Primary Valor

by Jack Mars

  Everything was done on an anonymous, encrypted phone Darwin’s people gave him. He never saw a bill. He didn’t even know what network it used. On Friday afternoon, he took the battery out of the phone and dropped it in the river.

  He’d been thinking of killing himself ever since. Yes, it seemed he had gotten away with it, but that didn’t mean he deserved to live.

  And as soon as he noticed these plainclothes types following him, he knew it was over. He hadn’t gotten away with anything. It was just completely over. There was no sense pretending anymore. He couldn’t go to jail. He couldn’t face Joy. He couldn’t face the media.

  He was moving quickly again, as fast as he could, and the ladder shook as he climbed it. He did not want that cop to catch up to him. At the top of the ladder, he clambered out through yet another trap door.

  He emerged onto a wide platform. It was high, much higher than it had seemed from the ground. The height was crazy, and the platform sloped gently downward from the center to the edge. One side of the platform looked out over the harbor and the distant islands, and the ocean, and maybe the whole world. It was dark that way.

  On the other side of the platform was the city. He could see the lights of the buildings downtown. He imagined he could almost see people moving, hurrying along city streets, all the hustle and bustle. But that was a different city, not Wilmington, not North Carolina. That was New York. It was almost like he was hallucinating now, or having visions. It was like he could understand things, things he’d never understood or even thought of before.

  He had been such a fool. Just a sorry clown who skimmed along the surface and never tried to understand anything. Now, too late, he saw that he could have been smarter about it all. His life could have been different.

  He started to cry.

  He walked toward the edge. It was an amazing view. More than amazing, it was magic. A strong wind blew, shaking the structure beneath his feet.

  Behind him, the man clambered out onto the platform. Jeff turned and looked. He was a tall black man, fit, handsome, maybe mid-thirties. The guy had everything going for him. His sports jacket billowed around him. He had a gun in a leather shoulder holster. Everything about this guy was stylish. He was the triumph of style over substance.

  “Jeff,” the man gasped. “Let’s just talk. You’re not in trouble. We don’t know anything right now. But there’s nothing that’s been done that can’t be undone. I can tell you that much.”

  Jeff backed away. He took a step, then another step. He was just a few feet from the edge now. He glanced down behind him. There was nowhere left to go.

  “I’m afraid you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The man raised both hands. “Okay, maybe. Maybe I don’t. Even so.”

  Jeff stepped backwards, right up to the edge, his back to the abyss.

  “Look at it, Jeff. It’s a long way down.”

  And it was. He glanced back and the water seemed far below, as if they were standing on top of a skyscraper rather than a bridge. He did a quick calculation: four stories back to the roadway, another five or six to the water after that. A ten-story fall. It would do the trick.

  He raised his arms out to his sides.

  “Jeff, don’t do it. You’re going to die.”

  Jeff nodded. He took a deep breath. He hoped that death was just a long darkness and nothing more.

  “I know,” he said, and let himself fall backwards.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  11:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Marriott Extended Stay Suites

  Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  “The man’s name is Darwin King,” Trudy said.

  Luke looked at Ed. Ed shook his head.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I don’t know,” Luke said. “Might ring a bell, might not.”

  They were sitting in the generic living room of Luke’s incredibly generic hotel suite. It was nice, in its way. Clean, spacious, with a good kitchen. Everything worked. But it had zero character or charm. It was a place for tired business people flying from Point A to Point B all week to lay their heads for a night or two.

  There was something both alienating and comforting about it. If you were in San Francisco one day, and Kansas City the next, and Chicago the next, it might be reassuring to stay in hotel suites that were the same everywhere you went.

  “Well,” Trudy said. “Get ready, because he’s a corker.”

  They were on another conference call with SRT Headquarters. Swann, Trudy, and Don were all still up and at the office. Luke might call that dedication, except it was nothing more or less than it should be. He and Ed were still on the job.

  “Do tell,” Ed said. Ed had killed two men tonight. It didn’t seem like it had exorcised any of his demons. He looked both murderous and exhausted at the same time.

  “Darwin King,” Trudy said. “He’s fifty-eight years old. Tall, handsome, a lifelong playboy. He comes from old money, and can trace his ancestry to both early Dutch traders who settled in New Amsterdam, as well as fanatical Puritans who settled Massachusetts and Rhode Island, both groups going back to the mid-1600s. He grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.”

  “So he’s one of the people who inherited this country,” Luke said.

  Trudy’s disembodied voice came out of Ed’s phone, which was sitting on the kitchen counter. “He seems to think so. He’s believed to have a net worth in the range of one to two billion dollars. No one can be quite sure, because much of his income comes under the table, and is undeclared and untaxed.”

  “What does he do?” Ed said.

  “His main business is arms deals. He has amassed an arsenal of old Cold War weaponry, mostly Soviet stuff, what we would consider obsolete. He sells it to Central African warlords, despotic regimes in Central America, and rebel militias just about anywhere and everywhere. He’s thought to have kept the civil war in Liberia going years past its expiration date by dumping cheap weapons on any ragtag group that could rub a few dollars together. He’s ruthless and utterly amoral.”

