“He doesn’t travel,” she said. “Hemmingway and Davie are the ones he sends on business trips. Davie’s been to New York a few times since she started working for us.”
Well, I thought. That’s a new wrinkle. Let’s hope that lead doesn’t play out. “Has Hemmingway been to New York?” I asked.
“Yes, but she doesn’t go as often. Davie takes most of the business trips.”
“Okay,” I nodded. “Has anyone mentioned Moldova recently?”
“Robert in Human Resources just bought a new car, but I think it’s a Honda.”
I blinked. “Good mileage on those,” I said. “I’m surprised Rinehart doesn’t travel himself. Most small business owners are hands-on.”
“He can’t,” Evalyn said, sipping her cocoa. “He gets sick. I heard he was in the first Iraq War. Someone told me he has Gulf War syndrome, but I don’t know if that’s a real disease or if it’s just a rumor.”
“Depends on who you ask,” I said. “I didn’t realize he was in the military.”
“He wasn’t,” the girl replied. “He was a private contractor. He says that’s why he knew Davie would be good at commodities acquisitions. She was a civilian who got to know the locals, like he did when he was over there.”
“I’d think someone who used to work as a contractor would know where to hire security.”
She shrugged. “He says he used to be in the motor pool?”
“Ah.”
Dead end after dead end. The odds of it being an inside job had seemed to jump when I had noticed the state of the office, but maybe there were other answers. Janitors get sick. Tech guys can be careless with registration codes. Managers at rental companies cut deals for a friend of a friend...
“Has Viktor Kumarin ever come into your office?” I tried, my one last chance. “He showed up unannounced at the safehouse last night. I thought it was… Well, you know. It was strange. People don’t do things like that.”
“No?” Evalyn shook her head. “I’ve never seen him, at least. I’ve just heard his name.”
“How long have you worked at Friction?”
“Since Rinehart opened in Washington? I had a friend who worked at his last company in Denver. He recommended me.”
I escorted dear young Evalyn back to the office, and flopped in the chair next to Ami in the waiting room.
“Learn anything?” Ami asked, still thumbing through the magazine.
“Robert in the HR Department bought a new car.”
“Yeah. a blue Honda Accord. He put a whopping sixty percent down.”
“Bored?”
I felt her glare at me through the link and the crumpled paper of the fashion magazine beneath her fingertips. “After learning that matching my nail polish to my purse is so last century, I checked out Friction’s financials.”
“Whoa!” I sat up, shocked. “Ami, I did not hear that.”
It was—and still is—OACET policy to not abuse our power. Admittedly, some of us were not as good about this as others (such as, hypothetically speaking, causing a series of minor traffic accidents in downtown D.C. to rescue a hostage-slash-girlfriend), but we tried. We all tried very, very hard. And we never bragged about it when we did step off of the straight and narrow, not even to each other.
“Metro has a warrant to search their books. Rachel is on loan from OACET to Metro. Rachel was in my head as I searched. Ipso facto legalo.”
“None of that is a real thing. Rachel would never have let you do that.”
“Do you want to hear what I found or not?”
“Fine,” I said. “Hit me.” I’d manage the legalities later. Maybe while helping Rachel dispose of Ami’s corpse: Rachel was ferocious when it came to upholding the letter of the law.
“Nothing.”
“Ami…”
“Seriously. No financial trails leading to any international accounts.”
“For a company which deals in overseas transactions?”
“Yep. Strange, no?”
I considered this, then asked: “All of their money comes from American investors?”
“There were a few British and Canadian transactions,” she amended. “But nothing from Eastern Asia, Africa, or the Middle East.”
Not what I had expected. Not from a business founded by a man with a long track record of doing business overseas.
“There must be something,” I said. “Davie travels the entire freaking planet. There’s got to be at least one international account.”
“Not unless it’s off the books. Here’s another thing,” Ami said as she turned a page. “I’ve been going through the office email.”
