The Trust

by Norb Vonnegut

  They spoke for a while and kissed each other good-bye through the receivers, but only after Biscuit said he’d be spending another night in Charleston. “Something’s eating me.”

  Then, he called room service again. “How about another martini, captain. This time send the shaker.” He booted up his computer and Googled Palmer Kincaid.

  Grove’s right, Biscuit thought. A guy who makes two hundred million is nobody’s stooge.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  AROUND TOWN

  What the hell can you do?

  Your friend’s been kidnapped. Through luck, through sheer force of will, you find her. That’s the bull case.

  More likely she’s dead, beat up and abandoned in a Dumpster somewhere. But you can’t think about the bear scenario.

  “Don’t go there,” you say. Because uncertainty is all you’ve got.

  That and a Maryknoll priest. Sometimes slick, sometimes twitchy, he gives you the heebie-fucking-jeebies. He’s your lead negotiator, the only chance to get your friend back. But the priest, you come to find out, is in league with the devil himself.

  Or is he?

  You don’t know. You’re marking time, grinding your way through a personal purgatory, wondering, worrying, waiting for his call with news, any news. Reminding yourself this ball of string would not be unraveling if you had wired $65 million in the first place.

  As if anticipation were not bad enough, your most powerful ally is an FBI agent with an agenda all her own. She’s as likely to crucify you as she is the kidnappers. Again, you remind yourself, “Don’t go there.” You try to focus on your friend, getting her back. You put on a brave face. You tell yourself over and over, “I’ll deal with the consequences later.”

  But the uncertainty that offers hope for your friend’s release—that’s the same uncertainty gnawing your guts. Tearing your insides up like barbed wire. You wonder whether you’ll be walking the yard at Club Fed. Doing five to ten with skinheads and the other lowlifes from the wrong side of town.

  “You want another drink?” asked Claire. For all the angst of the moment, I was struck by her skin. Beautiful. Ageless. Her complexion looked like it had been poured from a carton of milk.

  “Please.” I was three shots behind where they would do me any good.

  We were sitting on Palmer’s second-floor piazza. Every auto on the street looked like an unmarked car, but I didn’t breath a word about my conversation with Agent Torres.

  She was drinking scotch. I was sipping vodka, because I detest scotch and wine wouldn’t do. My watch read five-thirty, and I assumed the FBI was just starting its work inside the Palmetto Foundation’s offices.

  It was the same spot where JoJo and I had sat the week following Palmer’s death. This time, the cool slap from the harbor breezes brought no comfort. My cell phone was on the bistro table, a small slab of white marble between us, gray veins slivering their way through the stone.

  Claire’s phone was there, too. We were waiting for the call. Waiting for Father Ricardo to tell us he’d made contact. Wondering whether we had done the right thing, which was different for Claire than it was for me.

  I hate waiting. I’m no good at it. I see people standing in line, and I start thinking Plan B. There was only one reason I could sit there and pound drinks with Claire. Torres had instructed me to keep her away from the Palmetto Foundation.

  She snugged a gray cashmere sweater around her shoulders. “I feel like a jerk.”

  I knew what she meant. The depth of her anger. The rancor in her garden on Legare Street. At the time, I couldn’t believe her acid tongue belonged to the same person I’d known in high school.

  But families are funny things. We all have warts of one kind or another, and dysfunctional behavior comes with the territory. We say stupid things that piss each other off. And we stay pissed off. We stop talking and hold grudges long after everybody forgets what the hell was so stupid in the first place.

  If anybody deserved a hall pass, it was Claire Kincaid. She was the one who’d agreed to wire $200 million to rescue her father’s wife, six years older, a woman she didn’t particularly like. She reminded me of that scene from Chinatown: “Stepmother, stepsister, stepmother.” And so on.

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” I told her.

  “You must think I’m a bitch.” Tears started running down her cheeks.

  “We’re all under a lot of pressure.”

  Claire’s hand was on the table. I placed mine on top of hers, trying to punctuate my words with the casual touch that’s so foreign to me. Her hand was as icy as the marble underneath, as though the stone’s gray veins continued up into hers.

  “You’re cold.” I rubbed her hand to goose the circulation.

  “I never gave JoJo a chance.”

  “You don’t—”

  “When they got married,” Claire continued, remorseful, “I pitched a fit. Demanded my dad get a prenup. Can you believe that?”

  “No, actually.”

  Then she mimicked Palmer’s voice. “‘Don’t need one, sweetheart. I got the poor man’s version.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “He never told me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Today would break his heart.” Claire exhumed her hand, squeezed mine, and poured herself another scotch. “Both JoJo and what’s happening to the Palmetto Foundation.”

  “We’re not wiring one dime.” Agent Torres had convinced me otherwise, sort of. One way or the other, I wasn’t telling Claire about my meeting with the FBI agent.

  Kneed-to-know basis.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Claire replied, remembering my intransigence from earlier that day. “Let’s see what we learn from Father Ricardo tomorrow morning.”

  “I hope we hear something sooner.” I considered my words for a moment and then clarified them. “Something good.”

