A Spill of Blood Ch. 06

I led with some pleasant haziness while I tried to get a sense of her. She tolerated that for about sixty seconds.

"Are you here with a story about my husband and another woman? Because if you are, you might as well pack up and go."

She misinterpreted my surprise. She shook her head.

"No, I'm not naïve. If some husband hired you and is accusing Richard of that, then I'm neither going to break down and cry, 'I knew it!' nor scream, 'It's a lie!' and throw you out. The truth is, I don't know either way. Richard is extremely ... red-blooded ... and he sometimes keeps company that I would characterize as rather degenerate."

"Such as Jordan Regan?" I hazarded, working to get my feet back under me. She cocked her head to look at me.

"Yes, such as Jordan Regan. That one's a man-whore, if you'll pardon the expression. I wish Richard had nothing to do with him. But the thing is, Mr. Morgan, I don't know and I don't care." She broke off and bit her lip. "Well, that's not true. I do care.

"However, I've settled it in my mind. Richard may or may not sometimes have sex with other women. That possibility comes with the territory with that kind of man. I grew up in a family of them and know all about the double standard. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't; I don't know. But one thing I do know is that Richard knows if he ever embarrasses me with his actions and forces me to become aware of them, or brings home something, then I will make sure he regrets it forever."

The gray eyes flashed with sudden fire. Behind that polished exterior was some passion. How much did she swallow down pride because she either didn't want to admit to the world that her husband was a cheater, or because she didn't want to give up the lifestyle, or some combination of both?

"Which brings us to you," she went on. "You probably came up here expecting to find a wife who would be an ally in your investigation once you convinced her. Perhaps you believed that the apparent separation indicated marital problems and maybe there'd be a trove of evidence.

"But I'm afraid you've gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick. Richard and I are not separated. I despise city life. It's noisy and smelly and rude. He is bored up here. We each live where we are comfortable. He comes up once or twice a month, we give the staff a holiday, and we spend it together. If he is unfaithful other times, he doesn't show it to me, and I am content. So, your drive was probably for nothing."

Though her expression stayed neutral, I was sure she was thinking, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

I wondered if I believed that "I am content." Then I wondered if maybe Rachel Bertram enjoyed a little tit-for-tat with a tennis instructor somewhere. Then I put those thoughts aside and regrouped.

She'd misinterpreted my surprise. It wasn't that she'd guessed at my cover story because I wasn't going to use that one. I'd simply been surprised that this corduroy-and-Fair-Isle woman had dived into such a personal conversation with a stranger in under two minutes. I'd also been surprised by the glint of steel she'd revealed underneath. Most of all, I'd been surprised that, somewhere in that short period between Maudie calling her and my arrival, Rachel had taken the trouble to dig up enough information on me.

Or maybe that roadblock of an assistant had gotten her thinking and she'd started digging a half hour earlier, before Maudie's call. Either way, it seemed she knew I was an investigator and even what type of case sometimes came my way.

"Actually, that's not why I'm here. Fortunately, there's no husband on the warpath with a gun." I smiled to keep that light, but her expression didn't follow suit. One perfect eyebrow arched in a question.

I'd spent the minutes on my return journey deciding what to say. I didn't want to tell the truth for fear "he's running slaves" would meet with disbelief and doors, metaphorical or real, would slam shut.

I'd considered the prostitute angle, but I'd foreseen that going nowhere. I'd assumed a look of pain and embarrassment might enter her eyes, that she'd bite her lip and tell me it was none of my business. Her actual response had surprised me, but the result was the same.

Neither would a claim of a white-collar problem work. It was likely to get me a question about why I wasn't a process server bearing a notice of a lawsuit. Or maybe, "So, I presume you can show me credentials from the Securities and Exchange Commission?" While I did have a number of fake IDs, that wasn't one of them.

I needed an accusation serious enough to get her attention, one she couldn't trip up that easily.

"I represent someone foreign who's a collector of certain types of art. Not paintings ... more ceramics, carvings, mosaics, that kind of thing. A number of acquisitions have gone missing and he—"

"You're saying Richard stole this man's art?"

"Absolutely not!"

