by Ray Merritt
What I really wanted to know was more about Alice’s accident. I’ve never fully bought into the official version. She was too good a driver. I have tried to submerge that feeling, but it keeps bubbling up to the surface. If he told me more about how my family died, I would agree to omit his Swiss account from our report—a devil’s pact, which later I would break. Fuck him! I didn’t owe him anything. He might not have been the cause of their deaths, but he might well know something about what had happened. If he did, I’d destroy him.
49
As we began our descent into town, I noticed that the crows were surprisingly quiet.
From a roundabout on the edge of the road, Luc’s car reemerged and drew menacingly up close behind us. Viggie stayed calm. He directed us to keep low and not to open the windows. As Luc’s car drew abreast of us, it became clear that Sandino was intent on driving us off the road, sending us down the side of the mountain.
I tensed. Drew screamed. Dixie went white. Viggie went into action.
“Bastardo,” Viggie shouted as he turned our car into the side of Luc’s. We traded glancing blows but the road favored Sandino. On their side the land was elevated; on ours there was a steep decline.
A brace of deer darted across the road. At the same time we heard an awesome clamour. The crows had taken flight and attacked Luc’s car, pecking at its windows in a nightmarish frenzy. Drew hugged Nip hard. Viggie remained alert. His eyes were fixed on Sandino. His hands never left the steering wheel as he brought the car to an abrupt stop.
Sandino was no match. Startled by Viggie’s maneuver, Luc’s car pitched sharply, narrowly missing us, and slid down the mountain’s side until it hit a granite mass.
The crash was deafening.
Viggie, Dixie, and I piled out of the car and ran down toward the wreck. We were stopped by Viggie’s command. Drew had remained in the car with Nip. Viggie motioned Dixie and me to crouch down, as he unholstered a pistol he had carried under his sweater.
A body lay a few yards from the car. The passenger appeared to have jumped out as the car slid down. His eyes, rimmed with blood, were wide open, vacant—no trace of fear, remorse, or life. Farther down was Sandino—or, rather, part of him. His side window had shattered. His severed head landed on a bed of thistle. The rest of his body was a few feet away.
Viggie shouted, “Pezzo di merda. Si bruciano all’inferno. Hai ucciso i miei padri!” Roughly translated: “You piece of shit. May you go to hell . . . you killed my fathers.”
I understood. The others did not. Sandino’s clan had murdered Viggie’s family. Then killing Ben took away his surrogate father. He spit at Sandino’s corpse and silently crouched near the smoldering car. He shouted to us, “Stay down. Grogaman. He’s not here. Others dead. He got away. Dixie, maybe you come with me. Mr. T, you stay with Drew and Nip. You know guns, yes?”
I nodded, confirming what he already knew. We had had many conversations about my four years in the marines.
“Under my seat, you find a pistol and bullets. Watch for Grogaman ’til we get back.”
Dixie interrupted. “Hold on. Let me call Frank. If Grogaman has his phone on we’ll be able to track him.” He turned away, cupping his phone. Within a few minutes, he turned back.
“OK, we’re in luck. Frank has tracked Grogaman’s phone with his GPS app and he’s also tracking my phone. Luc is moving north-northwest. He’s about a quarter of a mile from here. One of Frank’s people will call Drew so you guys can follow our search.”
“OK, Viggie, we’re off. Stay low and follow me.” Dixie was taking command. Viggie did not resist.
I returned to the car and retrieved the pistol. Drew had already called 911. We sat and waited. Drew was ministering to Nip, who seemed to have recovered. Our wait was short. Drew’s phone rang. It was Dixie.
They’d found Luc. He was dead. They suspect he fell off a ledge. Viggie would remain with the body. He had retrieved Luc’s gun and phone and had given them to Dixie. Dixie arrived within a few minutes and put the guns and Luc’s phone in Ben’s car. Then we returned to inspect Luc’s car.
Evan’s body was there, his belt still secure. We had seen him before, and assumed he was dead. To our utter surprise, he was not. Blood had crusted on the side of his mouth and as I approached he began to speak, his voice a faint whisper. I leaned close.
