A Spill of Blood Ch. 06

Whodunit is answered: Larry Beck had the $32,000,000. Harry got it back, all but $100,000 in cash and $2,000,000 in cryptocurrency he let Beck have in exchange for information about Jordan Regan and Richard Bertram. Harry left, giving Beck a chance to run. Beck either didn't run or didn't run fast enough. He was tortured and killed, along with his girlfriend, Nikki. The single shot to the head with a .22 suggested that Mitchell did it.

Whodunit might be answered, but it's not over. The ones who done it are in the slave business, and that's not okay with Harry. And once they figure out someone knows what they do ...

—C

"Nine hundred thousand cash," I said, dumping the red carry-on I'd taken from Beck's cabin. I dropped a piece of paper next to it. It wasn't an elaborately engraved bearer bond containing secret codes hidden in printer's marks. It was the torn back of an envelope I'd scooped from Beck's desk on which I'd scribbled an account number and the precious sixty-four characters of the password using a cheap-ass ballpoint. "And twenty-nine million in there. Change the password or move it or whatever the hell just so long as it's not my responsibility anymore.

"You're short two point one," I went on, "because Beck already bought himself a stretch of beach in Honduras." Beck had suggested that story, and it seemed reasonable to me. "If that's a problem, take it up with the real estate people down there."

"Only two, Mitchell acquired the remaining cash," Regan said absently. That told me two things. One, it confirmed Mitchell had been the one to kill Beck. Second, it told me that Mitchell had fucked up. He either hadn't realized that Beck still had an account with millions in it, or hadn't been able to break him. I was betting the former. I doubt Mitchell would fail at the second. The password died with Beck, and that money was gone into the ether forever.

Regan still had the alpha-male hauteur, but I could see the tiny easing of tension in his body as he contemplated what I'd delivered for a moment longer. Then he looked up. "I said get me the thirty-two, so maybe I'll have you take it up with the real estate people down there."

"Well, there you might have a problem." I took a moment of pleasure in watching the spark of interest in his eyes. Regan liked breaking people to his will, but see, I found I liked frustrating him. "I'm not sure you know this, but Honduras isn't one of the fifty states." He looked at me blankly. "I don't have a passport."

I didn't. It had expired during the bad year after Amber left, and getting it renewed had never percolated up to the top of my priority list. We'd used it to travel, she and I. When I'd crawled out of the bottle, there were only fuckbuddies in my life, and I wasn't going to say to Lexie, "Hey, how does Santorini sound?"

Though, Harry, now there's Sydney, and Santorini would be ...

I dragged myself back from a moment's contemplation of Sydney and one of the topless beaches on the island. I set another item in front of Regan. "My bill, including itemized expenses."

I watched the wheels turn as he contemplated my refusal to track down a mythical waterfront property in Honduras. "Well, perhaps I'll put Mitchell on that problem."

"Where is your pet rattlesnake? I'm used to him coiled up in the corner."

"Other business." He pulled the bill over and glanced at it. "Well, I didn't expect you to succeed, but you did. So I guess I need to take care of this." He reached into the red carry-on and extracted some banded packets. "You ran a little bit over my time limit. I'm not paying you extra for that. But I said sixty." He counted six of the packets onto the desk. "And it's a little more than your expenses, but call it a tip." He added a seventh and gave me a wide smile. "Nice doing business with you, Harry."

I slid the packets into my jacket pocket, gave him a curt nod, and made my way out.

"Maybe we'll talk again," he said as I left the room.

I'd misused a metaphor earlier. Mitchell wasn't a rattlesnake. Mitchell was a mamba, striking silently out of the brush.

A seven thousand dollar tip over and above expenses, the easy acceptance of being stymied, the wide smile of "nice doing business" ... that was what the dry rattle from behind a rock sounded like, even if the snake didn't realize it was warning me.

"Is it over?" Sydney asked.

"Most of it," I lied. "Beck's dead and most of the money's returned. But I have no way of knowing if friends of those dead cops won't take a little revenge. They may come after me." I hesitated, then gave her a tiny morsel more because she wasn't entirely safe, not after Mitchell had seen her take my arm that day. "It's possible that Regan will want all traces of this mess to disappear, including anyone who knows about the millions."

