Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (25 page)

“So he still needs five million dollars?”

Arzghanian nodded.

“Yes. And from all that I can gather he needs it quite soon.”

“Why does he need it?” I said.

Arzghanian shrugged.

“I can’t be sure. He hasn’t shared the details with me. Only that he needs the money.”

“But you have your suspicions, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Whoever is behind this, they plague me as well.”

“So, who is it?”

Arzghanian cocked his head and looked me. He took a long time answering.

Finally, he said, “How much loyalty do you have to your government, Mr. Chasteen?”

“I’m an American. Scratch me and I’ll bleed red, white, and blue.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question. Perhaps I should rephrase it,” said Arzghanian. “How much do you trust your government and the people who work for it?”

“I’m willing to give most of them the benefit of the doubt,” I said.

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

“Considering some of the things that have happened to me in the not-so-distant past, it’s the best I can do,” I said. “But my ambivalence is equal opportunity. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, too.”

“Fair enough,” said Arzghanian.

He looked past me, to the goons by the door.

“Ramin, Hamil, you may leave us now, while we talk man to man,” he said. “I do not think Mr. Chasteen intends to grab me.”

The two left the room and shut the door.

“Ramin and Hamil?” I said.

“My sister’s sons. We are Lebanese originally. Ramin it means gentle, and Hamil is for compassionate. Very poor choices of names,” Arzghanian said. “You would not have made it across the desk.”

Two hours later, I stepped out of the building at 314 Dover Road. The black Mercedes was out front, right where I’d left it. I got in and wound my way out of Montego Bay, back toward Libido. I heard the cell phone ringing. It had fallen onto the floorboard. I let it ring.

I was on The Queen’s Road, past the airport, when the green Honda zoomed up from behind, its horn honking, the headlights flashing off and on.

I pulled over on the shoulder. Lanny Cumbaa hopped out of the Honda, came running up to my window, spewing profanity before he even got there: “Holy fucking shit, man. I saw where those two guys were taking you and I thought you were fucking dead. Freddie Fucking Arzghanian. Holy fucking shit.”

“You really need to invest in a thesaurus,” I said. “Get in the car.”

Cumbaa hopped in the passenger’s side, got himself settled, admired the Mercedes.

“Sweet ride,” he said.

I said, “You know, I really appreciate it how, you being so worried and all, you sent in the cavalry and came to the rescue when I was in there with Freddie Arzghanian.”

“Cavalry? What cavalry? You’re looking at the fucking cavalry.
And what am I going to do, put the life of a federal agent on the line just for some low-life informant?”

Cumbaa grinned. He said, “What part of that do you resent? The low-life part? Or the informant part?”

“That what I am now? An informant?”

“Well, yeah, that’s what you do, Zack. That’s how you save your ass from the IRS. So inform me, why don’t you?”

I told him some of what he needed to know. It took a while. When I was done, Cumbaa wasn’t nearly as puffed up as he’d been when I’d started.

“Jeez-o-fucking-Pete,” he said. “There’s always rumors within the agency about shit like this going on. You trust Freddie Arzghanian on it?”

“No reason not to.”

“You mean, besides the fact he’s Freddie Arzghanian.”

“Besides that,” I said. “You think he’s got it right? You think someone you work with could be causing problems for Darcy Whitehall?”

“You mean, like shaking him down?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Like I said, there’s always rumors. Mostly it works the other way—some scumbag offering one of our guys a shitload of money and our guy taking it. That kinda thing happens. But this here, it’s a whole different thing. It’s, you know, more proactive.”

We talked. Cumbaa told me a little bit about how things worked on his end. Then I told him how I saw it all playing out on my end.

When I was done, Cumbaa said, “So you and Freddie Arzghanian, the two of you hatched this plan, huh?”

“It’s just the beginning of a plan,” I said. “Still needs some work, still needs a few things to fall in place.”

“No shit, it does.” Cumbaa blew out air, rubbed his head with his hands. “Things are happening too fast, I gotta think. Gotta get out and walk around.”

“So do it.”

He did.

