by Mike Resnick
“Are you telling me they planted the vaccines just for you to steal?” asked Pratt.
“No,” I said. “That turned out to be a convenience, nothing more. They planted the vaccines because they were on Federated 308’s manifest.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Pratt, looking more and more perplexed.
“Let me begin at the beginning,” I said. “I was hired to find a dog, right?”
“Right.”
“But it wasn’t just any dog, Mike. That was the key. Everyone I spoke to told me the same thing, but I was too damned blind to see it: Baroness was the most easily identifiable show dog in the country. That’s what threw me. I kept trying to figure out why someone would want to steal her.”
“And why did they?”
“They didn’t steal her. That’s why there were four missing hours.”
“I don’t follow you,” said Pratt.
“The goddamned plane crashed, Mike.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Federated 308. It was carrying something to Mexico that they didn’t want found. There’s a powerful organization behind this, Mike—so powerful that in four hours’ time they could substitute another plane. They could replace the computer chips and the hardware tools and the television sets—”
“But they couldn’t replace Baroness!” he exclaimed. “They could even make it look like Binder and Fuentes had completed the flight, but there was no way they could find a ringer for the dog! So they had to cover up the fact that she was ever on the plane. There was absolutely no way a substitute could have fooled Nettles!”
“Right,” I said. “Whatever the hell they were shipping was going to San Benedicto Hospital labeled as vaccines. When the plane crashed, they figured they might as well deliver some real vaccines, just in case somebody found the wreckage and started getting curious. When I got there they tried to make me think I’d hit a dead end with Fuentes, and when that didn’t work they took advantage of having the vaccines on hand and maneuvered me into stealing them and bringing them back here. I was supposed to find out they were totally legit, and go back to trying to figure out who would steal the dog—which was just what I was about to do when my friend started telling me again how unique Baroness was, and everything finally made sense.”
“But who the hell has the clout to replace a plane in just four hours’ time?” he asked. “Even the CIA doesn’t have that kind of loot laying around these days.”
“I think the first thing we’d better do is find out who owns Federated,” I said. “And five will get you ten that they also own Amalgamated Laboratories.”
“But why?” said Pratt. “What’s the reason for all this?”
“The answer’s somewhere between here and Artesia,” I said. “We’ll know when we find what’s left of the plane.”
“What makes you think it’ll still be there?”
“Because the last thing they want to do is call attention to it. If it’s where they can reach it at all, they’ll be cleaning it up a piece at a time. Before we leave we’ll check the flight plan and avoid any populated areas where someone could have seen it come down.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll get cracking on Federated and Amalgamated.”
“You might check out a Doctor Jorge Greco at San Benedicto, too,” I said. “Maybe he’s clean—but he didn’t seem to find anything unusual about a hospital for the aged receiving childhood vaccines.”
“Okay,” said Pratt, scribbling down the name. “I’ll get right on it.”
He left the office a minute later, and I leaned back, sipping my beer and wondering uncomfortably about the nature of an organization that could replace a plane, most of its cargo, and two pilots on four hour’s notice.
14.
I spent the night sacked out in the lockup. It wasn’t the most restful evening I’ve ever spent. A drunk in the next cell kept singing “Sweet Betsy From Pike” and a kid on the other side of me kept crying and screaming that she really didn’t mean to steal the car and that her boyfriend had told her they were just going to smoke cigarettes.
Finally I figured there was just no use trying to sleep, so I walked out of my cell, much to the amazement of the drunk, who started complaining that it was a denial of his civil rights that his door wasn’t unlocked, too, and walked over to Pratt’s office. He was sitting at his desk, going over a huge computer readout sheet.
“Haven’t you been home yet, Mike?” I said as I took a seat.
“Oh, hi, Eli,” he said, looking up. “No, I’ve been here all night. It’s okay—I dozed on and off.”
“What time is it?”
“About four,” he said.
“Good. Then we can start in a couple of hours.”
“Eli,” he said slowly, “I’ve been giving it some serious thought . . .”
“And?”
“And I think you should go back to Cincinnati.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Look,” he said. “As long as they think you’re messing around with vaccines, you’re safe, right? Well, the second you climb into that chopper they’re going to know that their scam didn’t work, and you’re a marked man again.”
“What about you?” I said.
“Hell, it’s not even in my jurisdiction,” he said. “I’m going to have to open this case up, and the second I do they’re not going to give a damn about me.”
“Or me,” I said.
“Wrong. I’m just a cop who’s doing my job. You’re the guy who’s causing them all the trouble.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t think you would,” he replied. “However, maybe I can sweeten the pot a bit. I’ve spent half the night digging up what I could on Amalgamated and Federated.”
“And?”
“And they’re subsidiaries of Universal Investments.”
“Should that mean something to me?” I asked.
“It means we’ve come up with someone who’s got enough money and enough clout to pull a switch after the plane crashed,” he said. “Universal is into chemicals, airplanes, fruit importing, shipbuilding, and half a hundred other things. It would be in Fortune’s 500 if it weren’t a closely held corporation.”
“Closely held?” I repeated. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that it’s not traded publicly, not on the Big Board or the Amex or anywhere else.”