  “War is good for business,” Swann said.

  “If your business is war,” Trudy said. “And his is that.”

  “You said it’s his main business,” Luke said. “What else does he do?”

  “Oh, you name it. He owns a wide array of legitimate cash businesses, including restaurants, Laundromats, pool halls, and video arcades. He has almost certainly used them to launder money for South and Central American drug cartels. He is even considered something of a loan shark, since that’s one of the best returns on money you can get. And that’s the tip of it. There’s probably a lot more that we don’t know about. What we do know is he runs his businesses like a Mafia empire.”

  “How does he fit into this?” Ed said. “And why does stumbling upon him stop our investigation?”

  “It’s complicated,” Trudy said. “He appears to have protection at the highest levels. There’s possible intelligence agency involvement, though all information on him held by the CIA, NSA, and DEA is classified, if it exists. He has an enormous Rolodex. My sense is that his relationships with Third World dictators, Swiss and Cayman bankers, militias, cartels, oligarchs, foreign intelligence, and various other flotsam and jetsam make him useful. He lived in Manhattan for a long time, and his parties there were known as a who’s who of politicians, celebrities, and sports figures. The tentacles of his businesses reach all over the world.”

  “Even so, what does that have—”

  “Here it comes,” Trudy said. “He has a large estate on Jupiter Island, Florida. His property is about twenty-five acres, with ocean frontage, gated and behind high walls. About five years ago, in response to several missing person complaints, the Palm Beach County Police Department opened an investigation into activities taking place at King’s estate. Namely, teenage girls from around the city of West Palm Beach and neighb
oring areas had begun to disappear.

  “In general, they were girls from troubled backgrounds, broken homes, foster care. In a couple of cases, they turned up again months later, and said they had been living on King’s compound. The suggestion was that these girls were either enticed onto the compound, or were abducted and brought there. They became sex slaves for King and his friends, possibly including household names in the worlds of politics, international business, European aristocracy, filmmaking, and other fields. Some of the girls who disappeared never turned up again.”

  “How many?” Ed said.

  “It’s hard to say,” Trudy said.

  “Guess,” Ed said, “if you don’t mind.”

  Luke looked at Ed. Ed’s eyes were tired, but also alert. He was hungry. He was on a hunt. He was going to fix something in the past, something that couldn’t be fixed. He had risked his life earlier tonight stepping in front of a door that had just been blown apart by a shotgun. And he had killed the man they were hoping to interview.

  He would do it, Luke knew. He would drive up to Jupiter Island right now, as soon as this phone call ended. Then he would scale the high walls of some billionaire’s estate, and fight the man’s bodyguards to the death.

  Ed needed a break.

  “Twenty-seven,” Trudy said. “But not all of them could have been at King’s house. There’s also been known serial killer activity in South Florida over the past ten years. At least some of those girls may have been murder victims. Others may have simply run away, changed their names, fell off the radar. But some of them, certainly, appear to have ended up at King’s house.”

  “Twenty-seven girls have disappeared?” Ed said. “Twenty-seven?”

  “Yes,” Trudy said.

  “How is the investigation going now?” Luke said.

  “It isn’t,” Trudy said.

  “Why?”

  Don’s voice appeared. “You know why, son. Two police departments, the FBI, and at least one or two other agencies are on the case, but somehow the can keeps getting kicked down the road.”

  “Someone is squashing it,” Luke said.

  “Good boy,” Don said.

  Luke shook his head. “I’m not as dumb as I look.”

  “Who’s there now?” Ed said. “At the estate?”

  “Swann?” Don said.

  “Yeah, uh, I’ve done two drone flyovers in the past hour. I took my time, got a look at all of it. It’s quite a spread, like the Palace at Versailles. A main house, with two wings. Must be thirty or forty rooms. Beachfront, rolling lawns, a big inground swimming pool. Everything is lit up, but it seems as if no one is there. I didn’t spot a single human being anywhere on the compound.”

  “It appears,” Trudy said, “that King has left the country. He’s known to have a private island in the Western Caribbean, called St. Simon’s Saw, which is about forty miles off the coast of Honduras, near the border with Nicaragua. He has a close relationship with the Honduran ruling class and military. St. Simon’s is also a quick flight to Grand Cayman, where he appears to do much of his banking.”

  “No one is at the Jupiter Island place?” Luke said.

  “I didn’t see anyone,” Swann said. “But it doesn’t mean there’s no one there. If I had to guess, I’d say there are some maintenance people around.”

  Ed was quietly seething. “This man has stolen twenty-seven girls, he has an estate on Jupiter Island, and he has an entire island of his own?”

  “No one claims he stole twenty-seven girls,” Trudy said. “There are twenty-seven girls in that part of Florida who have gone missing in recent years.”

  “There’s some intelligence chatter about him that I’ve come across,” Swann said. “He’s paranoid. He moved his entire household and entourage down to the island. He felt that even if the investigation was stalled, it was still too close to him. As a result, he decided to leave town, maybe for a while, possibly for good.”

