“What I really want is some more painkillers,” I said.
I wasn’t kidding, either. My head was pounding. Hell, my whole body was pounding. It hurt just to blink.
As Eldridge explained, the bad news wasn’t that Speedo got away. It was that his real name was Pierre Simone, and that he was a con man and a poker cheat.
But nothing more.
“I wouldn’t let him babysit my kids,” said Eldridge. “But he’s no murderer. He’s not violent.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
He folded his arms. “Trust me; I know him.”
In Eldridge’s right hand I noticed a manila envelope, but I wasn’t ready to go there yet. The “trust me” explanation needed more details. This Pierre guy nearly got me killed, after all. So riddle me this, Mr. Commissioner…
“Why would he take off on me?” I asked.
“There’s an arrest warrant on him in the States. Some bounced checks in New York, I believe,” said Eldridge. “You had an American accent and, I presume, a lot of questions for him. He panicked.”
“Panicked?”
“I’m sure you know that Turks and Caicos adheres to the extradition agreement between the United States and Great Britain.”
“Not only do I know it, I’m inclined to put it to good use,” I said, only to watch Eldridge smile. I stared at him. “You think I’m kidding?”
He raised his palms. “No. I’m sorry, it’s not that. No one told you yet, did they?”
“Told me what?”
“You blacked out after your crash. Pierre’s the one who took you onto shore to get help. I guess he felt guilty.”
“Wait. So you have him in custody?”
Eldridge chuckled. “He didn’t feel that guilty,” he said. “He took off as soon as an ambulance was called. But like I said before, he’s not a violent person.”
I was lying there in the bed listening to Eldridge, but it was what I was seeing that proved more telling. The commissioner had the same look that he had when we first met in his office. He knew something I didn’t.
Then it clicked for me.
“Shit. He’s an informant for you, isn’t he?” I asked.
Eldridge nodded. “Pierre’s been very helpful on a few cases over the years. In return, I occasionally look the other way for him. But that’s not why I’m sure he isn’t a suspect,” he said.
With that, he handed me the envelope he’d been holding. My entire investigation was about to change. The trip to Turks and Caicos had just paid off.
Chapter 20
“ANYTHING TO DECLARE?” asked the customs agent at Kennedy Airport.
Yeah. If I never see another Jet Ski for as long as I live it will still be too soon. How’s that?
Warner Breslow’s pilot had given me his phone number to use when I was ready to go home. “Just call me and I’ll fly back down to pick you up,” he said. He assumed I’d be in Turks and Caicos for at least a few days, if not longer. So did I.
That was before I opened the envelope from Commissioner Eldridge.
By noon the next day, I was landing in New York and driving out to the Breslow estate in the Belle Haven section of Greenwich. The double vision from my crash was gone. So, too, were the tweeting birds circling my head. As for my bruised ribs, I figured if I could just avoid sneezing, the hiccups, and comedy clubs, I’d be able to muddle through.
“Come in,” said Breslow, greeting me at the front door.
Not surprisingly, Breslow’s voice—as well as everything else about him—was subdued. The usual sheen from his combed-back silver hair, his trademark, was missing, as was the gleam in his eyes. Instead, those eyes were bloodshot and sporting dark circles, undoubtedly from crying and lack of sleep. His cheeks were hollow, his shoulders slouched.
But most of all, it was what I couldn’t see. What was missing. His heart. It had been ripped out of his chest.
“This way,” he said after I shook his hand.
After a left turn at the Matisse, a walk down a long hallway, and then a right at the Rothko, he led me into what he called his reading nook.
Some nook. The room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, was absolutely huge. Throw in some coffee, pastries, and loitering hipsters and it could’ve been a Barnes & Noble.
After we sat down in a couple of soft leather armchairs by the window, Breslow simply stared at me, waiting. It went without saying that he didn’t expect me back so soon, so he didn’t say it. He had to assume there was a good reason, and he was right.
“Let’s talk about your enemies,” I said, getting right to the heart of the matter.
Breslow nodded, the corners of his mouth curving up ever so slightly. It was probably the closest he’d come to a smile all week. “Aren’t you supposed to ask first if I have any? That’s what they do in the movies.”
“With all due respect, if this were the movies you’d be petting a cat right now,” I said. “No one accumulates the wealth you have without being a villain from time to time.”
“You think my son’s murder was revenge, someone trying to get even with me?” he asked.
I listened to his question, but was more focused on his tone. He was far from incredulous. I suspected the thought had already crossed his mind.
“It’s a possibility,” I said.
“How much of a possibility?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Enough that you should probably stop recording our conversation.”
He didn’t ask me how I knew, nor was I about to tell him. Instead, he simply reached over and flipped a switch on the back of the lamp that sat between us.
“I take it you’ve read my file,” he said.
Chapter 21
ACTUALLY, NO, I hadn’t read his FBI file. Not yet.
