There was a long pause. Then he said, “I’m… wheelchair… bound. There… is no… one… in… my life. When… you… meet me… you will… under… stand.”
I thought about that for a moment and decided I already understood. “I’d rather limit our relationship to the telephone for now,” I said. “I actually do believe you wouldn’t talk. Something tells me you’d welcome torture and maybe even death.”
“You are… very… percep… tive… Mr… Creed. So… when… can you
… start?”
I wasn’t worried about speaking freely on my cell phone. The few people in the world capable of breaching my cell security already knew what I did for a living. “I have three clients,” I said. “If you want me, you’ll be fourth in line. Each contract is fifty thousand dollars, plus expenses, wired in advance.”
“Can… I… de… cide how… the hits… go… down?”
“Within reason,” I said.
Victor gave me the details for the first target. Then he hit me with a stipulation I’d never encountered: he wanted to speak to the victim minutes before the execution. I told him that would require kidnapping, which would place a major burden on me. It meant a second person, more time, and more exposure. I refused all the way up to the point where Victor offered to double my fee.
Victor proceeded to tell me exactly what he wanted me to do, and why. And as he spoke in that creepy, metallic voice, I realized that even though I thought I’d stared in the face of the deepest, darkest evil the world could possibly produce, I had never encountered anyone as vile. I came away thinking I’d have to scrape the bowels of hell with a fine-tooth comb to uncover a plan as morbidly evil as his.
I told him I’d do it.
“Before you meet them, you need to see them,” Kathleen Gray said as she signed me in. “They do this for the children, so they won’t see you cry or recoil in horror,” she added.
The William and Randolph Hearst Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell is the largest and busiest burn center in the country, entrusted with treating more than a thousand children each year. I got that and a bunch of other information from a brochure in the lobby while waiting for Ken Chapman’s ex to show up. I had called her at work and explained I needed to meet her in person before I could consider approving her house loan.
“Bullshit!” she had said. “You’re the guy from Homeland Security who called me yesterday. Don’t bother denying it; I recognize your voice.”
