by Alan Russell
PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR
“He has a gift for dialogue.”
—The New York Times
“Really special.”
—Denver Post
“A crime fiction rara avis.”
—Los Angeles Times
“One of the best writers in the mystery field today.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Ebullient and irresistible.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Complex and genuinely suspenseful.”
—Boston Globe
“Credible and deeply touching. Russell has us in the palm of his hands.”
—Chicago Tribune
“He is enlightening as well as entertaining.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“Enormously enjoyable.”
—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
“Russell is spectacular.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“This work by Russell has it all.”
—Library Journal
“Grade: A. Russell has written a story to satisfy even the most hard-core thrill junkie.”
—The Rocky Mountain News
OTHER TITLES BY ALAN RUSSELL
No Sign of Murder
The Forest Prime Evil
The Hotel Detective
The Fat Innkeeper
Multiple Wounds
Shame
Exposure
Political Suicide
Burning Man
St. Nick
Guardians of the Night
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2002, 2015, Alan Russell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477827475
ISBN-10: 1477827471
Cover design by Stewart Williams
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952437
To my beautiful daughter Brooke, without whose help this novel would have been finished three years sooner than it was.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER
ONE
The hit had proved to be anything but easy.
Her security was as tight as any he had encountered. She had eight bodyguards, and on those rare occasions when she did go out, they formed a protective phalanx around her. Behind their large bodies, you couldn’t even see her.
She was staying at the Copacabana Palace, a landmark neoclassical building styled after the great hotels of Europe. The Palace had opened in 1923 and was still considered the place to stay when going to Rio de Janeiro. Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles and Madonna had been guests there, as had de Gaulle and Eva Peron, and Queen Elizabeth and Princess Di, but neither celebrities nor politicians nor royalty had ever claimed an entire floor as their own as she had done. Her tab was a hundred grand a night, but for her that was chump change. There was no getting to her by elevator or stairway; her men had those covered. And there was no chance of his posing as staff. Her people had made the upper floors off-limits to hotel personnel. She had even commandeered the private pool on the sixth floor.
Graham Wells strolled along Copacabana Beach. Behind sunglasses, he monitored the hotel. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t made an appearance on the balcony for the three days she had been in Rio. If she was taking in the view of Copacabana and Leme’s famous horseshoe-shaped beach, she was doing it from inside her room, making a point of staying away from the windows.
His prey was wary.
With rolled-up trousers, Graham walked along the white sand in his bare feet. The camera around his neck advertised his being a tourist, which made him a mark for the vendors working the beach. He hoped he wasn’t a mark for others. Graham kept one hand on the camera strap, discouraging would-be thieves from attempting a snatch and run. His cash was tucked away in a money belt. There had been tourist advisory warnings about conditions in Rio, but Graham had visited spots that were much, much worse.
He looked once more to the sixth floor. A few years back, one of Graham’s targets had holed up in a twenty-third-floor New York City apartment. To get to him, Graham had borrowed a window washer’s rig. The lift was self-contained with an up/down button controlling the pulley system. As insurance, he stationed an accomplice above him just in case the rig jammed or failed to operate. He started from the thirtieth floor and slowly made his way the seven floors down. All the while he descended, Graham kept telling himself it was just like being in an elevator. But this elevator had no walls, no reassuring and insulating cocoon. Even wearing a safety harness, he had found it hard to breathe. He kept asking himself what the hell he was doing in a position like that, and like always, he made the same promise: this would be the last time. He would leave the game for good. Graham remembered how it felt being so high. His mortality had revealed itself in so many ways; his pounding heart, his trembling flesh, the bile in his throat. When he made it down to the twenty-third floor, he was shaking so hard he could barely hold the squeegee in his hands. The clean windows had made it easier to see in, though.
There was always a way to get the shot. You just
had to find it.
The roof wouldn’t work this time. She had one of her bodyguards stationed up there. If he was going to get to her, it would have to be away from the hotel. The problem Graham faced was time. She would be leaving soon, going back to her Bel Air estate. On her home turf, his big game hunting would be even tougher.