“Ben was not supposed to die. I . . . only wanted to make him sick. He was going to ruin everything . . . Jonathan, I had nothing to do with your family’s death. I swear . . . nothing to do with killing your family . . .”
He said no more. His head tilted; his eyes became opaque. He was dead.
Evan had killed Ben. An accident, he claimed. Alice, Lilli, and JJ’s deaths NOT an accident. They were murdered.
I went limp.
I awoke to anxious questions.
“Yes, yes, I’ll be OK.”
Dixie and Drew didn’t believe me.
“You’re sure you’re OK?” Dixie repeated.
“Really, I’ll be fine.”
Everybody fell silent again. Finally my breathing regulated, and I uttered, “I think we now know how Ben died.”
Everyone then became animated. Nip’s tail wagged at full swing. Theories abounded, followed by shock, surprise, and self-recriminations. “We should’ve known.” “How did we miss it?” “Never liked him!” “Hope he burns in hell!”
And in the end we veered back to the mother lode. “Holy shit, wait ’til we tell the Firm!”
Nip turned and walked to the body of the young man whom we’d come across first. She knelt down and emitted a howl I had heard only once before, when my Lilli found Snowdrop dead at Twenty Acres.
It startled all of us.
Nip continued to direct her soulful ire at the corpse.
A solitary crow flew down, landing near her. He stood still, looking at the corpse, then turned toward us. Uttering a mighty caw, he flew away. As if on command, the hundreds of crows roosting in the trees above followed suit and took flight.
Their clamour was deafening.
A grim silence followed. Nip returned to my side and leaned heavily against my leg. It was finally broken by the wail of approaching sirens.
Too late; they were all dead—assassin, accomplice, aider, and abettor.
50
The police report was somewhat more informative. The deceased were described as male Caucasians. Grogaman was listed as a forty-seven-year-old naturalized American citizen of Portuguese descent, Sandino as a forty-three-year-old Italian, and Trombley as a sixty-seven-year-old US citizen. The fourth was identified as thirty-seven-year-old Anton Berghov, a naturalized American citizen of Russian descent.
None had any known criminal record.
A number of items of interest were listed in the report. The car’s trunk held a cache of sophisticated weapons in a retrofitted compartment that usually carried the spare tire, including two fully automatic assault weapons, several twenty-round magazines, and four collapsible steel truncheons. Additional small firearms were found on Messrs. Sandino and Grogaman. Wallets, jewelry, and medicines were being held pending retrieval by family members.
Ozone and the Firm eventually put out statements of bereavement. The Firm promised to keep the deceased in their thoughts and prayers. I couldn’t vouch for the latter, but could for the former, especially since that would be billable.
More concrete actions occurred immediately.
The board of Ozone selected Dorothy as CEO the day of the accident. She immediately reduced the size of the board, cutting out the fainthearted and filling their positions with loyalists, at the same time introducing gender, racial, and ethnic diversity. Her biggest coup was inducing Russett to drop his takeover bid and join the board. Additionally she set about dismantling and liquidating ClearAire—not a short-term project and not without risk. The federal and state authorities were anxious to peek under that tent.
At the same time, she cleared up her family’s loose ends and cleaned up some of its
dirty laundry. Her evil stepmother was banished in style. For one hundred and fifty million dollars, paid in part by Dorothy, the Trust, and the foundation, Tremaine dropped her petition to contest Ben’s Will and her efforts to become Ben’s executrix and Leo’s guardian. She resigned her position in the Family Trust and on the foundation’s board, taking Abelard with her. In the process, she admitted under oath that little Bentley was not Ben’s offspring. Lady Tremaine also agreed that neither she nor her son would use the Baum name and she released Ben’s estate from any claims she had now or in the future. Even after the vile de Vil took his obscene 30 percent, Tremaine still cleared a tidy one hundred million.
Dorothy now stood alone as the CEO of Ozone. And possibly regent, for Eloise announced she was pregnant with twins. They decided to await the birth to learn the gender of the babies but they had already selected names—Benjamin and Andreas for boys, Ozma and Glinda for girls. In all four instances, Thompson would be the middle name.
