Jeffrey Mariotte signing The Devil's Bait at LA Times Festival of Books

Below is the first chapter from Jeffrey Mariotte’s upcoming thriller The Devil’s Bait. Jeff will be signing the book at the LA Times Festival of Books this Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 1pm at the Mysterious Galaxy booth (#372).

Chapter 1

There were two rules about banking that Jessie Dawn Cutler kept in mind at all times.

Well, there were really more than two rules—a lot more, banking being probably second only to the law in the sheer crushing quantity of statutes and regulations, voluntary and otherwise, imposed upon its practitioners.

But the two to which Jessie paid the most stringent attention had to do with money, and the banker’s personal relationship with same. The first commandment of the Gospel According to Jessica was this:

All that money? It’s not yours.

The second commandment went pretty much hand-in-hand with the first. Jessica phrased it thusly: And neither is the guy it does belong to.

Which commandment, the second one, that is, Jessie sometimes had a hard time persuading herself to live by. Especially when the guy who had the money, and plenty of it, was Richard Steele. Mid-thirties, built, well dressed, richer than sin, and, not to put too fine a point on it, gorgeous. Drop dead knock your socks off stone cold wow. Richard Steele was an inch or so over six feet. Combine George Clooney’s jaw and Paul Newman’s eyes with the bone structure of Redford—the young Redford, not that the older one was any slouch, mind you, and you’d be heading in the general direction of what Richard Steele looked like...when he just woke up. As the day wore on, he only got better looking.

Jessie was guessing on this last point, having never yet had the opportunity to wake up with Richard Steele. Not that she was opposed to it, in principle. Even though it would violate Commandment Number Two. But sitting across from him at a grill at the corner of 73rd and Columbus, with a candle on the table and a fireplace roaring behind her back and a few drinks and an excellent fettuccini Alfredo, preceded by a green salad and followed by a slice of flourless chocolate cake (an extra hour in the gym this week, she figured), in her stomach, looking at the dimples that formed at the corners of his mouth when he laughed, it was more and more difficult to keep in mind that she was his private banker, his Relationship Manager, in the official terminology of MetroBank, and that to sleep with him would probably, at some point, result in her being dismissed, or, in the terminology of Jessie, who wasn’t one to mince words, in having her ass kicked to the curb, employment-wise.

And as hot as Richard Steele was, as much as she could feel the mutual attraction that arced between them, a tingle that started below her waist and worked its way over the rest of her body like a low-grade electric charge, Jessie loved banking more.

Hard to believe, she knew. But there it was. In the contest between getting laid by the best-looking, wealthiest man she had ever met, and keeping her job, the job won out.

Thinking about it now, she shook her head, swallowed a sip of her French roast.

“What is it?” Richard asked.

She shook her head again—consciously this time, since she didn’t even realize she was doing it before.

“Nothing,” she said. “You don’t even want to know.”

He laughed. “I like that,” he said, raising his cup toward her. They’d both switched to coffee from Chardonnay when...well, when the bottle was empty, come to think of it. “It’s nice to think that my banker has layers of mystery about her.”

“I might as well,” she said. “It’s not like they’ll ever match yours.”

He laughed again. She liked it when he did. His teeth could have had their own career, at dental schools, as the “after” example of proper hygiene and excellence in orthodontics. “Nothing particularly mysterious about me,” he said. “I’m just a lucky guy.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“No other word for it. I’m successful, sure, but it’s not really from anything I did. I mean, it’s not like I was a genius at school, or invented anything brilliant, or made any special contribution to the world. I just do what I do and I’m well compensated for it. If that’s not lucky, I don’t know what is.”

“I think you’re underestimating your skills, but whatever,” Jessie allowed. “Have it your way.”

“I usually do,” Richard said. She knew he was right on that count.

Jessie had asked him once, over iced double nonfat lattes at Starbucks, where he made his not inconsiderable money. It was cash, mostly, or at least that part of it that Jessica saw was. Of course, the source of his income should have been among the first questions she asked, even before accepting him as a client. KYC was the first official rule of private banking—Know Your Customer—and MetroBank emphasized that rule to all of its relationship managers on a near-daily basis. But Richard had been passed down to Jessie by her boss, Barbara Slonaker, who had vouched for him, said he was a great client, and warned her not to ask questions that might spook him. She wanted the Steele millions to run through MetroBank, and who was Jessie Cutler to argue with Barbara Slonaker, who had, after all, practically invented private banking in the modern age?