Thus far Rochelle hadn’t gone stir-crazy. Rochelle—the world knew the pop star by the one name—had been on top of the music world for five years. For the recording business, that was almost an eternity. Everyone had thought Rochelle’s Rio de Janeiro visit would be one long party. For the beautiful people, Copacabana is a high-octane twenty-four-hour experience. But Rochelle hadn’t gone out to shake it in the many nightclubs along Avenida Atlântica. The old Rochelle would have been painting the town red, shopping along Rua Santa Clara, taking in the view and being viewed in the Forte de Copacabana, being risqué in the naughty nightlife strip called the Go-Go Copa, and going lip to lip at sunrise with a just-caught fish at Fisherman’s Corner. Those were the kinds of shots the world had come to expect from Rochelle. But then again, with Rochelle you had to expect the unexpected. Rochelle had a habit of reinventing herself. She was a pop diva, not a flavor of the month. It wasn’t only that Rochelle had great pipes—which she did—but her voice was complemented by the package and charisma that went with it.
Carnival was a month away, but Rochelle usually created her own Carnival wherever she went. This time, though, she seemed to be all business. Her long-awaited album was due out in two months, and she was finishing a last video for one of the sound tracks, a hot love song with lots of Latin flavor. The Rio beat was being showcased in the video. The Ipanema drag queens had come to a set and strutted their stuff to the pounding beat of samba drums, Rochelle dancing with them. And a couple weeks earlier, Rochelle had sent her film team to shoot footage of Rio’s famous New Year’s celebration along Copacabana’s Atlantic shore. Times Square had nothing on Copacabana. Every New Year’s more than two million people crowded together on Copacabana’s beach to watch the huge fireworks display. Most of the spectators dressed in white, a local tradition for good luck. The pounding drums grew more intense as the midnight hour approached. Many of the celebrants indulged in pinga, Brazil’s version of moonshine. Others came for spiritual counsel. Holy women, dressed in white cotton turbans, set up shop on the beach, offering an ear and guidance to the many who waited in their long lines. At midnight, the crowds rushed to the water’s edge, throwing in flowers and other offerings for Lemanja, a sea goddess worshiped in the Brazilian African religion of Umbanda. For one night at least, Lemanja had many followers. Rochelle’s video was supposed to be a combination of Lemanja and Venus and Rochelle. She would emerge from the sea with a suit of long wet hair, perhaps a little imaginative seaweed, and nothing else.
Graham looked at his watch. It was a quarter to twelve. He had a meeting with his local talent at noon at a nearby food kiosk on the Lido. Graham wasn’t sure which his confederate preferred more—the food or the view. Carlos Ribiera—called by friends and enemies Carlos the Jackal—knew whom to bribe and what questions to ask. Those were necessary talents for Graham’s line of work.
Carlos was twenty minutes late, but he didn’t seem to be in any rush to make up for lost time. In Brazil, clock watching is not a popular pastime. He was wearing dark sunglasses that complemented a white linen suit that would have looked better on Colonel Sanders. Carlos wasn’t wearing a Panama hat, probably because he was vain about his wavy black hair. He walked along as if he was hearing a samba beat. Maybe he did. Music always seemed to be playing somewhere.
Carlos ordered for them. Graham liked listening to the back and forth of Brazilian Portuguese. It wasn’t the same tongue as spoken in Portugal. It was samba Portuguese. On paper plates, Carlos brought over a Brazilian stew of black beans, pork, kale, and rice that he identified as feijoada. The two men did their chewing, and drinking of beer, and talking, sitting on wooden boxes and looking out to the beach. There were plenty of dental floss bikinis to keep Carlos happy. He pointed out one sunbather who seemed to have on less fabric than the emperor’s new clothes, offering up his jackal’s smile with his words.
“A few years back, one of your kind, and a girl like that, got our president in trouble.”
“That’s my job,” Graham said, “and that’s the job of girls like that.”
“It was during Carnival,” said Carlos. “President Itamar Franco was in a fancy box reviewing the parade. This model came straight from her float, where she had been doing a lot of shaking and dancing for the crowd. Anyway, after performing, she took off her costume, which wasn’t very much to begin with, and put on her change of clothes, which was a T-shirt. Being a very pretty thing, she was invited to the president’s box. And once there, she and our president got along famously. She stayed at President Franco’s side, and the two of them waved to all the passing floats. And people waved back. Oh, yes, they waved back. Because whenever she raised her arms, her shirt lifted, very clearly revealing her absence of panties. A photographer snapped some shots of the president and his companion, and that caused quite the scandal. You can imagine all the jokes and stories. In his defense, our president could only say, ‘How am I supposed to know if people are wearing underwear?’ ”
“The naked truth,” said Graham.
