by Dianne Emley
“Let it go, Iris.”
“The bad guys can’t get away with it.”
He kneeled on the grass in front of her. “Now you’re pissing me off.”
“I can’t just walk away because things might get tough. I have to do the right thing.” She held his face between her hands. “I’d like your support.”
“It stinks, Iris.”
“I know. The whole thing stinks, but I believe Weems when he says the risks of the sting operation are small. So, are you with me?”
Still on his knees, he reached to hold her thighs. “Once you get your mind set on something…” He sighed. “Of course I’m with you. Could I be any other way?”
She leaned forward and softly pressed her lips over his. He needed little encouragement and their gentle kiss turned passionate. He pushed up until he was leaning against her in the chair. He started pulling her blouse out from her skirt.
Panting, she put her hand against his and looked at the hedge separating her yard from her neighbor’s. “Let’s go inside.”
They ordered Chinese takeout and ate in front of the TV. It was mundane and wonderful. They went to bed early, both of them exhausted. He dropped off right away, but she couldn’t quiet her mind.
She thought about her life. She’d done plenty of things that she wasn’t proud of, done them out of naïveté, insecurity, a need to be loved. Those things were in the past, and she promised herself, never to be repeated. She was different now. Her past had been troubled and dark. Her future was bright and warm. Only the Czarina’s fox stood in the way.
She finally fell asleep. In spite of herself, she dreamed of Todd Fillinger and Le Café des Quatre Vents. He looked as she remembered him from Paris, with no beard and a husky build. He moved close to kiss her and she stroked his smooth cheek.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“That Rita Winslow.” Roger Weems was tossing the bogus fox up and down like a football as he spoke. It seemed to be a good-luck charm for him. He was dressed casually, wearing khaki slacks and a plaid shirt. Even dressed down, there was a military attitude in the knife crease in his pants and the way his brass belt buckle was squared. “She’s a funny old bird, isn’t she?”
“She has Fernando Peru on a short leash,” Iris said.
Garland, who was sitting at the conference table reading about the Czarina’s fox in one of the art books, was visibly annoyed. “Just for the record, Agent Weems, I want you to know that I don’t like this plot you’ve got Iris roped into.”
Weems scratched his head through his crew-cut. “All due respect, Mr. Hughes, but Miss Thorne stepped into this patch of quicksand herself.”
“You’re manipulating her desire to solve the murder of her friend.”
“Just doing my job, Mr. Hughes. Certainly, a man like you can appreciate that.” Weems tilted his head at Iris. “You’re not getting cold feet on me, are you, Miss Thorne?”
“No. I’m committed.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“Could you please call me Iris? Since we’re sort of in business together now.”
“Iris it is.” Weems’s Southern accent elongated the I. “And please call me Roger.”
The conference room door opened and a man pushed in a cart covered with telephones, tape recorders, and other devices.
“Here’s Jimmy. Great. Go ahead and do what you need to do to get everything set up.” Weems held his hand out to indicate the new man. “Iris, this is Jimmy Decker. Jimmy, Iris Thorne. And this is Mr. Hughes.”
Garland didn’t ask him to be less formal.
“Jimmy’s going to set up our communications.” Weems gathered the papers and books that were scattered across the table.
Weems sat at the head of the table. Iris took a seat across from Garland, who was facing the window.
“Iris, I received some information from Interpol on Enrico Lazare,” Weems began.
Iris eagerly leaned forward.
“He’s an up-and-coming drug kingpin. In the past few years, he’s become influential in the European heroin trade which is centered in Corsica. He’s ruthless. Murdered his way to the top.”
Weems opened a manila file folder and slid a black-and-white photo across the table to Iris. “That shot was taken at his sister’s wedding reception held last year at the estate of another wealthy Corsican on the island.”