I didn't think Regan would give a damn about people knowing of the millions. But I was certain he'd give a damn about people knowing what his business was. When Beck tried to bribe me with information ... well, when Beck did bribe me with information about Bertram, I'd followed a trail of logic. That trail led to Richard Bertram wondering if that bribe attempt had been made and information traded hands. The same logic applied to Jordan Regan. I had a feeling Regan's ego meant he wasn't always careful, but he wasn't stupid, not in his business.

"I think you should disappear for a while," I continued. "I know you said you didn't have family anywhere, but maybe a trip down to the Keys or something, some place warm where there're no bad guys in your vicinity."

She shivered but shook her head. "No. I'm staying with you. You've protected me so far. If we're leaving, it's together. We could go to Europe. Maybe we could find some way to get the money Larry left. Two million is enough to disappear in Europe."

"Sorry, hon, I don't think so. Even if he did, I don't have a passport."

We argued. She was scared—rightly so—and wanted to flee, but she wanted me along to protect her. She insisted.

I resisted. As much as the thought of lolling about the Mediterranean with Sydney appealed to me, I knew I'd never lose the burning sensation in my gut that came from knowing what was happening back here and doing nothing about it. It was hard to argue with her because I didn't tell her everything. Beck had stolen money, end of story as far as our conversation went. Nothing about the business they were in. I was reluctant to let her see the filthy side of men she'd shared a bed with. I didn't want her skin to crawl or nightmares to haunt her.

"I'm going to convince you," she announced when it was plain that neither of us were budging. "You'll see."

"How?"

"You're going to tell me your fantasies, every single one of them. And I'm going to promise to make all of them come true, every single one of them. And that will make you realize that saying no to me is a very, very silly idea." She had a wide grin. "I'm gonna guess one's a threesome because every straight man has that one ... so that's the sweater."

"The sweater?"

"Yep. Short-term incentive while I work on the long-term promises." She stood and stripped her sweater off. She glanced down. "Six pieces of clothing left. Tying me to the bed, and then doing whatever you want? Aah, you don't need to answer because your expression already has. That's the right shoe. Okay, I need five more."

I hemmed and hawed.

"Come on, Harry. I'm retired as of a couple of weeks ago, but you know my history. You can't shock me; I've heard them all. And I doubt you can even surprise me. Five more."

I struggled to find some high ground to fight from. "What if I have more than five?"

"Well, there's no limit. I said all your fantasies. But you need at least five more to get me naked right now. And I promise that getting me naked right now will be a good thing for you. You like dirty talk, so here's what's going to happen if you come up with five—

"Oh, wait! How 'bout this one? You know that when we're in Europe, we're going to try all the fancy restaurants, right?" I rolled my eyes. She carried right on as if I hadn't. "And one of those places, I won't tell you which one, I lean over and ..."

Her voice dropped to a sultry, barely audible level.

"... I whisper, 'I want to suck your cock right now,' and then I take you into a stall in the men's room and do just that." Her voice returned to normal. "Then we go back and have the second course, which"—she ran a tongue over her lips—"I guess would be the third for me. How 'bout that?" She giggled. "Yeah, there's the left shoe. Now stop making me do all the work here."

She teased me until I came up with four more. "With one of those private cabana tents, so you can do more than ogle" to the Santorini idea which hadn't entirely left my brain. "Goody! That's one of mine too," to the mile-high club. A tentative suggestion I made met with "I'm bad at that, but I know just the girl. She's got absolutely no gag reflex. During that threesome."

She rejected "You do all the work."

"Pfft. I'd do that any time you were feeling tired. No, I need one really wicked one to part with the only thing between you and getting laid right now." She slid one hand down her belly to trace the black triangle of lace. "Bi-curious? No? Okay. Hmm, being my sex slave for a weekend in Saint-Tropez? Uncertain ... no problem; we can think about that one. Come on, one really dirty one! One you think, 'No way she'll agree!' One you'd never admit to if it weren't for this."

"This" was dipping a finger underneath that lace, then drawing it out and sliding it into her mouth. "Mmm. One more and you can taste for yourself."