Carlos laughed. “Your job is to reveal that, yes?”
“Sometimes.” Graham tried to direct the conversation away from scantily clad women. “What did you learn?”
Carlos shook his head, even lost a little bit of his smile. “Bad news,” he said. “She won’t be doing her beach scene here. She’s made alternate arrangements on some island.”
Graham opened his mouth to question him, but was stopped by Carlos’s raised hand.
“I don’t know where. No one knows. All I learned is that she’ll be flying out of here tomorrow morning at eleven. Her pilot hasn’t even been given a flight plan. Where they’re going is a big secret for everyone. After they land, they’ll be getting on a boat. I know that because she had one of her assistants go out and stock up on Dramamine.”
Rochelle wasn’t usually so reclusive, especially with a new album about to be released. She had never been shy about showing her body before, but in doing the production for this last video, she was staying out of the public’s eye. All that was left to shoot was what insiders referred to as her “spawning” number. Rochelle was supposedly going to be writhing on the beach with some boy-toy eye candy, doing a risqué From Here to Eternity number in the sand and surf.
“What did King Momo tell you?” Graham asked.
This year’s King Momo weighed in at almost five hundred pounds. Every year during Carnival, Brazilians selected their King Momo based on the size of his belly. They wanted a real jelly—or Jell-O—roll to the samba beat. King Momo’s job was to shake his stuff during the Carnival celebration. Rochelle had hired him to do some shaking for her.
“He couldn’t be sure,” said Carlos. “Most of the time he was told to look straight at the camera. While he was shaking his belly, she danced around him. Most of the time she was shaking her—what do you call it?—booty. The camera was on her booty and his belly. That must have been quite a sight.”
That sounded like Rochelle. Provocative posing went hand in hand with her CD releases.
“But,” added Carlos, “King Momo did say she didn’t look like any expectant mother he had ever seen.”
If Graham’s information was right, in a few months Rochelle’s belly was going to be as big as the King’s. Small bits of information were adding up to a pregnancy. This video was being treated like a top-secret production, with the filming angles tightly controlled. Rochelle wasn’t going out nights, or even mornings, and she was doing everything possible to avoid being photographed. Her usual skintight clothes had been supplanted by a more conservative wardrobe, and, two days before, Graham had photographed one of
her assistants buying two boxes of saltine crackers. He suspected Rochelle was suffering from morning sickness.
A month earlier, one of his informants had told him that a disguised Rochelle had gone on a spending spree in an exclusive baby boutique in Beverly Hills. She paid cash, of course. Perhaps afraid that she’d been recognized, Rochelle told the clerk she was buying the items for “a friend.” Her deliberations had seemed anything but impersonal, though. She had consulted a few times with a “buff” tagalong male. Her friend had been described as a “surfer type with muscles.” It sounded like Jack Wilkinson, a sometimes model, sometimes fitness instructor, sometimes Rochelle lover. The same Wilkinson had accompanied Rochelle on this trip.
Graham wanted a picture of the two of them together. He wanted a shot of a rounded Rochelle, in the first bloom of motherhood. Better yet, he was hoping for a maternal pose.
There were good reasons for Rochelle to not want the same thing—maybe millions of them. Rochelle marketed herself as a sex symbol. While her music audience crossed the ages, more than half her sales went to the twenty-five and under market, a fact Rochelle was intimately acquainted with. With her album due out in less than two months, she knew her vampy videos would play a lot better if her pregnancy was kept secret. Women might look beautiful when they’re pregnant—that’s what their men have been telling them since time immemorial—but even Demi Moore’s very pregnant, very nude Vanity Fair cover didn’t work well for her as a Hollywood marketing tool. The entertainment capital of the world was still the same place where a producer had strongly advised a pregnant actress to “lose it, or lose your job.” Rochelle wanted the cash registers to sing along with her siren songs. That was reason enough to not want to prematurely trade in her tight spandex outfits for maternity clothes, or navel rings for prenatal vitamins. Maybe her next album would be a rendition of her favorite children’s lullabies; this one was about steam, and eroticism, and sex.
“We’ll need to shoot her on the way to the airport,” Graham said.