She settled back with a minor gesture that apologized for the rudeness of interrupting, and I went on.

"The two people responsible have been apprehended. The evidence against them is pretty clear, and there's a fair indication that they're part of a larger organization who specializes in this kind of thing.

"No, my involvement is more downstream. You see, pre-colonial art is valuable to certain collectors. Sometimes more than valuable: pre-Columbian art is worth an absolute fortune on the black market."

Time to show the hook and hope it's big enough, Harry.

"The issue, of course, is getting pieces from their place of origin to those collectors. It's ... difficult ... in most countries. The two men had already disposed of the objects. Among the stuff found in their possession were two bills of lading from Excelus Imports."

Excelus was Richard Bertram's company. My pause on "difficult" was a blatant euphemism for "illegal." She stiffened slightly.

"The question I'm trying to answer is who knew that the documents, which listed ceramic dishware from a factory in Vietnam, were really for some Aboriginal pieces from Australia and where did they end up."

I watched the shuttered eyes as she processed what I'd said. I saw the questions start to form.

"It's obvious I made some inquiries to find out who you were, Mr. Morgan." I noticed I was no longer Harry. "Not extensive, of course, given the time, but ... well, forgive me, but ... "

I foresaw this one coming, and my ego didn't mind a few bruises.

"You're wondering how an investigator that normally deals with adultery and insurance fraud is involved. It's okay; it's a perfectly legitimate question." I smiled to show no hard feelings. "My father was in the security business. He worked for multinationals and was very good at his job. My current client remembered him when he needed someone in America. However, my father passed away some years ago and the client ended up reaching me."

"And why not the police?"

Saw that one coming too.

"Nothing was said, and I don't look a gift horse in the mouth, but my working assumption is that some of those pieces might have had ... let's say a shaky provenance. The client's intentions as he expressed them to me were to 'reach some kind of arrangement for the pieces' return.' That's my goal."

Go on, Rachel Bertram, ask the third one.

"And why are you coming to me?" Bingo.

"Because wives know things, sometimes a lot more than their husbands realize. I'm looking for a copy of his shipping records. I can match those to dates we know stuff was stolen and maybe find some destinations. I thought maybe you'd know a way to go about getting those."

"I don't believe he did this."

"Maybe he didn't. It's entirely possible they're just using him. It doesn't really matter. I'm not the police and I don't care about your husband in the slightest. Let me emphasize that: I don't care about Mr. Bertram. I care about finding where those items ended up and getting them back."

She deliberated. "You want me to confront Richard?"

"No. That's a bad plan. Look ... if I talk to him, I'll get a door slammed in my face. If you talk to him, he denies everything if he's innocent. If he's not innocent, he still denies it and goes into damage-control mode. Then things get dicey."

"What does that mean?"

"If my client sees things getting out of control or the trail going dry, I don't think the police are his Plan B option." She wasn't stupid. She saw what might be looming behind that vague statement, and her face tightened. I didn't leave it vague. "By that I mean that more than one person has been killed in this business so far."

That was the hook I hoped was big enough to pull her into action. Just tossing an accusation of smuggling stolen artifacts wasn't much of a pry bar. "Talk to my lawyers" would be the automatic response for a person who probably had a squad of them. But "talk to my lawyers" stopped lawsuits. It didn't stop bullets.

"You're joking!"

Wordlessly, I pulled out my phone and showed her a picture, courtesy of Detective Murray and police files. There was no glimmer of recognition at Larry Beck's picture. Morgue photos never quite look like real people, but they do a good job of showing blackened holes where no holes should be in the human head.

She jerked her eyes away, but not before I saw something. Disgust, yes. Fear, maybe. Could I hope for belief too? "That was uncalled for!"

"I'm sorry, but I need you to believe me that this is serious. I need your help."

Her defenses were up now. I was getting nothing from her expression or posture except that she wished she'd never met me. I figured it out three ways.

One, she was scared by the picture and also scared to confront her husband. In that case, she might actually dig up some shipping records. If she did, that would give me dates ... not of possible pre-Columbian art shipments ... of people shipments. I'd send those to Murray because playing cowboy wasn't my first choice, no matter what he accused me of. Giving them to him might alert a few dirty cops, but we'd talked—they'd also hit the desk of an FBI agent at the same time as insurance.

