Liar's Market

by Taylor Smith

  “I think you’re right,” Tracy said. “I was talking to that English guy while you were upstairs with the dragon lady. We’ve come up with an idea. He’s gone across the road to try to sell it to the big fellow from CIA Security and the Bureau guy. Come on in and sit down, Carrie. Let me pour you a fresh cup of coffee and I’ll tell you what we were thinking.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  McLean, Virginia

  August 17, 2002—12:22 p.m.

  Huxley paced back and forth across Bernice Klein’s sculpted pink Chinese living room carpet. “I think we should let her take the boy and get out of there. Maybe MacNeil’s coming back for the kid, maybe he’s not. But if he is, we should force him to make his move on turf we control.”

  “We control the ground right here,” Andrews said. The FBI supervisor was sitting on the Kleins’ over-stuffed sofa, flipping through documents, sorting them into cardboard storage boxes marked “MacNeil—Bank Statements,” “MacNeil—Stock portfolios,” “MacNeil—Real Estate Holdings.” All the financial records from the house across the road were being readied for shipment to the Bureau’s forensic accounting specialists, who would study them line by line in an effort to spot the smoking gun—hard, prosecutable evidence that Drummond MacNeil had received payoffs for intelligence he’d leaked to the Zurich broker they already knew had been reselling western security secrets to a well-bankrolled assortment of enemy states and terrorist organizations.

  “MacNeil knew he was under surveillance,” Huxley argued. “That’s why he took off the other day. This is his turf, and somehow, he twigged to it. We could sit here from now till doomsday. If he does decide to come back for the boy, he’ll bide his time, then grab him a few months down the road from school or a park or a playmate’s house. In the meantime, that old crone across the road is making her daughter-in-law miserable.”

  “Hey, my heart bleeds,” Andrews said. “Look, she made her bed when she married MacNeil. Now she has to lie in it. Tough luck.”

  “Not the little boy’s fault, though,” Tucker said quietly.

  The old bruiser from the CIA was sifting through a box containing the contents of the Jaguar MacNeil had abandoned at Tyson’s Corner, mostly insurance papers and maintenance records, it would seem. But he paused, frowning as he smoothed out one piece of crumpled paper pulled from the bottom of the box, then set it aside.

  “I tend to agree with Huxley,” Tucker added, looking up. “We’ve done the background security check on Tracy Overturf and her parents. There’s no red flags there. I had an answer back from our station in Rome, by the way. The parents are right where she said they’d be, camped out in a rented villa in Tuscany. Mom’s an English prof at Georgetown University, using her sabbatical year to put the finishing touches on a novel. Dad teaches Romance Languages and is apparently a gourmet cook on the side. Our station over there says he’s doing the rounds of Tuscan inns, gathering recipes, writing a kitchen guide of the region.” Tucker held up a dog-eared issue of Bon Appetit. “I found an article here that Professor John Overturf did a couple of years ago. It’s on Italian cooking class vacations abroad. Probably sparked the idea for his book.”

  Huxley smiled to himself. Trust Tucker to have uncovered that little detail. That was something else Huxley had learned about his gruff colleague in the months they’d been working surveillance together. Tucker was something of a gourmet himself, as evidenced by some of the meals he’d whipped up right here in Bernice Klein’s well-stocked kitchen. Huxley and Tengwall both thought they’d gained weight on this job.

  “I was talking to Ms. Overturf just now,” Huxley added. “She said the reason her parents didn’t rent out their house while they’re away is because it’s needing some work. They didn’t think a renter would want to put up with the bother of having carpenters underfoot. If Mrs. MacNeil and her son were house-sitting, though, that might provide a handy cover to keep someone inside the place.”

  “You have anyone in particular in mind?” Andrews asked.

  Huxley shrugged. “Me old dad’s a joiner. Been around hammer and saw all my life. Depends what needs doing, but I could make a passing fair stab at the job.”

  Andrews smirked. “So you’re volunteering to babysit the lovely Mrs. MacNeil?”