So Jessie took Richard Steele on, and only after he had been a client for almost a year, and she had run more than sixty million dollars through his accounts, had she bothered to ask him where it all came from.

“Here and there,” he had said. Seeming to realize the evasive nature of his response, he had set his clear plastic cup down and leaned forward, a rare, serious expression on his face. “I own some contracting firms up and down the coast. We build homes, repair them when they break, you know. Real blue-collar stuff. And then I have an interest—a small one, really, but it’s a profitable gig—in a casino down in Atlantic City. The Kasbah. Maybe I can take you down there one of these days, comp you a room, a few dollars in chips. I’d like to watch my banking queen try her hand at some gambling.”

“Not really my thing, Richard. To me, shoving quarters in the washing machine in my building is a gamble. And one I’m always nervous about losing.”

“I’m sure I could change your mind, Jess,” he said. “You just let me know when you’re ready to try.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said. And, knowing she was prying but not willing to stop herself, she pushed a little. “But let me ask you, why take such precautions with your cash, then? I mean, there are easier and more liquid ways to manage your cash flow than what you’ve got me doing for you.”

“A huge portion of my income is cash—you know that better than anyone,” he said. “Some of our contracting clients pay in cash, and most of what I get out of the casino is cash. I’m concerned about it because...well, to be honest, you know what kind of people you meet in the casino business, right?”

“Not personally,” she said. “By reputation, sure.”

“Well, the reputations are true, in many cases. It was worse in the old days, I’m sure, before gaming commissions and the like. Still, I’m in business there with some people I wouldn’t want to be on the same side of the street with, if I had my choice. Nasty customers. I don’t want any of them deciding that they’d like to get their hands on my cash. So I figure it’s best if I keep all my accounts secret, so they can’t ‘accidentally’ find out what I’m really worth.”

“Are these guys dangerous, Richard? Mafia types?”

“Some of them could be mobbed up,” he replied. The words sounded awkward in his mouth, like he was repeating something he’d heard on TV. “I don’t really know, for sure. I don’t want to. The less our paths cross, the better. Though I have to say, they sure keep the casino running smoothly.”

“I bet. I’d hate to think that you were in any danger, though.”

“Oh, I’m not. I keep my distance from those guys, and they don’t have any reason to bother me. They bought in after my partners and I did—one of my partners had a cash crunch, a few years ago, and had to sell his interest. The guys who bought it, as I said, are not guys I’m totally comfortable with. But as long as I don’t have to break bread with them, I’m okay.”

She had dropped the subject then. But the conversation came back to her every now and again, especially on occasions when she thought about waking up next to him, and the thought occurred to her that she might be waking up next to a horse’s head at the same time.

Which had happened more than once, during this dinner. The part about waking up with Richard, which naturally enough would have to follow going to bed with Richard. The part about the horse, only once. Tonight.

But now dinner was over, coffee gone, dessert already a happy memory, and he had paid the bill and was helping her on with her coat, his hands brushing the back of her neck as he straightened her collar. She nearly melted right then, a sticky puddle on the restaurant floor, but somehow she maintained her proper viscosity and led the way out of the restaurant and into the cold early December night. She pulled her coat more tightly around her, and tugged gloves from its deep pockets.

This had been a business dinner—teasing and flirting aside, it had been a strategy session to talk about Richard’s financial plans for the upcoming year, and to go over some of the tax law changes that would affect him if she couldn’t manage to shelter every dime he made. But it was the teasing and flirting and the feel of Richard’s fingers touching the fine hairs at the nape of her neck that she would remember, she knew, more than any details of offshore accounts and commingled funds.

They said their goodbyes, wished one another happy holidays in the nonspecific manner that had become traditional, shaken hands, and shared a quick, overcoat-bulky hug, and then she had headed down Columbus to look for a cab while he had disappeared around the corner, to where he said he had parked his car. He had offered her a ride, but he was going the opposite direction and she figured if she had him in a car within a mile of her actual bed, it would all be over for her resolve.

