Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers)

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

H
ILARIO
“H
ARRY
” G
IANNESCHI LEANED ON THE CONCIERGE
desk at the Poliziano Fiera Hotel in Tribeca and stared forlornly down the hallway toward the hotel bar, enviously listening to the laughter and pulsating music. It seemed like every few minutes he saw pretty, well-dressed young women—alone, in pairs, or in groups of three or four—enter the lobby and make their long-legged way to the lounge, disappearing, sadly, from his view.

He sighed. Instead of working, he would have much preferred to be cruising the bar himself, using his dark, Italian good looks, runner’s body, and charming accent to bed one of the beauties. And continue his search for
“l’amore della mia vita,”
he whispered to himself.

Although happily playing the field at present, he hoped someday to find “the one” to marry—preferably wealthy.
And blessed with generous breasts and wide baby-maker hips….
Il mio dio, per favore….
My God, please, is that so much to ask?

His smile faded into a frown. Of course, his new wife had to be an American, too. As a native of Florence, the twenty-four-year-old Gianneschi had arrived in the United States some five years earlier on a student visa. But he’d dropped out after his first semester at NYU, and his visa had long since expired. That made him an illegal alien and subject to deportation.

But what am I to do?
Despite his mother’s pleas, he had no desire to return to Italy. He liked America and Americans—their optimism and generosity of spirit. He’d been told before he came that New Yorkers were cold, that they wouldn’t give him the time of day, that they would watch callously while robbers took everything he had, including his life. But that had proved to be a big lie. Yes, there were criminals and rude people, places one did not go on the island of Manhattan unless you had a death wish. But most New Yorkers seemed more than willing to help a newcomer. The people he talked to were curious about where he’d come from, particularly if they were of Italian extraction, and even asked what he wanted to do with his life. No one in Italy, except his family, gave a rat’s ass about his aspirations.

Gianneschi hoped that by marrying an American someday, he would be allowed to remain in the country permanently, and legally. Then he might go back to college, perhaps to study hotel management. Maybe even become a citizen.

He wasn’t in a hurry; if he was, he could have persuaded one of his sexual conquests to wed him. Even one of his married admirers would have been only too happy to keep him like an expensive pet. But as a romantic, he wanted to be in love with the woman he asked to be his wife—take her back to Italy to meet his mother and a million other relatives. Then they’d return to America, make lots and lots of babies, and lots and lots of money, and grow old sitting together on the porch of some house in the country, watching their grandchildren play soccer…
okay, maybe baseball
.

But until such a woman appeared, he was content to continue as he was. He liked his job as a concierge at what he considered the best hotel on the island. The Poliziano Fiera, named after the famous Poliziano Fiera in Milan, fit neatly into a small triangle of land at the intersection of the Avenue of the Americas and West Broadway. A trendy boutique hotel, it featured a private film screening room with plush seating, surround sound, and state-of-the-art projection. Hollywood glitterati were known to attend premieres at the screening room and then retire to the hotel’s bar, the Well, afterward to mingle with the crowd. The Well was located in the atrium, surrounded by the rooms on the floors above, and often
featured the latest hot DJ and release parties thrown by the record companies for their artists.

He’d been working at the hotel for two years and was a favorite with the management and guests for his encyclopedic knowledge of New York City’s hot spots and dining. Especially well versed on where to go in Tribeca, he explained to visitors that the name was a condensation of “Triangle Below Canal,” and that it referred to the pie-shaped neighborhood running from Canal Street south to Park Place and from the Hudson River east to Broadway. It had once been an industrial area dominated by warehouses, but over the past twenty years had undergone reconstructive surgery, yielding expensive loft apartments, trendy bars and restaurants, and hip, intimate hotels like the Poliziano Fiera.

Celebrity or tourist, he charmed them all with his bright, white smile and heartfelt “
Benvenuto indietro!
…Welcome back!” when they returned to the hotel. He enjoyed talking to people and helping them with their problems.