  “For a bit, maybe, until we decide whether it’s worth the candle or not. My brief—which both your front offices have signed off on, by the way—is to stay on top of this until MacNeil turns up, dead or alive. It’s not like I’m over-employed at the moment. I’d like to earn my keep.”

  “You know, that’s what I like about the cousins,” Tucker said, grinning to Andrews, “you can always count on ’em to pitch and help with the dirty work.”

  “Here, now,” Huxley protested. “Who was it held Hitler and the real bloody ‘Axis of Evil’ at bay for three years while you lot sat back and filed your nails, then?”

  Tucker played an imaginary violin.

  “We’ll see about letting Mrs. MacNeil move out and how that might unfold,” Andrews said. “Before she does, though, I’ll want the place in Georgetown checked out from top to bottom.”

  “Meantime,” Tucker said, picking up the crumpled paper he’d set aside, “did you see this?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A letter from the brokerage firm handling Carrie’s investment account from her parents’ estate. You remember she said she had her own money to live on so she wouldn’t need alimony if she divorced MacNeil?”

  “Yeah? So?” Andews cocked his thumb at the boxes of paper. “We’ve got her brokerage statements. Looks like there’s just over a million-four there, including a decade’s worth of accumulated interest. Most of it’s in bonds and mutual funds. Fairly conservative stuff.”

  “It was,” Tucker said.

  “What do you mean, ‘was’?”

  “I just came across this letter from her broker. It was under the seat in MacNeil’s car, apparently. Seems to be a response to a request to liquidate her account, and it’s dated July 28—three weeks ago.”

  “Why would MacNeil be carrying around a letter from her broker?” Huxley asked.

  “Didn’t she say that money was hers alone?” Andrews added.

  “The letter was addressed to her,” Tucker said, handing it to Andrews. Huxley moved over onto the couch next to the FBI man to read over his shoulder. “It confirms that they’ve started liquidating the account as per her instructions.”

  Andrews scanned the letter and read, “‘As requested, proceeds of your account have been divided into a series of laddered transmissions as scheduled to the accounts listed in the attachment to this letter (Annex A). These transmissions are to begin on this date and continue daily for the next eighteen weeks.’” Andrews flipped over the paper, scowling. “The attachment’s missing.”

  “Yeah, but think about it. A series of daily financial transmissions over eighteen weeks…” Tucker pulled a pen from his pocket and began scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. “That’s…umm…one hundred and twenty-six individual cash transfers.”

  “No big deal, these days,” Huxley said. “It’s just a computer algorithm. You set it up once and the electronic banking networks handle the rest. I don’t get it, though. Why dribble it out like that?”

  Tucker was still calculating. “Because assuming the million-four and change was divided up into equal chunks, that would make each international transaction about…. yup, just as I thought.”

  Andrew smacked his thigh. “Son of a bitch! Puts them under the ten thousand dollar mark that triggers the federal reporting requirement. Godammit! And you guys think she’s not in on her husband’s dirty dealing?”

  “Wait a minute,” Huxley said. “Even assuming that she is transferring her money offshore, it doesn’t necessarily make her a co-conspirator with him.” He waved a hand over the boxes strewn about the room. “We’re looking for MacNeil’s payoffs from the Zurich broker. This money came from her parents’ estate. Maybe what was going on here is that each of th
em, unbeknownst to the other, was planning to take a scarper, only MacNeil beat her to the punch and got out of town first.”

  “Whatever,” Andrews said. “Either way, she hasn’t been truthful with us. There’s obviously more going on here than meets the eye. I think I’d like to see how she explains herself on this one.” He folded the broker’s letter and got to his feet. Before the others could follow, a tinny bleat sounded from his hip pocket. The FBI man withdrew a cell phone and flipped it open. “What’s up?…Shit. I’m on my way!” He jammed the phone back in his pocket and headed for the door.

  Huxley and Tucker were close on his heels. “What happened?”

  “Across the road,” Andrews shouted, as he threw open Kleins’ front door. “MacNeil’s been spotted!”