So I hit her with one and those panties came off. Just before she slid me inside her body, she pulled her lips from my neck and whispered. "I'm not shocked. I will be nervous, though. But as long as there's a safe word, that one too. All your fantasies. I trust you."

"It's not over." From Jess, it wasn't a question. I'd told her everything.

"No, it's not."

"So, what do we do about it?"

"We get something concrete and then we hand them off to the police."

"I hope they'll let you."

That casual acceptance of my answer spoke volumes. It held the sure certainty that I did believe in the law, that I was someone she could work for. Paired with that was a memory of an evening that started with "Can you at least write me a fucking reference before you totally bitch out?" She'd dragged me out of the bar and poured coffee into me. She'd heard the Connecticut story ... heard the echo of my rage at evil walking around impervious to the law. It held knowledge that walking away wasn't an option for me. Or her. It held loyalty.

Now I contemplated how to go about it. Where to start unraveling? There'd been five at that party who could have given me a foothold.

Charlie Everett might have been the weakest personality, venal and easily conned. But that same venality had led him to try a little extortion, and Charlie Everett had been a poor judge of his target. I wasn't there, but I could envision what transpired that night: a dark street in the East Village; a hulking shape looming suddenly; an empty construction lot; the muffled crack of a handgun. Detective Murray had confirmed what caliber had killed Everett.

Or maybe no shape looming. "I'm big but you never see me coming," Mitchell had told me.

Larry Beck had been a weak link in another way. He was ruthless and had a certain toughness, but he had an Achilles heel named Nikki ... Nichelle Hill. And because he had that weakness, he delayed his flight, and that delay had meant his death. Just in time, I'd managed to snatch enough to get me further but not enough to get me inside.

That left three ... or at least, three that I knew of ... who were mixed up in the whole business. Four if you counted Mitchell, but he was part and parcel of Jordan Regan. Regan seemed Teflon for the moment, walled behind his money and Mitchell's gun. I didn't see a chink.

Anders Lindqvist and Richard Bertram. I needed to go after both, and I needed to do it fast before Bertram had a suspicion of what Beck had told me, or before Regan decided to act on his knowledge of it. I needed two irons in the fire.

"I think we go about this three ways. Bertram, Lindqvist, and Murray. I give everything I have to Murray, let him make the decision whether to take it to the Feds or not. He's the only cop I trust at the moment."

"Because this mess is vice and Gibson was vice," Jess said, agreeing.

"But I doubt that I've got the kind of time that it will take for the FBI to start up an operation. Bertram's plane comes in today. I have to assume he'll hear shortly after that, if he hasn't already. There's a short fuse on that one."

She pulled out a notepad. "Bertram was staying at the Hotel Capital in Zagreb. As of yesterday, I was able to leave a message for him, so I assume he didn't check out until today. If he flies commercial, the first flight in at the airports around here lands at twelve twenty-five, the last at ten thirty-five tonight. If he's on a private jet, it could be anything, of course. But if we assume that he didn't get up long before dawn, you probably have until later in the afternoon.

"Bertram and his wife, Rachel, apparently don't live together," she went on. "I don't know if they're separated or what, but she's living up in New Canaan while his address is in town. Maybe that's a place to start. If they're in the middle of a divorce, she might be willing to spill."

I stared at her in amazement. She pinked, then she favored me with an arch look. "And don't forget that raise."

"I haven't. Umm, be right back." I ducked into my office for a second. "Later, we'll go over the books together and figure out what we can afford. In the meantime ..." I set what I'd grabbed from the safe in front of her. "A bonus."

She stared: two packets, each bound by a yellow and white strap with "$10,000" printed on it.

"It's not going on the W-2, so it's all yours."

The pink got deeper. "Twen— I-I ... umm ..." She pulled herself together. "Thank you."

"Out of curiosity, what message did you leave for Bertram?"

"Just a phone number to call and that it was urgent."

"You told him to call here? That was—"

"Of course not!" She picked up her phone. "I gave this number." She put a voicemail recording on speaker.

"We've tried to contact you several times about your car's warranty. Please call us at ..."

New Canaan was on the way to New Haven.

