Innocent as Sin sk-3

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Everyone sat up straighter.

  “Billion?” Prosser asked. “As in a thousand million dollars?”

  “Profit after bribes and kickbacks are paid, yes,” Steele said. “That’s why some very powerful and influential people in Paris are unhappy. They don’t want St. Kilda to interfere in a revolution that will enrich them so well.”

  “You can prove this, I suppose,” Carson said skeptically.

  “Not at all, Counselor,” Steele said, “which is why I advise you not to include any of this in your program. These kinds of charges are made only in intelligence briefings and later, much later, in history books. But that doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me,” Carson said.

  “Why? All your station has to prove is that Andre Bertone is, or has been, an international arms dealer, a ‘merchant of death,’ as Mr. Thomas calls him. Your reporter has already laid the groundwork for the story. Now I’m offering you the centerpiece for that program.”

  Steele reached into the leather saddlebag that hung beside his wheelchair and pulled out a heavy manila folder. He sent it sliding down the sleek table. The folder came to rest directly in front of Prosser.

  The executive producer hesitated, then opened the folder. Inside were computer copies of color photographs. They had about the same resolution as pictures printed on the inside pages of a newspaper. The first photo showed a burly Caucasian man in a white safari suit standing in the doorway of a transport aircraft on a dirt strip somewhere in a scrubland. The man was scowling directly into the lens.

  “Bertone?” Prosser asked.

  “Yes,” Steele said.

  “Deb, you have our only photo of the guy. Is this him?” He shoved the first print over to the researcher, who produced another file from her leather folio.

  “It could be,” she said. “This shot isn’t much cleaner than the one we have.”

  “St. Kilda’s photo was taken from a blind near a dirt strip in what was then the endless civil war/ethnic cleansing of the King’s Republic of Uhuru and is now the New Democracy of Camgeria,” Steele said. “The photo is five years old.”

  “Okay, our photo is a decade old,” Martin said. “In truth, we aren’t even sure it’s Bertone. It’s a possible rather than a probable ID. A pal of mine down in Langley got the photo for me. He said there was one positive ID photo taken five years ago, but he couldn’t get it for me. Looks like this could be the one.”

  Steele knew it was.

  Prosser was already sorting down through the other prints. Each one of them told a story-the loading of bags of contraband and the unloading of what were clearly cases of weapons.

  Then he flipped over a picture showing Bertone with a long sniper’s rifle in his hands, staring through the scope.

  “Mother,” he said, startled. “Looks like he was scoping the photographer.”

  “He was,” Steele said. “Notice that his hand isn’t on the trigger.”

  “Still, glad it wasn’t me.” Prosser blew out a breath. “These will make a great photomontage, if we can authenticate them.”

  “Look at the last photo.”

  Prosser turned over the last one. Everyone at the table except Steele crowded around to look over his shoulder.

  Bertone was somewhat shadowed inside the aircraft, but it was clear that he had shifted from watching to acting. His finger was on the trigger.

  “He fired a few seconds later,” Steele said. “A good young man died.”

  Prosser blew out another breath. “Shit.”

  “Pictures are easy to fake,” Carson said. “Remember the CBS National Guard memos.”

  Steele laughed out loud. “Those were badly done counterfeits. No intelligence agency would have bought them and no self-respecting journalist should have.”

  “The point is-” Carson began.

  “Photographic prints can be doctored, particularly in this day of digitization,” Steele interrupted. “The prints I brought are computer reproductions. I have the original prints in my safe.”

  “Talk to me about negatives,” Prosser said. “You can screw with prints, but negatives are real hard to fake convincingly.”

  “When and if UBS agrees to my terms,” Steele said, lying with the ease of the diplomat he’d once been, “I’ll produce the negatives. I’ll also see that you get an on-camera interview with the photographer.”

  “You told us he was killed,” Carroll said.

  “I said someone was killed. It was the spotter. The man who snapped the photos is still alive.”

