by Dan O'Shea
Dan O’Shea
GREED
To my kids, Danny, Nick and Shannon
Everybody’s got to have a reason. You’re pretty good reasons.
CHAPTER 1
Darfur, 2008
Nick Hardin never thought his first Hollywood party would be in a big-ass tent on the Chad-Sudan border, but there he was, nursing a gin and tonic, hoping he’d set things up far enough west that he was out of RPG range in case some Janjaweed punk got a bug up his ass. Fucking Mooney and his do-gooder shit.
Hardin had run into Jerry Mooney in Khartoum almost a year back. Darfur was heating up as the PR play of choice for socially conscious Hollywood types looking to bump up their Q scores. Hardin had been heading out on his usual fixer gig for one of the networks. Same gig he’d been running since he got out of the Foreign Legion back in 2000 – logistics on a file footage job. Camera guy, sound guy, some former BBC face with the right kind of public school accent and safari-guide outfit. Get ten or fifteen minutes in the can from the hellhole of the week so Nightline would have something for a slow news day. Run the film, then cut back to the studio where the talking heads and maybe someone from Médicins Sans Frontières or some Foggy Bottom undersecretary could cluck their tongues between beer commercials. A little of the self-flagellation that a goodly portion of the folks who actually watch Nightline like to engage in before bed – helps them sleep better. Hardin’s job? Line up some transport and some security that, when you’d bought them for a couple days, stayed bought. Point the talent at the right locations, pay off the right warlords, make sure the face gets his interview without getting his throat cut and the crew gets out without having to buy back their equipment at ten bucks on the dollar.
The face in this case being Nigel Fox. Hardin liked Nigel, and Nigel liked gin. That was why he was spending his twilight years stringing the massacre circuit when he had used to cover No. 10 Downing Street for BBC One. Hardin had done Somalia with Nigel; had done Liberia back in the Taylor days; Kinshasa; Rwanda. It was the beginnings of a beautiful friendship.
Hardin waited at the Khartoum airport by the Twin Otter he’d chartered as Nigel walked across the tarmac with his crew: a couple of stoner Italian adrenaline junkies. And with Jerry Mooney.
Hardin had heard of Mooney, of course. Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor. Square-jawed leading man in a dozen chart-topping flicks. Probably more than a dozen – Hardin figured a few had come out that hadn’t made it to the flea-bag cinema down the street from his place in Accra back in Ghana.
“Nick Hardin,” said Nigel, “meet Jerry Mooney.”
“Jerry,” said Hardin, shaking hands. He turned to Nigel. “We still shooting news or are we making a movie?”
“Little of both, old boy,” Nigel said. “Ran into Jerry here at the Hilton night before last. Splendid chap. Shared a bottle of Boodles and let me have more than half. Anyway, he’s headed down to Darfur for a look-see, some video-blog thing for his website. Marvelously technical – beyond me, of course. But his fixer bolted on him, left the poor man stranded. All for one and one for all, of course, so I told him he could pack along with us.”
“Nice of you to spend my nickel, Nigel,” said Hardin.
“Hey, Nick,” said Mooney. “Look, I know I’m imposing, and I know you’ve got to make a living. The guy I was supposed to meet up with, he’d said $500 a day, American, plus expenses. Nigel tells me we’re back tomorrow night, so that’s two days. Suppose we say $2500. Is that fair?”
Usury is what it was, but Mooney had thrown out the number. Mooney was starting to smell like the gravy train. With a capital G and a capital train.
“Yeah, OK,” said Hardin.
Mooney smiled. Big, dimpled movie-star smile. “All right. Off to the heart of darkness.”
Hardin caught the little smirk from Nigel. They always do that, the first timers. Drop the Conrad on you. But the darkness wasn’t concentrated in a heart anywhere. It had metastasized into millions of tumors. Some, like Darfur, were a thousand miles wide. But most of them were about the size of a qat-chewing thirteen year-old with an AK-47.
Nigel waved the Italians back to the truck. “You’ve forgot the bloody gin.”
