got hold of it. It had the sort of lens that was so powerful, it could capture a cheating husband’s contented look fou
r football fields away. Holding it made his heart melt.

  The problem was that it had been used before. There were hairline scratches on the black casing. Oily smudges on the lens. Marty gave it another once-over and shook his head. There was no way he was paying twenty grand for this camera.

  “Too bad it’s hot,” he said.

  Wilson looked surprised, genuinely offended. He sat back on the stool and blinked, his great round belly expanding before him like a comic strip balloon. Seventy years old and he’d eaten himself into a three-hundred-fifty-pound birthday suit. It was a medical wonder his heart continued to pump. “What the fuck you talkin’ about?” he said. “That camera ain’t hot.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Marty said.

  “I’m not lyin’ to you.”

  “Then show me the invoice.”

  That silenced him.

  “And where’s the box?”

  Jo Jo looked away.

  “You can’t keep lying to me, Jo Jo. You’re no good at it. I’ve been onto you from the first day we met, when you were stupid enough to try and sell me a directional microphone that had no direction. Why haven’t you smartened up by now?”

  Wilson snapped his fingers on either side of his head. “Can’t hear you, Spellman. Emphysema’s eatin’ away my ears, too.”

  Marty removed fifty $100 bills from his pants pocket and fanned them out on the dirty glass counter that separated them. “Five thousand and you pay to have it delivered to my apartment tomorrow. That’s a fair price, Jo Jo. We both know it.”

  Wilson had no trouble hearing that and he looked at the cash as though it were a great pile of stinking shit. He gulped air and shook his pale moon of a head. “You got more money than God, and this is what you offer me? Five fucking grand?” He pushed the mask aside and spat imaginary spit. “Ten grand or nothing.”

  Marty put a finger on one of the $100 bills and dragged it to the left. “And my offer dwindles. Your call.”