They were met at the front door by Lincoln Berdon.
He was wearing a black, three-piece pin-striped suit, and the expression on his face was as somber as his funereal-looking attire. He ushered the two men into his living room. The house was decorated all in black, white, and silver. The tables were stainless steel. The floors were painted black and white. Couches and chairs were either white with black pillows or black with white pillows. Justin wondered if they had black and white wine. But he didn’t get a chance to find out since Berdon didn’t offer him a drink.
“What is this about?” Lincoln Berdon asked.
“Do you want to know who I am?” Justin asked.
“No,” Berdon said. “I know who you are. What I want to know is what you’re doing here.”
So Justin told him. He went through the events of the recent past step by step, beginning with the discovery of Evan Harmon’s body. He left nothing out. He told them both what he knew about Ronald LaSalle’s murder—and LaSalle’s recent business history. He told them everything he knew about Evan Harmon’s corrupt financial dealings, all the way through the overturned truck in Texas. At one point, Justin said, “I know that Evan arranged to buy platinum as low as he could and sell it at a huge profit to the Chinese government. That couldn’t have made you happy—him cheating your most important client.” Berdon didn’t respond; he was well trained. Neither of the two Wall Street legends looked shocked at anything Justin had revealed up to that point. Harmon was following Berdon’s lead, which surprised Justin a little. He’d expected their relationship to be on a more equal footing. This was Berdon’s show. Berdon’s world. H. R. Harmon was a supporting player.
Justin then talked about Wanda: what she’d told him when they’d met in her car, what he knew about her death. When he told them about the words she’d managed to scrawl before she died, Lincoln Berdon didn’t so much as blink. But this time Harmon looked startled. He glanced quickly at Berdon, who didn’t return the look. Berdon’s eyes never moved; they stared straight ahead at Justin.
“What else do you have to tell us?” Berdon asked. Justin felt as if he should compliment the man on having perfected his dismissive tone. But he thought he should hold off just a bit on any congratulations.
“I have a few other things,” Justin said. He told them about the break-in and murder at the LaSalle Group and how they knew that the murderer was a Chinese woman. Harmon also seemed to blanch at that news. Then Justin told them about the Chinese man who came to his house. And he went through exactly what had happened. He spared no details.
He then said, “We know the man’s identity now. The FBI ran his fingerprints, and we’re aware of his connection to the Chinese embassy. We also know his place of employment. I guess I should put that in the past tense. We know where he used to work. It’s hard to hold a job when your whole face has been melted away.” The two men were silent. Justin said, “Don’t you want to know where he worked?”
“Where?” H. R. asked.
“Rockworth and Williams,” Justin said. “His name was Togo Lu. And he had a job in Rockworth’s security division.” Justin turned to H. R. Harmon. “You speak Chinese, don’t you, Senator?”
“No,” the ex–ambassador to China said. “It was way too complicated a language for me. Never learned more than four or five words.” Harmon was turning paler by the moment. He turned to his longtime business associate. Then back to Justin. “But Mr. Berdon speaks excellent Chinese.” He turned to look right into Berdon’s eyes and said slowly, in a hoarse, raw voice, “How many dialects, Lincoln?”
Lincoln Berdon ignored H. R. Harmon as if he weren’t in the room, as if he didn’t exist. He spoke directly to Justin. “So far, all you’ve done is entertain us with stories. I still don’t know why you’re here. What is it you’re looking for?”
“Something simple—the truth.”
Berdon snorted. “What truth exactly? Which one?”
“That’s the thing about truth,” Justin said. “I find there usually tends to be only one.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Lincoln Berdon said. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from being around Wall Street all these years it’s that there isn’t any truth, there’s only perception. It’s what people think is true that drives the world.”
“Then maybe,” Justin said, “you should hear what I think is true.”
“I’d like to hear it,” H. R. Harmon said.
Justin looked at H. R. and said, “I think that you raised a very devious son. So devious, he couldn’t tell the difference between his friends and his enemies. So he cheated them both. And they both decided to do something about it. Only his friends got there first.” Now he turned to Lincoln Berdon. “And they killed him. And then they killed Ron LaSalle. And Wanda Chinkle.”