I hadn't forgotten the previous piece of information that Jess had dug up. It could easily be nothing ... probably was nothing ... but Lindqvist's ship stopping at the United Riverhead Terminal was odd, and odd bore checking out. I had no other line on him. The Namibian wouldn't stay in New Haven forever, so I was in the car.

When my GPS told me, "You have reached your destination," I was staring at closed wrought-iron gates in a toney section of a toney town. The little voice-box outside brought a male voice. It was polite, but it was rigid.

"I'm sorry, but Mrs. Bertram is busy and doesn't see anyone without prior arrangement."

"Can you tell her that it's about her husband?"

"I'm sorry, but Mrs. Bertram is busy and doesn't see anyone without prior arrangement."

"How 'bout I make an arrangement?"

"I'm sorry, but Mrs. Bertram is busy today." We played that game through an iteration or two before I gave it up as a lost cause and put the car back in gear.

I thought about leverage as I zipped along I-95. I knew a man who said he owed me for a job I took a few risks for. He said if I ever needed something, look him up. I knew there was a spending cap on that offer, probably a pretty low one since he'd paid me well, but I figured this might be in the budget. I dialed Jess.

"Did you ever reach Walter Sullivan?"

"Well, I got his assistant. I couldn't get past him."

"There's a lot of that going around. Never mind. I'll see if I have any more luck."

A call got me the assistant who, after making me wait for ten minutes, allowed as how ten o'clock on Saturday might be possible.

"It's a little more urgent than that. Is there any way he could talk to me today?"

"He's in a meeting right now. You'll need to wait until Saturday."

I was starting to lose it with petty tyrants. "Well, since you obviously can talk to him while he's in that meeting, how 'bout you go back in and talk to him again. Tell him I remember his offer and would take it as a personal favor if I could have a word today."

The miles ticked away. Then a different voice spoke, "Hello, Mr. Morgan, Walter Sullivan here. What can I do for you?"

I told him. I ended with, "The goal of all this will definitely cause Jordan Regan some pain ... serious pain."

There was a moment of silence. The voice that responded to that had none of the cordial, businesslike tenor it had when it greeted me. It oozed satisfaction and malevolence. "That eventuality would put me doubly in your debt. I don't know her personally, but I'm sure it won't be difficult. Give me an hour."

I didn't think it would be difficult for him. Jess's research showed Rachel Bertram was on the boards of a number of do-good endeavors, and in that small world of charities and trust funds, gazillionaires like Walter Sullivan were the big dogs. I cut over a lane and made the exit to go back.

I felt sorry for Rachel Bertram the moment I saw her. From the immaculately coiffed hair in a style that was probably described as "full and flirty" by the salon, all the way down to the Bean boots ready for mucking about in the garden or just lunch with the girls, she was a picture of the country-club-set wife. She was pretty, both because of nature and because money could buy pampering, and the jeans and sweater revealed a nice figure.

But that's what made me feel sorry for her. Because that whole preppy, polished, perfect look screamed everything from healthy and fresh at the club pro-am tournament to sophisticated and elegant at the club gala.

What it didn't scream was bent naked over a table at a bacchanal ... and Richard Bertram apparently had a taste for that. That, assuming Nikki's assessment had been right, was why there was a Coco who had a sugar daddy, a whale.

Coco might have been a better line into Bertram, but I didn't have a starting point. Sydney hadn't encountered her around the Eroticos world, and I wasn't going to dig into her with Regan. He'd made it clear that Bertram and Bertram's people were off-limits. Knowing that Bertram was going to find out about the theft hadn't changed that.

I wonder if she's close. Before he separated, I bet he put her in a nice condo close enough he was able to take advantage of Rachel heading out for tennis lessons or Pilates.

I looked at the woman leading me toward a "it's sunnier here" room.

But he's careful about Coco, I thought, because this woman moves in circles where housewives have lawyers in their contact lists too, the kind of sharks that enjoy nothing more than stripping every morsel of flesh off an errant spouse.

She was pretty and rich and her eyes spoke of intelligence ... and I felt sorry for her.

"So, Mr. Morgan ... can I call you Harry? Please call me Rachel. When Maudie phoned me"—I assumed Maudie was a link in the old-boy/girl network chain that Walter had used to get me this meeting—"she said it was important. What can I do for you? Is this about the charity?"