Two, she was scared of the picture but not scared of confronting her husband. She did it despite my request not to. He'd deny it and go into damage-control mode just like I told her. That was okay. Rachel Bertram talking to her husband wasn't going to trigger anything that wasn't triggered already. The evening I'd recovered the money, I'd worked out that he would suspect Larry Beck had made me an offer and that I knew too much. And for a man like Bertram, suspicion would be enough for action.

But maybe it would hurry things up because now I wasn't just someone who knew too much. Now I was someone who knew too much and was actively digging for more. People reacting in haste made mistakes. That's what Jordan Regan had wanted when he'd hired me, for me to beat the bushes until someone made that mistake and broke cover. Just because Regan was a scumbag didn't mean it was a bad strategy.

One little slip up, Richard Bertram, and I'm on you like a bad tattoo.

Three, she would talk herself out of being scared of anything. It would be "It's hooey, and talk to my lawyers." Best case, that was the same as number two. Worst case, she didn't even mention it to her husband, and that left me exactly where I was now.

"I ha-have to think."

"That's okay. I didn't expect anything more than that." I hadn't. Tiny acorns. "Here's my card. Call me either way once you've thought it through. But Rachel, time is short and these people don't play around."

I drove away. In the rearview mirror I saw the figure in jeans and a bright sweater standing in the doorway watching me depart. Somehow, she didn't look so preppily chipper anymore.

I cradled the phone against my ear and took a moment to survey the ship. She'd been repainted since the picture Jess had shown me was taken. She was still the LL Namibian, but the white-over-red hull had given way to black-over-red, and the words "Hong Kong" on the stern below her name were gone, replaced with "Panama."

I was used to the monster container ships that slid by on their way to Jersey City or Staten Island. Their large, smooth decks would be piled so high with shipping containers that it seemed inconceivable that they didn't capsize. The Namibian evoked a different era.

For one thing, despite the fact that she loomed above me, she was small. Four hundred some-odd feet was small compared to ships that were as long as the Empire State Building was tall. A check of that site Jess had found put her at just under ten thousand tons, small even by the standards of a company who specialized in small freighters.

For another, her bridge and other non-cargo components were amidships, and both fore and aft decks were cluttered with crane towers and the large wings of hold covers standing open.

"No, there's no room on those decks for containers," I answered into the phone.

"Then I don't know," said Detective Murray. "Way I hear it, women trafficked usually come in on fraudulent visas thinking they've got a legitimate job waiting, and straight-up people smuggling is usually across a land border or in a container. Makes it easy to drop it onto the back of a truck and slide past officials as cargo. No big boxes?"

"Just drums, those fifty-five gallon ones, and they're going on the boat, not off."

"Damn if I know, then," Murray said, "unless they're smuggling American girls out for some foreign fuck."

"I doubt he'd want them in the condition they'd be after living in an oil drum for a month."

"Yeah."

So how did this ship figure in? Maybe its presence was innocent, but I had the same sense Jess had had ... it wasn't. Regan throws a party to welcome a new client as an owner of a modern-day plantation. Said owner's ship makes an odd stop at a facility where it has no business being. Said owner flies up for a personal visit to what has to be the smallest vessel in his fleet. What's wrong with this picture?

I needed to check those drums just to be sure. Then I needed to poke my nose in other places where it didn't belong.

I had a plan, albeit not a great one. Some of those fake IDs had come courtesy of judicious work with a laser printer capable of writing on plastic cards. The one I was carrying had first seen the light of day when I'd been looking into a worker's comp issue that took me inside the Employees Only section of the PATH. I'd sweated bullets when I'd presented it back then, but it had passed muster without a second glance and had languished in my safe ever since. There are a number of police forces you find around New York. The NYPD was one of them. Another was the PAPD, the Port Authority Police Department, and I was with the CIB, the investigation bureau. The card said so.

"That says 'Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.' This is Connecticut."

