by R. J. Jagger
Jori-Lee thought about it.
It was partly true but mostly not.
“What I want is to prove that we have a killer sitting on the Supreme Court and then get his ass off it.” A beat then, “I’ll bet you anything that Leland Everitt is closing in on Robertson as the mystery voice who hired the investigator. That’s why he was so secretly meeting with Preston Wendell tonight. Wendell must know something about Robertson or at least suspect something. He was conveying it to Leland. Wendell’s a good guy. He wouldn’t want a stained judge on the court any more than I would. Way less, in fact.” She took a swallow of wine. “Tomorrow we need to go to work as dumb as dirt. We can’t let anyone onto what we know. Not yet.”
“Agreed.”
“As a footnote we need to figure out who Leland’s client is too, this private investigator,” she said. “He needs to be off the streets. Well at least now I know who I heard on the other end of the phone when T’amara Alder got murdered—Jean-Luc Baxa. He sounds foreign. I wonder who the hell he is.”
Zahara powered up her iPad.
“Let’s find out. You want some more wine?”
91
Day Ten
July 17
Thursday Morning
Whatever sleep came Wednesday night was intermittent and twisty and anything but deep. Teffinger woke at the first rays of dawn Thursday morning in the Intercontinental, not the fleabag, still needing another four hours of rest but knowing he’d never get it, not even four minutes of it, not with his brain on fire the way it was.
He rolled onto his back.
Del Rey was still alive, next to him, sleeping soundly.
The man escaped into the guts of the weather.
The detective who processed the scene last night, a man named Phil Bates out of the Crimes Against Persons unit, wasn’t too pleased that Teffinger had been laying wait out in storm with a gun. “You were going to kill him? That was the plan?”
“No. The plan was to take him alive.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure,” Teffinger said. “I didn’t know if he’d even show up.”
Bates wasn’t impressed.
“Killing suspects isn’t the way we do things out here,” he said. “That may pass for okay in Denver but it doesn’t here.”
Teffinger argued.
It did no good.
“The other thing we don’t do here is shoot at cars just because we suspect something.”
“That’s all I had time to do, assume the worst and shoot. I hit a tire which is what I was aiming for.”
“Yeah, well, you also hit the trunk and put a bullet through the back window. There could have been a gaggle of nuns in that car.”
“Doubtful.”
“Maybe but it was also possible.”
The car, it turned out, had been stolen two days ago.
It got towed for printing and processing.
The fibers and blood and minutia of the immediate scene were basically washed away by the storm, which didn’t let up all night and if anything got stronger.
Bates’ final advice was given with a hard face and tight narrow eyes. “Go back to Denver. If you stay here and end up killing someone, things could end up getting ugly for you.”
“Meaning what?”
“You do the math, especially if you injure a bystander.”
That was last night.
Now it was morning.
Del Rey was still alive.
The population of the world hadn’t gone down by one. That was good enough math for Teffinger.
He took a shower. Halfway through the curtain pulled back, Del Rey stepped in and said, “That detective last night was an ass.”
“He had some valid points,” Teffinger said.
“Yeah, well, if you were him, I’d be dead. I’ll bet he’s never had the balls even once to cock his hand into a fist.” She rubbed her stomach against his. “Thanks for being you and not some stupid little pussy.”
“Such language.”
“Sorry, but it’s true.”
Toweled off with coffee in hand, Teffinger wasn’t quite sure what to do today. Down below the financial district started to get thicker with movement. The air was fog-free. Early morning vessels cut wakes through choppy bay waters.
His phone rang.
It turned out to be the woman from the Green Dragon Oriental Massage, the young one wrapped in the kimono. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” she said.
“Well I’m glad you are.”
“I gave your message to Dandan,” she said. “She’s not going to call you. You need to help her. She’d going to hate me but I want to give you her new number. Please call her. She’s into to something and I don’t know what it is but I do know it’s serious. She needs someone.”
Teffinger grabbed a pencil and pad.
“Give me the number.”
She did.
“Please help her even if she won’t let you.”
“I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
He dialed Dandan. She hung up as soon as she realized who it was. He dialed again and said, “I just want to talk, just for two minutes. Just talk, nothing else. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll go away and you’ll never be bothered by me again.”
A beat then, “Talk about what?”
“For starters, keeping you alive,” he said. “Rail’s after you. My truce with him was over yesterday.”
“He’s not an issue. He’ll never find me.”
“You’re wrong about that. Do you still have the painting?”
“That’s no one’s concern but mine.”
“I know you sold it,” Teffinger said. “I know it’s under contract. What I want to know is whether you physically made the exchange yet or whether you still have the painting in your possession.”
“I’m not giving it to you so it’s a moot point.”
“Just tell me.”
“The exchange is set for three o’clock today.”
“Let me borrow it until two.”
He told her why; to show it to Rail, have Rail tell him where Susan Smith was, and who killed Kelly Nine, then switch it out from under his nose.