“And why would his friends do that?” H. R. asked.
“Because they wanted what Evan had taken from them. What he’d bought for himself. They wanted the platinum he owned. And the companies he’d bought to transform that platinum into something everyone needed.”
Lincoln Berdon smiled. “You’re a very interesting man, Mr. Westwood. Quite surprising. But you don’t have any proof and you will never find any proof to back up what you’re saying. And the reason is because it’s not true. In this case, perception does not equal reality.”
“You have a computer in this house?” Justin asked.
“Of course.”
“You mind if I use it for a minute? I’d like to show you something.”
Berdon hesitated. But he couldn’t resist. His curiosity got the better of him. He led both men into another room. A desktop computer sat on a large, antique, dark wood desk. Justin went to the computer, connected to the Internet, and found his way onto a Web site.
“This is Larry Silverbush’s Web site,” Justin said. “I believe you both know him. He’s a Long Island DA, and he’s running for attorney general.” When neither man said anything, Justin went on. “Mind if I show you something in particular? It’s a listing for one of Silverbush’s recent fund-raisers. It was at a private apartment. At seven forty Park Avenue. Does that address mean anything to you, Mr. Berdon?”
“I have an apartment at that address.”
“Not really such a coincidence. The fund-raiser was in your apartment.”
“There is nothing illegal or out of line about raising money for a politician.”
“No, there isn’t. But I’m pretty sure if I keep digging, I’m going to find a few things that are illegal and out of line. You want me to tell you why? Because this isn’t what I think, this is what I know. Silverbush was one of the first people who was told that Evan Harmon was murdered. Leona Krill called him right after I woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her. We’ve just seen the phone records, Lincoln, and they show that Silverbush called you immediately after he heard about Evan. I knew he had to have told somebody and you were the logical choice. You were his big backer. You were his ticket to eventually get him to the governor’s mansion. So he’d want to curry favor with you. He knew about your relationships with H. R. and with Evan. He knew you’d want to know what had happened. What he didn’t know was what you were going to do with that information. At least I hope he didn’t.”
“And what is it you think I did?”
“My perception? My perception is that as soon as you got the word that Evan was dead, you had your Chinese friends kill Ron LaSalle. And soon after that you had them kill Wanda Chinkle. You had one of them try to kill me, too.”
“And why would I do all that?” Berdon said.
“I’ve already given you a few of my theories. I’m still looking for a few specifics. And you’ll be the first to know when I prove them. But right now, the best I can do for sure is that you’re a son of a bitch,” Justin said.
Lincoln Berdon laughed. “That is very true,” he said. “I am one mean son of a bitch. And so is Mr. Harmon here. Isn’t that right, Herbert?”
“Yes,” H. R. Harmon
said quietly and seriously. “I am. But I’m not as big or as mean a son of a bitch as you.”
“Then that’s settled,” Berdon said. “So if that’s what you came to find out, Officer Westwood, you got your answer. And you can go.”
“Not yet,” Justin said. He said he needed to know how to get in touch with Ellis St. John.
“I’m afraid he’s not reachable,” Berdon said. “At least we don’t know how to reach him. He had some sort of family emergency. We told him to take as long as he needed.”
“And why would you be so generous?” Justin asked.
“Ellis is one of our most valuable employees. We’re like a family at Rockworth and Williams. We do what’s best for everyone.”
“Who’s handling his clients while he’s away?”
“Everyone’s helping out. It’s difficult but we’re managing.”
“You have all the answers, don’t you?” Justin said.
“I just want to be as cooperative as possible,” Berdon told him.
Justin exhaled a long, slow breath. “What the hell am I not seeing?” he asked. “What the hell is it that you two crazy old bastards know that I don’t know?”
“The truth,” Lincoln Berdon said.
And he started laughing again.
