The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  I caught sight of Ira making his way laterally across the stands. And I thought about Jimmy Zacharias and the showdown we were certainly building up to. Maybe Ira was right. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and there was nothing I could do to change it.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ​Felix had called as we’d made our way back down 1-95 to Miami, so we made a stop at his command post at The Suites. He was prepared for us. He had stacks of information—printouts, copies of news clippings, and what looked like SEC filings. They were laid out across one of the double beds in what he called the “Cray Room.” He asked us to sit. I took a seat on the other bed. Jack pulled out the desk chair and turned it around so he could sit in it with his arms across the seat back and rest his chin. He looked exhausted and I wondered if he’d had any sleep since the night in the hangar.

  Felix handed us each a neat packet that was stapled in the upper left hand corner and fronted with a cover page. It had a table of contents, an executive summary, appendices, and bullet points all presented in PowerPoint landscape orientation. It was as polished and professional a presentation as any you might find in the densely carpeted, mahogany-paneled boardrooms of old economy corporate America—and it was chock-full, I was sure, of stolen and pirated information. Gen-X meets General Motors.

  Felix paced back and forth. I halfway expected him to whip out a slide projector and pointer, but all he did was continue to pace, head down, lips moving, and no sound coming out. It took me a second to realize he was rehearsing.

  “Felix.”

  “What?”

  “Go.”

  “Oh, sure. Sorry. Okay. Uh… Miss Cray graduated from the London School of Economics, where she took a degree in Economic History. If you turn to Appendix I you’ll see her transcript.”

  Appendix I was an official-looking list of all the courses young Vanessa had taken in undergraduate school. They were heavy on economic history in places like Latin America and Europe. There was one called The Internationalisation of Economic Growth, and one I found particularly interesting called Gender Theories in the Modern World. Equally interesting was the fact that Vanessa’s class grades covered the full range from A- to A+. Wow.

  “How did you get this?” Jack wanted to know.

  “I called the school and told them I was from Data Processing and that I was, like, upgrading the system and I needed the password.”

  “And they gave it to you?”

  “No. So I put out an APB to some hackers at the school. I told them what I needed and they told me how to get it.”

  Jack and I looked at each other. “It’s a whole new world,” he said, and I resolved right then and there never to put my credit card number out on the Web again for any reason.

  “She spent the year after graduation traveling abroad. She attended a gourmet cooking school in Paris, and took flying lessons in Germany. She speaks, like, six different languages—English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Farsi.”

  “That’s not like six,” Jack said. “It is six.”

  “Oh, she also speaks some Russian. I forgot to put that in. Sorry.”

  “Seven,” I said, stretching across the bed and sinking down on one elbow.

  “She came back to the States to attend business school at Stanford, graduating with an M.B.A., concentration in Finance. That’s, um, Appendix II.” I flipped to the back. Another 4.0. Perfection can be so monotonous. “After graduation, she was recruited by, like, every Wall Street and consulting firm in the world.”

  No kidding. “How do you know that?”

  “It was in one of the articles about her. She went with a Wall Street brokerage house called Thierry Eckard & Dunn.”

  “Never heard of them.” That’s where the litany ended. I turned the page. “What happened then?”

  He went over to his stacks on the bed, picked up another handout, and handed one to each of us. My heart rate elevated instantly when I saw the title—indictment. Now we were getting somewhere. I sat up straight, glanced over the executive summary, which seemed to be a chronology, and went straight to the detail pages. There were copies of articles from the Financial Times, The New York Times, Barron’s, and The Wall Street Journal. They all described a joint 1992 undercover operation that involved U.S. Customs, the FBI, and the IRS. They were looking to find brokers with Wall Street firms who “willfully invested drug profits or otherwise engaged in transactions to conceal the source and ownership of dirty money.” Felix had helpfully highlighted that passage.

  “They were looking for money launderers,” Jack said. He was perking up as well.

  “And they found some.” I was reading ahead.

  It was an ugly scandal. Five brokers, all working out of the Panama office of Thierry Eckard & Dunn, were indicted in 1993 by a federal grand jury in Tampa on charges of money laundering. The next few articles detailed the slow, agonizing death of the firm as the case lurched slowly through the justice system. Still later articles profiled the brokers who’d been busted. Right there in the middle of a lineup of photos was Vanessa Cray.

  “Our little Vanessa,” Jack mused. “A money laundress.”

  “I can’t believe it.” I was up and pacing now. I had to be careful not to run into Felix, who never sat down unless he absolutely had to. “How can she run a hedge fund if she was indicted for money laundering?”

  “They all got off,” Felix said. “Some kind of technicality.”

  “What?”

  “The indictments were thrown out,” Jack said. “It doesn’t say, but it sounds like a problem with the case.” He turned to Felix. “This is good work, son.”

  Felix beamed. He was so pleased to be praised by Jack.

  “Anything yet on George Speath, Felix?”

  “Not yet, but there’s more on Miss Cray. Did you notice her personal history began with college?”