“That’s insane. No one’s that stupid.”
“I can make it work,” Teffinger said. “Trust me. You’ll get the painting back in time for the exchange. I’ll even go to the exchange with you, to make sure everything goes the way it should.”
“It’s already going the way it should,” she said. “Half the money’s already been paid.”
Teffinger exhaled.
“Susan Smith is going to die if you don’t cooperate.”
“She’s probably already dead. But even if she isn’t, and even if your plan works and you trick Rail into telling you where she is, he’s going to kill her as soon as he finds out you suckered him.”
“I’ll get to her first.”
“You don’t know that,” Dandan said. “An associate of his could be holding her captive somewhere, which makes sense otherwise she would have popped up somewhere. All Rail has to do is make a phone call. We both know that the only way Rail won’t kill her is if you give him the real painting. Either that or you kill him as soon as he gives you the information. Is that what you’re going to do? Kill him on the spot?”
“No.”
“So what’s your plan then? Give him the real painting?”
“No.”
“Well, then you don’t have a plan, not one that will work, anyway. I’m sorry about all this, I really am, but I think we’re done talking. I’m smashing this phone as soon as I hang up so don’t try calling again.”
The line went dead.
Teffinger called Sydney.
“Two minutes ago I just made a phone call to a cell number,” he said. “I need the physical location of where that phone was, as in an address if possible. Here’s the problem, I don’t have time to go the warrant route. Do you have any markers you can call in?”
Silence.
Del Rey studied him with a sober face after he hung up and then said, “You’re going to get Dandan killed.”
He opened his mouth to argue.
No good words came out.
He shoved his wallet in his back pocket, grabbed the car keys and headed for the door. “I’ll be back in an hour. Stay here where it’s safe.”
She grabbed her purse, fell into step and said, “Where we going?” When he looked at her and she said, “I don’t listen very well, do I?”
“Now that you mention it, no.”
`
92
Day Ten
July 17
Thursday Morning
They headed to Dandan’s apartment and found it unlocked as before, but now even more of a mess. “Someone’s been here,” Teffinger said.
“Rail?”
Teffinger shrugged.
“I’m guessing he made the first mess and someone new made this one, probably the guys after Rail, or more to the point, after the painting. Right now though I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything but the movie.”
The movie.
Teffinger’s theory was simple.
The papers showing Kelly Nine in a porno weren’t printouts from a camera shot, like he first thought. They were still prints taken off a movie. That movie was somewhere in Dandan’s apartment. If they could find it they might be able to get a better handle on who was in it, where it was taken and how Kelly ended up in it.
In the corner was a flat screen TV on a small table.
Under that table on the carpet were one or two hundred DVDs.
Basic Instinct.
The Wedding Singer.
Body Double.
Perfect Strangers.
The Hangover.
The Lincoln Lawyer.
They opened them, one at a time, throwing the boxes and the discs to the other side of the room. Five minutes into it Teffinger found something interesting.
In Failure to Launch was an unlabeled disc.
“Bingo, maybe,” he said.
He fired it up.
Kelly Nine filled the screen, frame after frame after frame, in unforgiving clarity, not enjoying what she was doing but going with it, almost as if she was drunk or in a trance or resigned to the fate because of something that happened beforehand.
He ejected the disc and said, “This has something to do why she was targeted for murder.”
“I agree.”
“She wasn’t enjoying herself.”
“No, not hardly.”
Teffinger stuck the disc back in Failure to Launch, slipped the case into his rear pants pocket and then he let his eyes sweep around. Maybe there was something here they missed the first time, something that would tell them where Dandan was.
He grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge and took a long swallow as his eyes roamed.
Suddenly the door pushed open.
A man walked in.
It was Rail.
He had a gun in his hand
Attached to that gun was a silencer.
He pointed that silencer at Teffinger’s chest.
“Stay calm,” the man said.
Teffinger swallowed what was left in the can, crumpled it in his hand and let it drop to the floor.
“It looks like we meet again,” he said.
93
Day Ten
July 17
Thursday Morning
Jean-Luc Baxa—the man who killed T’amara Alder—was an Internet ghost. His name was nowhere, his footprint was nowhere, his shadow was nowhere, his keystroke was nowhere. He was invisible, which wasn’t surprising given the nature of his work. A man in his profession wouldn’t get sloppy enough to let someone hunt him from the privacy of a living room.
Jean and Luc were popular French names.
Baxa was an established French surname.
So, the man was French, assuming the name wasn’t an alias.
Physically, Jori-Lee couldn’t differentiate a French national from an American one. If Baxa came for her, she wouldn’t suspect him based on looks. Language was another matter. If he spoke, there would be an accent, however faint or buried. That’s what she had to watch for.
Thursday morning, if Leland Everitt knew anything about the events of last night he gave no clue, not when he came to Jori-Lee’s office to be sure everything was going to her satisfaction on her second day of work and not when she bumped into him in the hall an hour later.
