by Barbara Paul
Marian perked up. “A connection?”
“Not that we can prove. They may not even have known each other. We compared their class schedules and they took no courses together—which proves nothing one way or the other. But look at this.”
Marian read the computer screen; it was a list of names and affiliations Evan Christopher did business with or was suspected of doing business with. The names were foreign and unfamiliar to Marian, and she said so.
“Watch.” Page moved the cursor to one of the names and pressed the return key.
The screen changed to a personal data record, and suddenly it all made sense. “PLO,” Marian said with a sinking feeling.
“Exactly. The Palestine Liberation Organization gets most of its money from wire-transfer theft—intercepting the transfer of funds and diverting them to their own accounts. They steal American money and use it to buy American weapons, illegally, from venal dealers like Evan Christopher.”
“Why haven’t you arrested him?”
“The agents assigned to his case went to his home in Baltimore Sunday to bring him in. They found him dead.”
Oh boy. “Murdered?”
“Evidently not. He just tripped and fell down a flight of stairs—and broke his neck. The Baltimore police are satisfied it was an accident. Christopher was alone in the house, for one thing. Our men on the scene accepted it as an accident.”
Marian thought a moment. “So this Evan Christopher was a sort of middleman … buying weapons legally here and selling them illegally to terrorist groups like the PLO? Did he ever sell anything other than weapons? Like information?”
Page sighed. “His file doesn’t say so. But there are a lot of things about Evan Christopher that we don’t know. Such as, how does a young, clean-cut MBA from Harvard get involved in the arms-dealing business in the first place? We have a lot of gaps to fill in.”
“And his only connection with the East River Park murders is that he attended the same school Jason O’Neill went to?”
“It may not be as thin as it sounds. We’ve cracked cases before by following up flimsier connections than that. But in situations like this the rule of thumb around here is ‘Follow the money.’ Holland is working on that right now, starting with Christopher and trying to trace some financial trail to Jason O’Neill. If he can find a link, then your case is solved. But even if he can’t find one, you still have to consider Evan Christopher a suspect.”
“A dead suspect.” Marian walked aimlessly about the office. “I’d give a ton of money to know what went wrong—assuming it was Christopher who did the killing, I mean. Did O’Neill get scared before the deal was consummated and threaten to blow the lid off the whole thing?”
Page nodded. “I’d say that was a good guess. Otherwise why would Christopher cut off his source of supply? O’Neill must have gotten cold feet.”
“Someone at Universal Laser may have found out.”
“Someone else on the liaison team? Possibly. That would account for the murderer’s killing another member of the team in addition to O’Neill, but why the other two?”
“Maybe they all knew. Maybe the killer was just playing safe. Maybe a lot of things. Maybe I’m through investigating the East River Park murders?”
Page grinned at her. “Could be. Disappointed?”
Marian laughed. “Oh sure, real disappointed. Look, I’m going to have to tell all this to Captain DiFalco.”
“I know. Just ask him to keep it under his hat for the time being. No paperwork, Marian, since this is still classified material.”
“Okay. How long has Holland been trying to trace the money?”
“He just started. Unless he gets lucky immediately, we won’t know anything for a while.”
Marian wondered how long a while was. “Is he working on it alone?”
“No, he has help. Perhaps you’d like to work with him, to keep track of his progress?”
“I’d rather kiss a Klingon.”
Page looked startled, and then laughed. “You’re not too fond of Holland?”
“Let’s just say he’s not one of my favorite people. What I want to do now is go see Edgar Quinn.”
“Oh? Why?”
“To find out if he knew this Evan Christopher himself. Or whether the sale of Universal Laser weapons was arranged by someone else, and if so, who. I’d like to pin this down.”
Page nodded. “Good idea. I’ll go with you. But let’s call first.” He went to the desk and used the phone. After a minute he hung up. “Quinn’s leaving for a business lunch in about twenty minutes—we won’t have time.” He checked his watch. “Speaking of lunch, are you hungry? I promise I’ll do better than a street vendor’s hot dog this time. I’ve been trying to buy you a meal ever since we met.”