  Martin grinned. “Okay! When can we have the interview?”

  Steele looked at his cell phone. No messages. Damn it, Faroe, is it too much to ask for you to check in occasionally? “In the next forty-eight hours. But first you must agree to the terms.”

  “Nobody edits my stuff,” Martin said.

  “I wouldn’t care to,” Steele said distinctly. “But if it comes to filming any St. Kilda employees, you will disguise their faces, and in some cases their voices. This isn’t negotiable.”

  Prosser grimaced. “But-”

  “Not negotiable,” Steele repeated. “Martin has known that from the beginning. And before you think about screwing me or my employees, think about what St. Kilda Consulting is: a good friend, a bad enemy.”

  Prosser looked irritated but didn’t argue. “What’s in this for you?”

  “Journalists rarely inquire as to the motivations of a good source,” Steele said evenly. “Gift horses and such. All that journalistic ethics requires of you is the belief that my information is valid. It is.”

  “We’ll be checking,” Prosser said, looking at Carroll. “You can count on it.”

  Steele smiled. “I do.”

  Prosser drummed his fingers on the table and looked past Steele, thinking hard. “What we have now is maybe a ten-minute segment, maybe less,” he said finally. “We need more.”

  “Bertone’s backers are getting restless,” Steele said. “The window of opportunity is closing. You’re either in or you’re out. No more meetings.”

  “Okay. If we got some modern pictures of Bertone, here in the States,” Martin said quickly, “stuff from the inside, it would juice up the segment. Otherwise, people won’t believe philanthropist Bertone was once a murderous gun smuggler.”

  Steele sighed and gave in. “The Bertones are having a big party at their Pleasure Valley house on Saturday, plein air artists in some abominable contest. Would that do?”

  “If Bertone is in the pics, okay,” Martin said. “And we need some idea of how Bertone is getting around our banking laws. The kind of money you’ve talked about can’t be moved around legally without leaving a trail.”

  Steele’s pale eyes narrowed. If Kayla Shaw talked to save her own neck, she’d give them her boss… “We’ll do our best.”

  Martin looked at Prosser.

  “You’ve got a deal,” Prosser said.

  “Okay!” Martin said.

  6

  Pleasure Valley, Arizona

  Friday

  10:31 A.M. MST

  Kayla Shaw drove quickly up to the gate of Elena and Andre Bertone’s Tuscan-style estate. The five-acre building site for Castillo del Cielo had been blasted out of dry, rocky hills less than two years ago. Now the acres were green and white, lush and expensive. Glass, art tiles, and copper gleamed among columns of imported Italian marble.

  She suspected that beneath the marble was good old Arizona stucco.

  According to bank records, the Bertones had paid more than five million dollars for the land. They had spent another ten million on construction of the house, guest casita, staff quarters, pools, gardens, and a guarded gate at the bottom of the hill. They even had a heliport out beyond the pool, complete with a racy little helicopter tied down and waiting for the royal whim.

  The people who served the royal whims weren’t all directly employed. The Bertones had more than $125 million on deposit with American Southwest, which entitled them to an unusual level
of service. Kayla paid bills for the Bertones, she moved money among their many accounts, she covered overdrafts and shortfalls, and she made house calls to Castillo del Cielo to pick up deposits and drop off receipts.

  In short, she was a gofer. It wasn’t what she’d thought banking was all about, especially private banking, but it paid the bills.

  As she waited for the guard to come out of his “shack” and buzz her through the gate, she looked at the tumbling, glistening wall of the water feature next to the guard building. Castillo del Cielo’s annual water bill for squad-sized showers, epic water features, and three swimming pools was almost as big as the escrow check in Kayla’s purse. As a desert girl that kind of extravagance made her uneasy, but the child in her delighted in the play of sunlight and dancing water, and the scent of water in the desert.

  Even if it was tainted with chlorine.

