Passenger 13

by Scott Mariani

  ‘Dwight wouldn’t give a shit if I walked out tomorrow. And I was going to. I still am going to. The guy might be an asshole. And believe me, he is an asshole of the first order. But he’s not a killer. He wouldn’t have the guts.’

  ‘It was just an idea,’ Ben said. ‘We’re going to need more of them if we want to figure this out. Someone out there, someone powerful, wanted Nick out of the way. Why?’

  Tamara stared into the middle distance as she smoked. Her brow flickered as a thought seemed to come to her. Her eyes hardened and she nodded slowly to herself. ‘Brigman,’ she said. ‘Shit. Brigman. Why I didn’t think of it before …’

  ‘Okay, who’s Brigman?’

  She turned her gaze on him. ‘Julius T. Brigman. He’s a Texan who settled here about twenty years ago. Owns half the luxury real estate on Grand Cayman, and just about all the yacht charter business. Last October, he decided he wanted to break into air charter as well, and made Nick an offer to buy him out.’

  ‘I’m guessing that Nick turned him down.’

  ‘Sure he did. In no uncertain terms. But Brigman’s not the kind who gives up so easily. He kept coming back. The offer went up and up. Nick kept on refusing. Then one evening in November, when Nick was alone at his place, Brigman turned up with two of his gorillas, and laid down a final offer. Nick told him to take a hike. It got a little ugly. Brigman became abusive, and in the end Nick grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and kicked his ass out into the street. Told the gorillas he’d break their arms if they ever came snooping round his house again.’

  Ben had to smile.

  ‘Nick joked about it for months afterwards,’ Tamara said. She stubbed her cigarette out angrily. ‘Damn, how could I have forgotten?’

  ‘Julius T. Brigman,’ Ben said thoughtfully.

  ‘There’s someone with the dough to make anything happen,’ Tamara said. ‘Anything he wants. He’s a billionaire, Ben. Number one big shot on the island. And he’s a ruthless sonofabitch who’d stop at nothing to make a buck.’

  ‘I imagine everyone would know where such a big shot lives?’ Ben said.

  ‘Cobalt Coast. Up on the North Side. I haven’t been there myself but I knew a woman who worked as one of Brigman’s gardeners for a while. Said the place was a real palace.’

  ‘Then it looks as if it’s time to pay Mr Brigman a social call,’ Ben said. He drained his whisky and stood up.

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘I’m impetuous that way,’ Ben said. ‘Before I go, one small favour.’

  ‘Name it,’ Tamara said.

  ‘I don’t think Dwight will mind if I borrow his Smith & Wesson?’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tamara’s friend’s description of the Brigman residence had been, if anything, understated. Lit up like a space station in the night and throwing a golden glow beyond its high walls and across its own secluded little Cobalt Coast bay, the towering mansion made the average Columbian drug baron’s pad look like a slum shack. Ben rolled the Jeep to a halt under a stand of palms a hundred yards up the coast road, killed his lights and engine, and watched and listened.

  It was after midnight, but it sounded as if the party going on within the walls of Julius T. Brigman’s luxury fortress was just getting into its stride. The music was live Dixieland jazz. As Ben sat watching the huge house, a white Lamborghini came growling up the road, slowed on the approach to the gates and drove into the floodlit courtyard; a guy in a tux climbed out and escorted a sequined blonde towards the entrance, where a pair of square-shouldered goons in dark suits lumbered up to check invites and wave them inside. Why did rich people always seem to think that bodybuilders made good guard dogs?

  Ben reached inside the Jeep’s glove box and took out the Highway Patrolman. He flipped out the cylinder, then cradling the revolver in his left hand he dug the six .357 Magnum cartridges from his pocket and slipped them one by one into the clean, oiled chambers. He snicked the cylinder shut, stepped out of the Jeep and slipped the revolver into the waistband of his jeans, so that it sat snugly behind his right hip and was covered by the hem of his shirt. He bleeped the Jeep’s locks and started strolling up the road towards the house. As he approached the gate, a swoopy bright orange Panther De Ville glided by and drove inside ahead of him. It parked outside the house and another glammed-up party couple stepped out.