Leo moved to a communal home in Paris populated with other similarly challenged young adults, where, according to Dorothy, he was the new guy on the block and loving every moment. He’d given up on Merlin; Casanova was his new role model. Eloise and Dorothy had placed him in the care of R. A. Stein, a renowned expert on adult autism who was a close friend of Eloise’s when they both lived in London.
Kati’s future was also looking up, thanks to Dorothy’s largesse. She was living in Paris in an apartment on rue Furstenberg near Eloise and Dorothy. To better ensure that her brutish brother stayed away, Dorothy set up a ten million dollar trust for her, with Eloise as her trustee. Everyone was awaiting the results of Kati’s paternity test, Terry having provided ample traces of Ben’s DNA. Should it turn out that Ben was the father, Dorothy’s new princes or princesses would have a halfsibling or, if you prefer, a half-aunt or half-uncle. Either way, Kati’s baby would be a child with a bright future, but with no line to the throne or share of the Baum fortune. Eloise was looking forward to walks and play dates with Kati in the Tuileries, exchanging mommy moments and life experiences.
Meanwhile back at the Hobbit Hole, Dixie and Drew had hung their shingle—Benson & Dixon Associates, Private Investigative Attorneys. Returning to the Firm was not an option for them, and they were offered a deal they couldn’t refuse. Terry gave them three years rent-free if they included Frank Mack and his team—a condition they enthusiastically embraced. Terry agreed to be the office housemother—working, however, only four days a week. But first, she wanted to take a quick trip back to high school in Kansas, to the store she and Ben bought and the hills where they first found romance. Then she would head down to Saint John’s where the weather and lifestyle were always warm and welcoming. To try to get away from the bad memories, I suspect, at least for a while.
Clients were no problem for the new firm. Ozone engaged them to help liquidate ClearAire, investigate Luc’s transgressions, to put it politely, and just for the pleasure of it, pursue allegations of self-dealing as it related to Abelard. De Vil, not being a good lawyer, had failed to gain Peter a release for the foundation’s questionable art purchases—a pawn that would have been easily traded in Dorothy and Tremaine’s negotiations. Additionally Drew garnered a raft of assignments from Charlotte, including settling and administering Trombley’s and Grogaman’s estates. Neither had any heirs, but both had many legal matters to resolve. Luc had no will. Trombley had an elaborate estate plan, leaving his entire estate to Harvard Law School to endow a chair in his name for Professional Ethics and Responsibilities. Harvard declined, but New York State was less reticent, aggressively seeking his fortune by escheat.
Benson & Dixon Associates became so overloaded with work that they hired two associates away from the Firm. And to add a little gray hair, they retained me as senior legal counsel. It would help dress up their masthead, they claimed.
51
I was content to just laze in bed. Nip was sleeping. Heckle was pecking at the window. Nip just rolled over, ignoring him. She wasn’t taking orders from a bird—much less a crow.
There she was mistaken.
I gave in and grabbed Heckle’s saltine fix, putting it out on the porch table. He would never take it from my hand. Rather he swooped down, his dark brown eyes meeting mine, and grabbed his breakfast, flying off to a welcoming branch. I’m convinced that he was the one who came down to us at Mohonk. I’ll never share that with anyone, lest they start wondering about me.
The truth is I’m happy with my secret and delighted to feed him.
The ringing phone caught my ear and I scurried back. It was Dixie and he was out of breath too.
“Tuck, late-breaking news on several fronts. Have you had your java yet? This is heady stuff.”
He didn’t wait for my response.
“Frank Mack just called. He’s hit pay dirt. Since we now have unfettered access to ClearAire’s files and computers, thanks to Dorothy, it’s been clearer sailing. Every expenditure is at our fingertips.
“Let’s start with Sandino. He bought a one-way ticket to Orlando the day before your family was killed. The next day he rented a black van from Avis at the airport, dropped it in long-term parking that afternoon, and flew back to Washington that night. The car was retrieved and returned to Avis twenty days later. The checkout receipt indicated a charge for damages to the front right side and bumper. Too many coincidences, Tuck. I believe he is the one who drove your family into the concrete abutment, killing them.”