  She glanced through her open window at the guard shack, where a young man stood listening patiently to the phone held against his ear. Jimmy Hamm had been working for the Bertones for two months. He was a young, chatty former minor-league ballplayer who stared at her legs every chance he got.

  She wondered if he’d be so flirty if he knew she made out the employment checks Elena signed.

  “Mrs. B. says you can go up, but please hurry,” Hamm said, coming out of the shack and smiling at Kayla. “Are you late? You’re never late.”

  Kayla glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Nope.”

  “She’s been edgy,” Hamm said, leaning against the Explorer’s door. “The old man is back.”

  “Mr. Bertone?”

  “He got in late Thursday night. At least I think that was him in the back of the limo. Never seen him to swear to it.” Hamm leaned close and whispered, “Never seen him in daylight, either. You think he’s a vampire?”

  Kayla rolled her eyes. “He’s a globe-trotting businessman.”

  “Yeah? What business? Drugs?”

  “Drugs?” She laughed and shook her head. “Switch to decaf, Jimmy. Mr. Bertone trades in oil and other natural resources. Now open the gate before you make me late.”

  Reluctantly Hamm stepped back from the Explorer. He leaned inside the guard-shack door and triggered the gate mechanism.

  Kayla shifted into gear and rolled through, both amused and irritated by Hamm’s persistent interest in her and his employers. She could handle the smiling come-ons, but the Bertones put a high value on their physical and fiscal privacy. Wealthy families were targets for everyone from civic and political fund-raisers to thieves and kidnappers. The wealthy kept the world at bay with gates and security cameras and a thick layer of servants, lawyers, and bankers.

  In the Bertones’ shoes, she would have done the same. Especially as they had three young children to protect from the world’s predators.

  Mentally going over the final details of the Bertones’ big art party tomorrow, Kayla pulled into the car park behind the five-car garage. She turned off the engine and automatically gathered her leather valise and purse. She hesitated, put the escrow envelope in the valise, and headed for the back of the house, where Elena had her office. Along the way Kayla waved to the Brazilian chauffeur, Antonio, who was washing a massive black Hummer. Head-high lilies bloomed along the flagstone path to the house. Everything looked and smelled green.

  Money green.

  “Down here,” Elena called.

  Kayla swerved without breaking rhythm. Apparently Elena was on the terrace between the Olympic-size pool and the children’s splash pool.

  “You’re late,” Elena said. “But I saved you some brunch.”

  Kayla slid onto a chair beneath the sunshade and dropped her leather bag on the flagstone.

  “I’m a minute off, by my clock,” she said cheerfully, “and you can blame that on your gate guard, who keeps trying to charm me out of my tiny little mind every time I come by.”

  “Of course he does.” Elena gave her the million-candle-power smile of the international beauty queen she’d once been. “You’re an attractive young thing who makes a good living and he’s a former athlete who doesn’t like working for his bread and butter.”

  The cool social calculation in the words was pure Elena. She was a stunningly beautiful woman whose figure had only been improved by having three children. She was shrewd, opinionated, socially ambitious, and arrogant in the way that only a gorgeous woman with a few hundred million in the bank could be.

  In the quiet of her own mind, Kayla admitted that she would never like Elena, didn’t really trust her, but was fascinated by her just the same.

  Then there was the fact that Elena was a loving mother to three energetic, utterly confident children. Raised just short of the Brazilian slums herself, Elena had a gut-deep understanding of the difference between poverty and wealth, family and standing alone against the world. The children were home-schooled, as the public schools in America simply weren’t equipped to handle kidnap targets.

  No matter what Kayla might think of Elena as a person, she respected her client’s dedication to her children.

  “Where are the kids?” Kayla asked.

  She looked around the grounds, half expecting to see Miranda or Xavier or Jonathan peering out from behind one of the marble columns in front of the pool house. In truth, she visited Elena more often than business required because she enjoyed the children.

  “I asked Maria to keep them in the house for a few minutes, while we conduct my business,” Elena said.

