Hades w-4

by Russell Andrews

  "Here's a cell phone," Justin said to H. R. "Call Lincoln Berdon and tell him you need to get together right away."

  "What is this all about?" H. R. said gruffly. "I'm not going to do any such thing. What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "I'll repeat it one more time," Justin said. "Call Lincon Berdon and set up a meeting for this evening. Tell him it's important."

  "Go to hell," H. R. Harmon said and he began to yell out for help. Before a syllable could escape from his lips, Justin swung his elbow as hard as he could swing it into the aging ex-politician's mouth. A tooth flew out. And Harmon went down hard.

  From his seat on the ground, a dazed Harmon spit out some blood, looked up and said, "You just made a big mistake."

  "I'm afraid you're the one who made the mistake," Justin said. "My associate is not nearly as easygoing as I am."

  Bruno now stepped over to the man on the ground and said, "Take one shoe off."

  Harmon looked up, confused. "What?"

  "Take one shoe off. It'll be a lot worse if I have to do it for you 'cause I'm already in a bad mood and I might take your whole fuckin' foot with it. Now take your goddamn shoe off."

  Harmon reached down and untied his left, all-white golf shoe.

  "Take your sock off," Bruno said.

  Harmon did as he was told.

  "Stand up," Bruno said, and Harmon pushed himself off the ground and stood up.

  Bruno pulled out a pistol with a silencer on it. And now Justin could see that Harmon was afraid.

  "He asked you twice, so I'm not gonna ask. I'm telling you. I'm gonna shoot one of your toes off. Then he's gonna ask you again. Each time you don't do what he says, I'll blow another one of your toes away. You won't die. But it'll hurt like hell. And I hope you don't mind the sight of blood."

  "Wait," Harmon said.

  "Too late," Bruno told him. He bent down, and before Harmon could react, Bruno put the end of the barrel against H. R. Harmon's pinky toe and pulled the trigger. There was a quiet pop and the toe disappeared in a spray of blood. The old man fell back down, in shock and enormous pain. Blood poured out of the end of his foot.

  "Ask him again, Jay," Bruno said.

  Justin stood over the onetime politician and said, "Call Lincoln Berdon and set up a meeting. Set it up for right now. Please." He held his cell phone down toward Harmon, who had, in the past five seconds, aged twenty years. His face had gone slack and his skin had turned pale.

  "My foot," he groaned. "My foot…"

  "Stand up again," Bruno told him.

  "Give me the phone, give me the phone," Harmon said quickly. He reached up to grab it out of Justin's hand. He punched in the required numbers as quickly as he could manage. He was so rattled it took him three tries to get the sequence right.

  Harmon reached Lincoln Berdon immediately, said there was an emergency and they had to meet. Said he couldn't discuss it over the phone. His voice was shaky but over the phone must have just sounded urgent. It worked. He hung up and nodded. He stared up at Justin and Bruno, overwhelmed by pain and the stunning realization that he was in a situation over which he had absolutely no control.

  Bruno tossed a handkerchief in the air and it fluttered down to the dirt by Harmon's shaking hand. "Here," the big man said, "tie somethin' around that before you bleed to death." He looked over at Justin, saw the look Justin was giving him. "What?" Bruno said. "You got what you wanted, right? Now you think I gotta start touchin' people's feet? Fugettaboutit. He can fix his own fuckin' foot."

  H. R. Harmon's driver, Martin, was surprised to see his boss coming up to the car with two men. He was even more surprised when he realized his boss was walking with one shoe off, and that his foot was bleeding like a motherfucker. What surprised Martin the most, however, was when one of the men, the smaller one, put a gun into his side and told him to get behind the wheel of the limo and start driving.

  Martin had no desire to get shot, so he said, "Sure," and, without demanding any more information, headed back toward the city, which is where the smaller guy told him to go. The bigger guy, the scarier one, didn't go with them. That was more than okay with Martin. And more than okay with Mr. Harmon-he could see that as soon as the big guy left. At one point during the drive, Martin glanced in the rearview mirror, saw his boss leaning back with his eyes closed, and he asked him if he was okay; but Mr. Harmon didn't say anything in response, so Martin decided to dispense with all further questions.