But I’d read the newspapers, especially those from some months earlier, when his firm purchased the Italian drug company Allemezia Farmaceutici, under a cloud of suspicion more bizarre and mysterious than anything in a David Lynch film.
It started with a video that appeared on the website of the leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. In vivid color, a Chinese man wearing nothing but bunny ears and a baby’s diaper could be seen hopping around a hotel suite with a couple of naked Italian prostitutes. Later in the video, after a three-way that would make Ron Jeremy blush, the guy was snorting a Great-Wall-of-China-size line of coke off the stomach of one of the girls.
Okay, just your average night in Milan, perhaps—only the man happened to be Li Yichi, the deputy general manager of Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical, the largest drug company in the world. Li was in Milan finalizing the purchase of Allemezia Farmaceutici for thirteen billion euros. It was all but a done deal.
But twenty million hits on YouTube later, it was all undone. The board of Allemezia rejected the Cheng Mie offer, citing fallout from the video.
Of course, there were many unanswered questions, not the least of which was how Li could be so careless. And what the hell was up with the bunny ears and diaper and those Italian prostitutes? Molto kinky, no?
The biggest question of all, though, had to do with who was behind the camera—both literally and figuratively. Had the married Chinese executive been set up? And by whom? Who stood to gain?
Warner Breslow sure did.
With Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical out of the picture, Allemezia’s stock took a major nosedive, leaving the company desperate for a new suitor. That’s when Breslow swooped in and bought them for a billion euros less than what Cheng Mie had offered. Talk about a discount.
But that’s not why I’d remembered all this, why I went online to reread all the articles.
It was the aftermath.
One day after the news broke that Breslow had bought Allemezia, Li, star of the video, hanged himself in his office. He was discovered by his father, Li Kunlun—the chairman of Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical.
“I want you to take a look at something,” I said to Breslow, opening the envelope.
It was the report from E
than and Abigail’s autopsy.
Chapter 22
“AS YOU CAN see from the toxicology section, there were traces of the nerve agent cyclosarin found in both Ethan and Abigail,” I said. “Once they were trapped in that sauna, the murderer wasn’t taking any chances. He poisoned them.”
Breslow looked up from the autopsy report, his eyes narrowing to a squint. “In other words, that’s why you’re here and not there. We’re not looking for someone in Turks and Caicos, are we?”
I shook my head. “Cyclosarin isn’t exactly found over the counter.”
“Where is it found?” he asked.
“That depends on who you talk to in the intelligence world and whether they’re on the record or not. The only country that for sure has produced cyclosarin in significant quantities is Iraq. After that, high on the suspect list would be—”
“China,” said Breslow, beating me to the punch. He knew where I was heading with this.
Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical was rumored to have worked closely with the Chinese government on developing chemical weapons. Li Kunlun, the chairman, had even been an officer in the Chinese armed forces.
“So he blames me for his son’s suicide and kills mine in return?” asked Breslow, suspicious. “That’s not really the Chinese way.”
“Neither is wearing bunny ears and a diaper,” I said.
Breslow conceded the point with a slight nod. “What now?” he asked. “It’s not like you can question him.”
“Even if I could I wouldn’t yet,” I said. “Not without some link connecting means and motive.”
“Like Chinese passports coming into the island?”
“For starters,” I said.
“Do you want me to make a call to the U.S. embassy in Beijing? Perhaps they could help.”
“Who do you know there?” I asked.
“Everybody,” he answered.
Gee, why was I not surprised?
Still, I’d just as soon not be the suspended FBI agent who upended relations between the U.S. and China. At least not yet.
“No. Let’s not play that card until we know more,” I said.
I wrapped things up, telling Breslow I’d keep him informed. Then he walked me out. As he shook my hand in the foyer, I could tell there was something on his mind, perhaps a question left unanswered.
Sure enough. “I’m curious why you didn’t ask me,” he said.
“Ask you what?”
“Whether or not I was the one who hired those Italian prostitutes and gave them a video recorder.”
“It’s none of my business,” I said.
“It is if it led to my son’s murder.”
I stared at Breslow, wondering what he was doing. Confessing? Still sizing me up? Or was it something else?
Not that it really mattered. The reason I didn’t ask him was because I already knew the answer. It was straight out of those Encyclopedia Brown mystery books I used to love to read when I was a kid. Something he’d done had tipped his hand.
You’re not quite as cagey as you think, Warner Breslow.
Chapter 23
I COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time I pulled up to my house knowing that no one else would be there. Between Marshall and Judy, John Jr. and Max, there was always somebody who’d answer when I’d walk through the door and shout out, “Hello? Anyone home?”
I hadn’t given much thought to being alone before they all left. Now I was by myself, and it was kind of weird. A little sad, even. A little eerie, too.
I got the mail before heading inside, flipping through it as I grabbed myself a Heineken Light from the fridge. The boys had barely had time to unpack their bags up at camp, so there was no chance of getting a letter from them. Instead, it was just a couple of bills, some junk mail, and—
What’s this?
