Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (24 page)

“Yep, that’s all you gotta do. Not like it’s heavy lifting or anything.”

“It’s blackmail.”

“Yeah, it is. Pretty cool, huh? First you, then him. It worked on you, and you know why it’s gonna work on him?”

“Why?”

“Because what’s the most important thing in Darcy Whitehall’s life right now? This is an easy question, Zack. Don’t think too hard about it.”

“Seeing to it that Alan Whitehall gets elected to parliament.”

“Bingo.”

Cumba picked up the file.

“And what happens if word gets out to the newspapers or to that crazy bitch Alan Whitehall’s running against, what’s her name, Oompah-pah-pah . . .”

“Kenya Oompong.”

“Yeah, her. She’s just Castro with tits, you ask me. We got
the goods on her, too, which is why, deep down in its heart of hearts, your government very much wants to see Alan Whitehall get elected, Zack.”

“He’s a good man,” I said.

“Yeah, whatever, who gives a fuck,” said Cumbaa. “But what if word gets out that Darcy Whitehall is nothing but a money-laundering scumbag. Or worse, what happens if we swoop in and Darcy Whitehall goes to jail? What happens then?”

Cumbaa let the file drop on the table.

“Ka-fucking-thud,” Cumbaa said. “It all comes tumbling down.”

The waitress put our check on the table. We both sat there looking at it. Then Cumbaa looked at me.

“You gonna get that?” he said.

“I bought the drinks in Miami.”

“Yeah, but see, the way I figure it, we’re still kinda in the dating phase and you need to impress me so I’ll put out for you.”

I got out some cash, covered the check with it.

“I need you to put out right now,” I said.

“Oh, Zack,” Cumbaa said. “I love it when you talk that way.”

I told him about the guys sitting outside in the parking lot, the ones in the Range Rover. I told him what I wanted him to do.

“Man, oh, man,” said Cumbaa. “I love this kinda shit.”

I walked out of the Bird’s Nest and got into the Mercedes. The white Range Rover was still sitting on the other side of the parking lot. I could see a guy behind the wheel.

I put the key in the ignition and turned it, and in that instant I thought: Bomb. They followed me just so they could plant a bomb.

But nothing happened. The engine kicked over. I headed for the exit. And that’s when the guy sat up in the backseat.

“Turn right,” he said. “To Mo Bay.”

There was an accent of some kind, I couldn’t quite place it. Middle Eastern, maybe. I looked in the rearview mirror. The guy pretty much filled it up. Dark hair, dark eyes, the kind of beard you shave it and an hour later it needs shaving again. He was leaning back in the seat now, chewing gum. It made his jaw muscles ripple. If the jaw muscles were any indication of the rest of him then I was looking at some heavy-duty talent.

I turned right onto the highway and adjusted the rearview mirror. The Range Rover was right behind us. And I could see Lanny Cumbaa coming out of the Bird’s Nest, strolling across the parking lot, taking his own sweet time to get to his car.

I said, “Man, this is such a cliché.”

I met the guy’s eyes in the mirror. He didn’t say anything.

I said, “I mean, how many times have you seen a movie where someone gets in a car and then someone who’s been hiding in the car sits up behind them?”

The guy chewed his gum, looked out the window.

“Yeah,” he said. “You think it couldn’t really happen. And then it does. You should have locked your car.”

“Shoulda-coulda-woulda,” I said. “Story of my life.”

I checked the rearview. A green Honda was hanging back a little ways from the Range Rover. Maybe that was Cumbaa.

“Leaving your car unlocked, that solved many problems,” the guy said. “We thought maybe we were going to have to grab you, put you in our car.”

“You really think you could do that?”

Our eyes met in the mirror.

He said, “I think maybe you would make it difficult.”

“You bet your ass I would.”

The guy looked out the window. He rolled his neck to one side. It popped. He rolled it to the other side. It popped again. These muscle guys.

I said, “Thing is, in the movies, guy sits up in the backseat he usually sticks a gun to the other guy’s head.”

The guy kept looking out the window.

“I’ve got one of those,” he said.

“So what happens next?”

“So what happens next is you keep driving. And you give me the file.”

“What file?”

“The file given to you by the man in the restaurant.”

I picked up the file from the seat and handed it to him.