  The traffic heading into Manhattan cost them about twenty minutes, so the drive took a little over an hour. As Martin drove, Justin reapplied the makeshift tourniquet to Harmon's foot. Martin found a few Advil in the glove compartment of the limo and Justin forced the old man to swallow four of them. Almost nothing was said the whole way in. The only words spoken were when Justin's cell phone rang. It was Reggie-Reggie who spoke to him as coolly as if they'd never met before. He closed his eyes while she talked, envisioning her naked on his bed, remembering making love to her. He realized he wasn't paying much attention to what she was saying, so he interrupted her to say quietly, "Look, we have to talk."

  "Let's just finish our business," she said, her voice even. "Let's just get through this and finish, and then we'll see if there's anything to talk about."

  He said okay, his heart pounding, and she told him what she'd found out since he and Bruno had left East End Harbor. She'd run prints on the Chinese man that Justin had killed. They knew his identity. When she told him, he looked over at the wounded man sitting next to him. He said nothing to H. R. Harmon, just spoke into the phone: "Okay, I've got it." Then he said, "These are sick goddamn people."

  She also said she'd gotten the records for all Larry Silverbush's phone calls. Justin had been right, she said-Silverbush had made the calls that Justin thought he'd made. He had a moment of self-satisfaction, then he told Reggie to hold on a second, and he said to Martin, "What's the number of this car phone in the backseat?" Martin didn't hesitate; he reeled off the number. Justin gave it to Reggie, asked if she could get a list of all calls made and received on it starting a week before Harmon's murder, and then he went, "Hold on one more sec." He said to Martin, "You have a cell phone of your own?" Martin said, "Yeah," and Justin said, "Give it to me." It didn't take the driver long to hand that over, and Justin flipped it open, got the number, and gave that to Reggie, too, again asking her to check all outgoing and incoming calls. He saw the look in H. R.'s eyes, knew he'd struck a little too close to home. Then he put his phone to his ear again. He and Reggie both stayed on the phone without saying anything. He could hear her breathing, and he knew she didn't want to sever the connection the same way he didn't. There was nothing they could communicate to each other, not right now, but he was glad she didn't want to be separated from him. Even if it was only temporary. He listened to her breathe, and then he finally heard her hang up.

  They went over the Triborough Bridge into Manhattan, but they didn't drive to the Rockworth and Williams building, as Justin had assumed. When they reached the city, Harmon-whose rich man's tan had faded into a sickly-looking pale green color-gave an address on East 69th Street. They pulled up in front of a brownstone.

  "What is this?" Justin asked.

  Harmon's voice was weak. It had no resonance. Justin knew the old man had to be in serious pain. He didn't really care. "Lincoln's home."

  "No," Justin said. "He lives on Park Avenue."

  Harmon shook his head. "That's his family home. He keeps this as a separate residence. To use for private functions."

  Justin turned to Harmon's chauffeur and said, "Pop the trunk." When that was done, Justin said, "Now get out of the car and get into the trunk."

  "What?" Martin said.

  "Get into the trunk," Justin told him. "You have five seconds."

  Martin was there in four seconds. Justin closed the trunk, said to Harmon, "Try to remember to let him out when we're done."

  Harmon nodded but didn't look as if that particular command was going to be a t
op priority.

  Justin wondered if he'd made the right move by not bringing Bruno. They had decided that it would be better if Bruno took Justin's car back to East End Harbor. Justin did not expect this session to take long. And he'd been afraid that Bruno's involvement wouldn't be good or productive for anyone concerned. For all he knew, the FBI would be waiting inside the house, and that would not be a meeting Bruno would relish. But now he wished he had some company. Some large and intimidating company.

  "All right, let's go," he told Harmon.

  "I want to put my shoe on," H. R. Harmon said.

  "It'll hurt a hell of a lot worse if you do that," Justin said.

  "I'm not going into Lincoln's house looking like this. I have to put my shoe on."

  Justin shrugged and watched as the old man grimaced and groaned but got his shoe on. He even tied it. But not too tight. And Justin was impressed: H. R. barely limped on the short walk from the car to the town house. Justin decided the old guy wasn't much on honesty or decency but he was hell when it came to dignity.