  Almost on command, the phone rang. Claire reached for hers. But mine was the one ringing. I looked at the caller ID and answered. “Did you hear from Father Ricardo?”

  “Who is it?” mouthed Claire.

  “Biscuit.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “No, I doubt he’ll call me,” the big man replied.

  “Are you heading back to Fayetteville?”

  “Tomorrow. What are you doing for dinner?”

  I looked across the table. “You want to join Claire and me?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I’m busy, and Claire may not be ready to hear what I think.”

  “About what?”

  “The thing that’s bugging me.”

  I turned away from Claire toward the harbor, the water gray in the fading light. “What is it?”

  “Let me ask you something. What class was Palmer at Harvard?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  I did.

  “Now will you explain why you want to know?”

  “What are you doing at ten tonight?” he asked.

  “Finishing dinner. Unless of course we hear from the reverend sooner.”

  “Meet me in the hotel lobby.”

  “Tell me now,” I said.

  “It’s just a hunch. I’ll know for sure by then.”

  “What if Father Ricardo makes contact?”

  “That ain’t happening,” Biscuit said, no doubt in his voice.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “You heard what Torres said. Don’t be late.”

  Dial tone.

  “Grove,” said Claire. Suddenly, my attention returned to the second-floor porch. “We don’t need him interfering. Not now.”

  “We need all the help we can get.”

  * * *

  It was 8:30 P.M. For the last two hours, Torres had been directing the equipment people on her team. She surveyed the spacious conference room inside the Palmetto Foundation one last time.

  Windows. They were more than windows. They were
architectural trophies from another era: narrow, six feet high, arched near the top, spectacular both inside and out. Check.

  Conference room table. The antique was a light wood, definitely not mahogany. The grains were black from age, winding this way and that, a home to untold insects through the centuries. Now the antique housed a different kind of bug. Check.

  Finally, Torres eyed the walls: photos of JoJo and Palmer, a few of Claire; old maps of Charleston; and everywhere, pictures of the Palmetto Foundation’s projects, like the wing at the South Carolina Aquarium. Von Maur, her go-to guy on the team, worked miracles with surveillance equipment. He had painted his favorite listening device, a single strand of electronic hair, right into the mocha brown walls. Check.

  Torres decided the room was perfect. There was no way Ricardo would detect anything askew. Nor would anyone else. Except for the antiques, the conference room looked like any other place to talk business. No hint of all the circuitry inside the room.

  There was only one item left to check.

  Von Maur had a sixth sense about these things. He appeared just as Torres was about to dial him on her cell phone. “What about the roving bugs?”

  “Done.”

  “Father Ricardo?”

  “We got all the numbers from their contact sheet. Everybody’s done, Ricardo, O’Rourke, Kincaid, and Hughes.”

  “Did you try JoJo Kincaid’s phone?”

  “Won’t help.” Von Maur rubbed his forehead with his right hand. He was always doing that. “We found the phone in her purse.”

  “Damn.”

  The two were discussing a surveillance technique. The FBI had downloaded spyware into all four cell phones—undetected—which enabled the agents to eavesdrop on their conversations. Years earlier, the same technology had been used to convict members of the Genovese crime family.

  “Roving bugs” worked not only for telephone calls. The FBI could listen to conversations between Ricardo and the kidnappers, wherever they might be. The sound of a human voice would activate the cell phone’s microphone and initiate a call to the FBI. The only way to exterminate the listening devices was to yank out the cell phone batteries.

  “Don’t worry,” Von Maur advised. “I don’t care if Father Ricardo’s in the confessional. We’ll hear everything.”

  “Frankly, that’s the one place I hope we find him.”

  * * *

  Bong checked his Rolex. It was 8:45 P.M. He blinked once, twice, and turned onto the Cooper River Bridge heading into Charleston. He had a long night ahead of him. Timing was everything. And right now, he smelled trouble.

  O’Rourke was bad news, a real SOB. Bong had known him all of one week. Already, he wanted to grind the guy’s face into pulp. Maybe there’d be time for that later, after things played out.

  “Anak ng puta,” he cursed to himself. Tagalog expletives, “son of a bitch” in this case, were so much more satisfying than their English translations.

  There was no telling what O’Rourke had done, whom he had involved. That mountain-sized lawyer was a case in point. Bong knew Highly Intimate Pleasures was gone. All the hard work, all the thought that had gone into the store—it was the perfect Laundromat for money. The bar, the billboards, the capital, they were all fucking gone. The Feds would seize his store and shut it down. All that investment down the drain.

  “What kind of name is Biscuit anyway?” he muttered.

  In the meeting today, Bong caught the lawyer studying him. The big man said little. But every time Bong looked in his direction, Biscuit was staring at him. Checking him out. It was more than creepy. It was like the attorney sensed something. Maybe he figured things out.

  Bong scratched his head. He ran his thumb and forefinger across his clerical collar. He told himself to stop it. He was always touching the damn collar, and it was turning into a nervous tic. Good thing he had purchased two. His one-way sparring session with JoJo that afternoon had left the other one a mess.