  Watching the security goons do their job, Ben wondered if they were the same two gorillas Brigman had taken with him for backup when he’d paid Nick his visit back in November. A slightly superior subspecies of thug, compared to the cut-price specimens who’d been sent to confront Ben outside the hotel. Considering the guy’s obvious wealth, Ben found it a little insulting.

  The gorillas went through their paces one more time as Ben approached the entrance. They could have been twins. Identical outfits, identical buzz-cuts; and they obviously both spent the same number of hours working out in the gym. They looked like they’d been practising their scowls in the mirror together. Maybe they injected each other’s backsides with steroids, too.

  ‘Whoa,’ said one, blocking Ben’s way with his palm. ‘Invite. Let’s have it.’

  ‘I don’t need an invitation,’ Ben said.

  The second security guy grinned evilly and folded his arms across his chest. He could barely touch his hands together in front of him. ‘Yeah? How you figure that?’

  ‘Because there’s nobody to stop me from walking right in this door. Unless they want their teeth shoved down their throats.’

  Ben didn’t have time to hang around waiting for a reaction. He’d taken two steps towards the entrance before the first gorilla made a lunge for him. The musclebound arm was so slow-moving that Ben could have lit a cigarette in the time it took to reach him. He trapped the guy’s porky wrist. Twisted it up and round, hard and fast, into a modified Aikido lock that he knew from personal experience felt like having your arm sheared off at the shoulder with a blunt blade.

  The gorilla let out a shrill wail. Ben twisted the arm a little harder, then sent the guy cannoning into his associate and the two of them went crashing to the ground.

  ‘Lay off the ’roids, boys. Pretty soon you won’t be able to move at all.’ Ben stepped past the floundering bodies and into the entrance. In moments, he was mingling with the party crowd and heading towards an archway that led through to the inner courtyard. On a podium to one side, the Dixieland jazz ensemble was crowing happily away while couples danced. Waitresses dressed like Hugh Hefner playmates circulated, serving champagne from silver trays.

  Ben walked into the middle of the courtyard, gaining a few odd glances from people noticing his informal attire. He collared the first fat fuck in a tux who dared to stare at him, and said loudly, ‘I’m looking for Julius Brigman.’

  The music faltered. The animated buzz of conversation dropped down several notches and the crowd edged away.

  ‘I’m Brigman,’ said a Texan drawl behind him. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Ben turned to see a short man pushing his way towards him through the crowd. Brigman was about sixty-five, in a tailored smoking jacket that managed to contain his bulk elegantly. He had white slicked-back hair and a closely-trimmed white beard, and there was a five-inch stump of a Havana clenched between his teeth. The effect was Old Southern Aristocracy. A latter-day Robert E. Lee.

  ‘Someone who’d like to have a word in private,’ Ben said, letting go of the other man, who quickly moved away, straightening his collar and muttering indignantly, ‘That guy’s nuts.’

  Brigman’s eyes bulged. He puffed cigar smoke in Ben’s face. ‘You’ve got one hell of a nerve, walking into my home and demanding to talk to me. You know who I am, son?’

  ‘Maybe you’d rather have this conversation in front of all these people?’ Ben said.

  Brigman stared a moment longer, then he plucked the Havana from his mouth, rolled it between his fingers and smiled. ‘Okay, you bought yourself exactly one minute. Come with me.’

  The muttering cro
wd parted to let them through as Brigman led him down a corridor of archways and into the cool, plant-filled interior of his palace. ‘In here,’ he said, opening a door onto a plush salon.

  There was a gasp from inside as a couple who’d strayed from the party straightened themselves up suddenly on a divan and looked round.

  ‘Clarissa, honey, this gentleman and I have some business to discuss,’ Brigman said.

  Clarissa hitched up the strap of her dress and led her red-faced beau away by the hand, her high heels clicking on the marble. On her way out of the room she flicked a look at Ben and gave him a coy little smile.

  Brigman shut the door behind her and turned to Ben. ‘I don’t believe I had the pleasure of being introduced to you, sir.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who I am,’ Ben said. ‘What matters is what happened to my friend Nick Chapman.’

