The Commander – Part 9
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It has been seven weeks since Don Malloy died, nearly five weeks since our legendary Dungeon party. We still talk about that party. That, and our move. I bought a new four thousand square-foot four bedroom condo. As these things always seem to go, I blew the budget, but I got a much nicer condo than we were looking for. The former owner vacated the premises and put it up for sale for over a year ago, and he was showing signs of desperation. He originally listed his unit for 5.5 million, and begrudgingly reduced his price by several decrements until he was asking 4.5 million last month. Still at the reduced price, no one was biting in this soft high-end market. I put in a cash offer of 4.1 million with a one week closing date. He accepted without a counteroffer. The good news is, my real estate agent tells me my old condo should sell for about 2.1 million, which is six hundred thousand more than I thought it would, so the budget will balance out after I sell the old property. Maybe I can rent it out until the market picks up before I sell it.
The new condo master bedroom is twice as large as our existing one, with his and her walk-in closets and a large heated tile floor bathroom with both a Jacuzzi and a shower. A second bedroom – as large as our old master bedroom – also has an attached bathroom. A regular sized bedroom and a smaller bedroom make four. I will use the smallest bedroom for my office. Jocelyn will take the second largest bedroom with the ensuite bath. There is a separate living room and dining room and an ultra-modern kitchen.
There are only two penthouse units on the twelfth floor, which makes the footprint of the combined units smaller than the floor below. The remaining floor space offers a lovely outdoor garden terrace that wraps around three sides of the condo. The east and west sides of the terrace are twelve feet wide, and the south terrace is twenty feet wide. Even when it is windy, you barely feel a draft on the terrace owing to eight foot high tinted glass perimeter walls.
The former owner converted a greenhouse at the west end of the terrace into a year-round glass sunroom. On mornings after we stay up all night, like we did at our Dungeon party, we might sit on the east terrace and watch the sun rise, and in the evening we will sit in the glass sunroom and watch the sun set. There are no high-rises nearby, so our view is unobstructed, and the south terrace is secluded, allowing Fiona to nude sunbathe in privacy. Although not exactly a waterfront property, there is only a municipal park between the condo building and the Hudson River to the West, and the zoning laws do not permit development on that park land.
I took possession of the property exactly one week ago today, on a Tuesday. M.B. Security did the upgrades on Thursday and Friday last week, to the tune of an extra $40,000. They were pleased to see the two penthouse apartments share their own private elevator that services only three floors – the twelfth floor, a private, locked entrance on the ground floor, and a private six car underground garage accessible only to penthouse owners. I took up Mary Bruno's offer, and the condo was legally purchased by a numbered corporation, which is wholly owned by a family trust, that I have total control over. The lineage is not completely untraceable, but it obfuscates the fingerprints of my ownership to anyone except a forensic accountant.
Speaking of real estate transactions, Don Malloy's house sold for $650,000 - $49,000 under my asking price. The circumstances were remarkably similar. I wanted a fast close on a vacated property, and someone offered cash – I accepted without countering. The sale closed two days ago, and the funds appeared in the estate trust bank account yesterday. I was finalizing the estate finances just before our own move.
Weeks before, when I sat at Don's funeral, a diabolically clever idea came to me while I was thinking about Cyrano de Bergerac. Suppose Jet were to "find" Don's holographic will (a handwritten will signed by Don with no witness signature – it is a legal document) while Jet cleaned out Don's desk at his home. Who was to say that will wasn't there all along? It would be penned in Don's handwriting and it would bear Don's signature. Suppose that this holographic will, dated when Don was in the hospital, revoked the Sam Allison will, and suppose it included Don's deathbed confession stating Don accidentally struck and killed the young boy, Tray Boullion, while he rode his bicycle. And suppose Don left one million dollars out of his estate to the Boullion family.
