by Sam Waite
Dollar Down
By
Sam Waite
Uncial Press Aloha, Oregon
2015
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-208-7
Dollar Down
Copyright © 2015 by Sam Waite
Cover design
Copyright © 2015 by Judith B. Glad
Design concept by Sam Waite;
View of Paris from Sacre Coeur© Pocholo Calapre | Dreamstime.com;
Golden currency symbols © 123dartist - Fotolia
All rights reserved. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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To Hiromi
Chapter 1
My taxi eased along wet cobblestone that ran narrow between stone apartments adorned with stone statuary. A pig-snout gargoyle grinned as icy drizzle flowed from its tusks onto a young woman clutching her collar against the cold. Her light-brown hair swayed gently in the easy rhythm of her stride, a contrast of warmth and vulnerability in the hard City of Light.
It would have been a nuance to savor, if my only client had not gone missing the day I arrived in Paris and my bank account wasn't down to a pocketful of nickels and lint.
My flight from Houston had landed last night. Trevor Jones, the man who hired me and brought me here, didn't answer my call from the airport. He was supposed to have arranged accommodations. Instead, I found my own way to the St. Lazare district, to a hotel that boasted a one-star rating, and a two-person elevator. My room had a single bed, an enamel tub chipped at the rims and a knee-high refrigerator filled with overpriced drinks. I walked a block to buy a bottle of four-euro wine. It made the bed feel less lumpy. Early next morning Trevor didn't answer a call to his office. I left a message and waited two hours for an answer that didn't come. Then I called a cab.
Two unreported hours for most people wasn't reason to call out the bloodhounds. For Trevor, it might as well have been a month. His secretary said he'd missed a client meeting without calling. I'd done a job for Trevor once before when I was still employed at an agency. He kept a log of every working hour, each of which was billable at a sum high enough to give any of my clients nosebleed.
The driver pulled alongside the curb on Rue de Bassano, a short street that met the Champs Elysées near the Arc de Triomphe, icons that won bragging rights for the Paris office of Winchell & Associates, the world's premier management consultancy. Trevor was a partner in the firm.
Winchell was founded in home-spun Ohio, but had grown to span the globe. More than fifty percent of its partners were non-American, although the firm's language was English, even among professional staff whose native language was something else. Revenues exceeded seven and a half billion dollars last year. Associate consultants graduating out of the top two percent of Harvard or INSEAD started at more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. Mid-career specialists got more. Its information network had few rivals outside national intelligence agencies. The firm's New York database was a dumping ground for knowledge gleaned from former Japanese bureaucrats leveraging connections for higher salaries, former spooks too smart to stay in the CIA, Indian engineers with doctorates in metallurgy and MBAs in finance. People left the firm to run major corporations and then paid the firm millions for global studies.
Incestuous wealth.
I'd earned barely enough to keep the doors open since I opened my own investigative office three months ago.
The call from Trevor was supposed to have changed that, but he'd fallen off the radar. A plea to his secretary got me an interview with a honcho in the firm.
"How do you know Trevor?" Sabine Duveau sat square-shouldered and spoke like a drill sergeant cursed with a seductress's voice. She was French, but it was hard to place her accent when she spoke English. The best fit I could make was midtown Manhattan, without the edge. I took her to be in her mid-forties. She was the director of the study Trevor was working on and commanded her realm from a massive wooden desk designed to give moving men hernias. The walls were paneled in dark-stained hardwood.
Bookshelves lined two of those walls. The only adornment was a painting of a window that was weathered and framed in wood whose moss-green paint was peeling. It was surrounded by a white iron grill that showed signs of rust. Artistic squalor amid splendor. I wondered what that said about her.
"About three years ago," I said, "Trevor suspected a particular company was presenting false data to facilitate a merger. The company was effectively bankrupt, but its management would have pocketed millions, if the deal had been finalized. He hired the agency I worked for and, through extra-legal means, I found evidence that he was right."
"That was you?" Ms. Duveau leaned back in her chair, pursed her lips and micron by micron drew her mouth into a smile that teased tiny crinkles at her lavender eyes, playfully darkening them with widening, glistening pupils as though they had heard their own private call to samba. "I'm impressed."
So was I.
"That's quite a famous study." She touched one index finger to her bottom lip. "It's been cited in in-house seminars from M&A procedures to ethics—mostly ethics. In this firm, no one else, as far as I know, has ever hired a private investigator or used 'extra legal evidence,' in a study. Nevertheless, you saved our client an enormous amount of money."
"I thought it was all confidential."
"For the sake of discussions outside the firm, the study has been sanitized. Names and a few other details were changed. We're quite careful. You haven't told anyone who the client was?"
I shook my head. "Not even you."
"There's no need. I'm among those who know. Why did Trevor hire you this time, Mr. Sanchez?"
