Initial Recon

One does not simply walk into a Park Avenue apartment. Let’s call a spade a spade, I’m going to abduct, ****, and literally psychologically destroy a pair of heiresses. Even with the simple jobs like cracking into a single bedroom apartment and working over the brain of a Slovenian model for a very wealthy American businessman you have to be careful and work slowly (hey, it was one of my first jobs, and to date the only one I truly regret… what can I say, it was the ‘90s. It’s also the reason I don’t do high profile jobs anymore, so don’t get any ideas about me doing Kiera Knightly or Beyoncé for you. Even if I still did those jobs you couldn’t afford my rates). So recon was definitely in order.

Most of that can be accomplished over the internet. An example would be the snapshots of life that I can glean from social media (Like the fact that Melanie’s LinkedIn page has more activity than her Facebook) gossip rags (Valerie seems to be able to just barely walk the line between embarrassing and illegal), legitimate news sources (These girls are the daughters of Julian Fucking Winter, a guy so wealthy that he doesn’t show up on the Forbes 500, something that’s usually reserved for sheiks of the UAE) and good old fashioned Google Earth street view it’s quite possible to stalk someone without ever leaving the comfort of home. Still all that does is give me background, most of which I’ve already got. I need the good stuff that you can only get up close and personal.

So I watch.

Every time police procedurals bring up surveillance and stakeouts they belabor the point of exactly how boring it is. They’re not wrong. It’s horrifically boring, but I honestly don’t mind. My patience is one of the two things that’s served me best over the years (the other being my creativity), and has kept me out of the hands of The Man more times than I can count. In fact I set aside two whole months for preliminary investigation.

I don’t learn much more than I already know from the dossier. My first real break is the first visit from Melanie’s masseur. After their appointment I follow him. Juan is a good looking guy in his early thirties. Built like a brick wall. Following him leads me to a bar in Alphabet City. The kind of place you wouldn’t want your mom to find out about if you were a nice Hispanic boy with a Catholic abuela back in Mexico City. I suppose I’m stereotyping, but homophobia is still very real among the adherents to the faith. his family might be all the way behind him being into guys. I dunno, but it does give me an opportunity to approach him.

It’s easy enough to get his attention. 6 on a Thursday afternoon isn’t exactly prime hunting time for someone looking to pick up, and though I’m not much to look at, dogs don’t bark when I walk by. I manage to get his number and address, and pump him for a few details about his most recent client. Enough that I know his next appointment with Melanie’s date and time. Enough that I know I’ll be able to replace him when the time comes.

I’m of course also in Brooklyn watching my dead drop when the payment shows up. The person who does the drop doesn’t display any furtive behavior leading me to believe I’m watching a ringer. I honestly didn’t expect my employer to deliver nine hundred and fifty large themselves, but sometimes knowing who’s hired me can make tailoring the client’s experience that much easier. I still follow the courier, a woman in her mid forties in of all things a pair of oversized sunglasses and a scarf, to a corporate office building in lower Manhattan, and take a picture of the building directory before heading back to my regularly scheduled stakeout.

Ten of the sixteen companies with offices there are at least partially owned by Julian Winters, and the holding company that the building is registered to is also one of his. Very interesting. Seems like I’m the paddle that Daddy is going to use to spank his bad little girls. Not the first time for me.

Most multi-gazillionaires, you can point at a specific thing and say ‘Yeah, he’s a tech guy’ or ‘Yeah, he made his money by swindling people out of their property using money he got from his dad as a seed and then developed the real estate into hotels, casinos, and golf courses all of which went quietly bankrupt, something which he keeps quiet by burying his detractors under a mountain of frivolous lawsuits and accusations of Fake News…’ um… So ok, I’m still kind of sore about that early job with the Slovenian model. Back to the point, Big Daddy Julian is one of those people whose business is business. His portfolio is massively diversified, real estate, tech, private security, shit he even owns interest in a business catering to boutique artisanal cat treats. The only thing they have in common is that they all make money.

So, that all out of the way, I start planning my initial insertion.