However,
he thought with another sigh,
there’s no one to talk to now
. Only the torture of listening to women’s voices tinkling like crystal from the Well.
If only
…His fantasy was interrupted by the sudden, urgent flashing of a red light on his telephone. Apparently, the occupant of the penthouse was trying to get his attention.

Harry sighed again, only this time out of reluctance to answer the phone. Mr. F. Lloyd Maplethorpe could try even his legendary patience.

Maplethorpe was a famous Broadway producer of musical theater who’d lived in the penthouse for several years and threw the best parties in the hotel. His credits included hits in the seventies (
Jimi Hendrix: The Musical
), the eighties (
Ronald Reagan: The Musical
), and the nineties (
Bill Clinton: The Musical
). However, it had been ten years since his last hit, years that had witnessed several short runs and an unmitigated flop,
Saddam Hussein: The Musical
. According to the hotel staff gossips, the word on Broadway was that Maplethorpe was getting desperate. His financial backers were getting cold feet after a decade of only breaking even or losing money. One more show with a less than spectacular run, they said, and Maplethorpe was finished.

Gianneschi uncharacteristically thought that such an end to F. Lloyd Maplethorpe’s career—and presumably, his stay in the Poliziano Fiera—was fitting. In the fantasy world of the theater, largely made up of self-important and self-absorbed people, Maplethorpe considered himself the most important and treated everyone else like garbage unless they had something he wanted. Or they were willing to prostrate themselves and fawn all over him, at which point they would be tolerated until he grew tired of them.

Maplethorpe was a skinny, odd-looking man in his midsixties and looked every day of it, with a thin, pallid face and waxy skin. His protruding eyes were a washed-out hazel color that he unfortunately emphasized with blue eyeliner. Someone in his entourage had talked him into also using rouge and dying his thinning hair a shade of burnt orange. His eccentricities were legendary in the theater crowd—from his insistence that he personally select each and every actor or actress for his shows, and then changing them on a whim in the middle of a production, to stomping onstage during rehearsals to show an actor “how it’s done.” He’d once even tried singing a part in one of his own productions until his financial backers told him it wasn’t working and that he had to stop or they’d pull their funding. Of course, when he was successful, his little tantrums and interferences had been forgiven as the eccentricities of genius. But of late, the shine had gone off and exposed him as a petty little man who’d pretty much beat to death the idea of turning pop culture artists and headline pols into Broadway musicals.

Harry Gianneschi didn’t like him—not because of his appearance or oddities, but because Maplethorpe was as two-faced as a lira in his treatment of the hotel staff. He’d gush all over “the help” if he was showing off, but treat them as if they didn’t exist if it suited his mood. He insisted that the “filthy” maids who cleaned his apartment wear rubber surgical gloves at all times, paper booties over their shoes, and face masks, “so I don’t have to breathe their germs.” And he was constantly asking the staff for favors—such as sending them out to a store at midnight for a bottle of wine or a package of condoms.

He’d once demanded that Gianneschi procure cocaine.
“I’m
sorry, sir,”
Gianneschi had replied.
“I would not even know where to look.”

“Oh, come now, a gorgeous little wop like you can’t find any party dust?”
Maplethorpe replied, smiling at the brunette teenagers, one male and one female, he had draped on either arm.

“No, sir.” And if I did,
he’d thought,
even if you agreed to appear naked in a Macy’s window, I wouldn’t get it for you
.

Maplethorpe had narrowed his eyes and turned his back as if Harry no longer existed. Since then, he’d been even cooler toward the concierge and hardly spoke to him unless it was to make some new demand.

Gianneschi had reported the cocaine request to the hotel’s management to protect himself in case there was a sudden spate of complaints from the guest in the penthouse suite. He was happy to have as little contact as possible. There was something about the man that made his skin crawl, and he thought Maplethorpe’s behavior in the privacy of his apartment probably went beyond merely eccentric.

Maplethorpe reminded him of a spider, with his odd, buggy eyes, his strange physical mannerisms—including sudden twitches, as if his skin itched—and fingers that worked constantly in front of his body as he talked. But as a night concierge, Gianneschi had seen the young women who entered the elevators behind his desk with Maplethorpe. They were always beautiful brunettes—proof, he often thought, that even a man as ugly as the producer could bed well above his station, so long as he had money and/or something else the women wanted.