  I hadn’t noticed. I’d been distracted by the juicier aspects of her story. But when he mentioned it… “Where is she from?”

  “I don’t know. There’s, like, nothing, you know? No personal information anywhere that I could access about where she comes from, who her parents are. Brothers and sisters. I tried everything. Inoculation records, social security number, birth certificate—”

  “What about the schools?” Jack asked. “She had to have filled out applications that included information about her parents. They would have had to sign them if she wasn’t eighteen.”

  “Blanked out. No data in those fields. Nothing. It was like she was born at the age of eighteen. Weird.”

  I looked over at Jack. “Witness protection?”

  “I thought of that,” Felix said brightly. “I tried to hack into the federal marshals’ database, but there was no way.”

  Jack blinked at him. “I think I’m glad to hear that, son. But if she went into witness protection at that age, chances are it would have been for something her parents did. Or saw.”

  “Maybe this has something to do with why you remember her,” I said. “Or almost remember her.”

  “I don’t know.” Jack went back to the first package and flipped through the pages again. He ended up studying a page near the end. I looked over his shoulder. He’d ventured back to Appendix III, which was two sparse pages. The first was a list of three different associations with telephone numbers and addresses: the American Orchid Society, the Australasia Native Orchid Society, and the Associació Catalana d’Amics de les Orchídies. The second page was a copy of a newspaper clipping from the Miami Herald. It was an article with accompanying picture of a woman in full climbing gear hanging from the side of a rock. According to the caption, it was Vanessa. She’d scrambled up a sheer cliff face to see an orchid with a name I couldn’t pronounce. Something quite rare, apparently, that not many people get to see.

  “She doesn’t do anything in half measures,” I said. “You know what we never got from Vanessa, Jack?”

  “Respect?”

  “An alibi.”

&nb
sp; Chapter Thirty

  Vanessa Cray was already forty-five minutes late. The ice in my glass was long melted. The water sparkled no more, and the slice of lemon I’d requested floated at the top like a dead goldfish. I was seated on the deck of the restaurant she had chosen, where I had been since I’d arrived, wilting in the humidity and watching the quiet street in front for a limousine, a Mercedes, or at least a black Volvo. But, as I was learning, Vanessa Cray did not always do the expected. She arrived by boat.

  It was a sleek cruiser with a tall cabin, a powerful motor, and a wide deck to play on. The name of the boat, The Crayfish, was painted in fancy script across the back. As it approached the dock, one of the waiters hurried out to grab a line.

  It would have been hard not to recognize the man that emerged first. It was the oversized Bee Gee, the same large, distinctive individual Jack and I had seen in Vanessa’s office the day we had visited. Today he wore a gold chain, a diamond stud earring, and a dark, tight, V-necked sweater over black slacks. He stepped onto the deck in his soft leather loafers—not exactly deck shoes—and discreetly slipped the waiter a tip. He scanned the surroundings, turned, and offered his hand to the boat.

  Vanessa stepped out of the cabin, took his hand, and practically floated onto the dock. They both started toward me, but the escort dropped off and settled three tables away. Vanessa approached my table and gazed over my head.

  “Where is Jack?” she asked.

  “He’s busy.”

  She continued to stand, bag under her arm, hands clasped in front of her. Today must have been business casual for her. Her long black skirt hung low on her hips and flowed around her legs like crude oil. The matching top, which looked like a shrunken black T-shirt, came down only far enough to reveal a thin strip of her smooth, tight belly when she moved. Her ice blonde hair was up, hidden under a black straw hat with a very wide brim. Sunglasses—Sophia Loren ovals—and perfectly painted lips topped off the look. Simple, yet exotic.

  I thought she might have been thinking about leaving, since there was no one here but “Jack’s assistant” as she had referred to me. Turned out she was only waiting for someone—in this case the waiter—to hustle over and whisk her chair out for her. While he was there he offered a menu. She ignored it.

  “I’ll have the Salad Niçoise with no eggs and a glass of lemonade. Not too much ice.” As she ordered she took off her hat and set it on the table. It was like lifting a serving plate off of her head. She never looked at the waiter once.

  “And for you, ma’am?”

  “Another—”

  Vanessa’s leather bag twittered. The waiter and I both stared as she reached in, extracted her cell phone, and flipped it open. She angled her body away, making clear the distinction between us and what was really important.

  “Another bottled water,” I said, handing over my menu. “With more ice this time, please.”

  Vanessa conducted the call in rapid French. I didn’t need a translation to know she was not pleased with whatever news she was getting. When the call ended, she put the phone on the table. She sat back and crossed one narrow leg over the other, letting the billowy black skirt fall loosely around her.

  “More questions?” she asked. “You seem to be the one with all the questions.”

  “I hate loose ends.”

  “And he was, after all, your friend, wasn’t he? This murder victim?” She said it as if the mere act of discussing John’s murder soiled her.

  “His name was John McTavish. He had a wife and three small children. And yes, he was my friend.”

  “You knew him from your work at the airlines?”

