Delicate Chaos

by Jeff Buick

  Leona spent part of her day at the hospital for a perfunctory checkup and the remainder at home, nursing a few bruises, sore lungs and a feeling of incredible vulnerability. Her worry was equally divided between her own safety and what was happening in Nairobi. There had been no news from Kubala and that was not good. There wasn’t a fifteen-minute stretch went by without Mike Anderson’s situation running helter-skelter through her mind. She knew the city and how dangerous it was on the surface. She could only guess at what kind of hellhole he was in.

  It was eight in the evening before George Harvey was finished at the scene and the morgue and back in his office. Leona and Tyler met with him and Hank Trost in Harvey’s office at the main police precinct at twenty minutes after the hour. The mood was somber, and they spent the first half hour going back over what happened prior to the explosion, and immediately afterward in the stairwell. Trost made notes as they talked.

  “What caused the explosion?” Leona asked after Harvey had wrapped up their eyewitness statements.

  The DC cop shook his head. “The gas line to the stove severed, gas escaped and ignited. That part is pretty simple. The tough part is trying to determine why the line failed. The explosion damaged it to the extent where we can’t tell. The CSI techs removed whatever shreds of evidence they could find and are working on it in the lab, but so far they have no proof that the line was tampered with prior to the blast.”

  Tyler looked puzzled. “Why would it be?”

  “Checking things like that is a routine part of the investigation,” Harvey said to the cook. Then he added, “Tyler, I’d like to have a few words with Ms. Hewitt. In private, if you don’t mind.” The tone of his voice indicated that he didn’t care whether Tyler minded or not.

  “Sure,” he said, rising.

  Leona let her gaze run across the pictures on the wall behind George Harvey’s desk. People pictures, every one of them. Mostly of cops, in uniform, posing for the camera. Smiling, no guns in sight—none of the dirty and dangerous side of being on the force. She focused on one of the photos. A young George Harvey was standing beside an older man, whose facial features were similar to Harvey’s now. His father.

  When the door closed, Leona said, “Your dad must be proud of you.”

  Harvey saw where she was looking, took a quick glance at the picture and nodded. “Yeah, he’s retired now. But I think he’s pleased I went into law enforcement. Justified what he’d done with his life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being a cop is a lot of things—dangerous, unrewarding, disturbing. You get to see the negative side of society on a daily basis. It wears on you. I think my dad wondered why he did it—why he devoted his life to it. When I joined the force it somehow made him feel that the time he spent as a cop was worthwhile.” He shrugged. “That’s what I think, but I’m no psychologist, just a cop.”

  Leona nodded, thoughtful. “Interesting concept.” There were a few seconds of silence, then she looked away from the picture and back to him. “You think the timing of the explosion is suspect.” It was a statement, not a question.

  He didn’t respond with a yes or no, but his eyes told the story. “You and Tyler were sitting at a table in the restaurant talking and drinking coffee, but neither of you smelled gas before the man who was killed in the blast opened the door to the kitchen? Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are the doors airtight?”

  Leona shook her head. “I doubt it. They open and close hundreds of times every day. If they were that tight, they wouldn’t swing shut easily.”

  “That was our line of reasoning as well. That and the fact that this happened at the precise moment you and Tyler headed into the kitchen. The odds of you not noticing a heavy concentration of leaking gas and the timing of the explosion are next to impossible. I think you’re lucky to be alive. And with what’s going on at the bank, it certainly makes one wonder. But so far we don’t have any definitive proof that the explosion was rigged.”

  He paused for a minute to flip through a file on his desk, then continued, “There are two details about Claire Bux-ton’s death that point toward foul play. Even in this room, off the record, I’m still not going to say that we’re convinced she was murdered. But what I will tell you is that I’m heading back down to West Virginia to collect a DNA sample from Derek Swanson.”

  “You have blood spatters at the crash scene that don’t belong to the victims,” Leona said after a five-second gap. “You think Swanson was there.”

  “Can’t confirm that. But I will say that we’re going to be looking at where Mr. Swanson was at the time the senator was killed in the crash.”

  Leona nodded. She didn’t speak for a minute, then said, “This may sound crass, but I’d like to ask you a question about the insurance on my restaurant.”

  “I don’t know much about that,” Harvey said. He turned to Hank Trost. “How about you?”

  Trost shrugged. “Not really. What’s the question?”

  “Will it affect my coverage if they find out someone blew up the restaurant in an attempt to kill me?”

  Trost looked at Harvey. “Good question. I’m not sure.”

  “Very good question. I think you’re probably best to offer them the least you can until you know for sure. I mean, we don’t know. Nobody knows right now. Until we do, it’s an accident.”

  “Thanks. I was thinking about asking for an officer to watch my house, but that’s probably not a good idea. If the insurance people found out, they might disallow the claim. If it’s not covered, I’m ruined. I don’t have a million or million-five to fix up the place.”

  “Best if you don’t make a formal request for protection, then,” Harvey said. “I don’t think we could justify it at this point anyway.”

  “Okay.”

  George Harvey stood up. Hank Trost and Leona followed suit. “Be careful. Watch everything that’s going on around you. And if you feel threatened, call immediately.” He handed her his card.

