Betrayal in Death

"Was Priory one of his a.k.a.s?"

"Not until now. I got it added into the mix. Anyhow, about fifteen years back I worked a case – serial strangulations, silver wire. Five victims scattered all over the damn planet. We had one in New York. Female. Licensed companion. Second-rate license. She had ties to the black market. So did the other four victims. Not the same organization. But every victim was a key player in something mucky. We got a line on Yost, but never tugged him in on it. The murders stopped, and the case sat there going stale."

"A hired hammer?"

"We figured, but who hired the bastard? He hit every major cartel. No bias there. He comes up most likely on no less than twenty strangulations before and since. And he did time in the thirties for assault with deadly."

"Yeah, I knew he'd seen what a cage looks like from the inside. Only one arrest?"

"Just the one. Records show he'd have been twenty when the Miami cops reeled him in. Looks like he's gotten better at his work over the years."

"I'm pulling into Central now. Send me everything you've got on him."

"Already did. I'm going to work it some more. Get you an update in the morning. I'd like a second shot at this guy."

"You've got it."

"Tomorrow, then. Hey, Dallas?"

"What?"

"What's that stuff in your hair?"

"What stuff?" She reached up, dragging fingers through, and felt the little raindrop diamonds. "It's just – I was out…" Mortified, she cleared her throat. "Never mind," she muttered and cut transmission.

The man who'd been born Sylvester Yost, who had strangled a young maid while under the name of James Priory and was currently carrying identification as Giorgio Masini, sipped his second glass of unblended scotch and watched the recording of the evening's Yankee game.

If he'd been the type to kill for personal reasons, he'd have hunted down the Yankee pitcher and gutted him like a fish. But since murder was a business, he merely sat, cursing quietly in a surprisingly feminine voice.

There had been some who'd made cracks about the thin, high pitch of his voice. If he was on a job, he ignored them. If he was on his own time, he beat the living hell out of them.

But even that was simply a matter of principle. He wasn't a passionate man, not about people or principles. The lack of passion made him an excellent killing machine.

The money for the night's work had already been deposited in an account under yet another name. He had no idea why the girl – because she'd been hardly more than that – had been targeted. He simply accepted the contract, fulfilled it, took the money.

This particular job had only just begun, and promised to reap him a considerable fee. As he was considering retirement, quite seriously considering it, it was a delightful little cushion.

Over the years, those fees had allowed him to develop, and indulge, a refined and cultured taste. He could afford the best, so he had studied and experienced and discovered just what the best entailed.

Food, drink, art, music, fashion. He'd traveled all over the world, and off planet as well. At fifty-six he could speak three languages fluently, which was yet another sterling job tool, and could, when the mood struck, prepare a brilliant gourmet meal. What's more, he could play the piano like an angel.

He hadn't been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but the silver wire had made up for it.

At twenty, he'd been the minor thug that Eve had seen beneath the polish. He'd killed because he could, and it paid.

Now he was a virtuoso of murder, a performer par excellence who had never disappointed his paying customers, and who left his own individual stamp on each target.

Pain – the beatings. Humiliation – the rape. The silver wire. Murder with class. For Sly, it was a tidy little three-act play, with only the set and the second lead as variables.

He was, always, the star of the show.

Sly enjoyed traveling, and had several scrapbooks filled with postcards he picked up as he did so. Occasionally he would page through them, sipping a drink, smiling over the reminders of places he'd been, and the trinkets he'd collected there.

The meal he had in Paris that summer after he'd dispatched the electronic's manufacturer, the view from his hotel window on a rainy evening in Prague before he'd strangled the American envoy.

Good memories.

He was confident that, though his current employment would keep him in New York for the run of the show, it would provide many more of those good memories.

CHAPTER THREE

In the morning, Eve sat at her desk in Cop Central and reviewed all the data Feeney had sent her the night before. With a few hours' sleep, a fresh eye, and a third cup of coffee she let a picture form in her mind of one Sylvester Yost.

A career criminal. A stone killer, sired by a second-string gunru

Sly had apparently decided to carry on the family tradition, with his own style of mayhem.

She had his juvenile file now. He'd toyed with knives, cutting the ear off his caseworker two weeks after he'd been sucked into the system. He'd sampled rape, assaulting one of the girls in his group home and leaving her battered.

But he'd found his true calling with strangulation, and had apparently practiced on small dogs and big cats before graduating to the human species.

At fifteen, he'd escaped from the juvie facility. He was now fifty-six. In those forty-one years, he'd spent only one in a cage, and was suspected of forty-three murders.

The information on him was sketchy, despite files compiled by the FBI, Interpol, the IRCCA, and the Global Bureau for Interplanetary Crimes.

The subject was a suspected killer-for-hire who had no living family, no known friends or associates, no known address. His habitual weapon of choice was wire of sterling silver. But victims attributed to him had also been strangled manually, with silk scarves and with gold rope.

In the early days, Eve noted as she read. Before he settled on his signature style.

Victims were both male and female, of all ages, races and financial groups. Bodily violence, including torture and rape, were often employed.

"Good at your work, aren't you, Sly? And I bet you don't come cheap." She sat back, studying the disc image of Yost at the check-in desk of The Roarke Palace Hotel. "Who the hell would hire you to kill a young maid who lived with her mother and sister in Hoboken?"

She rose, paced the crowded box of her office. There was a possibility he'd made a mistake, but that was slim.

You don't last forty-odd years in the assassin game by plucking at the wrong target.

Logically, Yost had done what he'd been paid to do.

So, who was Darlene French, and who was she linked with?

Roarke's co

Back to the victim. Had Darlene heard or seen something, without even being aware she'd heard or seen it? Hotels were busy places, with a great deal of business being done.

But if the girl had brushed up against something, why have her murdered in such an obvious and dramatic fashion? Take her out quietly and be done with it.

An accident, a botched mugging, everyone's shocked and sorry. The cops take a glance, offer their sympathies. And it all goes away.