“So?”
“So they don’t have to open their books or their meetings to a bunch of two-bit shareholders.”
“I see.”
“I’m not sure you do,” he continued. “Look at it this way: IT&T is a publicly held corporation, and they got away with bribing the Justice Department and dictating policy in Chile for years. Think of what a closely held corporation can do with even less scrutiny of its affairs.”
“What are they worth?”
“Net assets of just under a billion dollars,” he said, reading off the computer sheet. “Total indebtedness of under three hundred million. They’re a well-heeled little company, Eli.”
“Too well-heeled,” I answered. “Why would an organization with that kind of money mess around with dope smuggling?”
“Who knows?” he said. “Besides, until we find that plane, we don’t know what the hell they were smuggling. And while they may not be IT&T, they’re not without muscle. Consider this: they crashed in some of the most closely controlled airspace in the country. The White Sands testing range runs through it, and Fort Huachuca monitors it. All kinds of alarms should have gone off five minutes after the plan disappeared off course—but no one did anything about it, or even reported it. Now, that’s clout, pal.”
“So who owns Universal?”
“That’s the part you’re going to like,” he said. “Ever hear of a guy named Wilson Cotter?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Not many people have,” said Pratt. “H
e’s a man who likes his privacy.”
“He’s the owner?”
Pratt nodded. “You’ll take twenty years proving it in court. He’s set up a corporate veil that stretches from here to the moon and back. But he’s the man.”
“Where can I find him?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” grinned Pratt.
“Cincinnati?”
“Give the man a cigar. Universal has its executive offices in something called the Southern Terminal Building, and about half of their subsidiary companies—Amalgamated Laboratories, Federated Cargo, Nationwide Fruit, Consolidated Manufacturing, a whole bunch of others—are headquartered in Cincinnati.”
“I guess I’m going home after all,” I said.
“I guess you are,” agreed Pratt. “Let me give you a few sage words of caution, though. This guy Cotter is pretty well insulated: physically, legally, every which way you can imagine. Even if I find the plane, that doesn’t mean this case is over, not by a long shot. You’re going to need all the help you can get from your friend Simmons and the Cincinnati Police, and if I find what I think I’m going to find, you’re going to have Feds and CIA spooks all over the place. So don’t go rushing in and making like a hero before the troops arrive, or they’re going to be dragging Lake Michigan for you.”
“The Ohio River,” I corrected him.
“What’s the difference?” he said. “They’re both deep.”
“What is it that you think you’re going to turn up?” I asked.
“Why speculate? I’ll know when I find the plane. “
“Come on, Mike . . .” I began.
“If I told you, you’d laugh in my face,” he said. “I’ll call you as soon as something turns up.” He stood up. “And, because I knew you were a man of reason, I’ve already booked you on a nine o’clock flight out of Phoenix. Let’s grab some breakfast, and I’ll drive you there after the sun comes up. You can shake my hand at the gate and look terribly confused and unhappy for the benefit of any onlookers.”
We played it the way he wanted to, and five hours later I was sitting by myself on a half-empty flight to Cincinnati. Since I didn’t have any luggage I bought a newspaper in Casa Grande and slipped a copy of the readout into it so I wouldn’t be seen boarding the plane with anything that looked out of place or suspicious. I read the sports section, found that the Reds were still hanging on by their fingernails, waited an hour, and then, because I was still feeling mildly paranoid, I took the paper into the lavatory and locked the door behind me. Then I removed the readout and began to find out what I could about Wilson Cotter.
It made mighty impressive reading.
Cotter had been born in Vermont seventy-two years ago. He won a scholarship to Dartmouth, was an honor student, and took time off after his freshman year to spend three years in the Pacific theater during World War II, where he served with neither distinction nor dishonor. He went back to school on the GI Bill of Rights, graduated near the top of his class, and was accepted into the Yale Law School. He quit before getting his law degree and dropped out of sight until 1949, when he surfaced as a small businessman in Detroit.
He made his first fortune leasing trucks, and then he got into high gear. He was able to talk some backers into putting up the capital for a chain of motels in the South, parleyed the money from that into a shipbuilding yard, branched out into importing fruit from South America in his own ships, opened some processing and packaging plants, and he was on his way.
By the time he formed Universal Investments in 1965 his personal fortune was estimated to be in excess of two hundred million dollars, and he went on to prove the old adage about turning a hundred dollars into a hundred and ten being work, but turning a hundred million into a hundred and ten million being inevitable. He took some losses here and there—he had a franchise in the short-lived World Football League, and a number of high-priced yearlings who looked great until they stepped onto a racetrack—but for the most part, everything he touched turned to gold.
His most recent major investment was Federated Cargo Lines. Like Wee Willie Keeler, his idea was to hit ’em where they ain’t: Federated steered clear of the big air freight centers like Atlanta and Chicago, and set up a network of stops at places like Artesia and Casa Grande, where there would be little competition from the major freight carriers. Cincinnati and Tulsa were the two biggest cities on Federated’s route, and they hardly ranked up there with New York or any of the other megalopolises that Cotter avoided.