“You talked me into it,” Marian said. “Where are we going?”
They took a cab to Le Rivage on West Forty-sixth. The theater district had seen a blossoming of new restaurants in the past few years, but Page ignored them and chose a long-time favorite instead. Marian almost said no; she and Brian had shared a number of meals there when things were still good between them. But she couldn’t spend the rest of her life avoiding places that reminded her of Brian, so she said Le Rivage would be just fine. Lunch was long and leisurely, and Marian was able to fight down any feelings of guilt that threatened to surface over taking so much time; after all, Captain DiFalco had ordered her to spend time with the FBI. The fact that this particular representative of the Bureau was attractive and good company to boot had nothing to do with it. Orders were orders.
At the same time, the ticking of the clock kept nagging at her. All the time Curt Holland was searching for a money connection between Jason O’Neill and some stranger named Evan Christopher, back at the Ninth Precinct the Major Crimes Unit was closing in on Captain DiFalco … and on her case. And there was nothing she could do to speed up the one or slow down the other.
“Just how good is Holland with a computer anyway?” she asked Page. “Does he have a real chance of finding what he’s looking for?”
Page didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “How good is he? To be blunt, he’s the best I’ve ever seen. Admittedly I’m no expert, but I’ve yet to see him fail.” He considered a moment and then said, “I’ll tell you something, but it has to remain confidential. Not cop to cop, but me to you. All right?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Do you know what Holland was doing before he joined the Bureau? He was a bill collector.”
“A bill collector?”
“A most extraordinary one, believe me. He took only those cases in which the debtors had the money to pay but were welshing on legitimate debts. Holland had the access codes to more banks than probably any other single person in the world. After he found a hidden account, he’d simply transfer the amount owed to the account of whoever hired him—after first deducting a fat commission, of course. The debtors always knew what had happened because Holland never took one cent more than what was owed, but all they could do was scream about it. They could never prove anything.”
Marian stared at her lunch companion aghast. “The man’s a criminal!”
“Yes, he is, technically. But he never helped himself to other people’s money, and he never accepted cases in which there was some question about the legitimacy of the debt. Holland has his own strange code of ethics.”
“And the banks couldn’t stop him?”
Page laughed. “The banks were his best customers! But the whole venture was so typical of Holland—setting himself up to correct inequities the law could do nothing about.”
“Just like the Downtown Queens,” Marian muttered. “Where did he get all the access codes?”
“Bought some, swapped for others. There’s a whole subindustry out there dealing with access codes. And some security systems can still be cracked without the codes. Who are the Downtown Queens?”
She told him about the Queens and how they too took it on themselves to e
xecute “justice.” Marian and Page finished their lunch and reluctantly agreed it was time to get back to work. Outside, Page looked around for a taxi, but Marian stopped him. “Let’s go down to Forty-fourth Street first,” she said. “There’s something I want to take a look at. Short walk.”
Page had no objection, and they set out. The midday crowds were especially heavy in that section of town; people seemed determined to walk as long as the weather stayed good. Marian and Page endured the jostling and turned onto Eighth Avenue.
“What you just told me about Holland,” Marian said, “that scares the hell out of me. To think that a creditor could just walk into my bank account and ‘collect’ money whenever he felt like it—that is truly frightening. But I don’t understand why the FBI took him in if you knew that was what he’d been doing.”
Page vocalized a sigh. “We took him in because that was what he’d been doing. Or one man did, rather, the man who was my superior at the time. He told me that a talent like Holland’s mustn’t be allowed to go to waste. I’m not sure we could have proved in court that Holland was behind this eccentric approach to debt-collection, but we knew enough to make trouble for him. So my superior told him to join the Bureau or face prosecution.”
“You blackmailed him into joining?”