  Brigman’s cigar had gone out. He made a show of relighting it, puffed a great pall of smoke and said, ‘Now, are we talking about the same Nick Chapman who didn’t have the guts to face life, or the decency to check out alone someplace with a quart of Jack and a sixgun?’

  Ben slipped his hand up to his right hip and drew the Highway Patrolman out from his waistband. ‘Like this one?’

  Brigman’s eyes flicked to the revolver, but he didn’t seem unduly disturbed by its presence. ‘That supposed to scare me?’

  ‘I have a problem,’ Ben said. ‘Because I don’t believe my friend crashed his own aircraft. I think someone else is responsible for his death, and the deaths of all those people.’

  ‘And you’ve come here looking for someone to pin it on,’ Brigman said.

  ‘You could make it easy for yourself,’ Ben said. ‘Tell me how you did it.’

  ‘Should I call my attorney or the boys downstairs? I just have to click my fingers and they’ll bust your head sure and good.’

  ‘If you’re talking about Abbot and Costello on the gate, I think you’ll find they’ve already seen enough of me,’ Ben said. ‘As for the rest of the boys, you might want to call the hospital.’

  Brigman stared at him, confused. ‘What rest of them? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, son. None of my people are in hospital. Now, I need to attend to my guests, so if you don’t mind …’

  ‘That armchair looks comfortable,’ Ben said, motioning with the gun. ‘What is that, Louis XV?’

  ‘Louis XVI,’ Brigman said suspiciously.

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat on your nice little velvet throne there and tell me all about how you tried to snap up CIC last year?’ Ben said. ‘And then about how you decided that if you couldn’t have it, you were going to screw it for good and then start setting up your own? What’s the matter, Brigman, it’s not enough to rule the waves, you wanted to rule the sky as well?’

  Brigman stared incredulously for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘Oh boy,’ he said, wiping tears from his face. ‘So that’s what this is all about. You have some balls, I’ll give you that. Especially for an Englishman. You know, my great-great granddaddy was with the Continental Army under Washington in 1781, when we kicked your Brit asses at Yorktown.’

  ‘Half Irish,’ Ben said. ‘Mine was with the 69th New York Infantry when we helped Lincoln whip the South a few years after.’

  Brigman chuckled. ‘All right. You know what, I like your style, son. You want to know about the offer I made Chapman? Sure, last year I’d’ve torched half the island to get hold of a hot tomato like CIC. But if you were a little better informed, my friend, you’d know things have kind of changed for me since then. I ain’t buying any more, I’m selling. This place is the last piece of property I own on Grand Cayman, and it’ll be sold in a week. I’m going back to Dallas and you’ – motioning with the cigar – ‘you just gatecrashed my farewell party.’

  Ben said nothing.

  Brigman smiled. ‘You want to verify that with my attorney? Go ahead. He’s right outside. Better yet, go talk to Doc Rotella. He’s the one who diagnosed me, right around Christmas time. Lucky if I see another.’

  ‘Right,’ Ben said.

  ‘Oh, so you need proof? Step this way.’ Brigman heaved himself up out of the Louis XVI chair and led Ben across the room to a gleaming door set into the walnut panelling. ‘That look like a goddamn multi-gym to you?’ he said, pushing the door open and waving his arm at the machine that took up a large chunk of the room next door.

  Ben stared at the machine, all readouts and dials and tubes. Beside it was a chrome-framed hospital bed with crisp white sheets and a satin pillow, encircled by a rail with a curtain drawn to one side. Clustered around like a circle of wagons, six medical gurneys were loaded with surgical equipment and a huge array of drugs and medicines. The room looked like a private clinic.

  ‘Hemodialysis,’ Brigman said. ‘Twice a day, an evil bitch of a nurse hooks me up to that infernal device and it sucks the shit out of this old carcass of mine. Not that it does me much damn good, after a lifetime pickling my kidneys in scotch and bourbon,’ he added with a grunt.

  Ben was lost for words. He suddenly felt like an idiot. A rash, dangerous, violent idiot who’d come storming into a dying man’s home with a loaded weapon and a head full of wild ideas.