So Mooney had got the Darfur bug bad. Started harping on Congressmen, hanging out with Martin Sheen, the whole nine yards. Mooney’s buddies then started turning up, and Hardin ended up with damn near a full-time gig as the Darfur Tour Guide to the Stars. And the stars pay way better than the networks. Then Mooney got his big idea. Dollars for Darfur– a Live Aid type deal, but right here on site. Mooney signed up half a dozen big-name bands, got a mess of Hollywood types to commit. Huge buzz in the media.
Hardin had to admit it made sense from Mooney’s perspective. For once, the press would have more cameras looking at Darfur than it had looking up Lindsay Lohan’s skirt. But from Hardin’s perspective, it was a nightmare – staging a rock concert on the Darfur border was like building a golf course in Antarctica.
Hardin paid the bribes, pulled the strings, got the generators and tents and food and booze shipped in. And he did the other stuff that he couldn’t tell Mooney about – like talking to his contact at the Chinese embassy in Khartoum, explaining how, while this liberal love-fest was likely to piss off the masters in Beijing no end, it was still in the PRC’s best interest to lean on the Sudanese and make sure they keep the Janjaweed on their leash for a few weeks. Suddenly, you got almost as many publicists in Darfur as you got starving people, and they’re making sure every A-list name in town for the show has a camera on them every second. Janjaweed goes on a rampage within a light-year of the place, the PRC’s going to have to deal with gang-rapes and mass murder live and covered from more camera angles than the Super Bowl.
And Hardin was twenty-four hours from pulling it off. The night before the big show, Hardin was standing in the corner of the party tent, sipping a gin and tonic with actual ice in it, and watching all the size-one blondes strut around. Drink tasted good, which it should, because when you built in the logistics, it probably cost more per ounce than cocaine. The tent was full of movie stars, rocks stars, a couple of the right kind of politicians, a handful of network news guys – and not the second-string talent that usually got shunted off to Africa either. Couple of print guys, but only the big-time names with hot blogs and book deals. Rest of the print media was outside with the refugees and the aid workers.
Now Shamus Fenn was working on fucking up Hardin’s payday. Fenn had the Hollywood radical gene bad, always ready to play footsie with anybody who wanted to badmouth the US. But he also had an alpha male problem – had to know more and be a badder ass than anyone else around. When he got off the chopper that morning with what’s-her-face, some actress Hardin still couldn’t quite place, Fenn was in full macho mode. Chopper had spooked a mole viper out of its hole, the snake scurrying off for cover. The actress evidently had a snake problem, because she screamed, so Fenn had to get all manly, make a move to grab the snake.
“I’d leave that alone,” said Hardin. “Poisonous.”
“That little worm?” said Fenn. Mole vipers don’t look like much, short little black things, harmless if you don’t fuck with them. Fenn started walking after the snake. When his shadow fell over it, the snake stopped crawling and coiled up. Last thing Hardin needed was Fenn getting himself bit on his watch. So Hardin shot the snake.
“What the fuck you do that for? Just wanted to get a look at it,” Fenn said, puffing up.
“They coil like that, they’re going to strike I doubt if we have any antivenom here. You might have survived the chopper ride out, but you definitely would have missed the party.”
The actress was apparently
over her snake phobia now that it was dead, and also clearly didn’t want her screaming fit to be the last image in the minds of the press guys who’d gotten off the chopper with them.
“Shamus, we’ve come to save Africa, not to help destroy it,” she said, stomping off. A minute ago, Fenn had been halfway into her pants. Now she was marching over to Mooney.
Fenn walked over to Hardin. Hardin was five foot nine, 175 pounds. Fenn had four inches and 20pounds on him. Fenn got in real close. “I don’t know who you are, cowboy, but I don’t like you already.”
Mooney broke things up. “Shamus, this is Nick Hardin. You haven’t been out here before or you’d know him. He was just looking out for you.”
“I’ve looked out for myself in worse places than this. Not afraid of some pissant snake,” said Fenn.
“Of course not. Come on, let’s get you settled in, get you up to speed on the program.” Mooney got an arm around Fenn’s shoulders, turned him away from Hardin, walked him off.
