Chapter 8 - The Price of Treachery
The visitor’s room at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island was small, cinder-blocked, and reeked of commercial bleach and human misery. A thick pane of scratched, yellowed plexiglass separated the two metal stools.
When the heavy steel door clicked open on the prisoner side, Natalie stepped through, escorted by an armed correction officer.
She looked unrecognizable.
Her platinum hair was tangled, greasy, and pulled back in a sloppy knot with an elastic band. The designer glow of her skin had been replaced by the sickly, grey pallor of jailhouse fluorescent lighting. She wore an oversized orange jumpsuit that swallowed her thin frame, her wrists shackled to a chain around her waist.
When she saw me sitting across from her, wearing a tailored charcoal wool suit, my bald head exposed and gleaming under the harsh light, her lip curled into a sneer that was more desperate than dangerous.
She sat down heavily on the metal stool, picked up the black plastic telephone receiver, and slammed it against her ear.
I lifted my receiver and held it to my ear.
"Come to gloat, you old vulture?" she snarled, her voice crackling through the cheap speaker. "Look at you. Still playing the grand lady. You think you won? You think you broke me?"
"I don't think I broke you, Natalie," I said evenly. "A person must possess structural integrity before they can be broken. You are simply sand held together by cheap perfume and borrowed diamonds."
She let out a harsh, barking laugh that bounced off the cinder block. "Jackson is going to crack, Eleanor. You know he is. He’s weak. He loves me. The second he gets five minutes away from your apron strings, he’ll come crawling back to this facility. He’ll sign whatever I put in front of him just to hear me tell him he’s a big, strong man again."
"Jackson is currently working the midnight shift at Bay 4 in Queens," I told her calmly. "He stacks four hundred forty-pound crates of transmissions every eight hours for eighteen dollars an hour. His hands are covered in grease, and his feet are blistered. He lives in a maintenance shed that smells of radiator fluid."
Natalie’s smirk flickered. For a split second, her eyes betrayed a flash of genuine confusion. "You're lying. You wouldn't do that to your precious prince."
"I did," I replied. "And do you know what happened yesterday, Natalie? Arthur brought him the annulment papers. The grounds were fraud, criminal impersonation, and grand larceny. Do you want to know what Jackson said before he signed them?"
She gripped the telephone receiver until her knuckles went chalk-white through the plexiglass. "What?"
"He didn't say a word," I whispered, leaning closer to the glass. "He simply signed his name, handed the pen back to Arthur, and walked back onto the loading dock to finish his shift. You are dead to him, Natalie. You are an infection that he is sweating out over a diesel conveyor line."
"You ruined him!" she hissed, slamming her shackled hands against the metal counter. The chain clattered violently against the steel. "He could have had an incredible life with me! We would have conquered this city! You were just an old relic standing in the doorway, clutching your husband’s corpse!"
"We visited the Hoboken storage unit this morning, Natalie."
The color drained from her face so fast it looked as if her heart had stopped beating. Her jaw slacked, the vicious fire in her eyes suddenly replaced by an abyss of pure, sickening terror.
"Tyler gave us the key," I continued, my voice smooth and rhythmic, delivering each word like a lead weight onto her chest. "He gave us the laptops. He gave us the embosser. And most importantly, he gave us the three-ring binder titled *Phase III: Asset Extraction and Isolation.*"
Her mouth worked soundlessly. Her breathing became shallow and fast, fogging up a small circle on the plexiglass between us.
"Detective Miller forwarded the binders to the United States Attorney for the Southern District an hour ago," I said. "They are upgrading your charges to include federal wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and attempted second-degree murder through the administration of controlled substances."
"I didn't... I didn't try to kill you," she gasped, her voice shrinking into a high, pathetic squeak. "It was just a sedative! It was just to keep you asleep while I took the jewelry!"
"You wrote down the dosages, Natalie," I said, pointing a steady finger at the glass. "You wrote down the Scopolamine plan. You wrote down the name of the private facility in Connecticut where the medical director was willing to take a twenty-thousand-dollar monthly retainer to keep me sedated until my heart gave out."
Tears of sheer, unadulterated panic began spilling down her hollow, unwashed cheeks. The arrogant socialite had vanished completely. The grifter from Scranton was finally staring into the bottom of the pit she had dug for someone else.
"Eleanor... please," she begged, pressing her palm against the glass. "Please don't let them send me to federal prison. I'll give everything back! I'll tell Tyler to cooperate on the Florida cases! I'll sign a lifetime non-disclosure agreement! I'll leave the state! You'll never see my face again!"
"You're right about one thing, Natalie," I said, slowly rising from the metal stool, my posture regal, unbroken, and sovereign. "I will never see your face again."
"Eleanor! Eleanor, wait! Talk to Jackson! Tell him I'm sorry! Tell him I loved him!"
I hung the black receiver back on its metal cradle.
May you like
I didn't look back as the heavy steel door buzzed open, leaving Natalie Hayes—or whatever her name was—screaming against the plexiglass while two armed guards hauled her backward into the dark, concrete bowels of the island.
***
