Chapter Two

Chapter Two

10th, January, 2009.

New York City, USA. 

Edwin Wolfgang woke up at 5:30am in the morning, he wakes up thirty minutes earlier than usual, on the day after his killer squad has carried out an assignment. 

He got out of bed, and did a few stretches, before going into the bathroom. As he took his bath, he thought about the profits his organization are in a position to make from the sale of the collections of the two that just lost their lives. 

He got out of the shower and chose a blue designer suit out of his closet, he looked at himself in the mirror he’s gotten fatter every day since he started eating out, and he was too busy to go to the gym. 

He sighed, ‘well that is just a small price to pay for the profits I make’ he thought to himself. 

He stepped out of his stone house on east fifty-fourth Street, and got into the limousine parked in front of his house. “Dimarco’s” he barked, and reclined on the cozy carseat.

 Dimarco’s is the little Italian restaurant in Queens, where he usually have breakfast with his personal assistant, every morning after a victim’s life has been lost to his hitmen. 

Wolfgang had been born into the New York city upper east side establishment, his father had been a stock broker in Manhattan, and he had lived in New York all his life, except for the two years of his life he spent living with his aunt in Guatemala.

Edwin had instructed his driver to come pick him thirty minutes earlier than usual, which was no new thing to the driver, as they followed that routine on some occasions.

He picked up the day’s copy of the New York times, the latest obituary has not been published yet, he smiled once again because of the huge profit, he would likely make from his coup. 

“Here we are, boss” the chauffeur said, as he pulled up in front of the little Italian restaurant. 

He came down from the car, and walked over to the side to open the door for Edwin. Wolfgang walked into the little restaurant, and sat at his favorite table, next to the fire place. 

He would have to wait for his personal assistant who always found it difficult to be punctual, while he waited the waiter brought him a cup of coffee and some croissants. 

“Late again Steve” he frowned, as his personal assistant, Steve Cummins, walked into the restaurant five minutes later. 

“I’m really sorry sir”  Cummins muttered.

“Right” Wolfgang said, nodding his head.

Wolfgang knew that he had just muttered the apology perfunctorily, and he would come late again next time. 

He could not fire him for the last fifteen years, because Cummins had proved himself to be indispensable over the years, and firing him would be disastrous to his bank. 

When the Wolfgang’s bank was still struggling, Steve was the man that told him about the business plan that they have been operating, and it’s been years of highly profitable business ever since. 

Wolfgang waved the waiter over and ordered for toast, bacon and eggs, mushrooms and coffee. 

“The loan deal is two weeks away from expiration, what do you think our next line of action should be?” Wolfgang asked, as he buttered some toast. 

“Well since we have a three months window, I think we should auction the arts on the open market instead of contacting Sotheby’s or Christie’s, you know for the past few years we have been dealing with either of these two at different points in time, and they must have been looking at the trends by which we do business with them, they must have stopped dismissing the mysterious deaths of our customers as pure coincidence, based on the fact that all the paintings we have sold have been used as collateral by people who take loans from us and all of them die mysteriously, and there is always no way of tracing their killers” Cummins said, he paused, taking a sip of coffee. 

“I think this time around we should sell the arts on the open market, to douse any form of suspicion” Cummins added. 

“Well you are right, but how do you think we should go about this sale?” Wolfgang asked. 

“Well” Cummins smiled, “the loan would expire in two weeks after which we would be giving them an extra two weeks’ window, a month after the two-week window expires we would sell off the paintings at the upcoming art fair in Rome”. 

“That’s a nice idea “Wolfgang said. 

“Call Dolphin cargoes in Lagos, and Deborah Hutchins in London concerning the transport and delivery of the arts”, Wolfgang said. The waiter brought the bill, and Wolfgang signed it, before they got up to leave.

****************************************************

Danny stared out of his office window on the twenty third floor, in 26 federal plaza, the New York field office of the FBI. He stared at the Hudson in the distance, he has been thinking day and night about this very difficult puzzle he has been giving to solve. He wondered how perfect a criminal can be, in covering his tracks. 

Since his boss, John Wayne, called him to his office seven months ago, and gave him a team of five special agents to investigate and indict Edwin Wolfgang the chairman of Edwin Loans. Ever since he had been investigating, he had not gotten a single clue that can help him lay a glove on Wolfgang. 