  “So why don’t we just go there,” Ed said, “and get the girl back? And any other girls that happen to be there?”

  “It would take a security clearance that we don’t have,” Don said. “The Bureau is watching us like a mother hen. If they, or some other agency, or someone in power, deliberately stopped an investigation into this man, then the odds of the Bureau sending us to Honduras…”

  “Do we need them to send us?” Luke said.

  “Yes,” Don said. “This is why you’re attached to Special Agent Bowles. Or, more accurately, why he’s attached to you. He’s supposed to oversee your work.”

  “Bowles seems to have lost interest in us.”

  “Oh, I think he’ll be back.”

  “In the meantime…” Ed began.

  “In the meantime, you guys should get some much deserved rest. Let me see if I can touch base with a couple of people, and get some clarity on this.”

  “By clarity, you mean…”

  “I think you both know what I mean. Provided you’re up for it.”

  “I am,” Ed said.

  “Good,” Don said.

  Don was going to go forward. He was not going to wait for clearance, or even ask for it. That was the takeaway Luke got. Don suspected where the blockage was, and he was going to go above it, or around it.

  Luke didn’t know how he felt about that. The Bureau had already crashed their party once. If they had done it once, they could do it again. It was as simple as that.

  “How’s the security situation there?” Luke said. “Find any bugs crawling around?”

  “We swept this place from top to bottom,” Swann said. “At least for the moment, we are clean as a whistle.”

  When they hung up, Ed looked at Luke. It was time for Luke to go back to his room, and go to sleep. He welcomed it. Ed’s eyes were tired, and wired, all at the same time. He looked like he might never sleep again.

  Luke was concerned about him. He was going to drive himself too hard. Then he was going to slip up. In a sense, he already had. He had killed Cienfuegos tonight. That was bad enough. The next time, he might get them both killed instead.

  “Do you believe Swann?” Ed said. “Do you think that place is clean?”

  Luke thought about it for one second. “Absolutely not. I think they’re listening to everything we say.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  March 29, 2006

  1:35 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

  A white Lexus parked on the street

  Georgetown, Washington, DC

  “The mother’s boyfriend killed himself tonight,” Miles Richmond said. “Threw himself off a bridge.”

  Don Morris sat in darkness in the back seat, nearly shoulder to shoulder with Bill Ryan. Miles Richmond sat at the steering wheel. The three of them could be the world’s oldest gangbangers, plotting the world’s slowest drug deal.

  In fact, Don was updating them on the status of the case. He wanted to put the idea out there, an SRT surgical strike on Darwin King’s island. It was Richmond’s idea to talk in his car, like a bunch of teenagers. He didn’t want anyone to overhear them.

  Don hadn’t heard of this suicide until now. It could be that it would change things. It could be that it would change nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Richmond shook his balding head. “Don’t be.”

  “Why did he do it?” Bill said.

  “No one knows for sure,” Richmond said. “I have my suspicions, however. Joy isn’t necessarily a bad mother, but I’m sorry to say that she makes bad choices. This guy Zorn was one of them. I wouldn’t put it past him to have been involved in this somehow.”

  “Did Zorn know a man named Darwin King?” Don said.

  Richmond’s eyes laser focused on Don in the rearview mirror.

  “Everyone of a certain ilk knows Darwin King,” Richmond said. “I’m sure Zorn knew him. I’m sure that if you look, you’ll have no trouble finding pictures of them partying together. Darwin King likes his parties.”

  His eyes didn’t waver from
Don’s. “Why do you ask?”

  “None of what I’m about to say is guaranteed,” Don said. “But we’ve been tracking leads, and we’ve shaken the tree a bit. My people now believe that Darwin King took your granddaughter. He didn’t personally do it, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Richmond said. “Darwin King isn’t capable of doing anything himself.”

  Now Don eyed Richmond. “Do you know him?”

  “As I indicated, everyone of a certain ilk knows him. I qualify, unfortunately.”

  “Do you have reason to believe that he might want to hurt you?”

  The eyes still stared at Don. But now tears had begun streaming from them.

  “I swear to God,” Richmond said. He shook his head. “If he does anything to her…”

  “Did you know this from the beginning?” Don said. “My men risked their lives to get this information. They killed two men. They found three dead children. If you already knew…”

  Now Richmond shook his head violently. “Absolutely not. I had no idea. I had no reason to think it was him until this moment. But I do know him, and I know he’s a terrible person. We’ve banged heads in the past. He was a client of mine at one time, to be frank. But he wants what he wants when he wants it, and if he doesn’t get it, he decides he doesn’t have to pay. Then he gets taken to court, where he loses. And even with judgments against him, he still doesn’t pay. Instead, he demands back the money he paid upfront. He’s notorious for this.”

  Richmond took a deep breath. “He thinks I stole from him, but the truth is, he stole from me. And now…” His voice trailed off.

  “Now he’s taken Charlotte?” Bill Ryan said.

  Don nodded. “We think so, yes. We think he hired professional kidnappers, human traffickers, to take her. Two of those men, as I mentioned, are now dead.”