We didn’t talk much after that. I flipped on the radio, the guy in the backseat didn’t tell me to flip it off. There was music. Then there was news. The news was about the shooting at Libido the night before. One dead, one wounded, suspects still at large. Then came the voice of Kenya Oompong denying any NPU connection to the shooting. Then the reporter was saying that Darcy Whitehall had been unavailable for comment. Yeah, I knew all about that. I flipped the radio off.

When we got to Mo Bay, the guy told me to turn left to by-pass
all the traffic on Gloucester Avenue, then right on Dover Road. I’d figured that’s where we were going. Every now and then it’s nice to be right.

“Stop here,” he said when we got to 314 Dover Road.

The Range Rover stopped behind us. No sign of Lanny Cumbaa.

“Signs say no parking,” I said.

“It will be OK,” the guy said. “Trust me.”

You picture someone named Freddie and you see this guy, maybe a block-shaped little guy, with flashy clothes, rough around the edges and a boisterous way of doing business. Freddie Arzghanian was not that kind of Freddie.

He was Andy Garcia, like Andy Garcia in
Ocean’s Eleven
—great suit, hair that looked like he had a personal stylist on retainer, no laugh lines around his cold dark eyes. He was younger than I figured he would be, early forties, and he sat waiting for me on the other side of his desk. The desk was a slab of polished onyx cut in some free-form design, made it look like a shiny black amoeba. It was very cool.

So was Freddie Arzghanian. He watched me enter his office with the two guys who had been following me snug tight on either side. They were a matched set. The one who’d been in the backseat of my car handed Arzghanian the file that Lanny Cumbaa had given me. Arzghanian nodded the two guys to step back and they flanked the closed door. Then he nodded me to a chair by the desk. I sat down in it.

Arzghanian spent a few moments flipping through the file. Then he closed it and sat there studying me. I studied him back. It was a very thrilling moment.

Finally Arzghanian said, “Why did you come here the other day?”

“Got lost, stopped in to ask directions. Your receptionist was very helpful. She deserves a raise.”

“Please, Mr. Chasteen, I haven’t the time for this.”

“Neither do I. I’ll be going now.”

I got up from the chair and turned for the door. The two guys moved to block my way.

I pointed at the one who’d been in my backseat, the gum chewer.

“I’m coming for you first. Then you,” I said to the other one. “So if the two of you want to figure out a strategy to avoid getting your asses kicked then now’s the time.”

They both flipped back their jackets, put hands on their pistols. Helluva strategy.

“Sit back down, Mr. Chasteen,” Arzghanian said.

Seemed like a reasonable option. I sat back down.

“Why did you come here the other day?” Arzghanian said.

“I was trying to figure out the connection between you and Darcy Whitehall.”

Arzghanian looked me dead in the eyes, his face a perfect mask.

“Continue,” he said.

“And I’m trying to figure out who killed my friend.”

“You think these two things are somehow related?”

“Don’t know. You tell me.”

Arzghanian eased back in his chair. He folded his hands, propped his chin on them, and looked at me.

“If I were to say, yes, that I killed your friend, then what would you do?”

“Haven’t worked that part out yet,” I said. “I’m thinking I can probably jump across that fancy desk of yours and grab you before the two goons have a chance to pull their guns. After that it’s anyone’s guess.”

Arzghanian smiled. At least I think it was a smile. His lips narrowed and turned up on the ends like lips do when people smile. Then again, maybe he was just doing face exercises,
stretching his muscles, trying to avoid that middle-age sag.

Behind me, I could hear the two goons move in a little closer. Good to know I had them on the defensive.

Arzghanian said, “Perhaps your time is better spent asking what your friend was really doing working for Darcy Whitehall.”

“I already know the answer to that. Monk was working for the feds.”

“And for what purpose, do you suppose?”

“Hey, just a wild guess here, but I’m thinking it had something to do with money laundering. I mean, that’s your business, isn’t it?”

Arzghanian did that thing with his lips again. It wasn’t so much a smile as it was a snarl.

“I am just a simple banker,” he said.

“Smooth line,” I said. “Bet you’ve used it before.”

Arzghanian shrugged.

He said, “What about you, Mr. Chasteen?”

“What do you mean, what about me?”

“Do you work for the feds, too?”

