Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (23 page)

Alan looked away. He didn’t say anything.

“You’re not a stupid guy,” I said. “You’ve heard things.”

I gave it a moment. Alan nodded his head slowly.

“Yeah, I’ve heard things,” he said.

He still wouldn’t look at me.

“I’m going to eat lunch,” I said. “I’ll be back in a while.”

It was a thirty-minute drive to the Bird’s Nest, and about twenty minutes into it I realized I was being followed.

White Range Rover, fairly new one, with a grille rail, Altezza lights, and titanium racks. Nice set of wheels. It had been behind me when I pulled off to get gas at a National station near Waverley Hall. Then, in a roundabout just before I got to Falmouth, it slipped behind me again. Two guys, white guys, sitting up front. Couldn’t tell much more than that.

The Bird’s Nest sat all by itself on a stretch of road just west of Falmouth, a rambling wooden structure tacked precariously onto the limestone cliffs. I drove past it. About half a mile down the road, I pulled into a Stop & Shop store and watched the white Range Rover keep going.

I went inside the store, bought a pattie, and sat in the car eating it. The drizzle was slowing now, the clouds breaking. It was a pretty good pattie, the crust flaky, the shredded beef not all dried out like some of them get, with a little fire to it, but not too much, and just a hint of cardamom. I finished eating it, brushed off the crumbs, then circled back to the Bird’s Nest and parked near the entrance.

I was early and the Bird’s Nest was just opening for business.
The woman who greeted me inside the door said I could sit anywhere, and I chose a table in a corner at the far side of the front room. The prime tables were outside on several small decks connected by catwalks on the face of the cliffs. Scenic as hell, but my table gave me a view of the front door, and I sat down and studied the menu. Some curries, some jerk, some fish, some sandwiches. All priced in accordance with the view.

A waitress brought me water, and I told her I was waiting for someone to join me. I drank some water. I enjoyed the view. Then I got up and headed for the door.

“Forgot something in my car, be right back,” I told the hostess.

Outside, I fumbled around in the car, pretending to look for whatever it was I hadn’t really forgotten. The white Range Rover was angled in at the other end of the parking lot, pointing out and ready to go. The two guys were sitting in it.

I went back inside the Bird’s Nest, drank more water, enjoyed more view, and thought about the guys in the Range Rover. It didn’t get me anywhere.

The place began to fill up. A mix of tourists and locals. The tourists sat outside, the locals took the tables around me.

There was music coming from the speakers—Peter Tosh, “Once Bitten.” Then it was “African” and “No Sympathy.” Good stuff, tough and edgy. There were times when Peter Tosh sounded better than Marley. This was one of them.

I looked at the menu. Curry. Yeah, I’d probably get some curry. Although maybe I ought to go with something light, in honor of the unfastened button on my pants. A salad, I’d get a salad. But there weren’t any salads on the menu. That was good, because I wanted curry.

I was watching the front door when Jay Skingle stepped inside. His buddy was with him, the skinny guy with the hatchet face, the one who had taken Monk’s files. They didn’t see me. The hostess sat them in a booth by the door.

Well, well, well . . .

Two guys waiting for me in the parking lot. Two guys who
knew me in a booth by the door. A DEA guy with a proposition on his way to join me.

So many guys, so little Zack.

Peter Tosh with “Coming in Hot.”

Yep, some kinda interesting lunch this was shaping up to be.

Lanny Cumbaa arrived shortly after noon. He didn’t pay any attention to the hostess. He looked to his right and saw Skingle and the skinny guy sitting in the booth. The skinny guy looked up and saw Cumbaa. The two of them knew each other, no doubt about it, both of them surprised to see the other one, and covering it up quickly.

Cumbaa turned the other way, spotted me, and waved. He walked across the room. While he was walking I saw the skinny guy say something to Jay Skingle, and Skingle leaned out of the booth and saw me sitting in the corner. I pretended like I didn’t notice.

Cumbaa was carrying a briefcase. He stashed it under the table and said: “How about you let me sit where you’re sitting.”

“What for?”

“Because I don’t like my back to a room, OK?”

“Who are you, Wild Bill Hickok?”

“Funny, Chasteen, just move, alright?”

“I’m comfortable where I’m at,” I said. “Besides, I want to keep an eye on your pals.”

