The Taste of Fear (A Suspense Action Thriller & Mystery Novel) Read online

  “So you’re telling me someone was trying to murder me, Inspector?” Sal shook his head. “Forgive my skepticism, gentlemen. I find that extremely difficult to believe.”

  “We have already ruled out the motive of financial gain,” Al Marri said. “That leaves either random violence or pyro-terrorism or revenge.”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have some sort of vendetta against you, Mr. Brazza?” Al Zafein asked.

  “I’m not in the business of speculation, Mr. Zafein.”

  “You should know, sir,” Al Marri added gravely, “that this has become an attempted murder investigation. It would be in everyone’s best interest to get it solved.”

  “I’m not a crook, Inspector. Nor do I associate myself with criminals.”

  Al Marri glanced briefly at the deputy general, then returned his attention to Sal. “I am sure you are a very busy man, sir.” He handed Sal a business card. “If you should think of anything, anything at all, please do not hesitate to contact me.”

  The two police officers left.

  Edward Lumpkin shifted in his seat, his gangly arms folded across his chest, his face pulled down in thought. “Christ, Sal. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Will this have any impact on the hotel’s opening?”

  “Hard to say, but I’d keep an eye on the reservations during the first few weeks of operation. An attempted murder in the hotel could potentially turn off a lot of families. Thankfully, that’s not our core demographic.”

  “This is going to be a bloody circus.”

  “I heard what you told the cops, Sal. But be straight with me. Can you think of anyone who might have a bone to pick with you?”

  “Everybody has enemies, Ed.”

  “But someone serious enough to, you know, want you dead?”

  Sal didn’t reply.

  “Could it be a union thing?” Lumpkin asked suddenly.

  When Sal went non-union with the Prince last summer, labor picketed and sent death threats. One had threatened to blow up After Taxes, his $60-million, 155-foot yacht docked over at the Marine Club, while another had promised to gouge out his eyes while he slept.

  “These union guys, they talk the talk,” Sal said simply. “But they’re neither inclined nor capable of pulling off something like this.” He shook his head. “If you’ll excuse me, Ed, I have some calls I need to make. Write up what we discussed, and we’ll get together again next week.”

  When Lumpkin left, Sal called his security chief, Danny Zamir, and summarized the last twenty minutes. “I want you to find out everything you can,” he concluded. “Understood?”

  “Yeah, capo,” Danny said. “Understood.”

  Sal hung up and gazed out the bank of windows overlooking Dubai’s Business Bay, the city state’s latest multibillion dollar project. As he watched a crane atop an ambitious skyscraper swivel to the east, he thought about everything the two cops had told him.

  Someone wanted him dead.

  The intercom on his desk buzzed. He punched the talk button. “What is it, Lucy?”

  “The car’s waiting to take you to the airport.”

  “Fine.”

  He shrugged on his blazer, grabbed his briefcase, and left the office. He suddenly couldn’t wait to get out of Dubai.

  CHAPTER 2

  Scarlett opened her eyes. Brightness. God, it was so bright it hurt. She tried to piece together where she was, but her thoughts were groggy and uncooperative. She could smell traces of disinfectant and iodine, and then she could make out shapes. She was lying on her back in a bed—a mechanized bed with those side railings so you didn’t fall out. Beside her stood a blood-pressure monitor and an IV pole. A tube led from the bag hanging on the pole to a needle that disappeared into a vein in her right forearm.

  Okay, so she was in a hospital. And it appeared to be a very nice hospital, evident by the polished laminate flooring, high-gloss maple walls, and large-screen TV. Even the linen on the bed was of high quality. The door to the bathroom was ajar, and she could see gleaming blue-and-gray tile work, more maple, and faux-granite countertops. There were no flowers or cards on the side table. She took that to mean either one of two things. She’d only just arrived, and no one had gotten wind of whatever had happened to her. Or she’d been in a coma for a hell of a long time, and everyone had given up on her long ago.