Within two hours, the story of Shamus Fenn’s arrival in Darfur was up on one of the press blogs, complete with video, and nobody was missing a chance to put the needle in with Fenn. And now Fenn was stalking Hardin around the party. Fenn was liquored up, had been hitting it hard for a couple of hours. Every time he saw Hardin, he’d start angling toward him, but Hardin would move off, and somebody would grab Fenn and start chatting him up.
Then Hardin lost his concentration. The actress from the snake scene came over – having been at the booze herself some – wanting to apologize for the whole thing, hitting on Hardin pretty hard; making it clear that, if he wanted to stop by her trailer after the party, she’d be waiting. And Hardin was definitely thinking about it. You get up in your forties, you don’t have a lot of hard-body twentysomethings throwing themselves at you. And getting laid was one of the downsides to an Africa career nowadays. Condoms or not, with the AIDS rates, you had to think real hard before you dipped your wick anywhere. So this chick was stroking his arm, leaning forward so that her loose and not-very-buttoned blouse kept falling open, and Hardin had his mind on something other than Fenn long enough for Fenn to get right up next to him.
“You a star-fucker, Hardin? That your deal?”
Hardin turned, and Fenn was right behind him, face red, smelling of Bombay and testosterone.
“I was just thanking Mr Hardin for saving your life earlier, Shamus,” said the girl, putting some real bite into it, and all of a sudden Hardin got it. Some kind of history between these two, and she’d come over here to tee Hardin up, get Fenn over, make some scene, get some more face time on YouTube. Hardin thinking how his pecker could still get him in trouble.
Which was when Fenn threw the right. Shitty right. Movie right. Big, long, telegraphed punch Hardin could have slipped twice. But Hardin stood in, just turning with it at the last minute, let it glance off his head, made a show of going down.
“Whoa, nice shot,” Hardin said from his knees, showing his ass, still looking for an out. “Look, I guess I had that coming, OK? Just let me get out of here.”
But when Fenn went to put a boot in while Hardin was getting up, Hardin lost it. He grabbed the leg, flipped Fenn over onto the bar table, and gave him a good right to the nose. Just one, but the right kind: straight, short, starting from the legs, hips turning with it. Fenn’s nose got way broken, and pieces of the highball glass he landed on ended up stuck in his back.
“Oh, Shamus!” The blonde, all concern now, leaning over the semiconscious actor.
“Better get him to the doc,” said Hardin, trying to pull her aside so he could get a look.
She reared up and slapped him hard across the face. “Get your hands off of me. You thug. This whole continent is full of thugs.” She stomped off, exactly the same carriage as earlier, after the snake. Her exit stomp, Hardin figured. Must have that one down.
That derailed the gravy train, right there. Mooney kept him on through the concert, and he was cool about it after. “Everyone knows Fenn’s an ass, especially when he drinks,” said Mooney. “But the Darfur story is bigger than us, said Mooney. “Can’t afford to let it be about some movie star brawl,” said Mooney. “Need to let you go to get you and Fenn off the front page, make this about the people again,” said Mooney. “You’ll always be a hero of mine,” said Mooney. “Here’s another ten grand.”
Hardin knew there was more to it. The whole Hollywood PR machine was cranked up around Dollars for Darfur. It was their chance to prove what a big heart the industry had, take everyone’s mind off the brainless crap they put out – the no-panty starlets and the revolving doors at the rehab clinics. And now, instead of Darfur leading the news, they had video of a drunk actor acting like, well, a drunk actor.
That was five years ago now.
Hardin had tried to get back into the network gigs, but suddenly no one returned his calls. After a couple months, he ran into a producer he went back with a ways, and the guy told him he’d been blackballed. Word had gone out from the agents and PR flacks – any news team working with Hardin gets zero play with their people. And the same media conglomerates who owned the movie studios owned the news networks. The movie studios made way more money.
So five years of scrambling, taking riskier gigs for less money, working with some of the European outlets, Al Jazeera, even. Burning through his savings.