  I quickly replayed the interview we’d had in her office. If there had been any mention of my background in that conversation, I couldn’t remember it. “How did you know that?”

  She smiled. “I am an investor, Alex. I make very large bets every day with people’s money. I have an excellent research staff.”

  “Did you find what you needed?”

  “It wasn’t hard. It seems your time in Boston was short but rather”—she pursed her lips, but delicately—“newsworthy.”

  She watched for a reaction. My reaction was how interesting it was that we were off in our respective corners researching each other. She had her staff. I had Felix.

  “Given your background, this effort you’re involved in, this quest to find a murderer seems a bit out of your realm. What on earth has drawn you to such a risky activity?”

  “I wasn’t drawn to it. I’m repaying a debt.”

  “You certainly could do that without involving yourself personally. Jack, for example, could handle this for you. Quite capably, I’m sure.”

  I hated when she called him Jack. She probably sensed that, which was why she kept doing it. The waiter stepped between us to deliver our beverages—cold drinks in sweating glasses on a couple of damp cocktail napkins.

  “One could say the same thing about your ventures,” I told her. “Making large high-risk bets with other people’s money. Or climbing sheer rock faces to observe a rare orchid. I’m doing this because I have to. I’m not doing it for the thrills.”

  “Are you sure?” A thin smile spread across her flawless face. Behind it was enough ice to chill my mineral water without the extra cubes. Perspiration beaded on my forehead. I shifted in my chair. She’d kept me waiting for a long time, and I was tired of sitting.

  “Perhaps,” I said, “we could get to my questions now.”

  “Of course.”

  “We found a credit card receipt in one of your Volvos—”

  “One of the company’s Volvos.”

  “It was the one that was seen in the parking lot on the night we’re looking at. Someone named Arturo Polonia signed that receipt. There’s no Arturo Polonia on the employee list for The Cray Fund.”

  “Arturo would not be on the list. He’s in my private employ, and yes, I forgot to tell you about him. I hope you don’t misinterpret that. It wasn’t intentional. Tell me”—she leaned forward and removed her glasses, revealing intense green eyes, and I understood why she had been so successful. It was her ability to focus every ounce of her being on whatever it was she was trying to understand. Or control—“what was it like to kill that man?”

  The world around us went still, as if we were the only ones moving in it, and I wasn’t moving very much. I could not believe she had asked me that question. Even stranger was what I perceived as real curiosity, the first genuine human reaction I’d experienced from her. It burned in her eyes like the fever I was feeling, and I began to understand something about her. This woman was an insidious infection that got inside you in ways you didn’t understand, and began to break you down before you knew what was going on. She was a virus. I knew it for sure because I wanted to answer her.

  “Is there some reason,” I asked, “you’re so interested in me?”

  “As you point out, I myself am drawn to dangerous activities. The bigger the risk, the personal risk, the more I like it. They say it’s what makes me good at my job. I’m interested in others who are, as well. But it’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it.” A comment that was, of course, a challenge in itself.

  “What makes you think I would discuss something like that with you? I don’t even know you.”

  “Don’t you? I think we know each other quite well. Did it change you? Taking his life?”

  “I didn’t take his life. He was killed in an accident.”

  “While chasing you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you blame yourself? Do you think about him? Do you ask yourself every day if you could have done something differently to change the course of events? I understand he died rather brutally.”

  A quiet but insistent breeze brushed the white cotton tablecloth against my knee. It was stiff with starch. The same gentle gust billowed her skirt, which was far more fluid. It was a hot breeze, or it was a breeze that felt torrid against my burning skin, and I thought maybe my rising tem
perature was an attempt to fight her off.

  “The receipt, Vanessa.” I looked beyond her to her boat, but I could feel her holding me in that radioactive gaze, and I knew she knew she was very close. I took a drink of water because if I was drinking I couldn’t be talking. Talking to her and playing a game she obviously played with a great amount of skill. “Arturo Polonia?”

  “Very well… Alex.” She slipped the sunglasses back on, making it safe to look at her again. “What would you like to know about Arturo?”

  “What does he do?”

  She looked over at her escort seated across the deck.

  “Is that him?”

  “Yes. He’s my driver.”

  “And he drives the company cars?”

  “Arturo has carte blanche when it comes to all of my vehicles or the company’s. He typically takes the Volvos to run errands.”

  “Are you aware—” I dropped my voice, realizing he could hear us. “Are you aware of his extensive criminal record?” I looked down at my notebook. “Assault, possession, possession with intent—”

  “I told you I have a thorough research process. And I do background checks. I hired Arturo when he was on parole. It was a risk, but…” She let the thought run into a nonchalant shrug.

  “You like taking risks.”

  “And as you can no doubt see, he has certain… attributes that compensate for any nastiness in his background. In fact, the nastiness in his background is precisely why he is so effective for what I need.”

  “He’s your bodyguard.”

  “He is my security team.”

  The waiter arrived with her salad. He set it in front of her, and paused with the clear intent of asking if she needed anything else. She ignored him until he got the message and faded.