  Scarlett wiggled her toes. They moved. She raised a hand to her head and felt a bandage, which her fingers probed. A spot in the center of her forehead was sore and tender. What had happened? Had she been mugged? Shot? Stabbed? In a car accident—?

  It all came back to her in a rush of images: Laurel Canyon Boulevard, bursting through the guardrail, her stomach in her throat as she plummeted to the ground. She remembered the crushing landing, bouncing wildly out of control down the ravine, the tree…

  But I’m alive.

  The door to the room opened and Sal strolled in with his head down, his eyes glued to a story below the fold of the Wall Street Journal. Seeing him, Scarlett felt a burst of gratitude and affection. He was here, back from Dubai. If she had the strength, she would have jumped up and hugged him.

  He wore a crisp white shirt and navy merino wool suit, one of his made-to-measures from appointment-only William Fioravanti in Manhattan. It was something Al Capone might have fancied had he been around today. In fact, she often kidded Sal that he resembled an Italian gangster. He had short-cropped black hair, hazel eyes, and a generous Roman nose. And he was Sicilian, which sort of sealed the deal.

  “Scarlett!” he said, tossing the paper onto one of the leather chairs and rushing over. He knelt beside the bed and took her hand. “La mia bella donna.”

  After so long apart, the feel of his touch and the sound of his voice and the smell of his cologne all hit her like a truck, smashing through the cobwebs in her head, and she realized suddenly just how close she’d come to never experiencing any of those sensations ever again. The reality of her situation sank in with numbing force. She’d been in a car accident, one bad enough to knock her unconscious and land her in the hospital. She felt very fragile. Life felt very fragile.

  “Is that all I am to you?” she said, teasing him, happy to find she could speak. “Beautiful?” Her throat was dry. The words were a papery whisper.

  “What else is an actress but a pretty face to look at?”

  She wanted to laugh, but a sob escaped instead. A tear tripped down her cheek. “Sal…” She swallowed, tried to work up saliva. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  She didn’t know. For speeding? For not paying attention to the road? For all the terrible things she’d said to him after discovering the affair? She shook her head.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Groggy. But okay, I think. Am I okay?”

  “You’re fine.”

  Relief swamped her, and something inside her chest that had been very tight loosened. “What about this?” She touched the bandages around her head.

  “It’s just a bump.”

  “How long have I been here? What time is it?” She glanced toward the window. The blinds were drawn. No sunlight slipped in between the cracks.

  “You came in this afternoon. It’s about midnight now.”

  Less than twelve hours. Not as bad as she’d feared. “How long have you been here?”

  “A couple hours. I would have gotten here sooner, but we ran into some bad weather over the Atlantic and had to detour.”

  Scarlett frowned. There was something she was missing here. Something about Sal coming back to LA, coming for—

  “My birthday!” she said. “The party!”

  “Don’t worry about that. Gloria’s taking care of it.”

  Scarlett groaned. Her actual birthday was on December 13, nine days earlier. But because of filming she’d postponed the celebration to today. She usually didn’t make a fuss over birthdays, but this one, number thirty, was big, up there in importance with sixteen and twenty-one, the last b
ig fun one until you seriously began dreading them. Over two hundred invitations had gone out. Every actor who had made the headlines within the past six months would have been there—not to mention executives from HBO, Castle Rock, Warner, and all the other big studios. Sal had invited the mayor of LA and the former Vice President, both of whom were his close friends. On top of the Who’s Who guest list, a tabloid paper had paid her $2.5 million to photograph the event, the money of which was supposed to go to one of her charities.

  “I’m such an idiot,” she said, shaking her head and instantly regretting doing so as pain flamed beneath the bandage. She put a hand to the sore spot. “I’ve ruined everything.”

  The door to the room opened again. This time a fiftyish doctor with a graying beard and a ponytail entered. Scarlett had seen plenty of men sporting ponytails before, of course. Just never a doctor. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. It was like your doctor having tattoos—or worse, a bowtie.