35
Justin let Martin, the chauffeur, out of the trunk. He decided he had the upper hand so, what the hell, he told the driver to take him back to East End Harbor. Martin said he had to ask Mr. Harmon and Justin said it was okay, he thought he could safely speak for Mr. Harmon.
Sitting in the backseat, he opened a crystal decanter and sniffed. Scotch. Nice touch. He poured himself a small glassful, leaned back in the plush leather upholstery, and called Reggie.
“It’s right here in front of me,” he said. “All I have to do is make sense of one or two things. But I just can’t do it. I can’t see it.”
So she had him go over the whole thing again. Step by step. The murders. The connections. The path of the money. The corporate cheating. Lenny Rube’s role. Bruno’s role. Hades. The still unsolved meaning of the word “Ali” that Wanda had written. The limo was almost to the East End Harbor town limits and they were still on the phone when he said to Reggie, “I’m going to pick you up. Come over. We’re too close to let this go.” She hesitated and he said, “It’s business, Reggie. You said we had to finish this before we could move on to anything else, so let’s finish it. Now.”
She agreed and the limo showed up at her motel a few minutes later. When they got back to his house on Division Street, Justin checked to make sure his car was back, saw that it was, then he told Martin he could head back to the city but to make sure that Mr. Harmon was billed for the extra time. They walked into the house, and Justin expected to find Bruno there, but the big man was not around. He and Reggie didn’t waste any time. They started in all over again. From the beginning.
Justin sat down on the couch, absentmindedly picked up one of the yearbooks that Vince Ellerbe had given him, and began leafing through it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I don’t see the domino effect. If Evan Harmon was murdered, why does that mean Ron LaSalle had to be next? And why Wanda? And why weren’t they just killed? Why were they tortured? What information did they have that someone wanted? That Lincoln Berdon wanted?”
“You’re sure it’s Berdon?” Reggie asked.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s the link to Togo and the Chinese woman . . .”
“Who we’re searching for, by the way. We’ve got a bureau-wide alert out for her.”
“. . . and he’s the only one who’s connected to everyone else: LaSalle, St. John, H. R., now even Silverbush. But why? Why would he want Evan Harmon dead? He doesn’t benefit by Harmon’s death. He only benefits if Harmon lives and he gets to buy what Harmon’s selling. He needs what Evan Harmon has—so why would he want him dead? Why would—” He stopped talking. He bit off the rest of his sentence and stared at the yearbook page in front of him.
“What is it?” Reggie asked.
“Oh my god,” Justin said. “Oh—my—god.”
She knew enough not to say anything. She didn’t ask a question, she just waited.
He didn’t say anything either, not immediately. He couldn’t say anything, too many images were flashing through his mind. Too many pictures, too many bits and pieces of conversations. It was as if the pieces of the puzzle were raining down upon him.
And suddenly those pieces were forming themselves into a whole:
Vince Ellerbe talking about Evan Harmon: “His friends were mostly sycophants. He usually found one or two brainiacs who were frightened of him and that’s who he spent time with . . . He liked the cheating better. He was just basically dishonest . . . He could always get people in authority to look the other way, to break the rules just for him . . . At heart, Evan Harmon was a crook. He liked to steal and he liked to lie. He just liked it.”
The talk he had with Reggie after they saw Dave Kelley.
“. . . The tip wasn’t just that Kelley was having an affair with Abby Harmon. It said he owned a stun gun.”
“So somebody had to know how Evan was killed.”
“It does seem kind of strange, doesn’t it? Kind of . . .”
“Orchestrated.”
“Yes. Orchestrated.”
Ellis St. John’s calendar.
EH/EEH (see directions/adbk)
Reggie saying, “This guy Ellis was spending the weekend with Evan Harmon?”
Him saying back to her: “Seems like. But I’m telling you, it doesn’t make sense.”
The phone conversation with Abby Harmon.
“How’d you know I was working with the FBI?”
“I don’t know, Jay. Someone told me . . . I’m sorry, Jay.”
Him thinking: What the hell had she done? What was she apologizing for?