And maybe a few other things… not-quite-legal things. Hardin hadn’t always been a glorified gofer. He’d spent eight years in the Marines, Scout/Sniper back in Gulf War I. When a beef back home meant he needed a get-out-of-jail-free card, he spent half a decade in the French Foreign Legion, 1st Co, 2nd Para regiment, the baddest asses in a bad-ass crowd, pretty much his whole time in the Legion spent in Africa. It was no continent for pussies. Not just journalists who needed a little security.
Then Hardin heard some interesting noises about a new twist in the old West African blood-diamond business. That had cooled off after Charles Taylor and his RUF animals finally got run to ground, but there’d always been a Lebanese connection to the diamond trade in West Africa. Now Hardin was hearing that Hezbollah had muscled in on that, and then Bin Laden and the boys had muscled in on Hezbollah, and now Al Qaeda was using diamonds as a way to move capital sub rosa since the US was putting the freeze on any above-ground cash flow. Not to mention, if you got Hezbollah in the mix, then you got Tehran holding their leash.
Story felt a little canned, though; had a little Mossad scent around the edges, Hardin getting the feeling maybe the Israelis were trying to play him, get some storyline they liked to come out through Al Jazeera so it would fly on the Arab street, give them some way to muddy up Iran a little in case this was the week they decided to bomb something. So Hardin did a little recon. Far as he could tell, the story checked out.
A couple things, though. First thing was this. Even if he got Al Jazeera to bite, this was going to come to maybe ten grand on his end – ten grand after probably a month with a higher-than-usual chance of getting his ass shot. Second thing? These blood diamond guys, sometimes their security wasn’t what it ought to be.
Hardin figured he’d had a good run in Africa. But he was pushing fifty, and after almost twenty years schlepping around the Sahel, fifty was pushing back. It was time for an exit strategy. A few million dollars in untraceable stones looked like a good one.
That was how Hardin ended up on an Air France flight, headed to Chicago, with eighteen ounces of uncut stones hidden in his bag.
Problem was that was about fifteen ounces too much of a good thing.
A couple ounces were what he had planned on. Al Qaeda moved the stones when they had to finance an operation – usually two or three ounces, $10 to $20 million retail value, out of which they’d get maybe half. So Hardin figured he’d bounce a shipment, get a couple ounces of stones, come out with a million or two on his end, still be pretty much under the radar. From what he’d heard, it wouldn’t be the first time they’d had a shipment go missing.
Now he w
as halfway across the Atlantic with a pound and a half of hot rocks – ten times the size of a usual shipment. Eighteen ounces would cut out to better than $150 million retail. That raised a few questions. Like how was he going to move that kind of weight? And what was Al Qaeda up to that took that kind of financing?
Most importantly, how was he going to get back under the radar now?
Time to talk to Stein.
CHAPTER 2
Chicago, 2013
Detective John Lynch climbed out of the unmarked Crown Vic in the parking lot outside the United Center and hunched his shoulders, pushing the collar of his overcoat up around his ears. United Center… almost had that down now. Lynch could go a month sometimes without calling it the Stadium.
Temperature was near zero and heading down, wind coming out of the northwest like sandpaper. Beginning of March. Even in Chicago, they should be past this shit by now. But the storm had blown in overnight, dumped better than a foot of snow, cold front behind that. Lynch looked across Madison at the chimneys on top of the three flats. The wind flattened the heat from the furnace stacks sideways against the sky in ribbons of vapor and mirage. Powder blew across the snowpack around the edges of the parking lot in braided ropes, the half moon and stars showing in a night sky frozen so clear and hard that you’d swear it would shatter like a plate if you fired a round into it.
Been pretty warm the last week so the shelters had emptied out, a lot of the emergency options closed down for the spring. The uniforms would find the bodies in the morning – the homeless along Lower Wacker –curled up in the basement delivery doorways of the office towers; more of them frozen into fetus shapes under cardboard and old blankets beneath the underpasses out on the west side, the south side; probably a family somewhere, all of them dressed in everything they owned, choked out from carbon monoxide, huddled on the floor next to a smoldering charcoal grill in some shit-ass tenement where the heat was out because some slumlord hadn’t made repairs or paid his gas bill.