“I don’t know.” Steady scratched his stubbled jaw. “That had all the trademarks of a mob hit, but wiseguys aren’t in the business of whacking people who almost steal from them.”
“They might be if the guy almost stole two hundred million dollars.” Ren indicated the document Twitch had open on her computer.
Cam gave a long low whistle. “I need to get into plumbing supplies.”
“According to one of his associates, Phipps had just landed the business with Vacarro. Met with him in Vegas the day before—wined and dined him and stayed for some high stakes poker game before he headed back to New York.”
“That syncs with Calliope’s version of what Van Gent told her,” Tox added.
“So Van Gent lands the business then sits in on a couple hours of Texas Hold ‘em, wins a big pot but gets scammed with a fake painting. Seems like that sort of thing would be frowned upon at a high stakes table.” Cam offered.
“I think I can answer that.” Twitch looked at Cam over her monitor. “The man who reportedly put the forged painting in the pot, Franco Jasic, died at the scene. Heart attack. EMS’ attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful.”
“Van Gent’s not going to stick around in a room probably full of hookers and recreational drugs to give a statement to the cops, so he cuts his losses,” Steady concluded.
“That’s a dead end.” Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose. “No way could Johnny Vacarro have dealt with a DB in his hotel suite and arranged a hit on Van Gent in that time frame. Have Teddy double check though.” Teddy was Twitch’s protege. She was training him in the dark arts of cybersecurity. Nathan continued, “See if any of Vacarro’s go-to guys were in the city, if the Feds are poking around, the usual stuff.”
“Copy that,” Twitch confirmed. “Now this other client is more interesting. Roman Block, CEO of Blockbuild Construction out of San Francisco. Three weeks ago, Block transferred one hundred eighty million in assets to Gentrify Capital.”
“Another in a long line of suckers,” Steady added.
“Yeah…”Twitch kept clicking on the keys. “Something’s fishy. A big chunk of his corporate assets are leveraged, and the IRS is auditing the activities of the Lorraine Evers Block Charitable Trust.”
Chat shot Ren a glance, and he nodded confirmation. “Hypothetically, if Phipps Van Gent had this guy’s money, and he wanted it back, killing him doesn’t seem like the best way to go about it. I mean this guy, Roman Block, needs cash, not revenge.”
“Agreed.” Nathan nodded. “And judging from the crime scene photos—Twitch.” She tapped some keys, and the first grizzly photo appeared on the transparent nano-liquid screen on the far wall. Van Gent’s prone body was on a couch, obliterated by two blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun. “It doesn’t look like a conversation took place. Someone walked into that office and blew the guy’s head off.”
Twitch took over, replacing the photo with a floorplan of the Gentrify office. “According to Calliope, she passed a man she assumed was a client with a late-night meeting at the elevator. She estimates three seconds passed between her entering the elevator and the first shot. That would put the client about here.” She made an X with her stylus on her screen and the mark appeared overhead in the middle of the floor plan’s reception area. “Van Gent’s office is here.” Another X at the back of the floor plan. “Based on when the guard at the building entrance clocked the mystery client leaving, we have to assume he hid and waited for the shooter to leave, then took the elevator down to the lobby and left. The guard said the man seemed fine. He barely remembered the guy.”
“So where did the shooter go?” Steady asked.
“There was an event that night. Not unusual. The building has a restaurant on the mezzanine level that does catered events for the building’s tenants. That night a well-regarded private equity firm that occupies the ninth and tenth floors hosted a dinner. The event ended around ten and the catering staff was cleaning and breaking down tables until just before midnight.” Twitch read the information on her screen.
“So he takes the elevator down to the mezzanine and filters out the back with the catering staff,” Tox concluded.
Twitch nodded. “It’d be the only way out of the building that didn’t require a card swipe or passing a guard.”
Cam chimed in. “Doesn’t this seem a little, I don’t know, convenient. A guy smuggles a gun up to Gentrify Capital. Waits until the building’s nearly empty. Van Gent shows up out of the blue. The guy blows him away, and there happens to be an event going on where people are coming and going unmonitored so he can make his escape? I’ve seen a lot of hits go down, but this is like an assassin’s fairy tale.”
Ren spoke next. “Or an opportunity. What if the shooter worked there? He brings in a gun, maybe even in pieces, and has it hidden. He knows what he needs to make the hit: an empty office, an event going on downstairs, and Van Gent. So he waits. Maybe it takes six months, but eventually, those three planets would align.”
“He has the means: the shotgun, and the motive, which we can guess, and he just waits for the opportunity,” Cam nodded.
“Exactly,” Ren confirmed.
“So not a hired hitter, a premeditated murder,” Steady added.
“If that’s the case, Van Gent’s murder is an unrelated or tangentially related event,” Nathan deduced.
“With a motive nobody seems to know,” Ren surmised.
Steady chuckled. “Considering the victim, I think we can make an educated guess.”
Twitch typed at lightning speed. “The last employee to log out of the Gentrify system that night was Freddy Kerr at 8:52 pm.” More typing. “He’s a twenty-three-year-old client relations specialist. Huh.”
“What?” Steady asked.
“He developed a stock tracking algorithm and software program in high school. Smart kid. Other than the janitor, he was probably the last employee to leave that night.”