“That’s unethical and illegal. I did not hear what you just said. Nor will I hear anything that you will now say to clarify what you might have read in those aforementioned emails.”
“Uh-huh. So, the night Davie was threatened, there was an exchange between Friction Commodities and their potential trading partners in Nuristan. The Afghani company blamed Viktor Kumarin, and they threw their unconditional support behind Davie.”
“That worked out nicely for Friction,” I said.
“Didn’t it? Then, when Kumarin turned himself in, the Afghanis gave him the benefit of the doubt. Apparently they took it as a gesture of goodwill on Kumarin’s part. He might not get this one contract, but his reputation in Afghanistan has improved.”
“How about that. Don’t you love it when everybody wins?”
“I know, right?” Ami closed her magazine and stretched. “Seems to me that if you take out the parts where your girlfriend got terrorized and the last man standing was shot, there was no real harm done.”
“And Squirrelface wouldn’t have been shot if he hadn’t gotten stupid and kidnapped Davie.”
“Squirrelface?” I could feel Ami’s curiosity through the link.
“Nickname. Did you know that Kumarin got angry when he heard that Squirrelface had been shot?”
She shook her head. “Isn’t it sad when your goons don’t follow the plan?”
“Tragic, really. Let’s run this through. Assume Kumarin hired the Moldovans to threaten Davie...”
“Or,” Ami added, “Kumarin hired them, but gave them to someone at Friction. Either scenario would explain why Kumarin wasn’t aware of the sniper.”
“Which puts the person who hired the sniper here,” I said. I forced myself to slouch low in my seat so I wouldn’t look around and search their faces.
“Follow the money, Josh. Who paid the sniper, and who gets paid when Davie’s deal closes?”
I nodded. “Call Rachel. Tell her what we’ve found. Also, tell her Rinehart was a contractor in the first Gulf War, and have her check his record.”
“Will do. This is all ironic, you realize.”
“What is?”
“How everything would have worked out just fine if you hadn’t stuck your dick where it didn’t belong. You think your girlfriend is involved?”
“Nope. I think she was a sympathetic target.” I kissed Ami’s shoulder and stood. On my way back to Davie’s office, I remembered to add: “And there is nowhere my dick doesn’t belong.”
“Remind me to get you that garbage disposal for your birthday.”
I winced.
“Too far?” she asked.
“Yes. Be nice to it, and it will be nice to you.”
EIGHTEEN
I might have suspected Davie if it weren’t for two things. The first is that I’m damned close to impossible to trick. I’m not one of those so-called human lie detectors, but I know people, and I know when they have no conviction in what they’re saying. It’s how I knew something was off about Kumarin’s confession. If Davie had ever lied to me, it was because she believed the lies herself.
And the second thing? Davie was no killer. Even if she had staged the attempted assault, even if the plan was not to kill her but to hurt her enough to earn a pity vote, there was still the matter of Squirrelface’s exploding braincase. Davie was gradually learning my world
was not the swampy mess of morals she had originally thought, but her opinion of murder hadn’t changed.
Halfway to Davie’s office, I paused.
Not Davie.
Maybe Rinehart.
Kumarin, definitely, but not in any way I could easily prove. There was no reason to bring the Moldovans into this if he wasn’t involved. They appeared to be Russian to the casual American eyewitness, but Kumarin would have plausible deniability if anyone dug deeper. An odd way of playing on ethnic stereotypes, but since it had worked both on me and on as someone as well-traveled as Davie, it’d probably work on most folks.
There was one last name that came to mind. Someone who played with Friction Commodities’ public image on a daily basis.
Might as well cover all of the bases, I thought.
I found Hemmingway in her office. It was the twin of Davie’s, part of the same large central room in Friction Commodities but walled off from the rest of the employees by glass windows. I saw that Hemmingway had a cell phone out, her thumbs flashing at a frantic pace over the tiny keyboard.