  The rain had let up and a brilliant summer sum was breaking through the black clouds that had hung over the city all morning. The air was turning steamy, as the pavement dried and puddles evaporated. The cicadas, which had sounded muted from inside the closed up houses, were piercingly loud out in the oak and sycamore trees that arched over Elcott Road, as if shrieking in delight at the rain’s end.

  Huxley, Tucker and Andrews sprinted across the street and up the MacNeils’ white rock drive, taking the brick stairs at the front door two at a time. Inside, the front hall was empty, and as they wove from living room to dining room to den, looking for someone—anyone—they found the place apparently deserted. They ran down the short access hall to the kitchen. Rounding the corner, Andrews’s wet, leather-soled shoes skidded on the glossy terrazzo flooring.

  The kitchen was empty, too, but across the way, on the far side of the solarium, the French doors leading out to the terrace stood open to the early afternoon sunshine. On the sloping lawn beyond, leading down to the dock, they saw three agents in blue knit golf shirts with FBI stenciled in yellow across the back moving up and down the riverbank. Carrie MacNeil and her friend and son stood on the dock, peering downstream.

  “What happened?” Andrews asked as they reached the edge of the lawn.

  “I’m not sure,” one of the agents said. “We were working in the den when we heard Mrs. MacNeil yell. When we came into the kitchen, she was already outside, chasing her little boy across the lawn. Her friend said the boy spotted MacNeil down by the dock.”

  “Shit,” Andrews said. “Where’s the outside detail? Did they see him?”

  “They were in the garage. They’d been doing the rounds of the houses, but when the sun came out, they went to dump their hot rain gear in there. They couldn’t have been inside more than a couple of minutes, though.”

  “Where are they now?”

  The agent pointed to the riverbank, where two more agents were moving up and down through the tangled underbrush at the water’s edge.

  “For God’s sake,” Andrews said, disgusted. “Get on the radio, right away. Get a description out to the air patrol. I want overhead recon, stat.”

  Huxley was already down on the wooden dock, his eyes scanning the murky river. The rain had freshened the air, setting dust and washing down the summer-weary leaves, but on the water, bits of brown gunk and green algae could be seen floating just under the surface. In those moments when the breeze died a little, the Potomac breathed a ripe and slightly sour odor of decaying animal and vegetable material. You wouldn’t want to take a swim in this soup, he thought.

  Carrie, meantime, was down on one knee on the wooden dock, examining her son’s leg. Jonah’s gray-green eyes sparkled with unshed tears and his lower lip was trembling. Beneath his denim shorts, his shin was bleeding through a grass-stained abrasion.

  “Hey, matey, are you all right?” Huxley asked.

  Jonah shrugged unhappily. “I slipped. The grass was wet.”

  “Ouch. Yeah, that happens to me all the time. Is he okay?” Huxley added to the boy’s mother, who was dabbing at the bleeding shin with a tissue.

  “It’s just a scrape,” she said, but her voice, too, was quavering and her hand was shaking. With mother and son both struggling to maintain a brave face, it was hard to tell who was working harder not to upset the other.

  “Here, let me.” Huxley pulled a clean cotton handkerchief from his pocket and folded it lengthwise in half, then in half again. “Looks like that leg needs a pirate bandanna. Hold still. We’ll just put this on until we can clean it up at the house, okay?”

  He knelt in front of the little boy, who put a hand on his broad shoulder to steady himself while Huxley tied the handkerchief around the bloody shin. The mother had pulled out of his way, but as she hovered nearby, Huxley could almost feel her nerves thrumming and hear her heart pounding in her chest.

  “So, Jonah,” he said, keeping his eyes down on the loose knot he was fastening, “what did you see that set you off running like that?”

  “I saw my dad. He was in a boat, a real fast one.”

  “A motorboat, hmm? What color was it?”

  “I think it was black. And it had a stripe on the side.”

  “Like a racing stripe?”

  “Yeah. And a roof and everything.”

  “No kidding. That sounds like quite a rig. And was your dad running it?”

  “Uh-huh. I was at the window in the breakfast room, fixing our nets. That’s when I looked out and saw him.”

  “You saw him pull up to the dock?”

