Except for the uniforms of the police officers, it would be hard to tell what country he was in. At the desk, cops were contending with a variety of suspects, most of them Hispanic, but with a sprinkling of Asians, as well. There were also several black prisoners, some of them speaking in Nigerian accents. A young woman was struggling with two of the officers, screaming at them as they held her by the wrists. “Bastardos! Hijos de putas! Lemme go, you motherfuckers!”
She was pretty, Ben thought. Olive-skinned and with long black hair, wearing a white rabbit-skin jacket and a red skirt that barely covered her cheeks. The cops were trying to calm her down, calling her Conchita and telling her to be reasonable. She tried to bite one of them, and he said if she didn’t cool it, he’d punch her teeth in.
The desk sergeant had white hair and a stack of ribbons. He was busy logging a black teenager, paying little attention to the surrounding commotion. Apparently the kid had been picked up for dealing crack on the street. Tolliver flashed the tin and said Lieutenant Morales was expecting him. The sergeant pointed to the stairs and Ben walked up them, turning the corner and going into the squad room.
The scene made him nostalgic for his old crew, in Manhattan’s Sixth. Detectives in plainclothes were working the phones, typing reports, talking, and drinking coffee. Two of them were questioning a fat man who was sitting at a table, speaking to him in Spanish.
One of the questioners spotted Tolliver and grinned. He was slim and wiry, wearing a sharply cut worsted suit. A pencil-line mustache decorated his upper lip. He stepped forward to shake hands.
“So what brings you all the way over here?” Carlos Morales said. “You bored with the DA’s office, looking for a little action?”
“The opposite,” Ben said. “I heard this is a quiet neighborhood.”
Morales laughed. “Come on in.” He led Tolliver to a frosted glass door on the far side of the room and the two men went inside.
The layout in here was familiar, too: a gray metal desk, a few chairs, a filing cabinet. There was a single window, also of frosted glass, and on one wall was a bulletin board with departmental notices and memos tacked to it.
Morales took his seat behind the desk and waved his visitor to a chair. “You want coffee, or a drink?”
“No thanks,” Ben said. “How’s your wife?”
“Split.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“All for the best, as they say.”
“Kids okay?”
“Oh yeah. Good as can be expected. Living with their grandmother in Brooklyn. Meantime, Rosa’s running around with some asshole insurance salesman.”
Tolliver made no response, not wanting to get into it.
The slim man smiled. “Things don’t always turn out the way you want, do they? Little different from the shit they used to hand us in the Academy. You ever think about that?”
“Sometimes,” Ben said.
“How you doing with the senator?”
“Still a few details to wrap up.”
“You really know how to pick the high-profile cases. Couldn’t get much higher than that one.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The old man was a phony prick, in my book. Made a lot of noise when he was in the Senate, about the terrible drug problem. Said he wanted a broad educational program that’d teach kids to stay off it. Called for the death penalty for dealers.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“But it was all bullshit. Just a flag he could wrap himself in, tell the people what a great statesman he was. Then he turned around and voted against the appropriations bill that would’ve provided the money. So what does that make him?”
“A politician.”
“Exactly.”
“There’s something you might be able to help me with.”
“Sure, if I can. What is it?”
“The senator’s son is Clayton the Fourth. He runs one of the family businesses, a stock brokerage. It seems the company has been making illegal profits, and they’ve been sending some of the money to Panama.”
Morales’s eyebrows lifted. “Panama? Why there?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“You don’t think he’s in the trade, do you? Maybe owns a piece of something?”
“Who knows?”
“I’ll be damned. Hey, wait a minute, will you?” Morales got to his feet. “There’s a drug detective here right now who oughta hear this. Be right back.” He left the office.
Ben looked up at the bulletin board. Along with the other pieces of paper were several wanted posters, some of them fly-specked and curling from age. The subjects glared back at him, belligerently.