“That’s what it amounts to, yes. We sent him to Quantico for training, where he immediately endeared himself by demonstrating he knew more than the instructors. My superior is dead now, but he had me memorize details of Holland’s more flamboyant forays into other people’s bank accounts—no written records, you understand, since my superior’s method of recruitment is not exactly recognized as Bureau standard. Remember I once told you Holland wanted to quit the Bureau but couldn’t? That’s why. He’s afraid of what I might do. That’s also why he hates me,” Page finished simply.
That was quite a story. Marian mulled it over a moment or two and then shot a glance at Page’s face; it was void of expression. “How can you stand to work with a partner who hates you?” she asked.
He looked at her. “How can you?”
That brought her up short. “My god, is it that obvious?”
Page smiled ruefully, said nothing.
They’d reached Forty-fourth Street. “This way,” Marian said and turned toward Broadway.
“What is it we’re going to look at?”
“The Broadhurst Theatre. It’s one of these along here—there it is.”
Marian wanted to see the billboard advertisement out front. Abigail James got top billing, name above the title. Then below the title was a line drawing of two profiles, facing off against each other. The one of Ian Cavanaugh was slightly glamorized, making him look a little younger than he appeared up close. The other was … just Kelly, vibrant with life and energy even in a line drawing.
“Aha, the new Abigail James play,” Page said. “It ought to be a good one. Do you plan on seeing it?”
“Opening night,” Marian replied. “Friday.”
“Opening night, hm? You must have connections. I hear this play is sold out for months.”
“Kelly Ingram arranged it—she’s a friend of mine.” Marian hoped that didn’t sound like name-dropping.
Page grinned delightedly. “The star of the show, no less! Well, I envy you. I haven’t been to a Broadway opening in more years than I care to remember.”
On the spur of the moment Marian invited him to go with her. “I’ll have an extra ticket,” she explained.
“I’d love to,” he said without hesitation, “and thank you!” Suddenly he looked contrite. “I wasn’t hinting for an invitation.”
“Yes, you were,” Marian kidded.
“Yes, I was,” Page admitted. “Ah me. Am I still invited?”
“Of course.”
He was reading the billboard. “Marian—the title, what does it mean? The Apostrophe Thief.”
“Haven’t the foggiest. I’ll ask Kelly.”
“I did some acting in college, believe it or not,” Page said. “Mostly period pieces, because I was pretty good with a sword.”
And your timing ain’t bad either, Marian thought wryly as they turned away to look for a cab.
14
At Universal Laser they learned Edgar Quinn had not yet returned from his business lunch, so Marian and Trevor Page went their separate ways for the time being. Marian took the IRT to Astor Place and walked the few blocks to the East Fifth Street stationhouse.
Upstairs in the PDU room she found Gloria Sanchez sitting elegantly on her desk, wearing what she called cool-dude duds. Heavy eyeliner, a few ringlets of hair carefully placed; today she was Michael Jackson. But she, Captain DiFalco, and Foley were all three of them grinning like apes. “What? What?” Marian demanded.
“Major Crimes bailed out,” DiFalco told her, still grinning. “They read the evidence we’d assembled, mumbled something about still being understaffed, and split.”
“Hallelujah!” Marian cried.
“One of ’em told me it was a shitcan,” Sanchez said.
An unsolvable homicide. “I hope you agreed with him,” Marian said soberly.
“Oh, you better believe it! I said we’d be happy for Major Crimes to take it off our hands. That boy couldn’t wait to get outta here.”
Marian laughed and sank down on her chair; that was one obstacle out of the way, at any rate. “You know, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d taken over right at the start, but now—”
“Now that case belongs to us,” Foley interrupted. “We’re the ones been bustin’ our ass.”
DiFalco’s grin disappeared. “I hope to god that guy isn’t right and it is a shitcan. We’re all out of leads, in case you people hadn’t noticed. We’ve got to come up with something new, and fast.”