It threw Cumbaa, but he tried not to let it show.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The two guys in the booth by the door. You know them.”

Cumbaa gnawed his lip, didn’t say anything. He pulled out a chair and scooted it around the table so he had a sideways view of the room. He picked up a menu, pretended to study it.

“Yeah, I know one of them,” he said. “He works for the DEA out of San Juan. But it’s not like you walk in a place, you see a guy like that, you get all chummy, know what I mean? Can’t know what the setup might be. Particularly with a guy like Connigan. He’s into some down-low shit.”

“Who?”

“Connigan. Scotty Connigan. That’s the guy’s name,” said Cumbaa.

He looked at the menu.

Scotty Connigan. Monk DeVane’s best friend from his army days, the two of them stole a bus, the one who hadn’t made it to Monk’s memorial service.

Some coincidence. Too bad I didn’t believe in coincidences.

Cumbaa said, “So what you getting to eat anyway? They got good cheeseburgers here. I always get the cheeseburger. Helluva view, isn’t it? Glad that fucking rain stopped.”

The waitress arrived. Cumbaa got a cheeseburger. I got curried goat.

“So,” said Cumbaa. “You want to hear my proposition?”

I nodded.

Annie DeVane at the memorial service saying Monk had done some work for the government in the past, talked about getting in touch with some old friends. Scotty Connigan. The 61st Ordnance Division at Fort Sill. All of it swimming around . . .

“It helps, you pay attention,” Cumbaa said.

The proposition was about what I figured it would be. Cumbaa repeated his suspicion that after years of running a clean business, Darcy Whitehall was cozying up to Freddie Arzghanian again, looking to increase his cash flow by moving things out the back door. My job: put the pressure on Whitehall, get him to roll, then let Cumbaa sniff the money trail until he got the goods on Arzghanian.

“And what’s the payoff for you, Zack, that what you want to know?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea already.”

“You get to keep breathing fresh air, not that stale shit runs through the AC in one of those federal lockups, got a smell all its own,” said Cumbaa. “You know that smell I’m talking about, don’t you, Zack?”

I didn’t say anything.

Cumbaa reached across the table, slapped me on a shoulder.

“So put on your happy face, Zack. Life goes on. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. A sweet deal, you ask me.”

I said, “You want to put it in writing?”

“You outta your fucking mind?”

We finished our food. The curry goat was decent, not tough like it sometimes is. Still, I left a lot on the plate. Wasn’t like me.

Across the restaurant, Skingle and Scotty Connigan left their booth and headed for the door. Cumbaa turned and watched them. They never looked our way.

“Cute couple,” said Cumbaa. “Wonder who the other guy is.”

I didn’t say anything.

Cumbaa turned back to face me.

“So,” he said. “You got questions?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why do you think Darcy Whitehall all of a sudden needs money?”

Cumbaa shrugged.

“Who knows? Talk is he wants to expand that airline of his, maybe get into the cruise-ship business. Cruise ships got casinos. Freddie Arzghanian would love a taste of that,” Cumbaa said. “Or maybe I got it wrong. Maybe Whitehall doesn’t really want the money, but Freddie Arzghanian is missing the little partnership they used to have and is tightening the screws to get it going again. Hence, the bomb in the skybox just to scare the fuck out of Whitehall. Hence, the bomb in the van that blew up your friend to scare the fuck out of Whitehall some more and let him know Freddie’s serious. Hence, a lot of fucking shit.”

“Not often you hear someone use hence and fuck in the same sentence.”

“I got a golden tongue, what the fuck can I say? All I know is, Whitehall and Arzghanian, they’re working something,” Cumbaa said. “Take a look at this.”

He reached under the table, fumbled through his briefcase, and came out holding a sheet of paper. He handed it to me. It was a copy of a legal ad from the
Gleaner.
The same legal ad the woman had shown me at the office of deeds and surveys in Falmouth, the one detailing the “Notice to Sell” for the land off Old Dutch Road.

Cumbaa said, “Interesting, huh? Says here that Whitehall is selling this land to Freddie Arzghanian. What I want is to take a ride and eyeball that property for myself, see if it’s really worth anything. Something tells me it’s not. Something tells me it’s just a way for Arzghanian to start feeding Whitehall money again.”

I handed him the legal ad. I sat there looking at him.