Morales returned a few minutes later. With him was the young Hispanic woman Tolliver had seen fighting with the cops at the desk.
They stepped into the office and Morales closed the door. “Lieutenant Tolliver,” he said, “say hello to Detective Connie Lopez.”
Ben stood up and smiled as he shook her hand. She was even prettier up close, despite a gaudy smear of crimson lipstick on her wide mouth. “You sure fooled me,” he said.
She returned the smile and sat in another of the visitor’s chairs. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. Carlos tells me you’re looking to trace some money that went to Panama.”
“Correct.”
“How much are we talking about?”
“Fifty million.”
There was a moment’s silence in the room. Then Morales whistled.
“That’s a number,” Lopez said.
“It went by check,” Ben said, “only a short time ago. I’m pretty sure there were others before that. The money was deposited in an account at the Banco Cafetero.”
“Noriega’s bank,” Lopez said.
Tolliver looked at her. “How come everybody knows that but me?”
“If you worked in drugs, you’d know.”
“I’m told it’s very hard to get information from banks down there.”
“Almost impossible,” she said. “That’s why they’re so popular with the trade. And besides, what you’re after is a lot different from what we usually run into.”
“Because of the amount?”
“That, and sending it by check. The business here is strictly cash. And the people that run it, they know all about CTRs and how banks here have tightened up. So what they do is break it in little pieces. They got these smurfs running around with just under ten thousand each. The smurfs take the money to banks here and have it wire-transferred out of the country. Some to the Caymans, some to the Bahamas, Colombia, all over—including Panama. As long as the amount is under ten, no CTR.”
“Not just banks, either,” Morales added.
“That’s true,” Lopez said. “There’s over two hundred travel agencies within a few blocks of here. A lot of ’em will take any amount, send it wherever you say. Most of it goes to South America. But you don’t see any million-dollar wires.”
Tolliver leaned forward in his chair. “How can I get the information I want?”
For a full minute, no one spoke.
“What about contacts down there?” Ben said at last. “We got a good connection?”
Morales expelled air from between pursed lips. “You kidding? After what we did in that country in eighty-nine, they hate our fucking guts.”
Connie Lopez held up a hand. “No, wait a minute. How about Fuentes?”
The slim detective cocked his head. “Now there is a possibility.”
“Who’s Fuentes?” Tolliver asked.
“A police captain,” Morales said. “In Panama City.”
“If anybody could do it,” Lopez said, “he could.”
“Very true. I’ll try to reach him, see if we can set something up.”
“Excellent,” Connie said. “I have a strong feeling he’d go along.”
“Yeah, I think so, too,” Morales said. “And it’d be nice to see a Cunningham get what’s coming to him.” He turned to Ben. “I’ll let you know wha
t the captain says, right after I talk to him.”
“Okay, good. But why would this guy be willing to cooperate?”
“Because he’s got a brother here,” Lopez said, “sitting in a cell at Rikers, awaiting trial.”
50
Orcus slowly tooled the black sedan through the neighborhood, checking out the dimly lighted narrow streets surrounding the building. The South Street Seaport and the Fulton Market were close by, and people were going in and out of the restaurants and bars along the river. His best bet, he decided, would be to park a block away, facing the most direct route out of here; when it came time to go, he’d want to go fast. He’d leave the car in a spot where he could turn into Pearl Street and then head north.
Even though it was only a weeknight evening, it took him twenty minutes to find a suitable parking place. He got one when a bunch of half-drunk revelers climbed into their car and pulled away just ahead of him. Orcus slipped the sedan into the space and got out.
He had on the usual innocuous outfit he wore on a job like this, with the hat pulled down on his head and the dark glasses and the scarf obscuring his face. His topcoat was unbuttoned, however, so that he could hide the shotgun inside the coat and get it out in a hurry when he needed to use it. Walking back to the building, he stopped on the sidewalk across the street and observed it carefully.