I told her about the call two days ago, when Trevor mentioned a project for PDVSA, Venezuela's national oil company. I filled in background about my career with Global Risk Management. It came to an abrupt end in Japan, when I was told to abandon a case that was on the verge of being broken. I had to choose between loyalty to the company or to my Japanese colleague who had risked her life to solve the thing.
"As a matter of professional honor, I quit and opened my own shop."
Trevor was my first client outside a nasty divorce case and a few skip traces. I was happy to get the work, even though he hadn't explained exactly what he wanted me to do. He had insisted on a face-to-face meeting for that.
Ms. Duveau's expression went from stern to respectful to impish. Now it was soothing. "You must have loved her intensely. Your colleague, I mean."
It was my turn to smile. "You don't buy the professional ethics angle?"
"I have no doubt of your ethics, Mr. Sanchez. Trevor would never have dealt with you otherwise. What happened between you and your colleague, if you don't mind my asking?"
"She's there." I shrugged. "I'm here."
"I see." Ms. Duveau silently stared at her desk for an uncomfortably long time. "I'm very much worried about Trevor. He missed a client progress report this morning without notifying us. That doe
sn't happen in this firm, not without a disastrous reason. We've tried to contact him every way we know how. We've also called the police. They said they would notify us if they get a report on him, but it's too early for them to consider him missing." She scowled, apparently at what she considered incompetence on the part of law enforcement. "It will probably be days before they act. Time is critical in a situation like this, don't you agree?"
I nodded.
"Are you still interested in a job, Mr. Sanchez?"
Desperate might have been a better choice of word, but that was between me and my answering service. "Yes."
"Would you wait here? I'll ask my secretary to bring you coffee."
While she was gone, I took a close look at the painting. I couldn't recognize the medium. It wasn't oil, and it wasn't any sort of watercolor that I'd seen. Books on business strategy, architecture, history, music and literature lined her shelves. Rene Descartes' work on coordinate geometry was next to a photographic study of Argentine gauchos. A collection of William Blake's art and essays rubbed covers with Robert Service poems of the Alaskan wild. I took it down and opened it to pass the time.
"That's one of my favorites." She'd opened the door as I was reading Service's The Shooting of Dan McGrew. "Unaffected and feral." There was the imp again. "I have a proposition that I think will fit our situation nicely, if you agree to it. The managing director of the firm's Houston office is a long-time friend and close colleague. I'm sure he'll cooperate. He owes me more favors than he can ever repay. I'll explain the urgency and ask him to fax the required documents before the day is out. Once you sign them, you will become an employee of Winchell & Associates, temporary of course. This office will assume all responsibility for your schedule and salary, but from here, it will appear that you are on staff in Houston. What do you say?"
"It sounds complicated, why?"
"In the merger investigation, Trevor paid you out of his own pocket. The firm doesn't deal with private investigators directly. I'd rather not do that. As an employee, you will sign a confidentiality agreement. You may then have access to all the information available on the study. That could be an advantage in your work."
"Why go through Houston?"
"That's the base for the study. It's about oil. You're being from there makes it all the more convenient. This way we avoid a lot of nosy interviews from the firm's personnel office. Do you agree?"
"In principle. We haven't discussed fees."
Ms. Duveau went to her desk and pulled a folder out of a drawer.
"These are files on the Orimulsion study for Petroleos de Venezuela. Are you familiar with Orimulsion?"
"Vaguely, tar suspended in water used as a fuel for power plants."
"That's correct—vaguely. This will provide details. Read it and write a credible job description that fits your background. My secretary will give you information on positions available in the firm. You would be an industry specialist of some sort, I expect. Also, fill in your compensation. You may be generous with yourself, but be reasonable. I'm afraid the best we can do for accommodations is a cubicle among the business analysts. My secretary will show you."
I took the folder and started to leave.
"Have it ready by six. Houston will be starting its work day then. If you have no other plans, let's have dinner."
"I'm free." The imps in her eyes were gone. Ms. Duveau was a drill sergeant again.
"Good. I'll stop by your cubicle when I'm done this evening."
Dismissed, Private Sanchez. She was back at work before I closed the door behind me.
Ms. Duveau's folder had a stack of charts that were sketchy on details, but I did learn that Venezuela had enough hydrocarbons to rival Canada for having the world's largest reserves. A lot was light, sweet oil, but most by far was bitumen and extra-heavy oil. It was gunk that lay in a belt two hundred seventy miles long and forty miles wide in the Orinoco. Technology was steadily expanding the volume of recoverable fuel, but still the stuff was costly to dredge out and refine. The Saudis weren't in danger of being toppled from the peak of OPEC. At least, not yet.
Winchell & Associates had been hired to expand the market for unrefined Orimulsion, and the firm was doing a good job.