Iris studied the photograph. It had been snapped from far off and enlarged until the details had blurred. The bride was in a full-skirted white gown with a long veil. There were many guests. The man who Weems indicated was Lazare was in profile. He had long dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, a prominent nose, and was wearing a black tuxedo with a bow tie. “It’s hard to tell, but doesn’t look like anybody I remember from Paris.”
Weems slid across more photos. One of them showed Lazare facing front. None of the photos were clear.
“Dean Palmer was a heroin addict. That explains his connection to Lazare.” Iris pushed the photos over to Garland.
“Interpol hasn’t received any reports on Lazare for over a month. It’s rumored that he recently had plastic surgery to disguise himself. He may be recuperating from his surgery in a secret location.”
“Is there any indication that Lazare had a legitimate business with Todd Fillinger?” Garland asked.
“We can’t find any evidence that they were in business together as art dealers. I suspect Fillinger brought Lazare into the deal with the fox because he needed someone who was capable of doing whatever was necessary to steal it. After Fillinger put Lazare onto the fox and Lazare had it in his hands, he murdered Todd.”
“Looks like Todd Fillinger is your link between Palmer and Lazare,” Garland said. “You have the big-time dealer and the user on the street. There needs to be a middleman. Is there any indication that Todd was a drug dealer?”
Iris watched Jimmy set up the telephones.
“We don’t have any information about that, but he could have been. Moscow is a booming town for vice of all types.” Weems put the photographs back into the folder and opened another one. “I also received information from Detective Davidovsky in Moscow. He’s obtained a report of the calls Fillinger made on his cell phone in the weeks before his death.”
He scanned a photocopied phone record on which someone had scribbled notes in the margins. “There were calls to Rita Winslow’s London shop and her flat. Some to Nikolai Kosyakov’s Club Ukrainiya.”
“Any that can be traced to Lazare?” Iris asked.
Weems shook his head. “There’s an interesting call he made ten minutes before he died.”
“He must have been on his way to meet me,” Iris said.
“Curiously, the call was to an optometrist’s office in Visalia, California.”
“Visalia?” Garland repeated.
“A Dr. Hart. We tracked it down, but no one in the office had heard of Todd Fillinger. The doctor’s assistant checked the records and Fillinger wasn’t a patient.”
“Visalia is about an hour north of Bakersfield, where Todd’s sister and her family live,” Iris commented.
“It’s worth following up on, but right now we’re focused on flushing out Enrico Lazare and Dean Palmer.” Weems looked at Jimmy, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table wearing headphones. “How’s it look, Jimmy?”
He held his thumb up. “Ready whenever you are.”
Iris swallowed dryly. “Could I have some water, please?”
“Certainly.” Weems rose and walked to the small refrigerator in a corner of the room. “Mr. Hughes?”
“Sure, thanks.”
Weems returned with several small plastic containers of water. “Okay Iris. Your name is Margo Hill. You’re the personal assistant of a well-known art collector who wants to remain anonymous. You’re calling Douglas Melba, an art fence who works out of San Francisco. Dean Palmer contacted him to help him sell the fox, but you won’t ask Melba anything about how he got his hands on the fox.”
Iris
picked at a loose cuticle on her finger. “What if he demands to know who the buyer is?”
“He won’t ask. This is typical of how these deals go down. No rich collector wants it known that he’s bought stolen art, although many of them do.”
Iris asked nervously, “What if he’s suspicious and starts asking questions like how long I’ve worked for the collector and how did I meet him?”
Weems responded patiently. “He won’t. He’ll want to set the price, date, time, and location for the sale and get off the phone.”
Garland interjected, “Won’t Melba or Lazare or Palmer be suspicious if they’ve never heard of Margo Hill?”
“She’s a rich guy’s assistant. They don’t need to have heard of her. And she doesn’t need to sound smooth. They’ll think this isn’t something she does every day. Look, it’s easy. If Melba, Lazare, or Palmer gets suspicious, there’s no deal. They’ll just walk away.”