Cumbaa said, “What is it?”

It all comes down to taking chances on people. Some you trust, some you don’t. You make a gut choice, then you go with it. My gut was telling me that I could trust Lanny Cumbaa, even if he was threatening to lower the boom on me if I didn’t throw in with him. Besides, I was in serious need of an ally. It was going to have to be him.

“Some things I need to tell you,” I said.

I told him how I’d seen the same legal ad, had checked out the property, pegged it to be worthless, and come to the same conclusion that he had: Whitehall and Arzghanian were working some kind of deal. I told him that Monk DeVane had a friend named Scotty Connigan and there weren’t enough Scotty Connigans in the world for them not to be one and the same. I told him how Connigan had taken Monk’s files from the cottage and delivered them to Jay Skingle. And I told him how Skingle had, under considerable duress, admitted to me that Monk was working for them.

When I was done, Cumbaa slumped back in his chair and chewed it over.

“Well, fuck me,” he said.

I said, “So what I’m thinking is, maybe Skingle and Connigan are working something on Whitehall and Arzghanian, and it cancels what you’ve got going and you don’t have a proposition for me after all, huh?”

“Two hands scratching the same nut sack. Wouldn’t be the first time, fucking government work,” Cumbaa said. “You say this Skingle guy is with Homeland Security?”

I nodded.

“Makes sense. Homeland Security, that’s where all the cowboys are these days. They want to stir some shit, they stir it, no questions asked, whatever it takes. Fuck the oversight, just let ’er rip. Scotty Connigan, he’d fit right in.”

“So why don’t you make some calls, see what’s what, who’s doing who?” I said.

“Doesn’t work like that,” Cumbaa said. “It’s not like there’s an answer man you go to with all the questions. You got to be careful who you ask. Got all kind of allegiances and shit like
that. Especially once you throw in another agency. And even more especially when the agency is Homeland Security.”

He sat there thinking. I sat there watching him think, doing some thinking of my own. It was a galvanizing spectacle, I’m sure.

“What makes you think I could get Darcy Whitehall to roll?” I said. “I’ve got nothing to use on him.”

“Ah, my friend, that’s where you’re wrong,” Cumbaa said.

He reached under the table and fumbled through the briefcase again. This time he came out holding one of those accordion folders, thick with paper. He handed it to me.

“For your reading pleasure. If the DEA handed out a prize for literature this would fucking be it. Took me the past two years to put it together and it’s some beautiful shit. Lot of numbers, lot of names—shows exactly how Whitehall sent money out the back door to shell companies, phony accounts and all that. Only thing it doesn’t show is where the money was coming from. Got nothing here that can directly connect Freddie Arzghanian to anything. Still, there’s more than enough to put Whitehall away long past the time when he can enjoy all that pussy comes to stay at his resorts,” said Cumbaa. “Which reminds me, you getting laid?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’ll take that for a yes. You lucky bastard. Maybe a little bit down the road, we get this thing set on cruise control, I can drop by the resort and the two of us we can do some sportfucking, waddya say?”

I opened the file, scanned some of the pages, pretended like I understood what I was looking at. Then I closed it and put it back on the table.

I said, “So you’ve got files like this on other resorts Arzghanian funnels money through?”

Cumbaa nodded.

“Probably a dozen of them. I’ve been a busy boy. Your tax dollars at work,” Cumbaa said. “Oh yeah, that’s right. You’re a little behind on that front, aren’t you, Zack?”

He grinned at me.

I said, “Have you confronted any of the others with what you’ve found?”

Cumbaa shook his head.

“No, Whitehall’s the first one outta the box. He’s got the highest profile, the most to lose. Figured I’d start with him first.”

“So why don’t you just go straight to Whitehall, lay it all out for him yourself?”

Cumbaa made a face.

“What, I look like I got a death wish or something? I gotta be Mr. Low Profile in all of this. Mr. Invisible. Darcy Whitehall tells Freddie Arzghanian that the DEA is on his tail and I’m dead meat, you know what I mean?”

“So I get to be the meat?”

“Yeah, you’re the meat, Zack. Prime, select, grade-A meat. Doing a great service to your country. And to yourself. Win-win all the way around.”

“And all I have to do is show Darcy Whitehall this file and use it to leverage the information that will bring down Freddie Arzghanian?”