Federated had set Universal back some two hundred million dollars, and was carrying almost half the company’s debt. From what I could tell, Universal’s major sources of income came from building and leasing oil and cargo ships, and from importing fruit from Central and South America.
Cotter didn’t seem to have any links with organized crime, he didn’t overtly support or own any politicians (though it was hard to believe he couldn’t influence his share of them), he lived in the old-money Grandin Road area of Hyde Park, and he seemed to have only two passions in life: making money and collecting art. He owned upward of thirty Picassos, plus a few Renoirs and Rembrandts, and was currently trying to corner the market on Chagalls.
He had never married—not gay, just too busy—and while he hadn’t spoken to his father during the last twenty years of that gentleman’s life, he did feel some loyalty to his two brothers, both of whom were minor stockholders and executives in the company. One, James, was the general comptroller of Universal; the other, Richard, was in charge of new acquisitions, whatever that meant.
Cotter belonged to no church, no country club, no private clubs, no political party. He wasn’t a Howard Hughes type of recluse, but he didn’t like publicity and actively avoided it. He probably cheated on his taxes—what millionaire doesn’t?—but the IRS hadn’t caught him at it yet. He maintained residences in the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, Park Avenue in New York, and the Italian Riviera, but hadn’t set foot in any of them for the past five years. He had recently purchased an apartment in the Mayfair section of London, but hadn’t even seen it yet.
He never went anywhere without two armed bodyguards, one a former FBI man, the other an ex-Green Beret. He spent very little time at his office in the Southern Terminal Building, preferring to run his empire out of his house, which was surrounded by a high fence and had a pack of guard dogs running loose on the grounds. His neighbors considered him to be a bit eccentric, probably due to the dogs and the security, but felt he was a model citizen and a credit to the community.
He sounded like a man I’d like to meet. Hell, he sounded like a man I’d like to be. I couldn’t imagine why he was involved in some penny-ante smuggling scheme. Then I started computing what covering up the plane crash was costing him and realized that, whatever was going on, it certainly wasn’t penny ante.
I tucked the report back into my newspaper, unlocked the lavatory, and returned to my seat. We landed two hours later, but because of the time zone differential it was 4:30 p.m. when I left the airport. I took a bus across the river to Cincinnati, stopped in at my office long enough to check the mail—three hundred ads and another nasty letter from the phone company—and walked over to the public library. I picked out the latest volume of Who’s Who and tried to find out a little more about Cotter. He wasn’t in it. I couldn’t find him in Who’s Who in the Midwest, either. There was one brief mention of him in Famous Cincinnatians, mostly concerning his art collection, and he was written up in totally fictitious terms in America’s 100 Most Eligible Bachelors. Pratt’s information seemed to be checking out: this was a man who liked his privacy.
I went to my apartment, where I found another three hundred ads and a nasty letter from the landlord, put some coffee on, and phoned Jim Simmons to tell him that I was alive and well and skulking in Cincinnati. He had a couple of tickets for the Reds-Cardinals game that night, but I took a raincheck and sacked out at about 8:00.
I woke up at nine in the morning, feeling all stiff and achy the way you do when y
ou sleep all night without moving a muscle. I shaved, showered, and put on a lightweight summer suit, which had only cost me fifty bucks across the river but was the first thing I’d worn in days that even came close to fitting properly.
Then, since I hadn’t heard from Pratt, I called his office and asked for him. They told me he hadn’t returned yet, and I left a message for him to call me as soon as he came in.
Then I left my place, went to a pay phone, and called Joan Linwood. (Just in case my phone was being bugged, I didn’t want her name or number known.) I told her that I was finally out of danger. She mentioned that Nettles had called her right after I left, asking if she’d heard from me, and since she didn’t know what to say she had lied and told him that she hadn’t.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be calling him in a day or two, as soon as I hear from Pratt.”
“Baroness is dead, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn!” she said. “That’s just going to kill Nancy.” She paused a moment. “If you’d like, I can break the news to her. I’ve known Maury and Nancy for years.”
“No. It’s my job. Besides, I won’t have anything definite until I hear from Pratt.”
We spoke a few more minutes, and then I thought of my phone bill and cut it off as gracefully as I could.
I decided to take a ride past Cotter’s home in Hyde Park, just to see for myself what kind of security he had. I got into the LeBaron, breathed a small prayer of gratitude to find out it didn’t need a jump after all this time, and headed north on Interstate 75. I turned east when I hit the Norwood Lateral, crossed the city on it, and a few minutes later was driving past the elegant homes of the Hyde Park area. They were substantial, these houses, built to last a few lifetimes at the very least. There were center-hall colonials and Victorians and an occasional New England saltbox, but most frequent were the Tudors, and I found myself daydreaming about someday hitting a Trifecta or marrying a rich widow and moving into one of them. They probably didn’t differ all that much from the other homes in the area, but ever since I was a kid I’d dreamed of looking out at a summer rainstorm through diamond-shaped leaded-glass windows, or keeping collections of baseball cards and pulp magazines hidden away in the nooks and crannies of an old Tudor home. I wondered who lived in those homes, what they had done right that I had done wrong, and started fantasizing about how idyllic their lives must be.