“Why would you think that?”

“You come here to help your friend. He dies. You take over where he left off. Plus, you just had lunch with this man.” He opened his desk drawer, pulled out a file, and slid it across the desk to me. I looked at it. Lanny Cumbaa’s photo was paper-clipped to the outside.

Arzghanian said, “Mr. Cumbaa has been nosing into my affairs for years. He is very persistent.” He tapped the thick accordion file Cumbaa had given me. “And his work is very thorough. I have seen it before. Has he recruited you to work for the DEA?”

“Yeah, matter of fact, he has,” I said. “Care to hear my job description?”

“Please, if you’d be so kind.”

“I’m supposed to use that file to squeeze Darcy Whitehall and get him to give up the goods on you. Then the feds swoop down, arrest you, and the world is a better place.”

“Simple as that?”

“A piece of cake,” I said. “So why don’t you just let me borrow your phone and I’ll call them right now and tell them I’ve
got you cornered. Then you can confess to everything, and it’ll save us both a lot of trouble.”

This time Arzghanian did something with his lips that was more smile than snarl. He sat there, studying me. I studied him back. There we were, the two of us, and a couple of goons by the door, delighting in each other’s company.

Arzghanian said, “You are a very interesting man, Mr. Chasteen.”

“Gee, I find you pretty fascinating, too.”

“What I mean is, I admire your directness. I would not expect you to be so open about your motive, especially when it is one that could so easily get you killed. Not that I would ever entertain such an idea, of course.”

“Oh gosh, I know you wouldn’t, Freddie.” I gave my best coon-eating-shit-off-a-toothbrush grin. “So, seeing as how I’ve been direct with you, and you’ve decided not to kill me, I need you to be direct with me. What kind of jam has Darcy Whitehall gotten himself into?”

Arzghanian thought it over for a moment. Then he said, “All I can tell you is that he recently came to me saying that he needed a loan.”

“For how much?”

“Please, Mr. Chasteen, that is banker-client privilege. Very confidential.”

I put a finger to my temple.

“I’m thinking of a number, Freddie, and it’s, let’s see, it’s five million dollars. Five million dollars U.S. The amount you’re going to pay for that piece of property off Old Dutch Road.”

It got raised eyebrows from Arzghanian. But nothing else.

“Public record, saw the legal ads,” I said. “Plus, I took a drive up there to check out the property for myself. You’re getting screwed, you don’t mind me saying so. Plus, there’s a bunch of squatters living up there. Pain in the ass to move them off.”

Arzghanian made a face.

“The legal ad, it was Darcy’s idea, not mine. He wanted it all to be on the up-and-up, nothing under the table.”

“Doesn’t sound like the way you two have typically done business in the past,” I said.

Arzghanian shrugged.

“No, he did not want the old way,” Arzghanian said. “Unfortunately, there are certain regulations involved with the way my bank does business. There really is no such thing as a simple loan.”

“The way your bank works, you loan someone money and you own them, control the way they do business.”

“A crude way to look at it,” Arzghanian said. “I prefer to think that we are partners. At first, when Darcy approached me about the loan, about me buying that piece of property, it was with the understanding that we would resume our partnership. So he placed the legal ads and prepared papers for a standard real estate transaction. But he began to have misgivings when I spelled out certain terms of the loan.”

“What terms exactly?”

“I’m afraid that’s proprietary information, Mr. Chasteen. But five million dollars is a lot of money, and so the terms were, let’s say, rather rigid regarding my expectations for resuming our partnership,” said Arzghanian. “And that is why the deal fell through.”

“So you aren’t buying that property after all?”

Arzghanian shook his head.

“No, I am not. We came to that decision the other day when Darcy was here at my office, the day you visited. As you know, Darcy is preoccupied with getting his son elected to parliament. As well he should be. Alan Whitehall is an exceptional young man.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Which, unfortunately, put Darcy in the position of having to decide whether to resume our partnership or maintain a clean break for appearance sake, for Alan’s sake. In the end, he decided to make the break and withdraw his offer to sell the property. It was all very amicable, I assure you. Darcy is a friend. I tried to help him find other funding options through more, shall we say, traditional venues. That is why he was here in Mo Bay for two days. Sadly, we were unable to secure him any funding to that end.”