  Leona left the precinct and turned her phone on as she walked back to her car. It showed five missed calls, each caller unknown. Someone was trying to contact her. She found out less than five minutes later when the phone rang. It was Kubala.

  “What’s going on? Have you been trying to call?” she asked the moment she recognized his voice.

  “Yes, but you weren’t answering. I have the money,” he said excitedly. “I’m on my way to meet with the men who are holding Mr. Mike. I wanted you to know.”

  “Kubala, be careful,” she said. It was a trite thing to say, but conveyed her feelings, her anxiety.

  “Yes, of course. I think they will let him go. Mr. Mike thought of a good way to give them the money.”

  “How?”

  “I will give them twenty thousand dollars now, and the remainder when Mr. Mike is on an airplane or in the American Embassy.”

  “Excellent idea.” She reached her car and leaned on the passenger-side door. “When do you think Mike will be out of Kenya?”

  “I would have to guess.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight at the most.”

  “Oh, Kubala, that’s good news. Keep me posted on how things are going.”

  She snapped the phone shut when the dial tone kicked in and sucked in a couple of deep breaths. Mike might get out alive. She had consciously kept herself from dwelling on his predicament for a very good reason. Until this phone call had come through, she didn’t think he would live. She knew Kenya, knew the corruption and violence. She knew the value of life, and that value was very low. Her world and Kubala’s were so different. Vastly different.

  Yet someone was trying to narrow that gap. Whatever value society placed on her life, there was one person who thought it was considerably less. Nothing, in fact. They had tried to kill her. Of that she was certain. To Derek Swanson, or his flunky, she was expendable. A thing that was in their way. Something to be removed, like a burr f
rom inside a sock. And in trying to kill her, they had taken a young girl’s father. A woman’s husband. A family’s son. She tried to disassociate herself from blame, but it wouldn’t happen. Boozy and Eric had died in the explosion because of her. If she had okayed the conversion without any conditions, they would be alive. Two men dead, a direct result of her decision not to give Derek Swanson what he wanted. She shook her head in disbelief as she fished the car keys from her purse and thumbed the fob. The car lights blinked and she reached for the door handle.

  She stopped, frozen.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong. No one knew what her decision was except the men in the boardroom. And Bill Cawder. Swanson had an inside man. She closed her eyes and pictured him, standing inside her door at the office, smiling. What had he said to her? I thought you said it was a go. She had answered that it wasn’t; then he had asked if it was fixable. Christ, why hadn’t she seen what was happening right then? The questions. And the results of those questions. Derek Swanson had been fed information that ended up with two more people being killed during an attempt on her life.

  She opened her phone and thumbed through it until she found a number. Then she dialed it and waited. Anthony Halladay answered.

  “It’s Leona Hewitt,” she said.

  “Yes, Leona. What can I do for you?”

  “I need to see you. Immediately.”

  47

  Sunday morning at the open market on Mfangano Street was a busy time—a sampling of every region of Kenya thrown into a finite number of city blocks. Maasai villagers, in from the great plains of the Maasai Mara, sat elbow to elbow with locals from the city, displaying their wares on rickety tables. Small children ran through the throngs of shoppers packed into the narrow streets. Pickpockets worked the crowd, searching out targets by instinct more than sight. No one with any common sense dressed well or wore jewelry in the tight confines of the marketplace. A menagerie of odors drifted in the stale morning air; sweet cabbage, pungent spices. It was business as normal for Nairobi’s working class.

  Two men pushed through the crowd, the thieves and beggars melting into the crowd as they approached. Police. Even without their uniforms, the men were like red flags to the unsavory. Something about the swagger in their step, the ruthlessness and arrogance in their eyes, told of power. Something bordering on evil.

  Bawata Rackisha and his flunky slowed as they neared a booth selling cabbages, rice and potatoes. Sitting next to the vendor was Kubala Kantu. Rackisha’s aide stopped fifteen feet from the booth and stood with his back to a wall, his hand perched near his unseen handgun. Rackisha waved off the owner of the stall and waited until he was behind the ripped curtain that gave the man and his family a modicum of privacy. When the vendor was out of sight, the police inspector leaned over the baskets of food.

  “I don’t like meeting here,” he hissed. His face was twisted with anger. “And I don’t like being told what to do.”

  Kubala’s bowels were ready to let loose, but he maintained an easy posture and kept his voice level. “This is a safe place.”

  “For whom?” the inspector asked. His eyes were glittering with contempt.

  “For everyone, of course.” Kubala adjusted his stance and continued, “I have twenty thousand American dollars with me. I will release the other fifty-five when Mr. Anderson is on a plane out of Kenya.”

  Rackisha ground his teeth and leaned closer to the Maa-sai. “I could grab you right now and take you somewhere very private and convince you to tell me,” he whispered. “Don’t play games with me, Kubala Kantu, or I will kill you in a very ugly and very painful way.”