He looked again at Wolfgang’s profile, he was born into the Upper East Side establishment, his father had been a stock broker in Wall Street, while his mother worked as a bank executive in a Wall Street bank. He grew up with his two younger sisters in Manhattan, and attended one of the most expensive private schools in New York. 

Ed as he was fondly called by friends was basically a dummy though he was a good kid back in elementary school and high school, but he was always at the bottom of the class. 

He had struggled through high school and did not bother to enroll in college, he got into trouble with his dad because of his decision to not to go to college. 

He had obtained a loan from his dad, and started a small bank which was initially started to provide loans with little interest and collateral such as mobile phones for entrepreneurs who had just started their businesses, and could not afford to take loans from the bigger Wall Street banks. 

His father kept putting money into the bank, and the bank was doing fairly well. Two years after establishing the bank, Wolfgang met Steven Cummings, a fresh college graduate from the south who had studied Arts, in university of Austin, Texas, and had come to New York to look for a job, and a fresh start. 

Wolfgang had met Cummins at the subway in Brooklyn, and had employed him as a personal assistant after their first chat, in which he had showed his brilliance. 

Two years after Wolfgang and Cummins met, the bank suddenly started to grow, as they also began to accept paintings and sculptures as collateral five years later, Wolfgang got the company on the listings of the American stock exchange. 

Danny then switched his mind to the profile of the five people who had borrowed money from Edwin Loans, and had been murdered. 

The circumstances surrounding each victim’s death are not only connected by the money they owed the bank, but also by the manner in which they had been killed. Each of the victims had had their throats cut, and a part of their body mutilated.  He considered the first victim.

Madame Elizabeth Dubois was a rich hotelier in Marseille, she had been running her hotel with her husband Antoine until his death in May 2007. 

After Antoine’s death, the hotel was in a serious state distress, because of the amount Elizabeth had to pay as death duties and other state obligations. Elizabeth had to lay off half of the staff, the amount of customers lodging in the hotel and holding events in the hote, also dropped because Dubois could not afford to render the high quality service their hotel had a reputation for.

 Distraught, Elizabeth took to drinking and gambling. One night she had gone to a nightclub in Marseille and had gotten drunk, she had spent the night with a gigolo named Olivier. She started dating Olivier a month after their first meeting, and Olivier who was once a cashier in one of the wall street banks had told her that a bank in wall street offers good loans, and allowed arts to be used as collateral. 

Elated, Elizabeth had applied the loan and used the van Gogh self-portrait with the bandaged ear as collateral, without considering the loan terms and conditions. 

Convinced that she would be able to pay back the loan, she took obtained a credit of forty-five million dollars. It was all good again, as she was able to pay back ten million dollars at the end of the first year, at the beginning of the second year her debt was remaining thirty million dollars including interest. 

Three months into the second year of the loan duration, Elizabeth had her throat cut and her left ear chopped off. Olivier was arrested by the Marseille police but was released soon after due to lack of concrete evidence to prove that he was behind the murder.

Daniel Hutchins was a pig farmer in Shorewood, a small town near the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His entire family has been farmers for a very long time, and he had inherited the farm from his grandparents. Apart from the farm he inherited he also got some African ancient sculptures which his ancestors who were slave traders, had brought back from Africa during one of their expeditions. 

He also inherited several sculptures from his grandparents, which worth about eighty million dollars in total. When Daniel took over the farm from his grandparents, he decided to make the business a little bigger by adding a poultry house and a ranch for rearing cattle and sheep. He also began to process his pork into bacon and ham. 

He then began to search the internets, and the pages of local newspapers, for banks that offered favourable loans, that he could use to fund his business plans. While he was at this, he came across an advert on the pages of a magazine published in Shoredish, about a bank in New York that was offering loans to business people. 

He was so pleased with the loan, because paintings and sculptures can be used as collateral, which means that he could get the loan he wanted, without having to lose much in the event of things going south. He applied for thirty million dollars which he had worked out would be enough to fund his plans. 

He was able to repay twenty-five million dollars by the beginning of the second year, and had expanded his farm. Two months into the third year, he had almost paid back the loan in full, he had also begun to set up farms in Iowa, Minnesota, and Ohio.