Now suppose Don wrote the security code to his front door on outside of the sealed envelope that contained the holographic will, and suppose Don also wrote a note on the envelope declaring that Bruce, an orderly at the hospital, promised to deliver the holographic will to Don's home. The taxi records could verify that, even if Bruce couldn't remember. It could all work, until I later realized it would almost certainly result in a police investigation of Don's affairs related to the homicide of a young boy. I don't remember where Don was or what Don was doing on the thirteenth of November, 2012, when Tray Boullion was killed. Suppose a record exists of Don being somewhere else – a bank machine maybe – at the same time – then what? I didn't want the police scrutinizing Don's affairs – Jet was at Don's house on the night The Commander hammered Jet's finger. Jet almost certainly left fingerprints. Even after the cleaners had been through Don's house, traces of Jet's blood and DNA may still be there. And while Jet could fool Fiona about Don being a client of his, he could not fool the police's forensic accountant. Not to mention the time Jason Braggs called me a liar about my past life. I felt I was already playing too close to the edge – following this Cyrano path was inviting disaster.
Two weeks ago, when I signed the agreement to buy my new condo, I decided then to abandon the Cyrano plan. But that decision was part of something bigger. I also arrived at a more fundamental understanding – call it a solemn declaration – a promise. If Jet was to become the honorable man I wanted Fiona to love, I had to stop preying on defenceless women. Don was dead, and I had to let him go. I decided that continuing to have sex with people I had already turned, like Nicole, was fair game. But no new victims.
I wasn't suggesting I would forfeit my powers altogether – but I decided I had to find a more honorable way to use them. I needed some time to decide how to harvest my powers with dignity and self-respect.
Since the Dungeon party, Fiona, Jocelyn, and I have felt caged in our old condo. It took a lot of time, energy, and coordination with Karen Bruno to arrange even simple things, like Fiona going to the spa. After a while, Karen wore us down, until the path of least resistance prevailed – we became condo hermits. Thankfully, the move to our new home offered a welcome distraction. We had to pack up the contents of the old condo – that took nearly a week. With Karen's supervision, Fiona and I broke out of our hermit shell and went furniture shopping. We were expanding from a two bedroom to a four bedroom home – from a combined living/dining room to separate rooms. That proved less productive than we hoped, and we realized one of our new bedrooms would probably go bare for a while.
Fiona wanted to hire an interior decorator, but that required pre-clearance from Karen Bruno. Everything took more time, energy, and effort than it should.
Yesterday – that was Monday – the security approved moving company arrived at the old condo, and they carried everything we owned into a moving van. We were in the midst of moving our contents in to the new condo this Tuesday, around ten in the morning, when Jocelyn's cell phone rang. She looked at the incoming number – it was Karen Bruno – again.
I heard Jocelyn's side of the conversation "Hi Karen ... yes, they're both here ... hang on." She went to fetch Fiona, who was in the master bedroom directing traffic about placement of the furniture. "Fiona," Jocelyn called out, "its Karen – she wants to talk to all of us." After almost a minute, Fiona came into the living room where Jocelyn and I were. Jocelyn selected the speakerphone on her cell phone and set it down on a moving crate.
"Go ahead, Karen – Fiona and Jet are here."
"Okay," I heard Karen's voice over the cell speakerphone. "I have Detective Juliotte from the San Antonio PD on the other line. Detective, please tell Ms. Wheaton what you just told me."
"Ma'am," the southern drawl started out of the speakerphone, "on Thursday last week, State Troopers found three individuals deceased in an abandoned warehouse just outside a small town called Bandera, about fifty miles from here. The State Troopers asked for our assistance in this case because of certain evidence they collected on scene. In our subsequent searches of the deceased's premises, we found evidence that one of these deceased was the person responsible for the credible threat against your life." We all looked at each other, hoping we correctly understood the significance of Detective Juliotte's news. He continued.
"Specifically, we found, on a computer laptop, a photo editing program with the exact, identical picture of an erotic dancer with your face digitally altered over top of the original face – the same picture that was left for you to find at your house. We also found a disposable cell phone with a call history that includes one outgoing call to the cell phone you possessed on the date you received the threatening request for money. The fingerprints on the cell phone and laptop match the deceased. We have sent them away for DNA testing just to dot all the i's. We have also uncovered a great deal more evidence, some of which I have shared with Ms. Bruno on her solemn promise she will not disclose any part of that evidence to anyone else, but I wanted to give her a clearer understanding of the magnitude of evidence we are now collecting." The line went quiet.