I sat there, fiddling with the seat controls, got it to recline.
Cumbaa was right about the Mercedes. It was a sweet ride. Not my style, but still a sweet ride. Cumbaa was right about the way things were happening, too. Fast, much too fast. I leaned back in the seat and thought about how I could make all the things happen the way I wanted them to.

A few minutes later Cumbaa got back in the car.

He said, “So I guess what I need to know is, who are you working for? Me? Or Freddie Arzghanian?”

“Neither of you,” I said. “We’re equal partners in this thing. It works out, we all get a little something.”

“Only I don’t get Freddie Arzghanian.”

“Did you really think you were going to?”

“Hell yes, I did. I was gonna be a hero.”

“You’re still gonna be a hero, Cumbaa.”

“Yeah, but a different kind of hero.”

“A hero all the same.”

Cumbaa shrugged, said: “So what do you get out of it, Chasteen?”

“You mean, besides the everlasting gratitude of the U.S. government?”

“Yeah, like I’m sure that makes your heart go pitter-patter,” said Cumbaa. “Look, I can’t promise the IRS won’t come after you.”

“No, but you can promise that you won’t sic them on me.”

Cumbaa nodded.

“Yeah, I can do that easy enough.” Cumbaa studied me for a moment, said: “So you got a side deal going with Arzghanian?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Because you’d be crazy if you didn’t, that’s all I’m saying.”

I didn’t say anything.

Cumbaa said: “How much?”

I didn’t say anything.

“OK, fuck you very much. That’s your business,” he said. “So what I got to do now, I got to contact my supervisor, run this by him, see about getting some backup in here for when this goes down.”

“No,” I said.

Cumbaa looked at me.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, you don’t contact anyone at your office. Trust no one you work with. At least for the time being. For obvious reasons.”

Cumbaa thought about it. He knew I was right. He scrunched his lip, chewing on it, looking at me.

“That makes me very fucking uncomfortable.”

“Paybacks are hell, huh?”

Cumbaa shook his head, started to say something, stopped. He looked out the car window. Then he looked back at me.

“I have to tell you, Chasteen, you are one ballsy motherfucker.”

“That mean you’re in?”

“Yeah, asshole. I’m in.”

When I got back to Libido I swung by my cottage before heading up to Darcy Whitehall’s house. I went into the bedroom, started working the phone and eventually connected with an international operator who found a main number for Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Two calls later and I knew what I needed to know.

When I stepped out of the cottage, Otee and Boggy were sitting on the front porch.

“Thought the two of you had deserted me. Where you been?”

“Been talking to the mother of those dead boys, the two I had to shoot on the road out of Benton Town. It was his idea,” Otee said, nodding at Boggy. “Me, I didn’t want to go see her, but him say we had to do it.”

Boggy’s eyes were tinged with red, but other than that he showed no apparent ill effects as a result of his cohoba-induced trance the evening before.

“They came to me last night,” said Boggy.

“Who came to you?”

“The spirits of those two who died. They were lost. They wanted to go home,” said Boggy. “And so we took them there.”

“What, you just opened the car door, told them to hop in, and
drove them back to where they lived? Or used to live? You in the spirit-transporting business these days, Boggy? You make them wear seat belts?”

Boggy didn’t say anything. He’s accustomed to me unleashing a minor rant whenever he starts talking about communicating with the spirits. If he wants to sit around and snort cohoba, fine, we all have our vices. God knows, I love my rum. And I like where it gets me. Nothing wrong with getting a good buzz on, but that’s all it amounts to. No need to attach anything more to it than that. All that stuff about connecting with the other side? Unh-uh. It begins to wear thin after a while.

Otee said, “Him come get me early this morning and say we need to find where them two dead boys lived. I remembered their names from the paper and so we drove into Mo Bay, asked around. Soon enough we found their mother’s house. She live up on Camp Hill.”

“You tell her you were the one who shot her sons?” I said.

Otee shook his head.

“No, I didn’t tell her that. I let him do most the talking. And he found out much.”

Boggy said, “Those two who died were her oldest. The woman, she was filled with much sorrow.”

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy. Not after what they did,” I said. “She happen to mention how her sons came to get mixed up with the NPU?”

