“Leaving your car unlocked, that solved many problems,” the guy said. “We thought maybe we were going to have to grab you, put you in our car.”
“You really think you could do that?”
Our eyes met in the mirror.
He said, “I think maybe you would make it difficult.”
“You bet your ass I would.”
The guy looked out the window. He rolled his neck to one side. It popped. He rolled it to the other side. It popped again. These muscle guys.
I said, “Thing is, in the movies, guy sits up in the backseat he usually sticks a gun to the other guy’s head.”
The guy kept looking out the window.
“I’ve got one of those,” he said.
“So what happens next?”
“So what happens next is you keep driving. And you give me the file.”
“What file?”
“The file given to you by the man in the restaurant.”
I picked up the file from the seat and handed it to him.
We didn’t talk much after that. I flipped on the radio, the guy in the backseat didn’t tell me to flip it off. There was music. Then there was news. The news was about the shooting at Libido the night before. One dead, one wounded, suspects still at large. Then came the voice of Kenya Oompong denying any NPU connection to the shooting. Then the reporter was saying that Darcy Whitehall had been unavailable for comment. Yeah, I knew all about that. I flipped the radio off.
When we got to Mo Bay, the guy told me to turn left to by-pass all the traffic on Gloucester Avenue, then right on Dover Road. I’d figured that’s where we were going. Every now and then it’s nice to be right.
“Stop here,” he said when we got to 314 Dover Road.
The Range Rover stopped behind us. No sign of Lanny Cumbaa.
“Signs say no parking,” I said.
“It will be OK,” the guy said. “Trust me.”
65
You picture someone named Freddie and you see this guy, maybe a block-shaped little guy, with flashy clothes, rough around the edges and a boisterous way of doing business. Freddie Arzghanian was not that kind of Freddie.
He was Andy Garcia, like Andy Garcia in Ocean’s Eleven—great suit, hair that looked like he had a personal stylist on retainer, no laugh lines around his cold dark eyes. He was younger than I figured he would be, early forties, and he sat waiting for me on the other side of his desk. The desk was a slab of polished onyx cut in some free-form design, made it look like a shiny black amoeba. It was very cool.
So was Freddie Arzghanian. He watched me enter his office with the two guys who had been following me snug tight on either side. They were a matched set. The one who’d been in the backseat of my car handed Arzghanian the file that Lanny Cumbaa had given me. Arzghanian nodded the two guys to step back and they flanked the closed door. Then he nodded me to a chair by the desk. I sat down in it.
Arzghanian spent a few moments flipping through the file. Then he closed it and sat there studying me. I studied him back. It was a very thrilling moment.
Finally Arzghanian said, “Why did you come here the other day?”
“Got lost, stopped in to ask directions. Your receptionist was very helpful. She deserves a raise.”
“Please, Mr. Chasteen, I haven’t the time for this.”
“Neither do I. I’ll be going now.”
I got up from the chair and turned for the door. The two guys moved to block my way.
I pointed at the one who’d been in my backseat, the gum chewer.
“I’m coming for you first. Then you,” I said to the other one. “So if the two of you want to figure out a strategy to avoid getting your asses kicked then now’s the time.”
They both flipped back their jackets, put hands on their pistols. Helluva strategy.
“Sit back down, Mr. Chasteen,” Arzghanian said.
Seemed like a reasonable option. I sat back down.
“Why did you come here the other day?” Arzghanian said.
“I was trying to figure out the connection between you and Darcy Whitehall.”
Arzghanian looked me dead in the eyes, his face a perfect mask.
“Continue,” he said.
“And I’m trying to figure out who killed my friend.”
“You think these two things are somehow related?”
“Don’t know. You tell me.”
Arzghanian eased back in his chair. He folded his hands, propped his chin on them, and looked at me.
“If I were to say, yes, that I killed your friend, then what would you do?”
“Haven’t worked that part out yet,” I said. “I’m thinking I can probably jump across that fancy desk of yours and grab you before the two goons have a chance to pull their guns. After that it’s anyone’s guess.”
Arzghanian smiled. At least I think it was a smile. His lips narrowed and turned up on the ends like lips do when people smile. Then again, maybe he was just doing face exercises, stretching his muscles, trying to avoid that middle-age sag.
Behind me, I could hear the two goons move in a little closer. Good to know I had them on the defensive.
Arzghanian said, “Perhaps your time is better spent asking what your friend was really doing working for Darcy Whitehall.”
“I already know the answer to that. Monk was working for the feds.”
“And for what purpose, do you suppose?”
“Hey, just a wild guess here, but I’m thinking it had something to do with money laundering. I mean, that’s your business, isn’t it?”
Arzghanian did that thing with his lips again. It wasn’t so much a smile as it was a snarl.
“I am just a simple banker,” he said.
“Smooth line,” I said. “Bet you’ve used it before.”
Arzghanian shrugged.
He said, “What about you, Mr. Chasteen?”
“What do you mean, what about me?”
“Do you work for the feds, too?”
“Why would you think that?”