  ‘Precious little point in stopping now,’ Brigman said. He took another puff on his cigar, then plucked it out of his mouth and surveyed it tenderly. ‘You’re looking at a runaway train, son.’ He grinned at Ben. ‘Whatever life’s left to me, I have every intention of enjoying it to the full. If I never make another dime again, I still have about two hundred fifty thousand bucks an hour to live on until I finally drop dead, and that’s plenty good enough for me. You think I’d be interested in corporate takeovers right now, Mr …?’

  ‘Hope,’ Ben said. ‘The name’s Ben Hope.’

  ‘Believe me, Mr Hope, I might have done a few things in my time I ain’t too proud of. A guy who comes up from nothing, the way I did, doesn’t make his billion without breaking a few arms. Hell, I can admit that now – what are they gonna do to me? But I ain’t gonna be your whipping boy for whatever you think happened to your friend Chapman. I’d suggest you go look elsewhere. Anything I can do to help, you be sure to let me know.’

  ‘I made a mistake,’ Ben said. ‘I apologise to you, Mr Brigman.’

  Brigman slapped him on the shoulder. ‘No hard feelings, son. I’m a tough old turkey and life’s getting a mite short to hold a grudge. Maybe put that gun away, huh? Then how about you come outside with me and have a drink before you go.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was after four in the morning by the time Ben got back to his hotel. The strong black instant coffee he made in his room was pretty bad, but it masked the stale taste of bourbon on his lips. It would take a good deal more to wash away the sting of guilt and defeat.

  He stood on his balcony and watched the sunrise, then stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower. Under the cool water he carefully peeled the dressing off his aching ribs and checked his wound. It was livid and inflamed, and there were spots of blood on the dressing that there shouldn’t have been.

  So much for R&R, he thought to himself. Something had got torn in there, but the stitches seemed to have held. He patted himself dry, dabbed antiseptic cream on the wound and put on a fresh dressing that he covered with a clean black shirt.

  By eight-thirty, the sun was already hot and he was back in the car, cutting northwards up the Seven Mile Beach road towards CIC. He walked into Nick’s old office without knocking and found Tamara sitting alone at the desk.

  ‘You’re up early,’ she said.

  ‘I’m up late. And you can forget about Julius T. Brigman.’ He sat on the edge of the desk and told her what he’d found out.

  Tamara leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips. ‘It seemed to make such sense. Who sent those guys to beat you up?’

  ‘Someone else,’ Ben said.

  ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Somewhere else,’ Ben said. />
  ‘Will a cup of coffee make you more communicative?’

  Ben shook his head. Gently so as not to yank his stitches any more, he reached into his back pocket for his whisky flask.

  Tamara wrinkled her nose. ‘Isn’t it a little early in the morning for that?’

  ‘Hair of the dog that bit me,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’ll wind up like Brigman.’

  He ignored her, unscrewed the little chrome cap and knocked back a slug.

  ‘I was awake all night thinking,’ she said. ‘Maybe the Brigman connection was too obvious. I had another idea. What if there was some fault with the aircraft and the manufacturers tried to cover it up to save themselves a bunch of lawsuits? Someone with a history of depression would be an easy target to pin it on.’

  Ben screwed the cap back on his flask and shook his head. ‘They’d pin it on CIC maintenance personnel, neglectful servicing. And I don’t think they’d be running around murdering their scapegoat’s relatives. A lot easier just to call their insurers.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Something else,’ he said. He slid off the edge of the desk and started pacing up and down the office.

  ‘Does it really help you to pace like a caged tiger?’ Tamara asked him irritably.

  A caged tiger was exactly what Ben felt like, but Tamara was right – pacing wasn’t going to help. He stopped, looking around him for inspiration. His gaze locked on to the Escher print on the wall over the desk.

  The angels, then the demons. It was impossible to see them both at the same time. When you focused away from one, the other came into view, creating a whole paradigm shift, an altered reality.

  Sometimes it wasn’t what was there – it was how you looked at it. You just needed to look with different eyes.

  ‘We’re approaching this thing from the wrong angle,’ Ben murmured after a long pause.

  ‘Tell me what you mean,’ Tamara said. ‘And don’t say “another angle”.’

  ‘You have the passenger list on file?’ he asked.