I walked inside without knocking. Hemmingway glanced up, saw it was me, and nearly dropped her phone. She fumbled with it until she found the off button, then shoved the phone in a desk drawer.
“Can I help you, Agent Glassman?” she asked.
“I thought we could talk about Moldova,” I replied.
Her mouth dropped open. Not a lot, but enough.
Gotcha, I thought.
“What?” she asked, her voice steady.
“Not smart,” I said as I spun a vacant chair around and dropped into it. “Using a cell phone with two OACET Agents in your office. Especially when it’s a twin to the burner phone which sent the GPS route to the kidnapper.”
I had no idea whether the phone actually was a twin or not. It was a gamble on my part, but it paid off. Hemmingway’s eyes shot down to the desk drawer.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I’m sure you don’t,” I nodded. “But this would be a good time to ask for a lawyer.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“No,” I shook my head. “This is Metro’s case. I’ve just been helping them with the tech. But I’m giving you fair warning. They’re getting close. If you turn yourself in, it’ll go much better for you. Almost like Kumarin’s gesture of goodwill from the other night. I’m sure you remember that. Touching, wasn’t it? Not exactly the type of thing a former gangster would think up himself.
“They’re closing in,” I leaned forward. “I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
“I don’t need your help,” she insisted. “You’re insane. I had nothing to do with this.”
I smiled and stood. “Think about it,” I said. “The clock is ticking.”
I walked out of Hemmingway’s office and closed the door behind me, then went to the rest room at the other end of the floor. Five minutes, I bet myself. She’d either run or want to make a deal; in either case, this would finally be over in five short minutes.
I didn’t count on Ami getting up to stretch her legs.
Okay, I’ll admit this was my fault. Or, it wasn’t so much my fault as that I didn’t think to tell Ami how I had wound the most likely suspect to the point of popping. But Hemmingway, who was either coming out of her office to meet me or to make a break for the parking garage, I never did learn which, saw a bored Ami striding towards her, pistol drawn and seemingly at the ready.
Hemmingway panicked. She spun on her heel and tried to escape. And me—stupid me!—I picked that exact second to step out of the bathroom.
Hemmingway saw me coming at her from the other end of the room. Caught between two cyborgs, she did the only thing that made sense to her at the time.
She took a hostage.
(I have no idea what the man must have been thinking. One moment he’s walking along, busy in his paperwork, and the next the files are flying through the air and he’s got a gun to his head… Really ruins a day.)
Hemmingway had chosen well. He was tall and heavy; she was forcing him into a crouch, and he was still big enough to cover her.
Across the room, Ami had her pistol up and aimed directly at the three square inches of Hemmingway’s head that weren’t blocked by the man in the suit.
“You’ve got a target?” I reached out to Ami.
“Yep.” Ami was deathly still, but I felt her nod through the link. “If you can’t charm the pants off of her, I’ll take care of it.”
I ignored the screams of the employees and took a few steps towards Hemmingway, slowly. Hemmingway was smart; she knew Ami was the major threat in the room and didn’t move, but she did tell me, “Stop.” She dug the gun into the man’s head to make her point.
I stopped. “You know what I used to do for the FBI?” I asked Hemmingway.
“You think I care?”
“You should,” I said. “I used to do hostage negotiations. I know how to get you exactly what you want, and make sure that everyone in this room can go home to their families.”
“What I want?” Hemmingway laughed. “I want to go back in time and keep myself from starting this shitstorm! Or find a way to keep you out of it!”
“I don’t understand,” I told her. It was a little white lie; Ami and I had put the pieces together, but a room full of witnesses would help cover what Ami had discovered during her unauthorized search of Friction’s electronic records. There’s a way out of everything if you know how to find it.
“If you hadn’t gotten involved, no one would have gotten hurt. I would have gotten paid! But you had to come along and be the hero!”
“The Moldovans were just going to threaten Davie,” I said, leading Hemmingway through her own confession. “They’d disappear, she’d report it to the police, the security footage would confirm her story, and all of this would have been over before it had begun.”