  “Hello, Bill,” Sal said, standing and shaking the doctor’s hand. “Scarlett, this is Dr. Blair, the neurologist who looked you over when you came in.”

  “Welcome to Cedars-Sinai, Miss Cox,” he said, coming to stand before the bed.

  “Cedars? I thought I was in the Beverly Hilton.”

  “Not everyone gets a private room, Miss Cox. You can thank your husband for arranging that.” He shifted the clipboard from his left hand to the right one. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the bandage around your head. You hit it pretty hard in the accident—hard enough to have lost consciousness for several hours at any rate. Your forehead will likely be sore for a few days. But, as I’ve told your husband, the X-rays and CT scan came back clean. No fractures or hematoma, which is a good thing. How do you feel?”

  “A little groggy,” she said.

  “Any dizziness or nausea?”

  “Not now.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Earlier this morning. I get migraines.”

  He scratched some notes down on the clipboard. “How often do you get them?”

  “A couple times a week.”

  “How long have you been having them?”

  “A few months.”

  More notes. “Any change in diet? Change in sleeping habits?”

  “No.”

  “Are you drinking any more coffee or alcohol than usual?”

  “No, no. It’s none of that. It’s just stress. From work—and other things. My life’s been a little hectic recently.”

  Dr. Blair nodded, but didn’t say anything right away. Scarlett found herself wondering whether he knew about her and Sal’s marital problems. God knows the affair had been played to death on all the television entertainment channels, including several respectable news outfits. Not that she cared if he did know. She’d long ago become desensitized to what the general public thought of her personal life. “Welcome to the jungle,” her agent had told her six years back when she was still starry-eyed after her first big feature film success.

  Dr. Blair said, “Are you feeling any nausea now?”

  “No.”

  “Can you touch your nose?”

  She did what he asked.

  He held a finger in front of her face. “Follow my finger, please.” He moved his index finger left, then right. “Any blurred vision?”

  She shook her head.

  He straightened. “It doesn’t seem you have any post-concussion symptoms. But I’d like to keep you overnight for observation. I believe the police would also like to get a statement from you. After that, in the morning, you should be good to leave. However,” he added, “I want you to take it easy. That means nothing stressful for the next seven to ten days. Understood?

  “Impossible,” she said. “I have too much to do.” Her mind was already fast-forwarding to the weekend. The calls and apologies she’d have to make. Rebooking the venue for the party, sending out fresh invitations, the appearance Monday on Good Morning America…

  “Miss Cox,” Dr. Blair said. “You said so yourself. You believe stress has been triggering your recent spate of migraines. That sounds reasonable to me. On top of that, you’ve just been in a serious car accident. You’ve suffered a mild to moderate traumatic brain injury. True, you seem to be doing fine. But any sort of TBI should be taken seriously. Just because you’re not currently exhibiting certain symptoms doesn’t mean they won’t emerge tomorrow, or the day after that. And the best prevention against that is to take a break, relax, slow down.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Sal cut in.

  “Make sure you do. Now, I have to continue my rounds. A nurse will be in shortly.”

  They thanked Dr. Blair, and he left the room.

  Scarlett looked skeptically at Sal. “You don’t really think I need to sit around the house for a week, do you?”

  “You heard the man, cara mia. You need to relax. Whatever you have to do can wait.” He took her hand in his again and rubbed the top of it with his thumb. “It’s good to see you.”

  She wanted to tell him the same, but she bit back the words. She didn’t want to confuse her gratitude at surviving the car accident with her still uncertain feelings for him.

  Unable to meet his eyes, she looked down at the hand holding hers. It was tanned, strong, manicured nails, platinum wedding band on the ring finger.

  “Listen,” Sal said, clearing his throat. “What about we take a trip somewhere?”

  Scarlett raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You mean, just you and me?”

  “Sure,” he said, pushing up his bottom lip. If lips could shrug, that’s how they’d do it.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now, Sal.”