  Kubala wanted to run from the booth. Run and never look back. He simply shrugged. “No offense, Inspector, but I have taken certain precautions to protect myself. I do not know where the remainder of the money is hidden.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I have a friend who hid the money. Then he left Nairobi. He has a cell phone with him and is waiting for my call. I have his phone number, a password, and a certain time when I must call him. If I am incorrect with any of these three things, he will not release the location of the money.”

  “I could easily torture you and get the information.”

  “You do not have enough time. I have to make the call soon,” Kubala said. He picked up a cabbage and pulled off an overripe leaf. It calmed him to have something in his hands. “The moment Mr. Anderson is on a plane, I will phone this man.”

  “That may be impossible. There may not be a flight.”

  Kubala reached inside his shirt pocket and slipped out a solitary piece of paper. He handed it to Rackisha. “This is a printout of all the flights departing Nairobi Airport today. Six of them are international. Any one of the six is fine. I highlighted them for you.”

  Rackisha glanced at the page, then back to Kubala. “You have twenty thousand on you right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And fifty-five thousand later.”

  “That is correct. Seventy-five thousand US dollars.”

  “That doesn’t seem like very much,” Rackisha complained. “I think the American is worth far more than that.”

  “The only way to get more money is to contact his government.”

  A woman stopped at the booth to sample the produce, but one look from the inspector and she left. Rackisha rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. “I am not happy about this.” When Kubala didn’t respond, he said, “All right. Twenty thousand dollars now, fifty-five at the airport.”

  “That is fine.”

  “Where is the twenty thousand?”

  “You are leaning on it. The money is under the cabbages.”

  Rackisha rolled away a few of the vegetables and extracted a brown paper bag. He glanced inside, then folded the top flap back over. He held up the paper with the plane schedules on it and scanned the highlighted entries. Two morning flights, four later in the day. He needed time to get Anderson cleaned up—it would have to be a night flight. “Nine-fourteen to Paris,” he said, dropping the paper on the ground. “I’ll have the American at the airport. You make the call.”

  Kubala nodded. “This is not a problem.”

  Rackisha’s voice was filled with contempt. “It will be a very big problem if you don’t have the money.” He turned and walked back through the crowd. In seconds he and his associate were gone, swallowed by the sheer number of people.

  Kubala didn’t move. He was too scared to try his legs. Everything he had told the police inspector was a load of bullshit. There was no other person to call. The bulk of the money was ten feet from him, stashed in a bin full of white maize meal called ugali. He had come within one command from Rackisha from being tortured to death. Only the worthless cop’s greed had kept Kubala alive. He knew that. He also knew that Rackisha was not to be trusted until his American friend was safely on the plane. And then, with the money in hand, Rackisha would be at his most dangerous. The path to freeing Mike Anderson was still a hazy one, with much treachery and deceit. Timing was going to be the key to whether Mike Anderson and he lived or died. And that timing had to be perfect.

  Kubala finally stood, tentatively at first, testing his strength in increments before putting his full weight on his legs. He was shaking so badly he almost fell. Many difficult situations had arisen over the years, but nothing like this. He scanned the crowd to see if Rackisha had someone watching, then scooped the money from under the ugali and tucked it back inside his loose-fitting shirt. He paid the owner of the stall twenty American dollars and left, walking in the opposite direction from Rackisha. A chance meeting at this point would be a death sentence.

  He had important things to do, and little time. And two lives depended on how well he took care of the details.

  48

  Leona pulled her Saab off Foxhall Street in the upscale DC subdivision ofWesley Heights and into the secluded driveway. She punched the button under the security camera. Nothing happened for ten seconds, then the wrought-iron
gate clicked and drew back on its track. She drove into the private estate, along the winding road bordered on both sides by ash and walnut. The foliage ended abruptly, revealing a Civil War–era stone house set on a slight knoll. It was large, but not massive, and the expansive grounds made it look smaller than it was. The road ended in a circular driveway, and she stopped in front of the heavy oak door.

  Anthony Halladay appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in khaki shorts, a golf shirt and an impatient expression. “I have a nine thirty-one tee time. I’d like to make it.”

  “This is important, Anthony.” Leona climbed out of the car and glanced at her watch. Three minutes to eight. The morning air was still, the mercury rising as the sun warmed the parklike surroundings.

  “Come in.” He motioned for her to follow him into the house.

  The interior of DC Trust’s Chief Executive Officer’s house was exactly what she expected. Dark wood covered the walls and heavy draperies hung over small windows. Leona felt a touch of panic, the house drawing in around her, sucking the air out of her lungs, suffocating her. She followed Halladay into the great room in the rear of the house. It was much lighter, with a bank of windows that overlooked a small ravine filled with indigenous trees and shrubs. The claustrophobia diminished and her breathing returned to normal. She sat in a chair Halladay pointed to and waited until he had taken a seat opposite her.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “The Coal-Balt file.”

  “You have a definitive answer?”

  “I do. But I wanted to speak to you about something else. Something I think you’re going to find rather disturbing.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think one of our staff is feeding Derek Swanson information.”

  “Who?”

  “Bill Cawder. He showed up in my office a few minutes after our meeting to discuss my report. He wanted to know how things went—whether we approved the conversion.”

  “And that was the information he passed along to Swanson?”