Such as a role in a musical,
Gianneschi thought as he watched the flashing light on the telephone console. New York City was teeming with young women who dreamed of making it as actresses on Broadway. Sometimes it seemed that every pretty waitress he met, or secretary in an office, or woman working behind a counter at Macy’s, was really an actress waiting to be discovered. The sad truth, however, was that there weren’t enough parts for those who truly did have talent, much less for those who’d once starred in a high school musical and believed their mothers’ assurances that they had what it takes.

A tiny fraction ever set foot on the stage, except as part of a tour. Most of the rest were disappointed. The smart ones eventually realized that they weren’t going to become stars and found some other line of work if they wanted to remain in New York City. Some even managed to stay near the theater by selling tickets or working behind the scenes. Or they returned home to Lafayette, Indiana; Portland, Oregon; or Muskogee, Oklahoma, got married, had children, and tried out for roles at their local community theater.

But some held on to their dreams until they became desperate. Desperate enough to turn to prostitution—though the prettiest dressed it up a bit by describing themselves as “escorts” who worked for private “gentlemen’s clubs” and bragged about how much they could charge to let men use their bodies.

Or desperate enough to follow a disgusting creature like F. Lloyd Maplethorpe up to his suite, hoping that if they fulfilled his fantasies, he’d help them with theirs,
Gianneschi thought as he reached for the telephone receiver.

Whatever Maplethorpe did to them in his penthouse didn’t seem to trouble some of the women. They’d emerge from the elevator an hour or two later, reapplying their lipstick, straightening their skirts, their expressions smug. But others appeared disheveled, with tears running down their cheeks and frightened looks in their eyes. He’d inquire if they were all right.
“Is there anything I can do?”
But they’d shake their heads and hurry into the night, never to be seen again in the Poliziano Fiera.

Gianneschi wondered if this call had something to do with the woman who’d accompanied Maplethorpe into the hotel that night. She’d seemed a little older than most the producer liked, somewhere in her thirties, but she was a beautiful woman.

Maplethorpe was obviously drunk as he’d tottered toward the concierge desk, but the woman seemed sober. The young concierge thought her face looked familiar. Perhaps she was an actress and he’d seen her in the hotel or in a commercial, but he couldn’t quite place her. She smiled and laughed whenever Maplethorpe said something, but her voice sounded strained when she replied to Gianneschi’s welcome.
“Thank you, you’re very kind.”

Gianneschi pressed the button to summon the elevator for the
couple and stepped back. Maplethorpe ignored him as he laughed in his affected way—a staccato “hahahahahahahaha”—at something he’d told his date. As the concierge watched them get on the elevator, his brown eyes locked on to her green ones, which softened for a moment. He thought she looked resigned or bored. Then she shrugged and smiled, as if to say, “What’s a girl to do?” The doors closed and she was gone.

An hour later, Gianneschi answered the telephone. “
Buona sera,
Mr. Maplethorpe. How may I be of service?”

At first there was no answer and Gianneschi wondered if they’d been disconnected. Then he heard labored breathing and a small sob.

“Mr. Maplethorpe, are you there?”

“Harry? Is that you?” the man gasped.

“
Sì,
Mr. Maplethorpe,” Gianneschi said, preparing for whatever strange request was coming his way.

“Oh thank God. Someone I can trust…. Harry, I need you to come up here immediately!”

Gianneschi caught the rising tide of panic in Maplethorpe’s voice. Maybe the man was having a heart attack.
Or perhaps a reaction to a Viagra and cocaine cocktail, the dirty old bastard
. “Is there anything wrong? Shall I call an ambulance?”

“No!”
The producer nearly shrieked the word. Then he caught himself and continued in a clipped monotone. “Don’t call anyone. Just come up here.”

“Right away, sir.” Gianneschi hung up the telephone and shrugged. At least there didn’t seem to be a medical emergency.