I fell silent.
As did Dixie.
The circle had closed. It all made sense.
Luc, I suspect, had been afraid that I wouldn’t relent until I was satisfied that Ben had no interest in the Cerberus account. He must have been nervous I would trip over the truth. It was his way of chasing me off. Didn’t matter to him if they were killed or just injured. I would have taken leave from the Firm to tend to them, and by the time I returned, the matter would have been over and Evan would have reassigned me to projects unrelated to ClearAire.
“Should I go on, Tuck?”
“Is there more?”
“Yes, much more.
“The night Nip was hit, Berghov, the Russian, took the shuttle from Washington to New York and shuttled back late the same night. The New Paltz police reports showed an address in Queens. They found it in his wallet. With that, Mack trolled the Net and discovered that Berghov had a motorcycle license. One of our paralegals went out to Queens and peeked in his garage. Sitting there was a shiny black cycle. He e-mailed me the iPhone image and it’s like the one that came at us near the UN. Can’t be certain, but it sure as hell looks like it. Put that together with the steel truncheons the police found in Luc’s car and it adds up to the Nip attack!
“It gets better—or worse, perhaps. I don’t mean to be flip. I know this is serious stuff. Charlotte was able to get an interim letter of administration for Trombley’s estate. Armed with that, Drew gained entrance to his apartment. She needed ready access to his bank statements, tax files, checkbooks, art inventory, insurance policies, safe-deposit box key, and his Precatory Letter, if one existed—God forbid. All the normal probate stuff. According to Trombley’s secretary, he kept all his personal papers at home. After an unsuccessful search, Drew wandered into his dressing room, which, according to her, was ‘big enough to live in.’ She found a locked door behind the sliding shirt racks. She had a set of his keys, which Evan’s secretary had given her. She opened the wardrobe door and found a secret closet that she said would make Victoria jealous. Evan was a closet cross-dresser!
“He’s our very own J. Edgar. Go figure.
“And then his closet got really interesting. He was very neat, almost ‘anally neat’—Drew’s words. There were drawers and drawers of bank statements, bearer shares, gold certificates, zero coupon bonds, cash in three different currencies, even gold bars and what Drew thinks was his high school stamp collection. I’m guessing priceless rare stamps. They’re as good as gold and easier to negotiate. She has our a
ssociates taking an inventory. So far, it totals fifteen million . . . and they’re not even halfway through.”
I had no response.
Even Dixie dropped his patented repartee as we each tried to process this discovery.
“Dixie, I’m going to have to get back to you. Where will you be? I need to get some clear air.”
Damn, I have to stop using that phrase.
“I understand, Tuck. I’m on my way to join Drew at Trombley’s apartment. Call me back on the encoded phone. You still have that?”
“Yes. I suggest that you not share this with the Firm—at least not yet.”
“Tuck, you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes . . . and no. I’ve always felt that Alice’s crash was not an accident. Now I know and I need some time to process it.”
“I understand. Call us if you need anything.”
Technically my assignment was over. I’d slid over to another firm—with roles reversed. I was counsel—that’s a euphemism for aging associate—and Drew and Dixie were my bosses.
I smiled. They were less toxic than my previous one.
“Nip, out! I need some beach time.”
No argument from her, but we didn’t make it to the door. My ring tone was starting to really annoy me. I hated that tune. Time for a change. But, of course, I answered it. I thought I was cured. Three years in self-imposed solitary should have broken the habit.
It was Charlotte. Animatedly she fast-forwarded past the “how are yous” and announced triumphantly that she had just become the newest, youngest, first, and only female member of the Firm’s Executive Committee. Her first assignment was to invite me back to the partnership in a senior status. I would head Ozone’s corporate affairs. She droned on about the opportunities and excitement that lay ahead, pausing only to tell me that the Firm had dropped Trombley’s name from the masthead—part of the streamlining and updating of its visuals.