She actually had her hand out and a cab in sight when she remembered that she had forgotten to give him the holiday card in which she’d written her new phone extension and the hours she would be working over the next few weeks. Not a big deal, she knew, but she wanted to be considerate, and since she didn’t have many other clients with his kind of weight—like, none—she wanted to make sure he knew when he could and couldn’t expect to reach her. It would only take a minute, she knew, to go around the corner and catch him before he got to his car. She dropped her arm, turned, and walked briskly for the corner.

And as she rounded it, she saw him, walking toward the three-story parking garage a block away. But he wasn’t alone. Another man walked with him, a taller man wearing a black trench coat and one of those furry Cossack hats. His long legs moved like a robot’s, fluttering his coat with every step, while his upper torso remained almost still. She thought he walked like a stork.

She headed that way. She didn’t want to interrupt what seemed to be a fairly serious conversation between Richard and the stork—and where had he come from, anyway? Had he been waiting outside the whole time? But there might be an opportunity to catch Richard, after the stork got into his own car or went in some other direction. So she held back, standing in the shadows of buildings and low, leafless trees, and didn’t call Richard’s name.

The men entered the garage, and it looked like maybe they would be driving away together after all, so Jessie thought, fuck it, manners are nice but they’re not everything, and she started to run.

When all hell broke loose, she had almost reached the entrance to the parking garage. She was still in the shadows, outside the staircase that led up to the second and third floors, and she could see Richard and the stork standing near Richard’s Jaguar, but there was no way, unless they were looking for her, that they could see Jessie.

They weren’t even close to looking for her. They were looking up the ramp, as Jessie was, because from up the ramp came the growl of an engine and the screaming of tires, and then before it seemed like it should have been possible, the car lunged into view, and the windows were open and there were guns, like quills on a porcupine, bristling from every window.

Jessie’s heart stopped.

Richard and the stork didn’t run, didn’t shriek, didn’t dive under the car—all of which would have been Jessie’s reactions, if she had been able to do anything other than stand there in terrified shock. Richard and the stork reached under their coats, and when they pulled their hands out there was metal in them, and Richard and the stork stood their ground, firing at the oncoming car.

One of them hit the driver.

The driver—probably not surprisingly, since he had one or more bullets in him—lost control. The car slammed into one of the concrete support posts and came to a noisy stop. Only then did Richard and the stork take cover behind Richard’s Jag. Firing over the top of the car, they tried to pick the gunmen off as they emerged from the wreck. A couple went down right away, but two others got out the far side of the car and darted behind nearby parked cars.

They returned fire, and the noise echoed in the confines of the parking garage. To Jessie, standing outside, it sounded like all the fireworks shows she’d ever seen rolled into one. The garage boomed with flashes of light and the thunder of gunfire.

Richard and the stork seemed invulnerable. A bullet blew the stork’s Cossack hat from his head, revealing a shock of curly copper hair. He wasn’t hurt, though. Within a couple of minutes, the gunfight was over.

Richard and the stork were still standing. Nobody else.

Jessie breathed, finally, blowing out a huge lungful of air that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She didn’t understand any of this, had never known that Richard carried a gun—though with the kind of cash he carried around, and the kind of business associates he had, it made a certain amount of sense. But this?

Then, as she watched, still shielded by the trees and the shadows and the dark December night, Richard and the stork did something else she didn’t expect. Something she couldn’t have expected, couldn’t believe even though she was watching it happen.

Calmly, almost casually, Richard and the stork walked to each body that sprawled on the concrete slab floor of the parking garage. One of them, either Richard or the stork, would lean in close to the fallen man, press his handgun up against the man’s head, and pull the trigger. Brain and blood and fragments of skull skidded across the garage floor with each blast.

Jessie could taste her Alfredo, fought to keep it down.

One by one, the two men cold-bloodedly finished off each of the men who had emerged from the car. Then, a job well done, they put their weapons back underneath their coats, climbed into Richard’s black Jaguar, and drove away.

Jessie watching.

Sick.

In the distance, sirens wailed. Someone had called the police.

Jessie turned and ran, for Columbus and a cab. She didn’t want to have to answer any questions about this. Not until she’d sorted it out for herself.

If she ever could.