The Twelfth Card

But Ashberry was also atypical of your Forbes-level business executives. Scratch the surface and you’d find pretty much the same tough kid from South Philly, whose father’d been a head-knocking factory worker and whose grandfather’d done some book cooking, and tougher work, for Angelo Bruno – the “Docile Don” – and later for Phil “Chicken Man” Testa. Ashberry had run with a tough crowd himself, made money with blades and brains and did some things that could have come back to haunt him in a big way if he hadn’t made absolutely sure they were forever buried. But in his early twenties he had the presence of mind to realize that if he kept loan-sharking and busting heads for protection money and hanging out on Dickson and Reed streets in Philly, his only rewards’d be cheese-steak change and a good shot at prison. If he did more or less the same thing in the world of business and hanging out on lower Broadway and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he’d get fucking rich and have a good shot at Albany or Washington. He might even try to fill Frank Rizzo’s shoes. Why not?

So it was law school at night, a real estate license and eventually a job at Sanford Bank – first on a cash drawer, then moving his way up through the ranks. The money did indeed start coming in, slowly at first, then in a steady stream. He rose fast to be head of the bank’s hottest division, the real estate operation, rolling over competitors – both within the bank and outside – with his bare-knuckle approach to business. Then he’d finagled the job as head of the Sanford Foundation, the philanthropic side of the bank, which was, he’d learned, the best way to make political co

Another glance at the Jersey horizon, another moment of debate, rubbing his hand compulsively up and down his thigh, solid from his te

Life and death…

Calculating, one foot forever rooted on South Philly’s Seventeenth Street, Bill Ashberry played with the big boys.

Men, for instance, like Thompson Boyd.

Ashberry had gotten the killer’s name from an arsonist who’d made the mistake of burning down one of Ashberry’s commercial properties – and got caught in the process – some years ago. After Ashberry realized he had to kill Geneva Settle, he’d hired a private eye to track down the paroled burn-man and had paid him $20,000 to put him in touch with a professional killer. The scruffy man (for God’s sake, a mullet?) had suggested Boyd. Ashberry had been impressed with the choice. Boyd was fucking scary, yes, but not in some over-the-top, ballsy South Philly way. What was scary was that he was so calm, so flat. Not a spark of emotion behind his eyes, never spitting out a single “fuck” or “prick.”

The banker had explained what he needed and they’d arranged for payment – a quarter million dollars (even that figure hadn’t gotten a rise out of Boyd; he seemed more interested – you couldn’t say excited – about the prospect of killing a young girl, as if he’d never done that before).

It looked for a time like Boyd would be successful and the girl would die, and all of Ashberry’s problems would be over with.

But then, disaster: Boyd and his accomplice, that Frazier woman, were in jail.

Hence, the debate: Yes, no…Should Ashberry kill Geneva Settle himself?

With his typical approach to business, he considered the risks.

Despite his zombie personality, Boyd had been as sharp as he was frightening. He knew the business of death, knew about investigating crimes too, and how you could use motive to point the police in the wrong direction. He’d come up with several phony motives to mislead the cops. First, an attempted rape, which hadn’t worked. The second was more subtle. He’d planted seeds where they’d be sure to grow nowadays: a terrorist co

Boyd had gone to the trouble of stealing sheets of scrap office paper from the trash behind the exchange. He’d drawn a map on one sheet and on another written a note about the girl in Arabic-tinted English (an Arabic language website had been helpful there) – to fool the cops. Boyd was going to leave these notes near crime scenes but it’d worked out even better than that; the police found them in Boyd’s safe house before he’d planted them, which gave more credibility to the terrorism hook. They’d used Middle Eastern food for clues and called in fake terrorist bomb threats to the FBI from pay phones around the area.

Boyd hadn’t pla

Still, her presence alone at the foundation and the fact she wanted to check out some materials told the banker that the cops hadn’t caught on to the terrorist motive. Ashberry had immediately called Boyd and told him to make the story more credible. The hitman had bought a working bomb from the arsonist who’d put Ashberry in touch with Boyd. He’d planted the device in the delivery van, along with a ranting letter to the Times about Zionists. Boyd was arrested just after that but his partner – that black woman from Harlem – had detonated the bomb, and finally the police got the message: terrorism.

And, since the raghead was dead, they’d pull back the protection on the girl.

This gave Alina Frazier the chance to finish the job.

But the police had outsmarted her too, and she’d been caught.

The big question now was: Did the police believe the threat to the girl was finally gone, with the mastermind dead, and the two professional killers arrested?

He decided they might not be completely convinced, but their defenses would be lowered.

So what was the level of risk if he went ahead?

Minimal, he decided.

Geneva Settle would die.

Now, he only needed an opportunity. Boyd had said she’d moved out of her apartment in West Harlem and was staying someplace else. The only co

He rose, left his office and took the ornate elevator downstairs. Then walked to Broadway and found a phone kiosk. (“Always pay phones, never private landlines. And never, ever mobile phones.” Thank you, Thompson.)

He got a number from Directory Assistance and placed the call.

“Langston Hughes High,” the woman answered.

He glanced at the side of a nearby retail-store delivery truck and said to the receptionist, “This is Detective Steve Macy with the police department. I need to speak to an administrator.”

A moment later he was put through to an assistant principal.

“How can I help you?” the harried man asked. Ashberry could hear a dozen voices in the background. (The businessman himself had detested every minute he’d spent in school.)

He identified himself again and added, “I’m following up on an incident that involved one of your students. Geneva Settle?”

“Oh, she was that witness, right?”