  Oooookay, Kayla thought. No small talk.

  “What do you need?” she asked, pulling out a small digital recorder. Elena’s directives rarely came in twos or threes.

  “Several things.” Elena lowered her chin and looked at Kayla over the top of her sexy Italian sunglasses. “Are the finances all in order for the Desert Art Week?”

  “I don’t know about the rest of the festival, but everything is ready for your event. I wish we could call it something besides ‘The Fast Draw.’” Kayla kept her voice neutral, but it was an effort. If I was a self-respecting painter, I’d sharpen the end of a brush and fall on it before I entered that contest. I don’t care if first prize is twenty-five grand. There’s something belittling about the whole thing.

  Elena shrugged. “I didn’t choose the name. I simply supplied the money and the place. The arts are very important.”

  Especially for the socially ambitious, Kayla thought sourly. Social climbing was one of Elena’s less charming traits.

  Hey, if you’d been raised next door to a slum, you’d want to be accepted by the high and mighty, too, Kayla told herself. You’re just jealous of her looks.

  They’re worth being jealous of.

  With an effort Kayla dragged her mind back to the Fast Draw event, which was part of an annual art festival conducted to raise funds for the Scottsdale Desert Museum. Thirty landscape painters had been invited to paint the same subject in a two-hour timed contest. This year the Bertones had made quite an impression by offering their estate as the painting site and promising to purchase the top three canvases. Then they had doubled the total prize money to fifty thousand.

  The local press had gone gaga. Not only was Elena Bertone ravishing and intelligent and a sublime hostess, she was incredibly generous too. Definitely the best thing to happen to Scottsdale since reliable tap water.

  “The Fast Draw is the name they’ve used for years,” Elena continued. “I’m not ready to change that tradition yet. Have you done everything I required?”

  Kayla didn’t have to check her notes. The Bertones were far and away her most important client. The fact that her boss, Steve Foley, had given the Bertones exclusively to her a few months ago still amazed her. Maybe he’d guessed that she was mentally packing up and heading out for greener employment pastures.

  “The funds are all in the prize account,” Kayla said. “I’ve arranged for a commercial sign painter to do the presentation checks so that they’ll show up in the press photos.”

  “Good.” El
ena made no secret of the fact that she wanted her face and discreetly presented cleavage on the society pages at least once a week. “The caterer has given me a price of two hundred dollars a head for the Fast Draw party, but he demands a cashier’s check before he serves a single canapé.”

  He must have worked for the superrich before, Kayla thought. People who spent lavishly didn’t always pay on time. In fact, they rarely did. “If you want to pay the wine bills and the rest of the party expenses when you pay the caterer, you’ll have to top up the entertainment account. I can pull it from the household account as usual.”

  Elena removed her sunglasses and looked at Kayla like she was interviewing for a job rather than already an employee. “No.”

  The tone and the cool appraisal in the wide brown eyes made Kayla’s neck tingle.

  “Deposit this in the entertainment account,” Elena said, taking a cream-colored vellum envelope from beneath her plate. “It should settle all bills.”

  Kayla took the envelope. The heavy paper flap wasn’t sealed. She lifted it and removed a single handwritten check. It was drawn on a foreign bank she’d never heard of. Her eyes widened.

  “Twenty-two million dollars,” she said. “Holy-there must be some mistake. Even you couldn’t spend that much on a party.”

  “Your job isn’t to judge my expenditures.” Elena’s voice was as cold as her eyes. Her faint exotic accent deepened. “Your job is to deposit and withdraw money at my desire.”

  Kayla’s stomach knotted. The words compliant and complicit were part of any private banker’s training. Compliant and complicit bankers were no longer legally immune from the implications of their acts. Or as Kayla thought of it: Launder money and go to jail.

  “I’ll be glad to deposit this check in any account you specify,” Kayla said, “but, as I’m not familiar with the bank the check is drawn on, I’m required by federal government regulations to ask a few questions.”