Shortly before lunch, Jori-Lee walked into Zahara’s office and closed the door.
“I think I figured out who Leland’s mysterious private investigator Client X is,” she said. “I think he’s a guy named Oscar Benderfield.”
“Why?”
“Because—get this—Benderfield got killed last week.”
“How do you know?”
“I went down the list of investigators in D.C. and Googled them this morning, just trying to get a feeling as to whether one of them seemed shady enough to hire a hitman. I came across an article in the Post about Oscar Benderfield’s death. It didn’t say how he got killed but I called his office. A woman by the name of Danielle answered—his Secretary, I assume—and told me that Benderfield got killed by a Denver detective who came to town to question him about a case. Apparently there was a fight and Benderfield lost. The local police weren’t pressing charges against the detective.”
“What was the detective’s name?”
“Nick Teffinger.”
Zahara chewed on it.
“If Benderfield’s the client, why would Leland still be working the case last night if his client was dead?”
“Good question,” Jori-Lee said. “My guess is that he hasn’t heard about it, either that or he’s figured out that Robertson is dirty and is on a mission to bring him down.”
Zahara exhaled.
“Either way I guess it’s not important,” she said. “What we need to do is get into Benderfield’s office and see if we can find some evidence that ties him to Robertson, plus the guy he hired, the Luc-Jean guy; especially Luc-Jean, since he might be after you.”
“Jean-Luc.”
“Right,” Zahara said. “We’ll do that tonight.”
“Do what, exactly? Break into his office?”
“Yes.”
Jori-Lee swallowed.
Then she said, “Okay.”
94
Day Ten
July 17
Thursday Morning
Teffinger’s brain sparked with the force of a renegade lighting storm. There was no move he had that would be faster than Rail’s squeeze on the trigger. He was helpless against the man and, worst, so was Del Rey.
“I don’t have the painting and I don’t know where Dandan is,” he said. “Whatever you’re hoping to get out of me, you’re not going to get it.”
Rail wasn’t impressed.
He nodded towards the couch and said, “Sit down.”
Teffinger hesitated and then complied.
Del Rey joined him.
Rail leaned against wall, out of distance of any possible lunge, and kept the barred pointed at Teffinger. “Dandan’s broker in Rome, Savina Bandini, was murdered last night. Did you know that?”
Teffinger’s forehead tightened.
He could still hear the woman’s voice in his ear.
The voice disappeared as he realized Rail wasn’t bluffing. The fact was too easy to verify.
“By who?”
Rail retreated in thought and then said, “Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard of a man named Yoan Foca?”
Yoan Foca.
Yoan Foca.
“No.”
“That’s good for you,” he said, “because just hearing his name takes you halfway to death. He lives in Havana, Cuba, and has never once in his life left the country, at least to my knowledge. His minions though are all over the world. There’s no place they can’t go. There’s no one they can’t kill.”
Teffing
er hardened his face.
“Why do I care?”
“You care because Yoan Foca is my client,” Rail said. “He’s the one who originally owned the Van Gogh. He’s the one I was in the process of selling it for when Dandan took it. He’s the one out there in the shadows hell-bent to get it back. He’s the one who killed Savina Bandini last night. He’s the one who’s a heartbeat away from getting his fists around the throat of Dandan, whether she knows it or not.” A beat then, “He’s the one who will hunt you to the ends of the earth once he knows you refused to help me.” He nodded towards Del Rey, focused back on Teffinger and said, “And your pretty little girlfriend here? She’s nothing more than a scream in the night. Then, poof, she’s gone. She’s gone so far and so deep that it’s questionable whether she ever even existed.”
“Is that one of his men in town?”
“Meaning what?”
“The one who’s after me or her,” he said. “The one who rips the wings off birds—”
“Him? No, he’s not one of Foca’s,” he said. “Foca doesn’t hire people that sloppy. You’re going to have a talk with your little Dandan friend. You’re going to let her know just how deep in she is. You’re going to explain to her that the only way to come out of this alive—and un-tortured for that matter—is to turn over the painting while she still has a chance. Like I said, Savina Bandini’s dead. She was killed before the new buyer sent her any money.”
“She told me the opposite.”
“If she did she was lying,” Rail said. “Even if she wasn’t, Dandan would will never see a cent of it, not at this point. The woman has no upside in keeping the painting. It’s not going to bring her riches. It will only bring her death, worse than death, actually. This is your chance to save her from a horrible, horrible thing. I’ll call you in two hours. Have some good news for me.”
He shoved the weapon in his waistband and headed for the door.
“Hey, Rail. Where’s Susan Smith?”
The man stopped and said over his shoulder, “I’ll tell you in two hours when you have that good news for me.”
Then he was gone.
Teffinger didn’t get up. Instead he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Leigh Sandt in Quantico. “It’s me, Nick. Look, I know I’m being a huge pain in the ass but I need whatever you can get me on a Havana, Cuba guy named Yoan Foca.”