“You come here to help your friend. He dies. You take over where he left off. Plus, you just had lunch with this man.” He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a file, and slid it across the desk to me. I looked at it. Lanny Cumbaa’s photo was paper-clipped to the outside.
Arzghanian said, “Mr. Cumbaa has been nosing into my affairs for years. He is very persistent.” He tapped the thick accordion file Cumbaa had given me. “And his work is very thorough. I have seen it before. Has he recruited you to work for the DEA?”
“Yeah, matter of fact, he has,” I said. “Care to hear my job description?”
“Please, if you’d be so kind.”
“I’m supposed to use that file to squeeze Darcy Whitehall and get him to give up the goods on you. Then the feds swoop down, arrest you, and the world is a better place.”
“Simple as that?”
“A piece of cake,” I said. “So why don’t you just let me borrow your phone and I’ll call them right now and tell them I’ve got you cornered. Then you can confess to everything, and it’ll save us both a lot of trouble.”
This time Arzghanian did something with his lips that was more smile than snarl. He sat there, studying me. I studied him back. There we were, the two of us, and a couple of goons by the door, delighting in each other’s company.
Arzghanian said, “You are a very interesting man, Mr. Chasteen.”
“Gee, I find you pretty fascinating, too.”
“What I mean is, I admire your directness. I would not expect you to be so open about your motive, especially when it is one that could so easily get you killed. Not that I would ever entertain such an idea, of course.”
“Oh gosh, I know you wouldn’t, Freddie.” I gave my best coon-eating-shit-off-a-toothbrush grin. “So, seeing as how I’ve been direct with you, and you’ve decided not to kill me, I need you to be direct with me. What kind of jam has Darcy Whitehall gotten himself into?”
Arzghanian thought it over for a
moment. Then he said, “All I can tell you is that he recently came to me saying that he needed a loan.”
“For how much?”
“Please, Mr. Chasteen, that is banker-client privilege. Very confidential.”
I put a finger to my temple.
“I’m thinking of a number, Freddie, and it’s, let’s see, it’s five million dollars. Five million dollars U.S. The amount you’re going to pay for that piece of property off Old Dutch Road.”
It got raised eyebrows from Arzghanian. But nothing else.
“Public record, saw the legal ads,” I said. “Plus, I took a drive up there to check out the property for myself. You’re getting screwed, you don’t mind me saying so. Plus, there’s a bunch of squatters living up there. Pain in the ass to move them off.”
Arzghanian made a face.
“The legal ad, it was Darcy’s idea, not mine. He wanted it all to be on the up-and-up, nothing under the table.”
“Doesn’t sound like the way you two have typically done business in the past,” I said.
Arzghanian shrugged.
“No, he did not want the old way,” Arzghanian said. “Unfortunately, there are certain regulations involved with the way my bank does business. There really is no such thing as a simple loan.”
“The way your bank works, you loan someone money and you own them, control the way they do business.”
“A crude way to look at it,” Arzghanian said. “I prefer to think that we are partners. At first, when Darcy approached me about the loan, about me buying that piece of property, it was with the understanding that we would resume our partnership. So he placed the legal ads and prepared papers for a standard real estate transaction. But he began to have misgivings when I spelled out certain terms of the loan.”
“What terms exactly?”
“I’m afraid that’s proprietary information, Mr. Chasteen. But five million dollars is a lot of money, and so the terms were, let’s say, rather rigid regarding my expectations for resuming our partnership,” said Arzghanian. “And that is why the deal fell through.”
“So you aren’t buying that property after all?”
Arzghanian shook his head.
“No, I am not. We came to that decision the other day when Darcy was here at my office, the day you visited. As you know, Darcy is preoccupied with getting his son elected to parliament. As well he should be. Alan Whitehall is an exceptional young man.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Which, unfortunately, put Darcy in the position of having to decide whether to resume our partnership or maintain a clean break for appearance sake, for Alan’s sake. In the end, he decided to make the break and withdraw his offer to sell the property. It was all very amicable, I assure you. Darcy is a friend. I tried to help him find other funding options through more, shall we say, traditional venues. That is why he was here in Mo Bay for two days. Sadly, we were unable to secure him any funding to that end.”
“So he still needs five million dollars?”
Arzghanian nodded.
“Yes. And from all that I can gather he needs it quite soon.”
“Why does he need it?” I said.
Arzghanian shrugged.
“I can’t be sure. He hasn’t shared the details with me. Only that he needs the money.”
“But you have your suspicions, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. Whoever is behind this, they plague me as well.”
“So, who is it?”
Arzghanian cocked his head and looked me. He took a long time answering.
Finally, he said, “How much loyalty do you have to your government, Mr. Chasteen?”
“I’m an American. Scratch me and I’ll bleed red, white, and blue.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question. Perhaps I should rephrase it,” said Arzghanian. “How much do you trust your government and the people who work for it?”
“I’m willing to give most of them the benefit of the doubt,” I said.
“Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”
“Considering some of the things that have happened to me in the not-so-distant past, it’s the best I can do,” I said. “But my ambivalence is equal opportunity. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, too.”
“Fair enough,” said Arzghanian.
He looked past me, to the goons by the door.