Lenny Rube, in his den in Providence. “We used to deal with unions. With business, small businesses. Now we deal with Wall Street, with investors, lobbyists.”
Dave Kelley, talking in the Riverhead jail about the Harmon security system.
Him asking Kelley: “Who had laptop access?”
“Evan. On the laptop he used to travel with.”
“Abby?”
Kelly nodding, saying: “But I don’t think she really knew how to use it. She didn’t have much interest in it.”
Wanda. The horrible image of the words she’d managed to scrawl on her naked body, words written in her own blood: The last word tailing off. The final thought she’d ever have. The last two letters barely legible as her life was ending.
“Ali.”
And now the yearbook in front of him. Evan Harmon’s last year at Melman Prep. Photos of his classmates. Photos of one particular classmate. One classmate who’d conveniently not mentioned that he’d been a classmate.
Quentin Quintel. Now the dean of Melman.
Lincoln Berdon’s town house.
Justin saying, “What the hell is it that you two crazy old bastards know that I don’t know?”
Lincoln Berdon saying, “The truth.”
And back to the crime scene. Back to the Harmon bedroom. Justin standing over the body.
The body that was beaten to a pulp, beyond recognition. Blood everywhere. Pools and splashes of red.
The wedding ring . . . the favorite sweater . . . the shoes.
He remembered looking into Ellis St. John’s closet. And the image that refused to materialize. Now he knew what that image was.
The shoes that were shiny and new looking. The shoes on the battered body that didn’t have a drop of blood on them.
And listening to Bruno when the Mafia hit man was sitting on his couch: “Like I said. I woulda killed the little prick. But somebody beat me to it.”
And then again Wanda’s body. The word she’d managed to write. The word Justin now knew she wasn’t able to finish writing.
“Ali.”
Justin looked up at Reg
gie Bokkenheuser. He still didn’t say anything. Went to his phone, dialed the number of the Southampton Hospital, got the morgue attendant. Justin identified himself, told him it was an emergency, said he needed access to the morgue files immediately. The orderly put him on hold for a minute; someone else got on the phone, asked Justin what he needed.
“Evan Harmon,” Justin said. “I want to know his shoe size.”
“That’s it?” the guy in the morgue said. “That’s the emergency?” And when Justin didn’t bother to answer, the guy said, “Nine and a half.”
And Justin still didn’t say a word to Reggie. He just dialed another number, this time got the Riverhead police. This one took a bit longer but eventually he got the evidence room and he told the sergeant on duty what he wanted, the information he had to have immediately. It took a few minutes but Justin waited, and then the sergeant came back and said, “I’ve heard you’re kind of screwy and I think this proves it. But your corpse was wearing a ten-and-a-half shoe.”
Justin thanked him and hung up. He turned to Reggie Bokkenheuser and said, “It makes sense now. Everything that didn’t make sense before makes perfect sense now.”
He grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. And he wrote down Wanda’s last word: “Ali.”
“I still don’t get it,” Reggie said.
He said, very softly, “She didn’t finish. She didn’t finish writing.”
And so he finished for her now. He wrote down the first three letters: A . . . L . . . I . . .
And then he wrote the last two. V . . . E.
Alive.
Reggie Bokkenheuser’s eyes opened wide.
“Evan did it before, when he was a kid,” Justin said. “He staged his own kidnapping. Now he just upped the stakes. He staged his own death.”
36
Justin didn’t know how he knew, but it was suddenly as clear to him as it could possibly be. Maybe it was the photo he’d seen on the Net, the one of Evan Harmon playing in the celebrity softball game. Wherever the inspiration came from, he knew what the murder weapon was and he also knew where it was. He got Reggie to arrange for someone to dive into the Harmons’ man-made pond. Somewhere in there was a baseball bat. A bat that would have traces of blood on it. Ellis St. John’s blood. And fingerprints. Evan Harmon’s fingerprints. Salt water would have erased the evidence, but the pond was freshwater. Freshwater would not erase the evidence. Justin didn’t even bother to wait around. He didn’t need to. He knew.
Hades Page 35