Garland had fixed Weems with a steely gaze. Iris knew this look. He wasn’t saying much, but he didn’t have to. “This fence, Douglas Melba, he’s someone you know.”
“Right.” Weems waited for the rest of Garland’s thought.
“Then why don’t you simply follow him until he leads you to Palmer or Lazare and arrest the lot of them?”
Weems picked up the bogus fox and sharply banged it against the table. “Because of this, Mr. Hughes. We want the fox. The surest way to get it is to buy it. Once I have the fox, I can get everyone.”
“What about the price?” Iris sucked on the bloody spot where she’d pulled off her cuticle.
“Ask him his price and then haggle with him a little. That’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”
“What are we willing to pay?”
“Keep it around six million. That’s a good black market price. We’ll give you a case full of money. He’ll give you the fox. We’ll trail the money to Palmer.”
“Where’s Lazare in this?” Garland asked.
“In the shadows. He’s got Palmer doing his dirty work for him. Once we get Melba to rat out Palmer, which he will, we’ll put the squeeze on Palmer to get to Lazare. Winslow is waiting for Iris to sell her the fox, so that’ll be a piece of cake. Then we’ll have it all. After that, I may just get out of this business.”
“And you can guarantee Iris’s safety through all these transactions with these sundry lowlifes,” Garland said.
“Of course there are risks. I told Iris that. But we’ll do everything possible to ensure her safety.”
“What does Iris get out of this?”
“I won’t arrest her and she’ll know the bad guys who murdered her friend will be going to prison.”
“Why didn’t you just arrest her? Is it because you know you’d have to let her go because you don’t have any evidence against her?”
“Mr. Hughes, I can get the evidence. Understand? I’m too close to wrapping my hands around this. I’m not giving up now.”
Garland studied Weems, unblinkingly meeting his eyes. After a while he said, “Iris, this guy is as bad as these crooks he’s chasing.” He stood. “Come on, let’s go.”
Iris looked from him to Weems, not knowing what to do. “You were onboard with this, Garland.”
“Things look different in the cool light of day,” Garland said. “Iris, Agent Weems is obsessed with this case. He’s not concerned about your welfare. Anything happens to you, you’ll be collateral damage, and he’ll just find a new patsy.”
“Now hold on, Mr. Hughes,” Weems said as he stood. “I explained to you earlier that if Iris backs out, there will be severe consequences for her.”
“And I just explained to you that you’re full of crap. You have an obsession about getting this fox and a vendetta against this Winslow woman. I don’t know what’s behind it and I don’t care, but Iris doesn’t need to be part of it. Iris, let’s go.”
“Garland, please,” Iris said. “I want to do this. I know you don’t like it and I’m sorry.”
“But the hell with you, Garland. Right?”
“Garland—”
He was out the door before she could finish.
Iris scowled at the closed door. Jimmy and Weems both watched and waited.
Finally, she said, “Let’s do it before I lose my nerve.”
Weems tried to contain his satisfaction at having won. He pulled Iris’s chair out when she got up and guided her to the opposite end of the table, pulling another chair out for her to sit down. “Remember: price, time, and place. Tell him you want to meet in Los Angeles in a public place. At the airport or a busy restaurant or something like that. You won’t meet him in some hotel room. I need to surround you with agents.”
“Should I mention a place?”
“I don’t want him to get suspicious. Tell him to suggest a place. I’ll check it out. If I don’t like it, you’ll call him back and tell him to pick someplace else. He can call you back with the location, but impress on him that your boss wants the deal done tomorrow or the day after at the latest.”
He slid a pad of paper in front of her. There was a phone number on it. “Tell him that’s your private line at your boss’s office. He can leave a confidential message for you on it. Tell him the fox is hot and if the plans take too long, he’s afraid word of the sale will get around.”
Iris nodded.