I didn't find anything to explain why Trevor Jones had hired me, but I did think of a niche for myself. Orimulsion had a high content of minerals such as nickel and sulfur that rained back down after it went up in smoke. That and other ecological worries were sometimes the subject of public protests. I wrote myself a billet as a security specialist.
I also gave myself a twenty percent pay raise over what I was going to charge Trevor. Good help is hard to find.
At straight-up six o'clock, Ms. Duveau's secretary escorted me into her office. She cleared the paperwork with Houston in twenty minutes. I signed, took the oath of confidentiality and silently congratulated myself on the raise. I was in the firm.
Ms. Duveau said she wouldn't be able to make it to dinner after all. "But tomorrow for certain." She gave my arm a light squeeze and made a little wink as though she was trying to blink a pixie from her eye. Figuring out Ms. Duveau was going to take a while.
"I'd like to see Trevor's office. His agenda could be helpful. I might find something to suggest why he hasn't been in."
She paused for five seconds, probably long enough for her to consider every rational contingency, and then said, "All right." She led me to Trevor's secretary.
"This is Mr. Sanchez. He'll be with us temporarily. Cooperate with him. He might be able to find out what's happened to Trevor." She started to leave, but turned back.
"Keep everything involving Mr. Sanchez among the three of us."
Hush-hush. Way beyond corporate confidentiality. The young woman looked mildly excited.
While I looked around Trevor's office, she stood by to help. She also watched me like a hawk. That was OK. Even hawks blink.
I asked about the contents of file cabinets against a far wall. When the watchful hawk looked toward them, I slipped a set of keys out of Trevor's desk and into my coat pocket. I didn't find anything else I wanted to steal, so I invited her to sit down. "How long has Trevor been in Paris?"
"About a year and a half."
"I'd like a list of everyone you can identify that Trevor has had contact with for that period. Names and, if possible, phone numbers and addresses. I'd also like as much detail as you can give me about each person."
She fidgeted before she answered. "When do you need it?"
"Early tomorrow, but I don't need everything at once. We could start with a few of the most recent contacts. If it would help, you could just list names, and I'll ask you questions about each person."
"It's a lot. Tomorrow morning could be..."
Her expression told the fate of secretaries. Do the impossible yesterday.
"Whatever you can get together by tomorrow afternoon is fine. Let's start with Trevor's address."
She gave it to me, and I asked her to call a taxi.
It was a little after 8:00 p.m., early February. The taxi's tires sucked along wet streets between gauntlets of elegant rock architecture. Paris had been built many times but the final building had been made to last, a sprawling objet d'art that functioned as a city.
Trevor's quarters were just off Rue Saint-Dominique, not far from the Sorbonne. I turned my collar up against the weather and walked to his door. I tested the keys I'd lifted from his desk. One fit.
He had three floors across a relatively narrow breadth. Dining, lounge and kitchen on floor one, master's quarters on floor two and library and guest rooms on floor three. The second floor had a study where I found his computer. I booted it up to be greeted by a password request. It was a long shot, but I rummaged through his desk and found a notebook that contained a list of complex passwords. It was a tedious end to a long day.
I hadn't slept well last night. An ache in my stiff shoulders squeezed higher into my neck as I tested passwords, checked files and found nothing to sugg
est where or why he'd gone.
I commandeered a 128 GB flash drive from his desk and began copying the contents of his hard disk. When it was done, I started to leave, but heard scratching at the front door. If it was Trevor, he wasn't using his key. It sounded like a pick.
I turned out the light and listened. Footsteps indicated two people. One went to the third floor. The other moved my way. As the door opened slowly, my heart sped to fight or flight mode.
No place to flee.
Chapter 2
Ms. Duveau lost her drill-sergeant persona as I described my break-in and the encounter with an unknown party.
"There were two of them," I said. "I heard one go past. The other checked my floor."
"You were in Trevor's study?"
"That's right."
"Didn't they look there?"
"One did. He wasn't expecting me."
I figured I'd said as much as was necessary, but Ms. Duveau frowned and nodded for me to continue.
"I stood against the wall by the door. He had a flashlight in one hand. By the time he saw me it was too late."
"You fought?"
"Not exactly. I just stepped in front of him." I pointed to my solar plexus. "It was quick, quiet. Took the air out of him. I was out the door before he had recovered enough to make a peep."
She was a long way from shaken, but I sensed a tremor of uncertainty in a psyche that was accustomed to being in control. She bit at her lower lip.
"Before you tell anyone else, or go to the police, Ms. —"
"Call me Sabine. You're in the firm now."
"All right, I'm Mick. I want to go back and see if I can learn anything about what they did there."
"I'll drive you."
"It might take me a long time to look the place over. It might also be dangerous. Even if no one is inside, there could be someone watching. Your face could end up in a photo album that you don't want to be in."
"I'll wear a scarf over my head."