“We needed to motivate our partners,” Hemmingway said. “The deal wasn’t moving fast enough. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You were running out of time,” I said. “The war was supposed to end, the region was supposed to stabilize so mining could begin.”
“But the war kept going!” she cried. “We overran all of our worst-case estimates. Chris hired Davie to close the deal before we went broke, and it still wasn’t enough.”
“I think I understand,” I shook my head sadly. “So you and Kumarin teamed up. He agreed to sacrifice this one contract to improve his long game in Afghanistan. I’ll bet you signed a non-compete agreement on a few other potential contracts in exchange for him putting you in touch with the Moldovans. And after the news got out that your closest competitor was no longer in the running, it’d be just enough to buy some more goodwill from your investors.”
Hemmingway nodded. “We had always planned for him to turn himself in to clear his name. It would help his image.”
“Okay, I see what’s happened. You had good intentions,” I said. “It’s just been bad luck for you every step of the way.”
I took another step towards Hemmingway, and she twisted the gun in her hostage’s thinning hair.
“Back up,” she warned.
“I’m going to sit down, okay?” I said, holding up my hands and lowing myself until I was seated cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t want you to worry about me trying to jump you.
“What’s your name?” I asked the hostage.
“Robert Hollins?” He was wide-eyed and very unsure why we were making polite conversation.
“Hi Robert, congratulations on your new car,” I said. “Do you have kids?”
“Yes?”
“Stop!” Hemmingway shouted. “I know what you’re doing!”
“Bonding him to you, right?” I asked Hemmingway. “You’re probably watched a lot of action movies, been told it’s harder to shoot a hostage if you know about him. But since Robert works here…” I shrugged and leaned back on my hands, “… you already know more about him th
an I do. I’m not doing anything other than reminding him to stay calm.
“Here’s another thing they tell you in the movies,” I added, as if it were an afterthought. “They tell you the police never negotiate. That’s bullshit. Sometimes negotiation is the smartest way to end a bad situation. Hollywood makes sure that’s never shown. Law enforcement wants to foster the myth that a hostage taker never gets away. But that’s just not true. It happens all the time.”
(By the way, very little conventional wisdom about hostage negotiation is true. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors. Like how a man sitting on the floor might look more harmless than a man standing, but in reality he’s setting up a better shot for his assassin buddy. If Hemmingway wanted to concentrate on me, she’d have to juggle her grip on the too-tall Robert, then the bang!bang!bang! would come and poor Robert wouldn’t be able to wash the feel of raw brains out of his hair until he went completely bald.)
“Now, let’s talk about how you walk away from this,” I said to Hemmingway. “What do you want to happen? I can’t undo what’s been done, but we can work something out.”
Hemmingway started listing a bunch of stuff that could never happen, while I nodded and promised her it would.
Then, a dozen feet behind Hemmingway, Chris Rinehart appeared. He was slowly moving towards the waiting room. I tracked his path and cringed. Ami’s shotgun was where she had left it next to her chair; she preferred a pistol for tight work.
“Ami—”
“I see him,” Ami snapped. “I’ve only got two hands. Tell me what you want me to do with them.”
“Stay on Hemmingway,” I decided. “And hope Rinehart doesn’t do something stupidly heroic.”
I was still talking to Hemmingway. We had reached the part in the conversation where she was beginning to think that swapping Robert for Ami would be a good idea. I promised her that Ami would be docile and neatly handcuffed; Hemmingway would be ever so surprised when Ami broke both of her arms the moment they were alone in the elevator.
That was the plan, at least. We were right on the edge of making it work when Rinehart lunged for Ami’s shotgun.
Hemmingway saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and spun. Ami’s pistol went off first; Hemmingway’s right wrist seemed to dissolve, her Smith & Wesson falling to the ground. I was up and running with Ami’s single shot. I caught Robert in a low tackle and brought him down to the ground.
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