 During the summer of the third year Daniel was vacationing with his girlfriend in Los Angeles, California, when he was murdered in the same fashion as the other victims, with his left big toe chopped off. 

Like the murders of the other victims, there was little to no evidence that can be used to trace his killer. The case ended up in the basement of the Los Angeles Police department, as one of the cold cases they had no plans of revisiting.

Danny poured himself a cup of coffee, before opening the profile of the third victim.

Lucas Baptisto owned a sea food restaurant in Miami, Florida. He and his wife had been running the restaurant together for ten years, before she divorced him. He was a Brazilian from Saopaulo, and had emmigrated to the United States in the mid-nineties, where he married a lady from Georgia. 

When his wife divorced him, he had to give her half of his assests as alimony, and he had ended up with little left of his wealth. The restaurant was ailing, and even though he had to lay off some waiters and waitresses and some culinary staff, he still could not run the restaurant successfully. 

Distraught, he decided to call it quits and move back to Brazil. 

Few days before he was due to return to Brazil, he went to a bar to have a drink, and ran into an old friend who told him about a bank in New York, that gives out loans to small and medium scale business owners. 

As soon as he got back to his apartment, he googled the bank and was satisfied with the thought that he could easily put down his Monet and his Matisse as collateral for a large loan, both paintings were worth seventy-five million dollars on the open market. 

A very meticulous planner and strategist that he was, Baptisto carefully planned the reinvigoration of his business. He reasoned that forty-four million dollars should be able to not only bring him back to business, but also help him establish restaurants in three cities, Los Angeles, Houston and New York. 

He applied for the loan, and like other borrowers did not consider the clauses in the loan contact, before enthusiastically signing them. 

A year into the loan duration, he had paid back half of the loan, one month into the second year Lucas was murdered in his home in Miami, in the same fashion as the others, except that it was the little toe in his right leg that was mutilated.

Danny took a sip of his coffee, and was about to click open the case file of the fourth victim, when his desk intercom began to rig. He picked up the receiver, it was his secretary. 

“Sir Agent Bob Harden, from the embassy in London is on line one.”  his secretary, Betty Adler said. 

“Okay put me through to him” Danny said, Bob Harden was the FBI special agent at the embassy in London.

”Hello Bob, how are you doing” Danny said. 

“I’m doing great” Bob replied, “we are still trying to find Osama Bin Laden, what I do every day now is to investigate terrorists, and their finances” Bob said, chuckling. 

“Oh I don’t think that’s worse than investigating multiple murders, in which the only clue is the loans that they all the victims owe a certain bank”. 

“Yeah speaking of which, Danny I’m calling to tell you that you would have to open another case file, a fifth one” Bob said.

 Danny winced at the thought of having yet another victim of the mysterious killer.

 “Who’s the latest victim?” he asked 

“Owen Mclean an English businessman who deals mainly in real estate, I’d have my secretary send an email of the victim’s details to you, for profiling” Bob said. 

“Okay thank you very much Bob, I hope you’ve managed to get a bit of interest in soccer, cos the Brits hardly play any basketball” Danny said.

“Well yeah, I watch some games on tv whenever I have the time, but it cannot be compared to any sports played on the American soil, I hope I get redeployed back to the States very soon” Bob said.

 “Well that’s left for them to decide at the Headquarters, please give my love to Letty and the team in London, I need to go now” Danny and hung up. 

He called agent Edward, the agent he had appointed to be in charge of the team that’s responsible for putting Wolfgang and his members of staff under surveillance.

 “Hi Eddy” Danny said as soon as the call was picked up on the other side.

“Sir I was about to call you now Edwin and Steve just had breakfast in Brooklyn, as they do whenever a victim has been killed, I think we have another victim”Edward said. 

“Yeah we do have one, this time from London, Agent Harden just called a few minutes, to inform me” Danny said. 

“Okay boss, we just left the little Italian restaurant, and it seems like Wolfgang is heading back to his office” Edward said.

“Alright make sure you keep an eye on me, and report any important observations you make to me” Danny said.

“I’d do that sir” Edward said.

“Alright then, I’d talk to you later” Danny said and hung up.

Thirty Five minutes after he received the phone call from the London, Danny’s desk intercom rang again. 

“Sir, the embassy in Lagos is on line one” Betty said. 