  “He was already there. The boat was just kind of bobbing on the water at the end. I think he came to give me a ride, Mark. He must’ve bought the boat today like he said. He told me we were gonna get one. Soon as I saw him, I yelled, but he couldn’t hear me ’cause the windows were shut, so I ran to the door, but it was locked. After I got it open, I ran down, but the boat was already leaving and it was noisy, so he didn’t hear me calling. And I fell, and he didn’t see me.” The six-year-old’s composure finally abandoned him and he started to cry. “I wanted to go for a ride, Mom! How come he left? I wanted to go for a ride in the boat!”

  Carrie crouched down next to him and brushed his sandy red curls back from his sweaty forehead. “Shh! Sweetie, it’s okay. I don’t think it could have been Daddy. I told you, he’s away on a business trip.”

  “No, it was him! He had hair just like Daddy, and sunglasses just like Daddy. And he was wearing a blue golf shirt, Mom, the one we bought him for Father’s Day.”

  “Maybe it just looked like him and that’s why he left? Because the man realized he was at the wrong dock? You think?”

  “It was Daddy. I’m pretty sure it was…” A hint of doubt seemed to creep into his voice now, but maybe it was just frustration. In any case, the tears flowed freely and he threw his arms around his mother’s neck.

  Huxley watched as she rocked him, stroking his hair while her own nervous eyes darted up and down the river. Then she stood, lifting the little boy in her arms.

  “Come on, sweetie,” she said quietly, “let’s go up to the house and put a purple Band-Aid on that leg.” He wrapped his legs around her green apron, burying his face in her shoulder as she carried him back up the lawn and in through the solarium doors.

  Tracy Overturf had followed the others down to the water’s edge. She frowned at the men on the dock, now, then shaded her eyes as she, too, scanned the riverbanks, upstream, then down. Finally, head shaking, she went after her friend into the house.

  Huxley and Andrews were sitting on bar stools at the baker’s table when Carrie came back downstairs about half an hour later. Her mother-in-law had come down briefly to see what the commotion was about. Then, with a snort of disgust, she’d retreated upstairs to her room once more. Carrie had spotted her on her way down from the third floor, and she thought Althea had seen her, too, but her mother-in-law had marched into her bedroom without a word and slammed the door behind her.

  Downstairs, Tucker stood over at the solarium windows, still watching the sun glint off the Potomac, watching fruitlessly for Drum’s return. Tracy was emptying the dishwasher, and from the steam and the smell rising off the coffeemaker, Carrie c
oncluded that her friend had put a fresh pot of coffee on to brew. Even with the house shut up once more against the saunalike heat and humidity that had descended like a wet towel after the rain, Carrie could hear the low thump-thump-thump of rotor blades as a helicopter made passes up and down the river.

  Huxley looked up when she walked in. “Is the little guy all right?” he asked.

  Carrie nodded. “I let him lie on my bed to watch cartoons and he fell asleep. He’s still fighting that cold, and crying got him all crouped up again. He has problems with asthma, too, so when he gets upset like that, it doesn’t help. He used his inhaler, though, and that seemed to help.”

  “The sleep will probably do him good,” Tracy said.

  Carrie turned to Andrews. “Did you find anything out there? Was it Drum?”

  “I don’t know. That’s our search copter now, checking out the traffic on the river. We’ve got a patrol boat out, too, but so far, they haven’t spotted him—if it was him,” he added. “You think there’s any chance the boy imagined it?”

  “I don’t know,” Carrie said. “I was at the kitchen counter and I didn’t realize anything had happened until I heard him yell as he struggled to get the patio door unlocked. The next think I know, he was running out the door and down the lawn. If there was a boat, I didn’t see it. I’ve never known Jonah to make up stories before, though.”

  “There was something there,” Tracy said firmly. “I saw a wave sloshing around the dock. Some kind of boat had to have gone by, but I couldn’t see anything through the willows on the banks. Jonah’s a bright little guy,” she added. “I mean, look at the level of detail—he remembered that the man he saw had hair like his dad and sunglasses like his dad. Even a similar golf shirt, for crying out loud. I’ve seen people convicted in criminal cases on less complete witness testimony.”