  They were met at the front door by Lincoln Berdon.

  He was wearing a black, three-piece pin-striped suit, and the expression on his face was as somber as his funereal-looking attire. He ushered the two men into his living room. The house was decorated all in black, white, and silver. The tables were stainless steel. The floors were painted black and white. Couches and chairs were either white with black pillows or black with white pillows. Justin wondered if they had black and white wine. But he didn't get a chance to find out since Berdon didn't offer him a drink.

  "What is this about?" Lincoln Berdon asked.

  "Do you want to know who I am?" Justin asked.

  "No," Berdon said. "I know who you are. What I want to know is what you're doing here."

  So Justin told him. He went through the events of the recent past step by step, beginning with the discovery of Evan Harmon's body. He left nothing out. He told them both what he knew about Ronald LaSalle's murder-and LaSalle's recent business history. He told them everything he knew about Evan Harmon's corrupt financial dealings, all the way through the overturned truck in Texas. At one point, Justin said, "I know that Evan arranged to buy platinum as low as he could and sell it at a huge profit to the Chinese government. That couldn't have made you happy-him cheating your most important client." Berdon didn't respond; he was well trained. Neither of the two Wall Street legends looked shocked at anything Justin had revealed up to that point. Harmon was following Berdon's lead, which surprised Justin a little. He'd expected their relationship to be on a more equal footing. This was Berdon's show. Berdon's world. H. R. Harmon was a supporting player.

  Justin then talked about Wanda: what she'd told him when they'd met in her car, what he knew about her death. When he told them about the words she'd managed to scrawl before she died, Lincoln Berdon didn't so much as blink. But this time Harmon looked startled. He glanced quickly at Berdon, who didn't return the look. Berdon's eyes never moved; they stared straight ahead at Justin.

  "What else do you have to tell us?" Berdon asked. Justin felt as if he should compliment the man on having perfected his dismissive tone. But he thought he should hold off just a bit on any congratulations.

  "I have a few other things," Justin said. He told them about the break-in and murder at the LaSalle Group and how they knew that the murderer was a Chinese woman. Harmon also seemed to blanch at that news. Then Justin told them about the Chinese man who came to his house. And he went through exactly what had happened. He spared no details.

  He then said, "We know the man's identity now. The FBI ran his fingerprints, and we're aware of his connection to the Chinese embassy. We also know his place of employment. I guess I should put that in the past tense. We know where he used to work. It's hard to hold a job when your whole face has been melted away." The two men were silent. Justin said, "Don't you want to know where he worked?"

  "Where?" H. R. asked.

  "Rockworth and Williams," Justin said. "His name was Togo Lu. And he had a job in Rockworth's security division." Justin turned to H. R. Harmon. "You speak Chinese, don't you, Senator?"

  "No," the ex-ambassador to China said. "It was way too complicated a language for me. Never learned more than four or five words." Harmon was turning paler by the moment. He turned to his longtime business associate. Then back to Justin. "But Mr. Berdon speaks excellent Chinese." He turned to look right into Berdon's eyes and said slowly, in a hoarse, raw voice, "How many dialects, Lincoln?"

  Lincoln Berdon ignored H. R. Harmon as if he weren't in the room, as if he didn't exist. He spoke directly to Justin. "So far, all you've done is entertain us with stories. I still don't know why you're here. What is it you're looking for?"

  "Something simple-the truth."

  Berdon snorted. "What truth exactly? Which one?"

  "That's the thing about truth," Justin said. "I find there usually tends to be only one."

  "That's where you're wrong," Lincoln Berdon said. "If there's anything I've learned from being around Wall Street all these years it's that there isn't any truth, there's only perception. It's what people think is true that drives the world."

  "Then maybe," Justin said, "you should hear what I think is true."

  "I'd like to hear it," H. R. Harmon said.

  Justin looked at H. R. and said, "I think that you raised a very devious son. So devious, he couldn't tell the difference between his friends and his enemies. So he cheated them both. And they both decided to do something about it. Only his friends got there first." Now he turned to Lincoln Berdon. "And they killed him. And then they killed Ron LaSalle. And Wanda Chinkle."