“How about the name of an illicit arms dealer who went to school with one of the four victims?” Marian asked, and enjoyed the looks on their faces. She told them about Evan Christopher and his tenuous connection to Jason O’Neill. She explained how Christopher had died last Sunday in an accident and how the FBI was trying to uncover a money trail that led from Christopher to O’Neill.
“Tempting,” Captain DiFalco said, musing. “Very tempting indeed. Pin it on a dead arms dealer and call the case closed.”
“He had to have an accomplice,” Foley said. “We could still go after him.”
“Hey, put on the brakes,” Sanchez growled. “This guy went to the same school as Jason O’Neill? That’s all the FBI has?”
“I know, it’s not much,” Marian admitted. “But if the FBI is willing to try to establish a connection for us, what have we got to lose? It’s their time they’re using.” She turned to Foley. “By the way, we should have heard by now. Did the Crime Scene Unit turn up anything in Jason O’Neill’s apartment?”
While Foley looked blank and started pawing through the papers on his desk, DiFalco answered her. “They swear no homicide was committed there. They found note pads with various doodles on them which they say were made by different hands, but no notes or anything that could tell us what the four victims were meeting about Saturday afternoon. Foley, did you talk to that night guard at Universal Laser yet?”
Here Foley was on firmer ground. “Yeah, he’s just getting over some virus. That’s why they were shorthanded on Saturday—the same bug hit ’em all. And the guy says he left his monitors a lot on Saturday night because he was already sick and couldn’t stay away from the can for long. He says the whole Russian army coulda marched through and he wouldna known. And when he wasn’t on the can, he was trying to get the chief of security on the phone, to send him some relief—haw, relief.”
“Get on with it,” DiFalco snapped.
“Anyway, he couldn’t get hold of the security chief and stuck it out until his regular replacement showed up at midnight. By then me and Larch were already on the scene in East River Park.”
DiFalco was nodding. “So getting in and out of the building unseen was never a real problem. Glass doors on the grou
nd floor?”
“Yeah,” Foley said.
“Anyone wanting to sneak in could just watch from outside until our diarrhetic guard made one of his periodic dashes to the men’s room. And anyone wanting to leave without being seen could watch from … where?”
“The stairwell?” Marian suggested. “It’s right next to the elevators.”
“Good enough. So our killers follow the liaison group in—”
“Or they’re already in there, waiting,” Sanchez suggested casually.
“That’s a possibility,” DiFalco conceded. “So they’re either in there or they follow the four victims in. Then what?”
“They kill ’em,” Foley said unhelpfully.
“Where?” Marian asked. “Not in the Universal Laser building.”
“Why the hell not?”
“And then try to carry four corpses out while the guard is away from the monitors? And then put all four into the stolen van without anyone’s noticing? No way, Foley. That’d be risky enough with just one body. Four would be impossible.”
“You’re saying they left alive?” DiFalco asked.
“They had to. Either the killers were waiting for them when they came out of the building, or they marched them out at gunpoint.” Foley hooted. “Difficult, yes, but easier than carrying four dead bodies out.”
DiFalco considered that. “The killers were waiting for them? The liaison team made an appointment with them, not knowing they were walking into a trap? Damn! If only we knew what they were up to on Saturday!”
“Yeah,” Foley echoed, “if we only knew.”
DiFalco stood up and straightened his tie. “Well, we’re not going to find out sitting around here. The answer’s buried somewhere at Universal Laser. Larch, how many of the personnel there did you interview?”
“Only a handful,” Marian answered regretfully. “It’s not a small company.”
“Okay, I want you to try again. You three and the others as well when they come in. Talk to as many people as you can. Start at the top and work your way down. If something is going on, that means a lot of people must know about it. A whole group of people trying to keep a secret? There’ll be cracks somewhere. If you think you’re on to something, don’t back off—keep at ’em until they start threatening to file complaints.”