The structure was old, built of brick. Probably had been a warehouse at one time. Now it had a business of some kind on the ground floor and the one above, apparently an importing firm. The upper floors had been converted to apartments, and he could see that the ones looking east would have views of the Seaport and the river and beyond. That made him think of the visit he’d paid Jessica Silk.
He walked completely around the block, glancing over the building and the one next to it. On the side where the entrance to the company’s offices was, there was a plate glass window with FAR EAST ENTERPRISES painted on it, and next to that was a large freight portal with a folding steel grate secured by padlocks.
Around the corner was a smaller entry way, apparently for use by the building’s apartment tenants. That had an inner as well as an outer door, both of glass, but with bars over the outer one.
Farther along the wall, he saw a ramp leading down to a garage door. It was a good arrangement, he thought. The people who lived here could drive down into the garage and go on up to their apartments without having to stop outside the building. And of course they could leave the same way. It was a lot safer than parking on the street, for the tenants as well as their cars. The garage door was the type that rolled up in sections, clad in corrugated steel.
The streets here were all one-way, a labyrinth of constricted thoroughfares. He saw that to enter the garage, someone would have to drive eastbound and turn left before going down the ramp. Which suggested that the best place for him to wait would be a short distance away, where he could watch the ramp and not be seen. Cars were parked close together, parallel to the sidewalk. He stepped between two of them and sat on the rear bumper of a Honda.
It was chilly out here with the wind kicking up, and his seat was uncomfortable as hell. But he didn’t let any of that bother him; rough conditions were merely something that had to be taken in stride.
For that matter, he wasn’t even sure he’d get a chance tonight. He had no way of knowing when his quarry might be getting home, or whether the guy would come home at all. But that was part of doing business. If there wasn’t an opportunity this time, he’d try for another one as soon as possible. There was too much at stake for him not to accomplish what he had to do.
Slipping the shotgun out from under his coat, he held the weapon in both hands and inspected it. The gun was a 12-gauge Remington pump that had been sawed off fore and aft—the barrel to a length of 16 inches, the stock shortened as well. He’d loaded it with double-0.
This time there was no reason to screw around with a cover setup, making it look like something other than murder; a cop would have plenty of people who’d be glad to see him dead. And if you were going to use a gun, there was nothing better than the one gleaming dully in Orcus’s hands. With a bullet, it was possible to come up short, to wound instead of killing. But with a shotgun firing a heavy charge at close range, you turned the target into ground chuck.
He put the weapon back under his coat, holding the grip in his right hand, forefinger outside the trigger guard. The metal was cold to his touch.
A couple came along the sidewalk. The man had his arm around the girl, letting his hand slide down to squeeze her ass, and she was giggling as she pretended to slap the hand away. They walked within five feet of the motionless Orcus and never saw him sitting there.
A thought occurred to him. Getting up from his perch, he stretched, keeping the shotgun out of sight beneath his coat. Then he stepped back to where he could get another look at the garage door. It felt good to get off that goddamn bumper.
He studied the door for a moment, then turned and walked to where he’d left his car. Opening the door on the passenger side, he went into the glove compartment, taking out a screwdriver and putting it into a pocket of his topcoat. Moving at an unhurried pace, he returned to his hiding place.
From time to time, headlights blazed as a car drove past, but none went down the ramp to the garage. Orcus was cramped and stiff. Nevertheless, he sat where he was, staying low, holding the shotgun in his right hand.
He hoped the detective would show up tonight. If he didn’t, Orcus would come back tomorrow night. One thing he couldn’t do was to put it off any longer. Listening to the bitch criticize and complain had become insufferable. Better to get it done, get it over with, and get on with business.
He tightened his grip, slipping his finger inside the guard and lightly brushing the trigger. In his mind’s eye, he pictured what he was planning to do. He could see the blast, see the impact of the buckshot when it hit the target’s chest and blew it to bloody rags.
Tolliver was an arrogant bastard. It would be a pleasure to kill him.