“Ramin, Hamil, you may leave us now, while we talk man to man,” he said. “I do not think Mr. Chasteen intends to grab me.”
The two left the room and shut the door.
“Ramin and Hamil?” I said.
“My sister’s sons. We are Lebanese originally. Ramin it means gentle, and Hamil is for compassionate. Very poor choices of names,” Arzghanian said. “You would not have made it across the desk.”
66
Two hours later, I stepped out of the building at 314 Dover Road. The black Mercedes was out front, right where I’d left it. I got in and wound my way out of Montego Bay, back toward Libido. I heard the cell phone ringing. It had fallen onto the floorboard. I let it ring.
I was on The Queen’s Road, past the airport, when the green Honda zoomed up from behind, its horn honking, the headlights flashing off and on.
I pulled over on the shoulder. Lanny Cumbaa hopped out of the Honda, came running up to my window, spewing profanity before he even got there: “Holy fucking shit, man. I saw where those two guys were taking you and I thought you were fucking dead. Freddie Fucking Arzghanian. Holy fucking shit.”
“You really need to invest in a thesaurus,” I said. “Get in the car.”
Cumbaa hopped in the passenger’s side, got himself settled, admired the Mercedes.
“Sweet ride,” he said.
I said, “You know, I really appreciate it how, you being so worried and all, you sent in the cavalry and came to the rescue when I was in there with Freddie Arzghanian.”
“Cavalry? What cavalry? You’re looking at the fucking cavalry. And what am I going to do, put the life of a federal agent on the line just for some low-life informant?”
Cumbaa grinned. He said, “What part of that do you resent? The low-life part? Or the informant part?”
“That what I am now? An informant?”
“Well, yeah, that’s what you do, Zack. That’s how you save your ass from the IRS. So inform me, why don’t you?”
I told him some of what he needed to know. It took a while. When I was done, Cumbaa wasn’t nearly as puffed up as he’d been when I’d started.
“Jeez-o-fucking-Pete,” he said. “There’s always rumors within the agency about shit like this going on. You trust Freddie Arzghanian on it?”
“No reason not to.”
“You mean, besides the fact he’s Freddie Arzghanian.”
“Besides that,” I said. “You think he’s got it right? You think someone you work with could be causing problems for Darcy Whitehall?”
“You mean, like shaking him down?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Like I said, there’s always rumors. Mostly it works the other way—some scumbag offering one of our guys a shitload of money and our guy taking it. That kinda thing happens. But this here, it’s a whole different thing. It’s, you know, more proactive.”
We talked. Cumbaa told me a little bit about how things worked on his end. Then I told him how I saw it all playing out on my end.
When I was done, Cumbaa said, “So you and Freddie Arzghanian, the two of you hatched this plan, huh?”
“It’s just the beginning of a plan,” I said. “Still needs some work, still needs a few things to fall in place.”
“No shit, it does.” Cumbaa blew out air, rubbed his head with his hands. “Things are happening too fast, I gotta think. Gotta get out and walk around.”
“So do it.”
He did.
I sat there, fiddling with the seat controls, got it to recline. Cumbaa was right about the Mercedes. It was a sweet ride. Not my style, but still a sweet ride. Cumbaa was
right about the way things were happening, too. Fast, much too fast. I leaned back in the seat and thought about how I could make all the things happen the way I wanted them to.
A few minutes later Cumbaa got back in the car.
He said, “So I guess what I need to know is, who are you working for? Me? Or Freddie Arzghanian?”
“Neither of you,” I said. “We’re equal partners in this thing. It works out, we all get a little something.”
“Only I don’t get Freddie Arzghanian.”
“Did you really think you were going to?”
“Hell yes, I did. I was gonna be a hero.”
“You’re still gonna be a hero, Cumbaa.”
“Yeah, but a different kind of hero.”
“A hero all the same.”
Cumbaa shrugged, said: “So what do you get out of it, Chasteen?”
“You mean, besides the everlasting gratitude of the U.S. government?”
“Yeah, like I’m sure that makes your heart go pitter-patter,” said Cumbaa. “Look, I can’t promise the IRS won’t come after you.”
“No, but you can promise that you won’t sic them on me.”
Cumbaa nodded.
“Yeah, I can do that easy enough.” Cumbaa studied me for a moment, said: “So you got a side deal going with Arzghanian?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Because you’d be crazy if you didn’t, that’s all I’m saying.”
I didn’t say anything.
Cumbaa said: “How much?”
I didn’t say anything.
“OK, fuck you very much. That’s your business,” he said. “So what I got to do now, I got to contact my supervisor, run this by him, see about getting some backup in here for when this goes down.”
“No,” I said.
Cumbaa looked at me.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean, you don’t contact anyone at your office. Trust no one you work with. At least for the time being. For obvious reasons.”
Cumbaa thought about it. He knew I was right. He scrunched his lip, chewing on it, looking at me.
“That makes me very fucking uncomfortable.”
“Paybacks are hell, huh?”
Cumbaa shook his head, started to say something, stopped. He looked out the car window. Then he looked back at me.
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