  Soon, he’d wire $33.5 million to Moreno. That transfer would square things up with the snake. Bong would pay himself the agreed-upon $6.5 million fee and keep the remaining $160 million balance all to himself. He wasn’t splitting that money with anybody. He didn’t care what promises he’d made.

  Details. Details. Everything is about details. And fear is always the greatest before the big score.

  Bong eyed the blue canvas bag on his passenger seat. His eyes gleamed, and his lips curled into a cruel smile. Payback would be oh so satisfying, hell for O’Rourke. He retrieved the phone from inside his black jacket, checking the rearview mirror as he pulled it out.

  Nobody there.

  With his left hand, he powered down the passenger window. And then with his right, he backhanded his mobile out the window. It was a monstrous fling. The phone, $19.95 from Walmart, sailed through the cables and over the edge of the bridge. Down, down, down it tumbled, some two hundred feet to the shrimp and blue crabs waiting in the Cooper River below.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  SAVING JOJO

  No word from Father Ricardo.

  Around 9:15 P.M. I left Claire’s home on South Battery, hustled through the shadows of Meeting Street, and phoned Annie. She was aghast by my news about JoJo. “What have you gotten yourself into?”

  I could hear the fear in her voice. “Don’t worry. The FBI is here.”

  “They’re helping you now?”

  “They have their own agenda. I just want JoJo back.”

  “You’re not some kind of bait, are you? You won’t do anything stupid?”

  I’d do anything for Palmer, even if it meant risking my life to save his wife. Now was not the time to argue, though. “No way.”

  “Promise?”

  “Do me a favor. Get some friends to spend the night.”

  “What for?”

  Then I said to Annie what had been twisting through my mind ever since the first shot of vodka that night. “I’d feel better knowing you’re not alone.”

  “You think I’m in danger?”

  “No. But just invite some friends over.”

  “You’re scaring me, Grove.”

  “I know. Sorry.”

  “You never answered my question,” she persisted. “You won’t do anything stupid?”

  My BlackBerry picked that moment to run out of juice. And I’m not sure Annie heard me say, “I promise.”

  * * *

  It was nine-thirty when I returned to the hotel at Charleston Place. Biscuit was nowhere in sight, which was no surprise. We weren’t meeting until 10:00, and I assumed he was still doing whatever had prevented him from joining Claire and me for dinner.

  A bunch of drunken Shriners boarded the elevator with me. At my floor I raced to the room, stripping off my tie en route. I didn’t bother with lights. Afterward, relieved, I washed my hands and brushed away the cardboard taste of delivery pizza from my mouth. And when I emerged from the bathroom, finally flipping on the overhead lights, five words shattered the silence:

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I almost leaped out of my skin. Father Ricardo was sitting in the room’s occasional chair, framed by a blaze of upholstery that was a little too Marquis de Sade for my taste. He wore his black shirt and white clerical collar, no jacket this time. His eyes, ringed by anxious dark circles, resembled skull sockets in the gloomy light.

  Talk about startled. My heart rate soared from 60 to 150 in three beats. Shivers shot from my legs to my face. And it felt like a million ants were marching up my spine.

  “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “And you interrupted a perfectly good nap, my friend.” He spoke in a calm voice.

  I went ballistic. “How’d you get into my room?”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The lord works in mysterious ways.”

  “Cut the crap.” I was gathering my wits, remembering what Agent Torres had said: Moreno, money laundering, FBI suspicions but nothi
ng concrete.

  “That’s no way to speak to a priest.”

  Given what Torres had said earlier, I wasn’t sure he was a man of the cloth. So I turned sarcastic. “Fine. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. How the hell did you get into my room?”

  “Saint Benjamin.”

  It took me a second to process his meaning. “You slipped somebody a hundred?”

  “I heard from the kidnappers.”

  “Your guy spoke to them?”

  “I did.”

  In that second, I forgot my annoyance. I forgot the warnings from Torres. She had been wrong. So had Biscuit for that matter. I forgot Annie’s exhortation: “You won’t do anything stupid.”

  I think it was subconscious on my part. But the news, good or otherwise, made me drop my guard. “Is JoJo okay?”

  “We’re going to get her.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “I told you once. I told you before. Nobody pays if these guys develop a reputation for killing hostages.”

  I ignored Father Ricardo’s testiness. “Did you talk to JoJo?”

  “She sounds awful.”

  “But she’s okay, right?”

  “For now.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you said, ‘We’re going to get her.’”

  Ricardo was a human boomerang. Every time I asked him something, he returned a bigger question. He tugged at his shirt collar. He rolled his head in a big circle, as though chafing from what he was about to say. “I need you to answer one thing.”

  “For sure. Just tell me.”

  “Do you want JoJo back?”

  “Stop horsing around. You know I do.”

  “Are you willing to pay?”

  “Once she’s safe—whatever they want.” I ignored what Torres had outlined. The FBI agent no longer mattered. My instincts were taking over.

  “And trade yourself for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I told them you’d pay. Otherwise she’d be dead.”

  “We’re crazy not to call the police.”

  “Shut up.” His words shook me. “Do you want JoJo back, yes or no?”

  “Yes, of course.” I nodded my head.