"That garbage is washing up on beaches both sides of the Sound, so we cooperate. We both only got so many men and there's a million places they need to be. I drew this lovely field trip."

I held up a clear plastic gallon bag with a fragment of cardboard in it. The bottom of "otatoes" was visible along with a Sharpie scrawl of "L Nambian" with what looked like the horizontal stroke of another "L" coming in from the tear. The fragment was torn from something dug out of a restaurant dumpster. The Sharpie was in my glove compartment.

"Nambian," I observed. "Seems like someone doesn't know their countries."

"We dispose of our garbage exactly as we should," the first mate of the Namibian protested.

"Look, we both know what happened here. You offloaded refuse when you got into port. Some hauler decided that he could save himself fuel and landfill fees if he just partook of a dark night out in open waters. Currents did the rest. You know it. I know it. But I gotta see your records anyway. If they're in order, I'm outta here, and it becomes the next person's problem."

Grumbling, he led me from the head of the gangway toward the bridge structure. The document in question was produced.

"Got a copier?"

"No, and I don't think I should let you—"

"For Christ's sake! It's a garbage report! Never mind the copier." I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture before he could do anything. I handed the paper back to him. "It's dated, signed, and has a hauler's name. That's all I needed. Thanks for your time."

As we made our way down to the main deck and across it, I glanced over at the drums. "I'm here, so I'll ask. What's your cargo?"

"That's detergent. We've got some food, some bulk cosmetics."

"Manifest?" I saw the annoyance level start to climb and backed down. "Hell, never mind. No need to make work for anybody." He settled.

As I made my way across the pier, I wandered close enough to eyeball one of the pallets. Plastic drums, the kind with the non-removable head. There were no visible air holes. If there were people inside them, they weren't going to survive the journey. Of course, these drums weren't all the drums being loaded. The open hold had been mostly filled. Still, it didn't feel right that they'd be individually packing human cargo.

My peripheral vision caught the mate watching me from the deck, so I turned and headed for my car. I drove into town, looking for a diner where I could kill some time. I pulled out my phone and used the calculator. The results told me I needed to get back on board.

The story about dumped garbage had originally been nothing more than something to get me aboard so I could look around. I'd originally intended to demand to see the galley and the garbage-storage facilities as an excuse for a tour.

One look at the paper had changed that. I didn't know how many crew it took to run the ship. Container ships ran with crews that seemed ridiculously small for their size, but I supposed older-style freighters needed more. Maybe twenty, twenty-five?

The first thing that leapt out from my perusal of the paperwork hadn't been company names or dates or who signed what. It had been a number: 23,290 ... as in 23,290 gallons of black water pumped. I was no math savant, but it didn't take one to wonder just how twenty-five-ish crew were generating a thousand gallons of toilet water a day between Tangier and New Haven. Hell, how did a ship designed for a crew that size even have the capacity to hold that much shit-water?

I googled "how much garbage cruise ship" and punched the numbers from the document for solid waste, gray water, and black water. Assuming whoever was aboard the Namibian was as profligate as a cruise passenger, we were talking a hundred twenty-five people. And cruise ship passengers were conspicuous consumers, so it was probably more.

Put that together with something else. The mate's shirt wasn't loose enough to stop the pistol underneath from printing.

I needed to revise my theory. See, I'd been trying to find some way to explain the stop at United Riverhead. When I thought about Lindqvist being a new client of Regan's, it occurred to me that ships needed crews. Nobody said those crews needed to be entirely voluntary. The British Navy had worked on that principle for two hundred years.

I'd assumed Lindqvist Logistik AB decided to cut costs the same way Beck Resources had. The Namibian meets up with another ship at United Riverhead. Maybe it's a passing container ship taking advantage of the deep-water channel; maybe it's a tanker moored there with a dummied hold that was really a holding pen. A lighter crosses between them and a shipping company's labor costs plummet.

But loading up on pressed crew in Long Island Sound didn't explain an Atlantic crossing with a boat full of people. The stop hadn't been a pickup; it had been a delivery. A Hong Kong flag of convenience changed to a Panamanian one. Larry Beck had said, "They want to push into Latin America."