  “I meant what I said about getting through this. I want this marriage to work.”

  “I want it to work too, I really do, but I don’t think the next step is us vacationing together.”

  “But it is,” he insisted. “It’s exactly what we need.”

  She searched his eyes. “What about the hotel?” she said cautiously. “The opening?”

  “I’ll have my phone. I’ll keep in touch with the office.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “It’ll be good for you.”

  “Humor me then. What do you have in mind?”

  He shrugged. “Something private, away from the crowd.”

  “The Caribbean?”

  “And lie around on a beach?”

  “Well?”

  “What about a safari?” he suggested.

  She was surprised. “As in Africa?”

  “Dubai’s on the same clock as Kenya, or Tanzania. If there’s an emergency, and I have to get back for whatever reason, it’s only a couple hours flight. You could come. Check out the hotel. The movers and decorators are finishing up this week.”

  Scarlett considered it. In her head she saw an acacia tree silhouetted against a sapphire sunset. Giraffes and zebras and elephants gathered at a watering hole. Antelope grazing on the savanna. Elegant game resorts and tented camps. It sounded nice. She could almost hear Elton John singing “Circle of Life.”

  “All right,” she said, warming to the idea. “I’m game.”

  Monday, December 23, 11:11 p.m.

  London, England

  Like the devil, the fugu was known by many names—blowfish, puffer fish, globefish, balloon fish, toadfish, more. The second most poisonous vertebrate in the world, it was a nasty piece of work, its neurotoxin ten thousand times more deadly than cyanide. If ingested, the poison numbed the lips and tongue, induced vomiting and muscle paralysis, and eventually caused death from suffocation. If you somehow survived, chances were good you’d end up in a prolonged coma, cruelly conscious of everything happening around you, a kind of hell on earth.

  The Irishman Damien Fitzgerald had one such fugu on the cutting board in the kitchen, cold and dead. He picked up what the Japanese called a fugu hiki—a thin, single-edged carbon blade—and removed the eyes. He sliced a cir
cle around the mouth, stuck his fingers into the incision, and peeled back the skin. It came off cleanly, like the shell off a hardboiled egg. A jelly-like substance coated the denuded meat. He scrubbed it away with water and salt. Gutting the sucker was the tricky part. Most of the neurotoxin was contained in the liver and ovaries. If you ruptured either, the poison would seep through your skin and into your flesh. So very slowly, with the precision and dexterity of a surgeon, he removed the internal organs and filleted what remained of the meat into thin strips, cutting upward against the bone. Afterward he placed the sashimi onto a plate and poured himself a glass of a ’96 Domaine Laroche Chablis. Before he could sit down and enjoy his dinner, however, his computer beeped.

  Fitzgerald popped a piece of the fish into his mouth—it was gelatinous but not fishy tasting—and entered the study, where the floor-to-ceiling bookcases were filled with thousands of books on the history of warfare. He was going through the centuries in chronological order, a hobby he’d begun shortly after his wife and eight-year-old daughter were brutally murdered nine years ago. He’d started with the Battle of Megiddo in 1469 BC—or BCE, if you cared to be politically correct—and was currently up to the Battle of Talasa in 751 AD, a conflict between the Arabs and the Chinese for control of a major river in Central Asia. The Chinese lost, which was a shame for them. Had they won, Central Asia today might have been Chinese, not Muslim.

  The computer, a MacBook, was on the desk in the corner. He sat down in front of it and logged into specially encrypted software. He had one new email message:

  How’s my favorite assassin, Redstone? If you’re not keeping up, the FBI is still holding its collective dick over the last job. All they’ve got is the killer wears size 12 loafers. Next time don’t step in the fucking blood, yes? See the attachment, per usual. There’s good news and bad news. Bad news—the first guy we used fucked up, so you’re cleanup on this one. The good news—the mark’s going to Africa for a few days, which, if you’re quick, should make things a little easier than usual. Shit happens in Africa, right?