  "And why would his friends do that?" H. R. asked.

  "Because they wanted what Evan had taken from them. What he'd bought for himself. They wanted the platinum he owned. And the companies he'd bought to transform that platinum into something everyone needed."

  Lincoln Berdon smiled. "You're a very interesting man, Mr. Westwood. Quite surprising. But you don't have any proof and you will never find any proof to back up what you're saying. And the reason is because it's not true. In this case, perception does not equal reality."

  "You have a computer in this house?" Justin asked.

  "Of course."

  "You mind if I use it for a minute? I'd like to show you something."

  Berdon hesitated. But he couldn't resist. His curiosity got the better of him. He led both men into another room. A desktop computer sat on a large, antique, dark wood desk. Justin went to the computer, connected to the Internet, and found his way onto a Web site.

  "This is Larry Silverbush's Web site," Justin said. "I believe you both know him. He's a Long Island DA, and he's running for attorney general." When neither man said anything, Justin went on. "Mind if I show you something in particular? It's a listing for one of Silverbush's recent fund-raisers. It was at a private apartment. At seven forty Park Avenue. Does that address mean anything to you, Mr. Berdon?"

  "I have an apartment at that address."

  "Not really such a coincidence. The fund-raiser was in your apartment."

  "There is nothing illegal or out of line about raising money for a politician."

  "No, there isn't. But I'm pretty sure if I keep digging, I'm going to find a few things that are illegal and out of line. You want me to tell you why? Because this isn't what I think, this is what I know. Silverbush was one of the first people who was told that Evan Harmon was murdered. Leona Krill called him right after I woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her. We've just seen the phone records, Lincoln, and they show that Silverbush called you immediately after he heard about Evan. I knew he had to have told somebody and you were the logical choice. You were his big backer. You were his ticket to eventually get him to the governor's mansion. So he'd want to curry favor with you. He knew about your relationships with H. R. and with Evan. He knew you'd want to know what had happened. What he didn't know was what you were going to do with that information. At le
ast I hope he didn't."

  "And what is it you think I did?"

  "My perception? My perception is that as soon as you got the word that Evan was dead, you had your Chinese friends kill Ron LaSalle. And soon after that you had them kill Wanda Chinkle. You had one of them try to kill me, too."

  "And why would I do all that?" Berdon said.

  "I've already given you a few of my theories. I'm still looking for a few specifics. And you'll be the first to know when I prove them. But right now, the best I can do for sure is that you're a son of a bitch," Justin said.

  Lincoln Berdon laughed. "That is very true," he said. "I am one mean son of a bitch. And so is Mr. Harmon here. Isn't that right, Herbert?"

  "Yes," H. R. Harmon said quietly and seriously. "I am. But I'm not as big or as mean a son of a bitch as you."

  "Then that's settled," Berdon said. "So if that's what you came to find out, Officer Westwood, you got your answer. And you can go."

  "Not yet," Justin said. He said he needed to know how to get in touch with Ellis St. John.

  "I'm afraid he's not reachable," Berdon said. "At least we don't know how to reach him. He had some sort of family emergency. We told him to take as long as he needed."

  "And why would you be so generous?" Justin asked.

  "Ellis is one of our most valuable employees. We're like a family at Rockworth and Williams. We do what's best for everyone."

  "Who's handling his clients while he's away?"

  "Everyone's helping out. It's difficult but we're managing."

  "You have all the answers, don't you?" Justin said.

  "I just want to be as cooperative as possible," Berdon told him.

  Justin exhaled a long, slow breath. "What the hell am I not seeing?" he asked. "What the hell is it that you two crazy old bastards know that I don't know?"

  "The truth," Lincoln Berdon said.

  And he started laughing again.

  35

  Justin let Martin, the chauffeur, out of the trunk. He decided he had the upper hand so, what the hell, he told the driver to take him back to East End Harbor. Martin said he had to ask Mr. Harmon and Justin said it was okay, he thought he could safely speak for Mr. Harmon.