Sandwiched between the latest issue of Sports Illustrated and an L.L.Bean catalog was a small package, one of those padded manila envelopes. My address had been handwritten in black marker, and the envelope was sealed tight with a lot—and I mean a lot—of clear tape. We’re talking the whole roll.
Whatever was inside wasn’t getting out on its own.
I was looking so much at the tape that I didn’t notice something right away. The postmark was from Park City, Utah, but there was no return address. Not in the upper left corner, not on the back, not anywhere.
Oh, great. Cue the paranoid thoughts…
You could forgive an FBI agent for being a little…um…spooked when it came to mysterious packages in the mail. The Unabomber, anyone? Those anthrax-infected letters sent after 9/11? In fact, since then, any mail delivered to me or any other agent at my office without a return address had to be X-rayed.
But this wasn’t my office. This was my home, and I didn’t exactly have an X-ray machine tucked away next to the old Black & Decker tool set down in the basement.
Here goes nothing.
After giving the package a quick shake, as though I were a kid on Christmas morning, I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut open one of the ends. So far so good. There was no suspicious powder, and it certainly wasn’t a bomb.
Instead, it was a Bible.
Really? A Bible?
My first thought was that some religious charity had decided to step things up with its fund-raising.
But there was no letter attached. No solicitation. Just a holy Bible.
No, wait. Make that a stolen holy Bible.
Flipping it open, I saw PROPERTY OF THE FRONTIER HOTEL, PARK CITY, UT stamped on the inside cover.
Frontier Hotel? I’d never heard of it, let alone been there. I was pretty sure I didn’t even know anyone from Park City. I once skied at Deer Valley years and years ago, but that was it, my only visit.
I took the last sip of beer and was about to shrug it off and move on to more pressing matters—like grabbing a second beer, for instance—when I noticed that one of the pages was dog-eared.
I turned to it.
The next thing I knew, I was practically turning my house upside down.
Chapter 24
IT WASN’T ANYTHING I read.
It was something I couldn’t read.
What had been dog-eared was a section in the Old Testament, the Song of Moses, from the book of Deuteronomy. A passage was missing—literally cut out from the middle of the page—right between Deuteronomy 32:34 and 32:36.
What was 32:35?
Maybe if I’d paid more attention in Sunday school, when I was an altar boy at Saint Augustine’s Church, I’d know. But I was the kid in the back of the room, staring at the clock and counting the minutes until they served the cookies and lemonade.
So off I went. A tornado from room to room.
I knew there was a King James Bible somewhere in the house. A beautiful one, too. Leather-bound, gilt-edge paper. It had belonged to Susan. John Jr. read from it at her funeral. I still remember how brave he was, holding back the tears so he could finish his passage.
“Mom wouldn’t want me to cry,” he told me afterward.
That’s where I looked first, his room. The bookcase next to his desk was too obvious. I mean, what thirteen-year-old kid puts something where it belongs, right? After scanning the shelves, I checked the closet. Then the small table by his bed. Then under his bed.
Max’s room? I went down the hall and did the same routine, checking everywhere. I felt like one of those parents in those after-school specials, rifling through his kid’s room searching for his stash of weed. Of course, Max was only ten. There wasn’t even a stashed-away Playboy to be found.
Or a Bible.
I kept looking, determined as hell to find it. This was strange, after all. Someone was trying to tell me something, and whoever it was had gotten cute about it.
Was cute even the word? It depended on the message, didn’t it?
I searched everywhere in the guest room, otherwise known as Marshall and Judy’s room. I went back downstairs and looked in the den. Finally I remembered. Duh!
I’m
the one who had it.
I’d put it in a box of Susan’s things that I kept under our bed, the side she slept on, no less. Dr. Kline would have a field day with that one, wouldn’t he?
I hightailed it into my bedroom. Pulling out the box, I put on emotional blinders. I didn’t want to get caught up in the other items in it, the keepsakes. That had blubbering, crying mess written all over it.
Thankfully, the Bible was right on top. No digging necessary. I sat on the bed, turning to Deuteronomy and the Song of Moses.
Scrolling down the page with my index finger, I stopped on the missing passage, 32:35. I read it once, then twice.
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence;
their foot shall slide in due time:
for the day of their calamity is at hand,
and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
I read it over again a few more times, although I didn’t know why. Maybe I was hoping that I was missing something, that there was a different interpretation.
There wasn’t.
No matter how you sliced it, I was being threatened. Someone had it out for me.
I think I need that other beer.
Chapter 25
NED SINCLAIR SAT behind the wheel of his stolen Chevy Malibu, watching from across the street as John O’Hara returned home.
He watched O’Hara get the mail. He watched him go inside.
Soon the sun would go down, and under the cover of darkness Ned would do what he’d come to do. What he was dying to do.
Outside the open windows of the Malibu he could hear the sound of a sprinkler head on a nearby lawn as it sprayed its water in a slow but steady circle.
Click, click, click, click…
It was the same sound, over and over and over. Relentless. Monotonous.