“That must be agent Watson, put him through” Danny said.

“Hello Paul” Danny said, as soon as he was put through.

 “Hello Danny how is it going over there in New York?“ Paul Watson said.

  “Pretty good Paul, I have not been running for a long while and I am feeling like I’m putting on weight”. 

“That’s not a bad thing for someone of your stature” Paul said.

 “It is Paul” Danny said. 

“Okay if you say so, I’m calling to inform you that there has been a murder in Lagos, which I think you might be interested in”. 

“Let me guess someone had his throat cut” Danny said. 

“Well yeah, but this time, it was a lady” Paul replied. 

“And if I might continue my guesswork, thee victim owes Edwin Loans some money” Danny continued.

 “Yeah she does, twenty million pounds or thereabouts, and she had some arts in her collection, just like the other victims” Paul said.

 “Alright thank you very much Paul, I would open a file for her, can you please send me her details, you can just send it in an email” Danny said, 

“Sure I’d do that” Paul said, and the line went dead.

**********************************************************

Wall Street, New York City, USA.

It was a cold winter morning, and the staff of Edwin Loans was not exempted from the effects of the cold. 

The humming sounds of thee heaters sounded in all the offices in the building where Edwin Loans has its headquarters. 

Wolfgasng upon getting to the office, had instructed Becky his secretary to prepare a speech for him to present at the bankers’ association conference taking place the following night, he had gotten the recognition he always wanted from the bankers’ association because of the growth in leaps and bounds his bank has been experiencing for the past few years. 

He also called the loans director and the arts director to a meeting in his office. Carl Whitefield loans director, and John Summers, the arts director arrived at the office together, for the meeting. 

“Good morning gentlemen” the chairman beamed as he always did, both directors always wonder how he robs people of their properties, and still manages to keep the good guy personality. 

They returned the smile and greeted the chairman, before taking their seats. 

“Carl, give me an update on the loans we gave out to Ms. Johnson and Mr. Mclean” Wolfgang said as soon as the men were seated. 

“Well sir the two customers have not paid back any amount of the loan I spoke to Mclean two days ago, and according to what he told me on the phone, it seems like he was severely hit by the economic meltdown, the same can be said for MS. Johnson” Whitefield said. 

“I guess we need to start evaluating the collections of both of them because the loan duration is running out in two weeks, I also want us to draw up a sales plan before the time runs out” Wolfgang said to Whitefield. 

He turned to Summers.

“John I want you to give me a run down on the worth of the paintings and sculptures in Mclean’s and Johnson’s collection” he said. 

Summers proceeded to reel off the arts in McLean’s and Johnson’s collections offhand, like he always does. 

“Mclean has three paintings in his collection Rembrandt’s the foot operation portrait, Vermeer’s young woman sitting at a virginal, and Van Gogh’s sunflowers all three paintings worth a hundred million dollars, Johnson has some ancient Benin sculptures in and a Matisse in her collection all the arts in Johnson’s collection should worth a hundred and twenty million dollars in total”. “If we are going to sell the artwork in their collection we would be making profits worth almost four times the value of both loans combined”.

 By the time John finished, Wolfgang was beaming from ear to ear, as he always does whenever he is told that he would be making huge profits from exploiting customers. 

“John you would have to travel to London tomorrow, to inspect the artwork and start preparing for a bank takeover, when you are done with the inspection and valuing in London, you would then travel to Lagos to carry out the same exercise, I would inform the head of the legal department about the arts acquisition the meeting is over” the chairman said. 

Both directors left the chairman’s office wondering why the chairman was so confident about the inability of the customers to pay back the loan. 

“Sir you have two packages in the mail, and the mail man said you have to sign before a certain document, before you get them” the security man Harold Fisher said.

”Alright Harold let me have the document” Wolfgang said, he already knew what the packages contained. The security man handed him the document, and he signed it. The security man took the document out of the office, and came back two minutes later, with two packages wrapped in colourful ribbons.

 He opened the packages and peered inside seeing the blood stained ear of a black woman and the pale fingers of a man, he called his personal assistant and told him to deposit the payment of the two members of the killer squad who had just carried out the two latest murders in the usual place, his company was about to become at least two hundred million dollars richer and he smiled at the thought of that.