51
On his way back from Queens, Tolliver pulled off the drive and stopped at Sparks Steakhouse on Forty-sixth Street, where John Gotti’s troops had blown away Big Paul Castellano some winters before. There was a TV in the bar and he wanted to catch Shelley on the ten o’clock news. Maybe he could talk her into having a late supper with him after she finished doing the update at eleven.
Certainly that would be preferable to going home and rooting around in the freezer for something to heat up. And besides, a repeat of the night before would be lovely. He’d call her as soon as she went off the air, see how she felt about it. Sparks was busy, for a weeknight. The tables in the hokey, fake antiques–furnished dining room were mostly occupied and a number of people were in the bar. He ordered a beer and asked the bartender to tune in WPIC TV.
A moment later, the news came on, starting with a rundown of what was going on in the world. The anchor was a self-important commentator named Bert Craft, whose main talent was his ability to read a TelePrompTer. The format called for cutting back and forth between Craft and taped news clips the station bought from the networks.
The anchor was an idiot, in Ben’s opinion. Everything he said was delivered in the same pompous tones, whether he was reading a piece on Paris fashions or one about mass starvation in Africa. Even his appearance was fatuous, sort of like a talking pumpkin.
There was nothing funny about the news, however: more trouble in the Middle East; the deficit was worse; Congress was legislating tax increases. All of it was interspersed with seemingly endless commercials, a half dozen of them ganged together at a time. If it hadn’t been for his wanting to see Shelley, Tolliver would have given up.
When at last she came on, she looked great, as always; wearing one of her power suits, but with a soft white blouse. Her blond hair was lighted just right, and the lights also intensified the color of her eyes, adding sparkle to the deep blue. Seeing her made him wish he could take her into his arms.
> Until she opened her mouth.
“There are dramatic new developments,” she said, “in the case that has gripped not only the citizens of New York but the entire nation. This is an exclusive report on the investigation into the mysterious deaths of former Senator Clayton Cunningham and Jessica Silk, the writer who was interviewing him at the time he died.”
He stared at the tube. Dramatic new developments? What the hell was she talking about?
Shelley continued: “This reporter has learned that the investigation, under the direction of Detective Lieutenant Ben Tolliver, has recently focused on the alleged suicide of Miss Silk.”
They cut to a taped shot of Tolliver and Jack Mulloy emerging from Silk’s apartment house.
Ben winced. He watched his image brush off the gaggle of reporters who were yelling questions at him as he walked toward his car, Mulloy trailing behind.
Shelley, voice-over: “Jessica Silk’s body was found in the rear of this luxury apartment building where she’d been living, and where she supposedly jumped from her twenty-second-floor terrace. According to a confidential source, the police now realize certain unexplained aspects of her death call into question the decision to close the case. Was it in fact a suicide? Did she actually jump? Or was she murdered? Although Lieutenant Tolliver has refused to divulge details of police suspicions, this part of the double mystery has by no means been resolved.”
Cut to Shelley on camera: “Among the unanswered questions surrounding Miss Silk’s death are several that hold special interest for investigators. For instance, no trace has been found of the article on Senator Cunningham Miss Silk was writing when he died. What happened to this material? Why have the police been unable to locate it? What secrets might it reveal about the true relationship between the senator and Miss Silk? What is the complete story behind their bizarre deaths?”
Ben shook his head, wishing there was some way he could shut her up.
Shelley went on: “The police task force isn’t saying what they’ve learned, but we have it on good authority that Lieutenant Tolliver is also looking into various business enterprises owned by the Cunningham family. Principal among these is Cunningham Securities, headed by Clayton Cunningham the Fourth. Although this company has been under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for some time, little progress has been made. Is it possible there is a connecting thread running through all this? The police seem to think so. For further developments, stay tuned to this station. I’m Shelley Drake, reporting to you live from WPIC TV’s studios, in New York.”
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