Rico

Prologue

The blue Toyota Corolla pulled up at a cheap motel. He had traded it for his red conspicuous 2007 Audi Concept which would have attracted a lot of attention. Attention was the last thing he needed. He got off the car, grabbed his suitcase and marched into the motel.

The receptionist was a middle-aged, heavyset dark-skinned woman with a pleasant attitude (unlike most women in her profession). There were only two rooms available; room 14 and room 27, and she wanted him to choose for himself. He chose 14. There was something significant about the number.

Minutes after settling into room 14, he pulled out a tiny briefcase from his suitcase and poured out it's contents on the modestly-decorated mahogany bed that occupied more than two-thirds of the room. Five different passports, six driver's licenses and four different ID cards. None of these documents held his real name and, honestly, he couldn't remember the last time he used a document that held his real name.

He figured he'd stay at the motel for two to three weeks. Therefore, he had to choose an identity by which the receptionist and other people in the motel would know him. He was a master of disguises, and he had changed his appearance more than thrice since they started looking for him.

Christopher Wallace. That's the identity he settled for. Christopher Wallace is a freelance web-designer and computer programmer. He is thirty-two, divorced with no kids and graduated from Stanford University. He could play that profile nice and easy, it was one of the easiest because it didn't deviate greatly from his real one. So, Christopher Wallace it would be.

He fired up his MacBook as he started thinking of what his next move would be. First, I need cash. A lot of cash. Like most 21st century racketeers, he was stinking rich. The challenge was in moving the money around, and thirteen years of doing that had made him a pro. He wired half a million dollars from a Swiss account to his French 'banker'. He then instructed the Frenchman to wire half the amount to the Diamond Trust Bank in Manhattan to a new account under Christopher Wallace. They had to have a readily processed visa credit card that he'd collect in four hours. With that kind of money the Diamond Trust Bank could process 20 visa cards if he wanted. The transactions were completed in fifteen minutes, and all communications between him and his French 'banker' were via encrypted mail. You could never be too careful when you were on the run.

He laid the computer on the tiny table beside the bed and walked across the room towards the window. A golden sunset glowed at the end of the horizon, and the street below was swamped with foot traffic. Husbands walking home from work, kids walking home from school, and mothers off from running their numerous errands. Maryland was quite a populous town, and that's why he had chosen it. He could take an unlimited number of identities and still remain inconspicuous.

A shattering sound pulled him from his reverie. He turned around to see a huge brown rat running off under the bed. On the floor was his two-thousand-dollar Rolex wristwatch, it's face shattered into pieces. It infuriated him. To him the watch was not worth two grand, it was priceless. He had gotten it from a friend. A very special friend.

He went to the closet where he had unpacked his stuff. He picked up a tiny highly-ventilated box beneath the shoe rack. He went back to the bed and lifted the roof of the box. Inside lay a 20-inch-long black Egyptian cobra. He picked it up, rolled it on the floor, and whispered, "Go get me some revenge, Rico."

Barely a minute later, Rico crawled from under the bed with a huge brown rat between his jaws. Rico never failed him.