“That just it,” said Otee. “Them mother, she say them not NPU. They always been PNP. Just like her. Them just doing what them did for the money. She say another one of her sons, a young one, just thirteen, him get paid, too. And guess what him get paid to do?”

“Paint NPU slogans on the Libido wall?”

Otee nodded.

“Yeah, him and some him friends. Getting paid good, too. One hundred dollars U.S. every time they do it.”

“She say who paid them to do that?”

Otee shook his head.

“No, say she didn’t know. But she say that younger son of
hers, the one thirteen, he’ll be back at her house this evening. Said we come back she make sure he talk to us then.”

“What about the police? Do they know about this?”

“No,” Otee said. “She said they come by but she wouldn’t talk to them. Afraid they’d take her younger son away and lock him up. Me, I didn’t think she was going to talk to us either. Stood there at her door, she not wanting to let us in. But then Boggy, he set her down and talked with her soft-soft. Then she was crying. And then she was talking, telling us everything.”

I looked at Boggy. His face was as neutral as neutral could be. I knew he bore me no ill will for having unloaded on him a few moments earlier. While I’d never buy into that whole speaking-with-the-spirits thing, I didn’t begrudge him the fact that it sometimes got us where we needed to get.

“So, Mr. Silver-Tongued Shaman, what exactly did you say to this woman to get her to talk to you?”

“I told her that I had spoken with her sons, and that she no longer had to worry,” said Boggy. “I told her they were standing right there with her and that they had found peace.”

Otee shivered as Boggy spoke.

“I tell you true, mon, there was something in that room with us when he was saying all that,” said Otee. “Hair was standing up on my arms. This cool draft come blowing through the house while it hot as all hell outside. Me want to run out of there, but me no can make me legs move. Me hope like hell them two duppies at peace.”

“I should have come clean about everything from the start, when the phone calls first started,” said Darcy Whitehall. “But I didn’t trust the police. I didn’t trust anyone. I thought I could handle it myself, make it all go away.”

We sat in the living room at Whitehall’s house—Whitehall on the sofa with Ali and Alan on either side, me in a rattan chair, facing them. Their morning soul session had yielded results—a family détente, an easing of whatever ill will had been between them, mostly on Ali’s front. She leaned against her father, her hand in his.

I felt like the Grand Inquisitor. I’d been hammering Whitehall with questions from the moment I’d arrived.

At first he’d been defiant, telling me I had no business meddling in his affairs. But then I showed him the accordion file that Cumbaa had given me at the Bird’s Nest, the one that provided a money trail for the years he’d been fronting for Freddie Arzghanian.

Whitehall skimmed through the file. Then he excused himself, stepped into his den. He returned a few moments later, holding a file of his own. I looked it over. The pages were identical to the ones Cumbaa had given me.

“It was the first contact they made with me. I found it sitting
atop my desk one morning, as if it had materialized overnight. Believe me, it got my attention immediately,” said Whitehall. “It’s quite devastating to see something you’ve labored so hard to keep secret laid out in black and white, and in such detail. I felt like the whole world had come crashing down on me.”

Whitehall shuddered, took a deep breath. Ali patted his knee. He put his hand on hers. I let the moment play out.

“When Margaret died—that’s Alan and Ali’s mother, my wife—it was a wake-up call. It was like I’d been living in a fog and it took something like that to bring me back to my senses.”

He looked at Ali.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.”

“I know, we’ve been through that,” Ali said. “You don’t have to tell me again.”

She smiled at him, sadly, sweetly.

Whitehall looked at me.

“I went to London to get Ali, and as soon as we returned I went straight to Freddie Arzghanian and told him I wanted out.”

“What was his reaction?”

Whitehall shrugged.

“Freddie was Freddie. He gave me that cold hard look of his and said we had an arrangement, one that was irrevocable. But I’d made up my mind. I cut off the pipeline coming in, and I cut it off going out. I got financing, at no small cost I can tell you, and got the operation over the hump. I cut, I trimmed, and I didn’t solve problems simply by throwing money at them. In the end, we turned the corner. But all the time, I was watching the door, thinking that Freddie Arzghanian would be coming after me.”