He looked at his watch. “It’s almost three. I got word to Melba that we’d call by then. We’d better do it. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Jimmy punched in a telephone number. Iris picked up a telephone handset. Weems pressed one side of a headset to his ear.
The phone rang twice. A man answered. He sounded tired. “Hello.”
“Douglas Melba, please,” Iris said.
“Who’s calling?”
“This is…” Iris paused for a second.
Weems winced.
“Margo Hill.”
“Okay. This is Melba.”
“I’m calling about the fox. My boss wants to buy it.”
“Six million.”
“Six?” Iris began to relax and get into the flow. “That’s a little steep. That’s more than my boss wants to pay.”
Weems closed his eyes and nodded slowly.
“What does he want to pay?”
“No more than five.”
“Can’t do it. Can’t go any lower than five seventy-five.”
“Five-fifty. That’s his final offer.”
Weems widened his eyes at Iris.
Melba exhaled into the phone. There was a long pause during which no one in the conference room moved.
“Okay, five million, five. Cash.”
“Of course. When and where?”
“Let me get back to you on that.”
Iris shot a worried glance at Weems. He put up a hand to indicate it was okay and scribbled SOON on the pad of paper.
“That’s fine,” Iris said into the telephone. “But my boss wants the deal completed tomorrow or the next day. He’s afraid word will get out if it takes too long.”
“Understood,” Melba said in his flat voice. “Where can I call you?”
Iris read the number that Weems had written down. “That’s my private line at my employer’s office. If I don’t answer, just leave the time and place on the phone machine. But it has to be in the L.A. area.” She quickly added. “And a public place.”
“Public. I don’t know if I can go for that.”
“Look, I’m coming by myself. I’m not going to meet you in a hotel room or something. You can understand that.”
Weems clenched his fist and shook it, indicating Iris was doing well.
“Okay, fine,” Melba said. “I’ll call you back tomorrow.”
“Okay. Good-bye.”
Weems drew his finger across his throat and Jimmy disconnected the call. As soon as they were off, Weems threw his arm around Iris’s shoulder and hugged her hard. “You were great. It couldn’t have gone better.”
“Good work,” Jimmy ag
reed.
“Thanks. I feel a little shaky.” Iris’s hand trembled as she took a sip from the water bottle.
“Do you need a ride home?”
“I don’t know. I can’t believe that Garland would have left me here, but maybe he did.”
“I’ll drive you.”
Iris left the building with Weems, who was still grinning. He guided her through the almost vacant building with his hand on her upper arm as he had done the day he first brought her here. But today, the gesture felt protective.
She still felt shaky and stepped carefully as if her legs might give way. She didn’t know if it was because of the phone call or if Garland’s departure had sunk in. On the one hand, she wished she’d gone with him and left Weems to follow through on his threats. On the other, she was angry at Garland. Maybe he didn’t agree with what she was doing, but he should at least respect her decision. His outburst had surprised her. She’d never seen him act so emotionally before. Was he jealous of Todd, a dead man? She was certain of one thing, she didn’t know what she would do if Garland wasn’t waiting for her outside.
She smiled when she saw him sitting on a cement bench near the parking lot.
“Looks like your ride’s still here,” Weems said. “I’ll call you as soon as Melba leaves a message.” He walked to the parking lot, greeting Garland as he walked past.
Garland smiled at Iris.
“I thought you’d left me.” She sat beside him.
“I could never leave you.” He scratched his head, rumpling his auburn hair. “I don’t know you as well as I thought I did. I don’t understand how you could have been in love with a man like Todd Fillinger.”
“Todd was always nice to me. He wasn’t involved in anything criminal when I knew him.”
Garland shifted on the bench, as if he didn’t like what she had said.
She added, “I’ve since learned that Todd was into some pretty heavy stuff. It’s hard for me to admit that I didn’t really know him.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Weems’s navy blue Thunderbird drive past. “Todd Fillinger is dead.” She looked at Garland. “I’m in love with you and only you.”